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Life Here, Life Gone By Cat WILLCOCK

The cool spring wind rustled the blooming trees, making an almost harmonic sound in her finely-tuned ear. To her, it sounded like a highly talented orchestra building towards its pounding, earth-shaking climax, but alas, it wasn't that at all. All it was, though from all it seemed to be, was a simple breeze; here one second, gone the next.

"That's all happiness is." She thought to herself as God put forth another breeze with His majestic powers. "Something that is here one second, and gone the next. A fleeting dream, something you think you feel but when you reach out to grab it, it's gone."

Depressed by the outlook she had just painted for her- self, she allowed the muscles in her neck to completely relax and her head slumped towards the earth. She closed her eyes, unwilling to see her head crash into the pavement, praying the pain wouldn't last long, if at all. Her eyes were jerked opened by the fact that her chin had slammed into her chest. She chuckled to herself, realizing that she was not going to be allowed to die that easily. She was going to have to make more of an effort that just allowing her neck muscles relax.

She focussed on the pavement and actually admired it for a moment, taking it all in. The pavement was a mostly grey colour; a mix of good and evil to form the lifeless colour of grey.

"Funny," she thought, "people drive on this grey every- day and they don't realize what they are actually driving on." Realizing that she herself didn't quite understand what the true meaning of the colour was, she focused her attention back onto the grey. As she studied it more, she saw specks of black, but no specks of white.

The blackness in the grey road was of varying degrees, but nonetheless, it was still black. The blackness came from various rocks and oil stains, but its presence alone, or perhaps it was the lack of any white in the grey, began to bother this woman immensely

She shook her head, raising her shaking hands to her head, hoping that they could somehow chase these insane thoughts out of her mind, but sadly, her-effort failed, leaving, her only with fists of hair.

The wind blew again.

Happiness here, happiness gone? No, that wasn't quite right. Sanity here, sanity gone.

There, that's better.

She faced the fact that she was inevitably going to refo-

cus her attention back to the grey, so with a heavy sigh, she began to take in the grey to her mind and _ her faithless soul once more. She became frantic as she seemed to begin to search wildly for some sort of colour, some sort of life. Her desperate search came up empty. Tears, formed by the deep- est part of her blue eyes, clung to her eyelashes for a brief moment, and then began their descent down her pale cheeks, leaving a salty trail of moisture in their wake. The tears, which gravity began to control, fell to the earth, and onto the grey, making only a silent 'plop' on the pavement. »

She was even more distressed to see the tear sink into the grey, a small black mark its only evidence of existence. Unable to watch this sight anymore, she turned her head to her right, desperately hoping that she would see some ray of hope. That's when her small hope, if only for a brief moment, lifted. |

On the top of the grey, victoriously painted, were two seemingly unending, solid yellow lines. They were separated by a solid grey line, but nonetheless, a sign of light on the rather depressing scene. She smiled, in spite of herself, and reached out to touch them, hoping to herself that this wasn't just some other false dream like those cool spring breezes. Her heart jumped when she realized that those two yellow lines were tangible objects, something she could feel. Her fingers ran across the yellow lines, ignoring the rough feel of _ the road, the slight imperfections of something so beautiful to her at this moment. Nothing could take this away from her.

That's when she saw it, the one thing that robbed her of her smile, the one thing that made her hopes come crashing down from the high plateau she had placed them on. It was nothing gigantic by any means, only to her it was earth-shat- tering. It was a speck of grey, mixed in with the bright yellow - lines. She blinked her eyes and opened them again, wishing that it was her over-worked mind playing horrible tricks on her, but it wasn't. :

Once she opened her eyes from her quick blink, she real- ized that there wasn't just one speck of grey, there was anoth-

_er. And another...And another...

The wind blew again. Hope here, hope gone? No that wasn't quite right. Sanity here, sanity gone. There, that's better.

Unable to focus on the grey any longer, she rose her. head, forcing the muscles she had allowed to completely