Man on the Street (vignette) --PG-13
Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:46 am
Okay, just a little vignette. Short, sweet and to the point.
Man on the Street
I’m going to tell you something, and you can believe me or not. I know what I say is true.
There’s a ghost on the streets of Los Angeles. He drives a green Mercedes Benz, and he cruises good neighborhoods and bad.
The working girls know him—they see everything. The young ones, the new ones, hope he’s looking for them, because that ghost, he carries a handsome, haunted face. But the ones who’ve been longer on the street, they know he never stops, never looks, and because they see everything, they know what I know.
See, the years go by, slow when you’re young, faster the longer you live, and we all change. We get taller, we get fatter, and after awhile we get grayer. But the man in the Mercedes, he never changes. Must’ve been in the early seventies, coming up on forty years ago. Hot summer nights, and even as a kid, not yet ten, I had trouble sleeping. I’d slip out of bed quiet-like, hoping not to disturb my grandma, and lean up against the burglar bars over the window, hoping to catch a breeze.
And I’d see that car, dark green under the streetlights, and black in the darkness between, purring quiet like a stalking leopard. And the driver, dark-haired, thin face, his big hands owning that steering wheel. Just driving the streets like he was looking for a way out of hell.
I think even at seven or eight, I could have told him he wouldn’t find redemption out there.
The years go by, man, so fast, and when I got older, when I was out running the roads myself, looking for God knows what—adventure, money, love, whatever young men look for—I still saw him, from time to time. Looking the same, the Benz a little older, but still in way the wrong part of town. Friend of mine had a run-in with him once, said the man scared the crap out of him, but he’d never say what happened, exactly. I know, though, I know that’s no ordinary man.
And to this day, whenever I’m out late, I keep an eye out for that car. I found what I was looking for, a long time ago. But every now and then, a man needs to be out in the small hours of the night. And when I am, I listen for the purr of that Mercedes, low and sweet in the darkness, and I watch for the man who hasn’t aged a day, not in almost forty years. If he’s searching for redemption, he hasn’t found it yet. Maybe he never will.
So you can believe me or not, but I’m telling you true. Out there on the night streets of Los Angeles, there’s a ghost. And he drives a green Mercedes Benz.
Man on the Street
I’m going to tell you something, and you can believe me or not. I know what I say is true.
There’s a ghost on the streets of Los Angeles. He drives a green Mercedes Benz, and he cruises good neighborhoods and bad.
The working girls know him—they see everything. The young ones, the new ones, hope he’s looking for them, because that ghost, he carries a handsome, haunted face. But the ones who’ve been longer on the street, they know he never stops, never looks, and because they see everything, they know what I know.
See, the years go by, slow when you’re young, faster the longer you live, and we all change. We get taller, we get fatter, and after awhile we get grayer. But the man in the Mercedes, he never changes. Must’ve been in the early seventies, coming up on forty years ago. Hot summer nights, and even as a kid, not yet ten, I had trouble sleeping. I’d slip out of bed quiet-like, hoping not to disturb my grandma, and lean up against the burglar bars over the window, hoping to catch a breeze.
And I’d see that car, dark green under the streetlights, and black in the darkness between, purring quiet like a stalking leopard. And the driver, dark-haired, thin face, his big hands owning that steering wheel. Just driving the streets like he was looking for a way out of hell.
I think even at seven or eight, I could have told him he wouldn’t find redemption out there.
The years go by, man, so fast, and when I got older, when I was out running the roads myself, looking for God knows what—adventure, money, love, whatever young men look for—I still saw him, from time to time. Looking the same, the Benz a little older, but still in way the wrong part of town. Friend of mine had a run-in with him once, said the man scared the crap out of him, but he’d never say what happened, exactly. I know, though, I know that’s no ordinary man.
And to this day, whenever I’m out late, I keep an eye out for that car. I found what I was looking for, a long time ago. But every now and then, a man needs to be out in the small hours of the night. And when I am, I listen for the purr of that Mercedes, low and sweet in the darkness, and I watch for the man who hasn’t aged a day, not in almost forty years. If he’s searching for redemption, he hasn’t found it yet. Maybe he never will.
So you can believe me or not, but I’m telling you true. Out there on the night streets of Los Angeles, there’s a ghost. And he drives a green Mercedes Benz.
I want you to know, you hit every theme and did it in a MUCH more pleasant way. 
You never fail to restore my faith in the written word...
I'm sure Samuel Taylor Coleridge is rolling in his grave, but I do appreciate the praise!