The Future's Orange by Martin Edwards

HTW's July ‘word maze’ challenge to use the words orange, retirement, melancholy, bottle, brothel, change, friendship and glass within a 10-15 minute writing window.

The future is orange. At least that’s what they told us, back in the day of housebrick-sized mobile telephones. Years on, my orange has turned decidedly sour.

I was a young, thrusting, go-anywhere, do-anything for a fast buck, kinda’ guy.

But those years passed me by, and now I don’t go anywhere, or do anything, and the last fast buck flew out of my moth-eaten wallet last week - fixing the cranky old boiler in my one-roomed downtown apartment. 

I exist in melancholy squalor, on the seedier side of town, squeezed in between the local brothel and Gianvanni’s fast food Pizza parlour. Each day, I tread the pavement outside, littered with the tinted glass shards of yet another drunkenly disposed broken bottle.

This is not what I dreamed of. Not what I was promised. Not what I expected. My reality of retirement is a life of hand-to-mouth. My only friendship, the sad-eyed, flea-bitten stray dog that follows me to the park. At least he has one ear left to listen to my woes. 

It’s time for a change. It’s time to escape. Time to taste the juice of a fresher orange.