Storiesonline.net ------- Midnight in Memphis by carniegirl Copyright© 2012 by carniegirl ------- Description: a tale about dreams and lost innocence and were it leads in the end. Codes: slow ------- I waited for the bus like the other ten people trying to either stay awake, or stay asleep. Midnight in Memphis wasn't nearly as romantic as I had thought it would be. Going home with my tale between my legs wasn't either, but it was time to do it. Especially if I didn't want to wind up a junkie whore. Yes, I had turned a trick for the price of the bus ticket and a burger and coke, but that didn't make me hard core whore material. I should have known, when I sold my guitar two weeks ago, that it was over for me. The dream eluded me for sure and I couldn't catch onto it even as I watched it pass me by. I had given it almost a year, but my dream of being a country singer just wasn't to be. My friends all told me I needed to lose twenty pounds to be a star. Well I had lost that, and more. The part time jobs and empty bars playing for tips, kept me hungry for sure. I had been hungry for success, but also hungry for food. The almost year I gave myself to make it was gone, so it was time to go back to the job I had waiting for me. I still had family that loved me. They would help me put it back together. I was going to eat a lot of crow, feathers and all, but I could still hold my head up. A majority of the girls who came to Memphis turned to drugs to dull their sense of failure. Then to prostitution to pay for the drugs. Then finally they just died for no real purpose. I knew that it would have been me. I almost gave into the drugs in a moment of despair and I might easily have done it, if not for Eddie. Eddie had been my rock during the whole time I tried to make it. Eddie was a junkie but he never let me near him, when he shot up. He told me that only a complete idiot, failure used drugs. He told me to stay strong and never give in to the bullshit he had. Yes I screwed him high or not. I loved him when he was flying, and I loved him when he crashed. I loved him while I held him bleeding out in the street. Eddie was not drug dealer material. He was just helpless junkie material. I loved him after he was gone. I loved him while I put five holes in the street hustler who killed Eddie. It took two weeks to find him after I swapped the guitar for the rusty .38 revolver. So I was leaving Memphis and head home. Home to my family and home to the civil service job for which I had qualified almost a full year before. The one I could walk into anytime within the year, without another test. In a week's time, I would be a small town cop, in a state far away from Memphis and my failures. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2012-03-09 ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------