Audiobook: White Lights
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
British (Received Pronunciation - RP, BBC) South African (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
They replaced the street lights at the front of my house with new power saving ones that cast a sickly grey, giving the street the atmosphere of a zombie film. It wasn't the cheeriest night I'd spent wide awake staring mindlessly at the window. My storey began, as many do at stupid o'clock in the morning. The witching hour, a time known only to unnatural creatures or drunken party, goes staggering home. Like the cast of said zombie film and me, though I was definitely neither of those I was sitting at my window. There was a lot of stuff I could have been doing in stayed reading, perhaps writing my university application, finishing coursework due in the next few weeks. But I had gone to bed, and that meant drawing a line under regular activities. I had chosen watching the new street lights, and I was going to see it through because some decisions you just have to live with it was late. This is what passed for logic. It wasn't like the lights even did very much. They just glowed dimly. Perhaps. I thought it was some sort of diabolical plan. These lights weren't even bright enough to drive safely. Bye. I could imagine a squad of hippies infiltrating local governments across the country, cackling to themselves that they advised the use of the bulbs, knowing they're reducing power consumption and taking thousands of cars off the roads in one fell swoop. Not that I was likely to see a car power across the road and flipped over the low brick wall that angel garden any time soon. I lived on a back street in Trots Pond, middle of nowhere, and the amount of stuff that happened here was zero. They were weird out of the way small town things phase and the occasional town meeting. But the's didn't get everyone talking for weeks to come. A missing cat made the front page of the trust upon chronicle as if the universe had read my mind, a cat streaked interview. I mean, it was moving very fast rather than completely naked. This is rural England, not some fairy tale land where animals habitually wear top hats and dinner jackets, though for some reason, almost never trousers. This cat was a long head thing, huge and pampered looking. It must have bean from under the bigger, detached houses down the road where they had proper loans in their front gardens. Soon another kept came along thin and furious, hearing after the first in full chemicals, you're attack mode, ready to claw off huge chunks of fuzzy hair. The first cat fled. The second followed, yelling all the way stillness sunk, beckon like the world was snuggling and a big do ve of quiet, much like the quote I should have Bean under the world remain grey and grew more boring by the minute. Not a fox or better wondering by not a single car grumbling down the main road that lay beyond our street, I wondered if it might not be better just to lie down and stare at the ceiling and stayed. But to my amazement, more than one distraction came along in a single night. And what an improvement on a cat fight. It wass a young men, not a pimply teenager. Like all the boys we knew, the ones at college who would talk to us came around the corner. He was tall, scruffy and had white guy dreadlocks, lung tangled and hanging loose to his shoulder blades. He blended in well with the background, his hair was black, his T shirt, dark grey dreams and lighter grade to match the pale paving slabs. I shrank behind my curtains immediately terrified that he'd seen me. But he didn't look up, and I got bored with my peaking. I didn't have any lights on, but the streetlights were probably at least strong enough to our Klein, my pasty, freckled face for anyone to see if they scan the row of houses. On the other hand, he seemed completely uninterested in the houses around him, mooching along with his hands in his pockets and minding his own business. He cut across the street and glanced around as if checking the ground, then set down right on the pavement opposite my neighbor's house with his head toe back to face the stars. I could just make out that his eyes were closing like it was meditating. I couldn't understand it. Why would anyone want to sit on the chilli pavement wearing just a T shirt and jeans in the middle of the night In March, I knew every face in the town, if not their names, and it had never seen this man before. Had I missed the buzz of someone new, someone with dreadlocks and the gleam of metal piercings on his face should have caused such a loud tutting and the post office it could be unheard off in the hills. The old women of this town had more than enough snot in isjust for my mom's hippie stand, and she was fairly normal. Aside from the tie dye, I had to find out what this is all about. Sniff around and see what he was doing on our territory. I could see a relaxed smile, a calmness to the way, he said. More likely than not, he was drunk or on drugs. He's probably sold his code for more drugs, which was a pretty in my limited experience of gawking at them in the bigger towns. Guys who will ripped jeans and T shirts with some sort of grubby band artwork on had the most amazing lung coats usually studded, hanging with belts and att the very least riddled with that safety pins