My Old China

My old China

Faded White walls. Tattered Red door. Stained glass windows, and lifeless curtains. A table stands straight, a coat of white cloth and weaponry of cutlery, flotsam in a sea of a blood red carpet.

Silence has for too long been here. Its rule is absolute and nothing is done without its consent. Noise is now a thing of the past, having been kept down for what seems like an eternity.

The waiter is a statue and her expression is as hard as stone. She stares motionless at the door and waits with her legs aching but she can’t sit, somebody might enter, but that gradually turns into nobody as the clock ticks on.

The chef is in his kitchen glaring at empty orders. He falls back on his stool and daydreams of a time when it was busy. He yearns to cook. He reaches out for it. The cold condensation on the surface of the glass as he touches it pulls him back to reality, he sighs to his faithful pan and he gazes cold-heartedly at the ever-darkening moon.

Across the barren silence of the room, a television is seen but not heard. It flashes pictures of the news. Here next to the window, it sees everyone, yet no one sees it.

Outside another busy train thunders overhead, rattling the building. It starts to rain, producing a further dramatic drop in the restaurant’s mood, as the hope of customers is flushed down the drain.

Through the windows, a gloomy view of cars passing by, with their shining eyes lighting the sodden street and the squelch of wet tyres slipping along the roads.  The clogging smell of fumes is overpowering, as the flowing stream of cars becomes a stagnant canal, with horns bellowing and people shouting.   

My Old China is left in the dark. Alone. Half drowned under a railway bridge and surrounded by towering industrial offices, My Old China is a trembling mouse hiding in its hole from the owls glaring down on it. It’s trapped and it knows it is now only a matter of time…