Ripples 18 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

18 Cold Front

The car parked, she gathered her important items.

The blue tag placed in the window, a public statement of plight. Set so anyone could determine if The Queen for a Day was a righteous queen.

The cold winds swirled as she made her way towards a building constructed of monotone concrete slabs. Dreary-Grey, forbidding and ugly. Some esthetic's idea for combining permanence with healing. A tribute only to the ignorance of the architect, builders and worse, those that commissioned it.

The building oriented to catch every gust of wind: sheering cold and rains in season; heat and dust on the change. A concrete sarcophagus confronting nature, oblivious to those that sought sanctuary away from the elements. She grimaced with a cold chill as the wind sliced through her coat and hurried towards the glass doors marking the entrance. The doors slid open. The inside appeared even bleaker although the exterior warned there would be no welcome.

Poorly painted walls with attempted splashes of subdued colors surgically selected to dull the senses. Smells. Old smells. Stale smells. A nasal cacophony of decay. She wrinkled her nose as she made her way through the halls and corridors.

She passed others traversing the corridors, like ants meandering to some destination known only to themselves. The currents here were erratic, turning people this way and that almost on a whim, rip tides flowing in opposite directions. Whirlpools collecting the unwary, in an unceasing vortex of wrong directions.

She came at last to her destination.... many others here before her.

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting is what one did.

Especially if you were Queen for a Day.