The Old Brick Building by Paul Conversano, 2010
Lets pretend we all are real. Like each of us are special and unique.. Then we woke up.
The rain pitter-pattered on the windowsill incessantly like a beggar. The trees swayed and rocked, laughing at the world and talking to the wind. The rain seemed to be coming from the ground rather than the sky. Black clouds bullied and pushed their way to drop their depressing loads. The building leaked and moaned from the infinite rain. It was an old brick building, tall and proud. It stood looming over the other buildings around it. The downstairs floor served coffee and pastries and was popular among townsfolk.
As years passed the building grew old and ivy grew up the sides of the brick like tree snakes. Eventually the buildings around it began to be knocked down and new taller buildings took their places. The brick building felt lonely without its old friends. Each day it felt worse and worse and each day taller and taller buildings were built around it. Years passed and steel skyscrapers raped the skyline with their gaudy outlines. They looked down upon the small brick building and laughed with contempt and superiority.
The days began to grow slow and the nights grew to be painful reminders of the past. The ivy that once climbed the sides of the brick building withered and died, leaving only gray and brown remnants. The sun shined but never did the old building get the love from the sky god because the skyscrapers left it in perpetual shade. Less and less people began to come into the first floor coffee shop. The building was literally left in the dark.
People spit on its sidewalk and spray painted its walls with obscene and offending words. The aerosol paint was like a knife to butter on the building’s spirit. The windows were broken with rocks; the skyscrapers continued to climb skyward. Boards covered the depression and splintered remains of the building’s past. Nobody was left to care or keep the place alive. Each day the building lived to just live; nothing was sufficient anymore.
When it was finally alone and forgotten, stranded in the shadow of its successors, wallowing in the sorrow of the past come and gone, the building began to cry.
The rain pitter pattered on the windowsill incessantly like a beggar. The trees swayed and rocked, laughing at the world and talking to the wind. The rain seemed to be coming from the ground rather than the sky. Black clouds bullied and pushed their way to drop their depressing loads. The old brick building cried for days past, for the love it used to take for granted, for the life it once had. The other skyscrapers looked down on the black clouds surrounding the brick building and they began to snicker. Snickering turned to laughing, which then turned to hysteria. The final straw had come. A flash of light was the angel of remorse, like Gabriel letting Muhammad know the real meaning. The old brick building caught fire, lightning ripping through the old rotten roof. The building burned and crumbled; no fight was put up. The firetrucks arrived to watch the fire consume even the red brick from the past.
The old brick building was gone. Those who had known and loved it were ashes in the wind, and the building died without friends or a funeral. The people who had lived by it talked of the grand old coffee-shop, yet the building was soon forgotten. The debris was eventually cleared.
Years passed. The ground was broken and sad. Bulldozers moved the past and pushed the cold hard present into the vacant lot. Cement was poured; steel beams were installed. The old brick was no more, and a new bland skyscraper took its place. Standing tall and at attention like a soldier the new skyscraper was looming and sinister. Memories faded and the old building was forgotten forever.
