The Stranger and the Question by William Asrov

He was standing, stooped over groveling in the gutter beneath the streetlamp, lit, his eyes straining, searching. “Let me help you,” said the approaching Stranger. The man didn’t look up. “I’ve lost something,” he murmured as he motioned vaguely behind him. “Somewhere over there in the dark.”

“Then why do you look over here and not over there in the dark where you say you’ve lost it?” said the Stranger, puzzled, but the groveling man shook his head.

“The light over here is better,” he replied, and dropping to his hands and knees he began crawling about the street on all fours, feeling for it with his hands, his lips wordlessly working, his eyes vainly seeking, his head pressed to the dirty pavement.

Away down the deserted street, headlights were dimly visible in the distance.

© 2014 William Asrov

When not at work William Asrov reads and writes. He enjoys Kafka, Camus, Hesse, Faulkner, Nabokov, and Dostoyevsky among others. He also enjoys music and foreign languages. Otherwise, he’s twenty-four and it is likely that a third of his life is now over.

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