I’m Odds and Ends

It was just another Tuesday night after work, and I was sitting in my favourite booth at my favourite little caff with my usual after-work delight, a Cornish pasty, silverware on one side of the plate, and a cold can of Tab on the other. I casually glanced around the place, seeing most of the regulars here, the old man sitting at his usual table and donned in his weathered beige duster and plaid newsboy cap, the charmingly snarky waitress adding another order ticket to the stack for the cook, and a young lady in a comfy casual dress and hoodie with her cuppa and newspaper. I smiled a bit to myself, briefly looking at her, remembering the many times I’d passed by her booth, casually looking down to see that newspaper opened to the same section every week; the comics. I asked her about it once and she told me she particularly enjoyed The Mysterious Racer comic.

I turned back to my meal for a few more bites, opened up my drink, the light pop and fizz sounds wafting up to my ears, and I took a long and satisfying swig. Turning my gaze back to the folks in the diner, when my eyes fell back onto the lady reading her comic, I noticed that she seemed unusually focused on it. My brow arched and I watched her for a bit longer. Suddenly, my eye caught the sight of a drawn hand reaching out of the newspaper for her. Terrified, I could only stare as she regarded the hand fearfully, then looked back down at her paper. At that moment, her face went from a look of fear and trepidation to determination and, to my utter shock, she actually took the drawn hand in hers, seemed to turn into a drawn version of herself, and was pulled into the newspaper!

I sat at my booth, shaken by what I’d just seen, thoughts swirling as my mind was reeling. Was this real? Was I dreaming? A Hand coming out of a newspaper! And she grabbed it! Why would anyone do such a thing? It’s completely mental! I have to be losing my mind. I looked back over at her booth to make sure she was there, to assure myself that I was hallucinating, but no, she was gone. It was only minutes later that I saw her again, running out of the diner, panic on her ink-stained face, and her crumpled newspaper in hand.

I never saw the young lady again, but that is a Tuesday night, in my sleepy little town, that I will never ever forget.

"You're all the things I've got to remember."