Emerald City Nostalgia

The city was lit up, golden yellow, reds, blues and neon greens shining down on the empty roads. She stood outside a darkened bar, wide eyes taking in the city before her. It was her escape, somewhere to run to. Not that she had a clue as to what she running from, she was just running. A self proclaimed fugitive. The first days were glorious. The city a complete opposite of being alive, no one would bother her here, she reveled in the stillness, the nostalgia of quieter times.

                As most days do, they started to become dull in her personal Emerald City. She continued to run, a fugitive of her own imagination, but she ran in place. She spent her night reading the labels on beer bottles, drowning in her nostalgia. The city was as bright as ever, as still as it was when she arrived. Though now, it enraged her.

                "Who wants to sleep in the city that never wakes up?,” She asked herself, “why won't anyone wake up?"

                She had escaped, from what she still didn't know, but now she imagined a thousand places that were better than this one, it wasn't quite what she thought it would be.

                Eventually, nights of reading those beer bottles got to her, and she began to struggle with herself. Her mind, now clouded with alcohol said "I want to sleep in the city that never wakes up. I want to revel in the nostalgia again." Sleep would be her only escape. And so she drank, and drank, and drank. Before she fell into her final escape, just as those tigers in the emperor's cage had, her eyes, once filled with nostalgia and dreams of yellow brick roads, closed, and she whispered to her Emerald City;

                "I guess Dorothy was right though."