Solitude

One night, I was walking back home very late. The streets were empty. Darkness and solitude surrounded me. I could only hear my footsteps. Doors closed, windows shut, trees sleeping.

I liked this street. Rather long and wide. Nice gardens. Semi-detached houses. As I kept on walking, I began to think about the stories that may fill each of these homes. The sight of lights from a couple of houses made me focus on them. The image made me slow my pace down. I found it funny. These detached houses share the wall that separates their lounge on the ground floor. There was light coming from both lounges. I was coming closer and I could distinctly see two people. One of them was a man sitting at a table. He seemed to be using a PC. The other one in the other house, a woman, was lying on her sofa. She seemed to be using a laptop. And I found this image so funny because if the wall dividing their houses had been removed at that very moment, they would have found themselves looking at each other's face, almost able to touch each other's finger tips.

But they didn't know it, and I was not going to knock at their doors to tell them. I just continued on my way home with the image of these two people virtually looking at each other in my head.

The man typed pressing the space bar longer than you have to. His words were too separate. He enjoyed his virtual life. He truly believed that he looked like his avatar very much... And so he let his girlfriend believe too.

His girlfriend was very much in love with him. She thought he was special and typed smileys almost at the end of every line. When he was offline, she spent hours looking for clothes to please him, hours looking for romantic sims with slow dance poses, and hours and hours. She was totally addicted.

- One of these days, I'm going to find you in real life! :-)
- One of these days
- Will you be around tomorrow then, love?, asked she while wiggling her back to make her cushions in her sofa more comfortable.
- Not sure, but most probably, replied he jumping off his slow dance ball and then adding kisses and good night wishes...

A sad blue square popped up on Artemis Hound's screen: "Orion Imsohandsome is offline".

The lights in both lounges of both semi-detached houses went off.


Sherezade.