A Rosewood: A Short Story

I had always loved Rosewood. It is such a beautiful place and has always understood me. It is a maze of narrow winding streets, as complex as the heart. The streets were the veins, paved with dark red stones, smoothed over by squealing school girls; the hard working mother; and the men who would stagger their way home after a night in the tavern. The people were the blood: good or bad, they gave the town life. The sound of the smiths, beating swords and breastplates into shape, is the consistent and dull pounding that let you know the town is alive.
The city loves me in ways no person ever has. It listens to my fierce footsteps, the clicking of my polished heels against its dirty pavements early on a Monday morning. It sees me smile ear to ear when I see the windows on its skyscrapers reflect the orange glow of the afternoon sun. It empathises with my frustrated groan long past midnight when I can't flag down a taxi to take me home. It hears my satisfied sigh in winter as the first sip of a morning coffee warms my throat and

The glass stared down from skyscrapers that kissed the grey sky above. The roads were perfect rivers of tarmac untouched by all but the construction vehicle tires. Traffic lights blink to control the non-existent cars and the pedestrian crossing buttons were shiny without sheen of finger-prints. The air is as clean as the countryside. On occasion a deer would gallop through the streets or a bird alight on the tall black lampposts, but other than that the only noise is the wind. At the train station stood seven high-speed engines with multiple high-class carriages but the clock on the wall had long given up on telling the time. By anomaly it topped the nation’s charts for lack of crime, smallest hospital wait-lists and lack of children failing in school. It is a ghost town, or perhaps a ghost city. A town built in the belief that people would come and industries follow. They just never