Sarah’s heels smacked against the cobbled pavement with percussive pock sounds. Her conservative dress was smart, devoid of creases and the same colour as the sky that day: dark grey. Thick droplets of water descended from the clouds above, and the word “fuck” appeared in her mind; a clear image of the umbrella left beside her front door, conjured there too by her limbic system. Her pace quickened, and something about her walk caught the attention of a man in a hard hat across the traffic-filled-road. A wolf-whistle pierced her distracted thoughts, and she paused mid-step. She looked at the man, eyes narrowed, and then resumed her pace while simultaneously removing a notepad and pen from her black leather bag. Over the idling engines a co-worker could be heard, shouting at the whistler to get back to work. Sarah rounded a corner and stopped under the eaves of a stone building. A detailed description of the man entered the notepad: Probably five-foot seven or so, tanned complexion, beer belly (though slim otherwise), dense Mickey-Mouse hairline, dark hair and thick stubble, small nose, thick suckling lips, medium-sized eyes spaced considerably far apart, brown or dark green irises (difficult to discern at distance), yellow hard hat, blue overalls (oil stained). She might have gone into more detail, but the rain was getting heavier; she replaced her note taking apparatus and continued onward. The entry would later be fleshed out and added to her three-hundred-page dossier she named “The Misogyny Files”. The rain grew thicker.
She entered a café and took one of the two remaining seats by the window, successfully escaping the downpour. A polite waiter soon arrived to take her order. While waiting for her flat white, Sarah retrieved a 5cm square piece of paper from her bag, and wrote upon it in tiny block capital letters: ABSOLUTE FUCKING SHIT. She carefully folded the sheet into a tiny origami crane — thus hiding the words behind intricate creases — and placed the paper bird atop a thick picture frame hanging on the wall by her table. She glanced at the art inside the frame and considered it to be disgusting.
She never kept count, but this crane marked her thousandth expletive origami bird left in a public space.
A young man looked lost, wet from the rain, wandering between tables. Sarah noticed that he was good looking, though apparently a few years younger than herself. He asked if he could sit with her. She nodded. He took off his jacket, revealing a blue t-shirt beneath. Sarah’s brow furrowed as she noticed block lettering on the shirt which declared: HEARTBREAKER. She didn’t allude to the shirt. Neither did he. The two of them shared an awkward conversation. Finally, he left.
Sarah took out her notepad.
