Here now on this thread…
The Overtakings — A Short (+ True) Story by Patrick Avenell (tweeted while written)
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
On Tuesday night, after trivia, at 10pm, I alighted a taxi and walked from the main street of my inner city suburb down a hill towards home
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
roughly 250 metres away. One of the questions at trivia was about the Louvre and this had triggered some reflections regarding the lyrics
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
to Lorde’s new song The Louvre, from her recently released sophomore album Melodrama. Although descending rapidly into deep rumination
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
I became aware that a young man was walking closely behind me, and that he was holding a key swinging from a lanyard of no small slackness.
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
The man continued to shadow me at a distance of no more than six cadavers laid head-to-toe to the embrasure of my apartment block’s security
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
door. He was dressed in the classical style of the modern male macaroni: designer brand trainers; sable skinny jeans; and a hoodie, unfurled
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
over his pate and drawn to his spectacles. While not a man of considerable size, he presented as spry and limber, fast if not furious.
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
The 12 letterboxes for my apartment complex — three units each across one subterranean and three superterranean levels — are positioned
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
immediately before and perpendicularly adjacent to the door, and I could see mine was adipose with collateral for various bicycled fast food
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
delivery services, which, incidentally, must be the mode occupation for people in my East Sydney hamlet. I stopped to withdraw this bamf
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
from my receptacle and dispose of it in the comingled recyclables bin located several metres back on the footpath. This distraction allowed
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
the young gent trailing me to overtake and, to my surprise, as I had not clocked him erstwhile, to use his prenominate pendulumic key to
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
open my block’s security door, just as I was returning from recycling. He held the door open for me — polite but sans recognition, perhaps
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
flashes of emergent suspicion glazing across his eyes — and I overtook him to walk the length of hallway to the stairwell some 20 metres
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
hence. Again my thoughts were cast back to Lorde’s The Louvre (cowritten by Flume and Jack Antinoff from fun. and Bleachers) and what it
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
means to be hung in the back of the Louvre. Too swept up in this that I miscounted my steps and storeys and emerged from the stairwell on
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
the second floor, whereas I live on the third and top floor. It wasn’t till I reached the middle of the three apartments and saw a door
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
number not my own that I comprehended by peregrination solecism. This digression meant the hooded hipster overtook me in proceeding up to
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
to the third floor, which is where I live in an apartment in Sydney that I own because I have never eaten avocado in my life. The sequence
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
of events leading to this now kneaded from curious and inchoate to perspicacious and amusingly translucent for me, but altogether terrifying
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
for the other chap. Through nothing more than a reverie on lyrics gussied up as low cunning I had managed to enter the building sans key and
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
then craftily conspire to fall behind my prey in order to track his progression to his apartment, next to mine and the far end of the floor
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
where he now frantically rushes to calm his trembling hands and insert the vacillating key into the capricious lock, all while eyeing me
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
steadily approach with a visage (his) now completely overwhelmed with lacrimating despair. Just as he opens his mouth to ask, “What do you
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
want?!”, I reach my door and calmly intercourse my key, hear the lock turn in orgasm and silently disappear from his view and nightmare.
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
I then put The Louvre by Lorde on my Sonos. I haven’t seen him since.
The End
— Patrick 👻 Avenell (@Patrickavenell) July 6, 2017
