Scrivenings of the King-Beyond-The-Wall

Giovanni's #6

I drained the last dregs of coffee from my mug and signaled the waitress for another. It was almost midnight, but I wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight. I could use all the help that I could in staying awake through the early hours of the morning.

I was sitting in my favorite hole-in-the-wall diner downtown, tucked away on a side street beneath the old elevated turnpike that cut through the neighborhood and cast everything in shadow, no matter the time of day.

Sometimes people ask me why I spend all night out at this local diner, especially when they find out where I live. I actually like coming to this diner because the night shift waitress does know where I live and either doesn’t care, or does me the courtesy of pretending like she doesn’t. Because when you come home to your entire family murdered in your home, it kind of makes you not really want to go back there. Even when it’s a lavish mansion in the fancy area of town.

Everything that happened in that house; the initial discovery when I returned from a business trip, the police investigation, being suspected of the heinous crime myself, the trial, the exoneration, and finally coming back home to an empty and quiet house that used to be filled with so much life. It was just so hard to spend any extended amount of time there, especially late at night when it’s just me and the ghosts of my past.

So now I spend my nights out and about, afraid to go home. I bring my laptop to the diner and do my work there, then slink home in the light of day to sleep for a few hours before the house just becomes too much for me again and I have to leave. I don’t sleep more than a few hours anyway; my family’s killer is still out there and I’ve dedicated every waking hour to finding out what actually happened. I have the District Attorney’s evidence as presented at trial, and I’ve been pursuing the leads on my own trying to see if I can move the case further along than the prosecutor did before deciding that just charging the husband was good enough.

I had some promising leads, but so far nothing had panned out and the case was only getting colder as the weeks and months went by. The waitress refilled my coffee again and I felt the warm shot of caffeine spread throughout my body as I took a long sip. I rubbed my eyes, which were bleary from staring at a computer screen all night.

I don’t even know how the hours passed; time is meaningless to me now. It felt like it was midnight just a few minutes ago, but now the sky was starting to brighten and, looking at the clock on my computer, it was nearly five o’clock in the morning and sunrise was not far away. I noticed the waitress was starting to pack up and prepare for her end of shift, and I started packing my things as well. It was time to start the long walk back home so I could get a few hours’ sleep at home, with the incessant demons of my own personal tragedy.


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(550 words)


Prompt: You sip your coffee at your favorite hole-in-the-wall café across from a crumbling and congested elevated highway. It's nearly midnight, but you don't want to go home.