089/100 aka 229/365

CLOTH PEOPLE COME WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT THEM
Word Count: 367

The mornings are yellow-gray and full of tree frogs. They chirp a background song of camaraderie and fondness for the night. Somewhere not far from where you now live, a Cloth Person sneaks into your cellar.

Though no one truly knows this as fact, the Cloth People are believed to be born in the Salvation Army bins in the corners of parking lots at the mall. They are the throwaways of their society, no longer the belle of the parties, they are outgrown, stained by living, some often still wet with widow’s tears. They’ve been pulled from their homes in the morning and driven away to be left in a box among strangers. That’s why they’re afraid of the day.

They huddle together, lost in the dark and rejected, finding comfort in someone else’s spilled bag. They tell each other their stories of happier times that always sadly end the same way. In a pile. In the dark. Where lonely things go. Mended and patched, they sometimes rise and escape into the night.

The one that I met once at midnight was a chocolate bar pillow of a man. He was solid and sturdy except for the tweed wool of his feet that glared in the moonlight that fell into my room. I was startled but not really frightened. Since my husband had died nothing could frighten me anymore. Who are you? I asked, and he told me he’d once lived in a penthouse down in the city and was thrown out after divorce.

We sat up late talking. I made coffee since I couldn’t sleep. We each had our sad tales and good days to share, and morning light soon unweighted the windows.

I must get away from the daylight, he whispered and got up to steal into the still darkened hall. You can stay here, I told him, without knowing why, and I opened a closet where my coats still clung to the London Fog raincoat, the parka my husband used shoveling snow. I pushed open a space where I knew he could fit and get used to the fabrics around him. And that’s where he stayed, until it was safe to come out.