Content Note: I am trying to work on my fiction writing again, so you may see some unusual posts coming up. This is one of them. Basically for this I started with the image and then just kept on going.
He stepped out the front door pulling it closed firmly behind him. He even gave the knob a test to make sure it was locked, while patting the outline of his keys in his pocket. He looked down the street for a moment – the 
sidewalk was plastered with the flat leaves from the recent rain. He turned for a second and looked back at the door, but no, no need to go back in. Jamming his hands down into his pockets he stepped away from the house and began walking.
He wasn’t quite sure where he was headed this morning, but he knew he couldn’t stay in the house. Things sure weren’t going to get any better for him in there. He had been cooped up far too long staring at the walls, the bookshelves, the ceiling, or at nothing at all. Nope, the television wasn’t one of his options. He refused to have one. The only shows and movies he watched were on his laptop, and he hadn’t turned that on. He hadn’t brought it out with him this morning either. His shoulder felt light without the weight of the bag with laptop and power supply and notebooks in it.
Hadn’t brought it with him. If asked he would have said that he didn’t bring it because he wanted to enjoy his excursion. To see what was going on in the city right now and not lose himself in the machine and have his world view filtered through news agencies and social media. Social media. Crap. About all he knew of his friends these days is what he would stumble across on Facebook. And if those postings were to be believed they were all drunk, sunburned, and shacking up. Actually, with a lot of the folks he knew that might actually be the case.
But the laptop wasn’t with him for another reason. And he hadn’t turned it on recently to watch videos for the same reason. He knew that if he got on the net he would check his email, look at Facebook, hit all the normal sites, and realize how much she had not contacted him. Like a phone not ringing after a date, her silence would be deafening. They had kept up a running dialogue for so long on every service and in every format, that her not being there was like – well, like TV to him. Lots of stuff going on and absolutely no reason to care.
Coffee shop? Book store? Real breakfast? There were a lot of possibilities this morning, but the easy route out was to head to the bookshop a few blocks up on the corner. As did most stores of its type these days, they had a small coffee shop built in that normally had some muffins or bagels on hand. It would be good to get some caffeine in his system and watch the city again. If the coffee reved him up enough he might even muster up the energy to browse the stacks for a real book. One of those made out of paper. Wow, how long had that been?
