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If you are are reading this short story on or around the day it went live (and you live in the northern hemisphere), you are reading it on a summer day – and maybe evening. Quite by default, you are reading it “in another world”, because each one of us constructs their very own individual universe in terms of perception: You are the center of the world because that is the only way you can experience whatever “out there” reality that exists.

Fancy linguistic and conceptual wizardry aside, this is a short story I wrote in a sunny afternoon in April. As it often happens in art (certainly in my art), it contains plenty of references to experiences and things uniquely meaningful to me but which are entirely opaque to you. It’s “another world”, but one you can perhaps still see forming tangents with your own.

As it should also be fairly obvious, considering the title of this story, it’s part of my eponymous flash fiction collection, A Summer Evening in Another World.

Most of my novels are available as an immediate free download – simply visit the Fiction page on the main site. And remember, you can also just email me and ask for a free, no-strings-attached (e.g. review etc.) digital copy of any of my books.

“A Summer Evening in Another World”

I’m waiting for my suitcase in the long arrival hall, flanked by mothers and daughters, aunts and grandmothers and plenty of girls. Men are conspicuously absent from this balmy summer evening – with the exception of a few teenagers who look like an amateur basketball team.

No, that’s not true; there are only three of them – skinny and tall, and lost in the drifting breeze of irrelevance.

My hands impulsively twitch as I see the old-fashioned, brick-red suitcase peeking around the nearest curve of the baggage carousel and making its slow approach toward my position. With a socially acceptable movement – firm, purposeful, but cautious – I grab the handle and pull my suitcase away.

As I walk outside the hall, I’m greeted by the sunset sun. Another world awaits me, one outside space-time and the horrendous evil of existence. I make my way to the taxi queue – it’s delightfully short; is this a dream, one concocted by a benevolent deity for my solipsistic universe alone?

I tell the driver where I’m going; he swiftly places my suitcase into the trunk and shuts it with a firm, aggressive pull. I notice his hands – they’re short-fingered, hairy, the hands of a non-artist.

As the cab crawls outside the airport and into the city arteries, following the beach avenue, I willingly become mesmerized by the pulsating lights of the stores – buy this, see that, something you miss, feel sad – that red and green and blue all over promise me another world.

Another world, another world.

Maybe that’s the best of all possible worlds, the one we can’t ever reach.

“This heat is pretty nasty, ain’t it?” the taxi driver asks meaninglessly, wanting a chitchat. I notice the back of his head, fat droplets of sweat descending into oblivion. I offer him a socially acceptable response, one that is ambiguous yet pleasant, and he continues to talk about other things that don’t interest me – football, politics, foreign relations, and even medicine. I don’t offer anything but monosyllabic responses, and after a while he forfeits. We are again ignoring each other in peace.

The vehicle, squeaking and creaking like a disintegrating refrigerator, moves along with the traffic and soon approaches my neighborhood. It’s still early, there’s even a bit of light left in the sky, and plenty of passersby stroll around the tall apartment buildings and the stores.

A couple of blocks away from my apartment building, I notice a familiar face: At the corner café – where my grandpa used to enjoy his coffee when he was still alive – the old man with the red Nana Mouskouri glasses seats at a table outside, together with a couple of other old men. He is gesturing vibrantly, likely explaining why this or that politician is insincere, or what is the best way to plant lemon seeds.

“I’m getting off at the next corner,” I tell the cab driver and pull my wallet out of my jeans – both wallet and jeans are black and ripped, the difference being that one is a result of fashion, the other of excessive use.

As I walk toward the apartment building entrance, holding the suitcase with one hand and the keys with the other, I notice the corner kiosk lady. Safe, predictable, unattractive – both physically and otherwise. I sigh, somehow disappointed in a way I can’t quite explain, and enter the building.

I take the elevator to the second floor, noticing the bone-colored buttons; the digits are a bit faded, as if they have been pressed too many times. The cabin bounces as it reaches my floor, and I step outside. I open the door to my apartment and a familiar scent greets me before I even have time to turn on the bright light of the living room.

I immediately walk to the balcony, before anything else. I rest my arms against the railing and allow the alien night – another world – to embrace me. I look down and notice a car passing – it’s a cabriolet, a young woman driving, a young man by her side with his hand tenderly on her shoulder. My eyes follow them for a while, then focus on the distant horizon – a confident dark blue by now. Far away, beyond this world, a plane is taking off.