Vancouver Gothic
- It is morning, and you hear the seagulls. It is nighttime, and you hear the seagulls. You hear the seagulls. You always hear the seagulls. You pray the seagulls do not hear you.
- A Skytrain pulls into the station. It is completely empty. The ticker board does not say which line it is. Come to think of it, you are not sure what station you are at, either. You step onto the train.
- The paddleboarders swarm English Bay. You cannot see their faces. It is sunny and bright, but there are no faces to be seen, no matter how close you look. Something in your brain tells you not to look any closer.
- You walk around the sea wall on a warm evening, and stop to stare at the towering Inuksuk. It stares back.
- A gaggle of tourists surround the Steam Clock. Every fifteen minutes, it calls them. They worship it with their cameras. With every click of a shutter, it ticks ahead a minute. Whose minute that was has yet to be determined.
- There is a starfish on Georgia Street. Nobody knows why. Another one drops to the ground behind you as you ponder this.
- It is raining, and the grass is green. The trees are green. The sidewalk is growing green. The skies are grey and everything else is much, much too green. You forget what it is to see anything that isn’t grey and green. You don’t miss it.
- Ship horns threaten to shatter your ears. You’re nowhere near the harbour. You’d better get out of the way.
- You take the 99. It bleeds.
- There’s another coffee shop opening on the corner. You’ve forgotten how to tell the difference between them. As you walk in and slap down a $5, you also realize that you can no longer tell the difference between the taste of coffee and the taste of rain.