The dawn was glorious, rays of piercing sunlight broke through the curtains and gently awoke James in the manner that only a early spring day can. A usually and an unusually melancholy fellow he felt different today, the gloomy cobwebs brought down at last. It wasn't as if he suffered in his melancholic gloom, he accepted it and thought of it as a different perspective on life where one was constantly either pleasantly surprised or reaffirmed in one's belief whenever an outcome was discovered. Nor did his friends, and he had many, think that his pessimism was a character deficit. On the contrary, it gave him an aged air with a cutting, dry wit like a good red wine and a cosy sense of aloofness.
So it was with a strange feeling that he made his customary toast and tea that morning, going through the motions of taking the bread bag from the bread bin, removing two slices and placing them into the toaster while filling the kettle through the electric hum of the bread browning. It was as though his actions were someone else's, the movements of his hands holding the knife, buttering the toast and putting the butter back in the refrigerator carried out by a puppeteer. He ate his toast plain and sipped his tea in silence.
James worked at a library, thinking about his place of work you could say it fitted his persona like a glove. A particularly fine, velvet, glove. It was one of those old fashioned libraries that mostly still contained books and hadn't yet been infected by the modern desire to make a library a glorified internet café. The rows and rows of oak bookcases stood triumphantly, stone walls against the marching, rifle carrying army of the 'information age'. Needless to say, James enjoyed his work and the people that came and went. A concrete bastion against transience. Whatever happened outside, the books would always be there, not like the people, he thought. They never stayed, always went.
So it goes that the very morning that he felt out of sorts would be the very first morning that he was not particularly looking forward to going to work. What once felt welcoming and permanent now felt oppressive and staid. The familiar oak bookcases filled with row after row of musky books no longer gave the promise of permanence, they now instead threatened imprisonment. Thought of the twilight rooms practically gave him the shivers.
Nevertheless, he picked up his briefcase, finished his tea and walked out of the door. The morning practically screamed life and vitality, each note of birdsong was as beautiful as a whole sonata of Beethoven. The prospect of arriving at the library which had on previous mornings served to get him through the walk suddenly reversed. Now it was the prospect of being able to walk through the glorious spring day for twenty minutes that acted as a sweetener to the nine hours before he could walk in what would undoubtedly be a delightful evening.
Getting to the end of the street, a solitary cloud passed in front of the sun, dimming the world for a brief moment. James pressed the button at the crossing and waited patiently as he had done countless times before. This time, he looked left, right. No cars coming. 'Pff', he thought 'I'm wasting my time waiting here, it's a clear road for christ's sake and the only sound is that of birdsong. Perfectly safe. For once in my life I might as well just forge ahead'.
Striking out confidently across the road, the cloud dampening the sun resumed its path across the sky, letting the sun illuminate the street once again. He paused halfway across, blinded by the sheer beauty for the second time. He didn't even hear the car approaching.
