Sophia hadn’t wanted to take her nephew that day, but she owed her half sister a favour after the whole dark corner of the library event. Cheryl had promised not to tell anyone about the things Sophia had been doing to the books, though she had vowed to hold her witnessing over Sophia’s head for the rest of her life. Ever the epitome of forgiveness, this photograph captures the moment Sophia realises hurting her nephew would make her as disgusting as Cheryl had said she was.
Cheryl hadn’t talked to her in ten years, but Mabel showed up in her best clothes at the diner every day anyway. She waited for service that would never come and was used to being utterly ignored. She saw that Sophia and her grandson were there, but knew that she wasn’t allowed to talk to them. This image pictures Mabel imagining the diner burning to the ground, her saving her grandson, and the shock of the event being the catalyst for a new beginning with her daughter.
Balthazar had always hated his name and told people to call him Benny. He didn’t much like Benny either, but at least it wasn’t Balthazar. Somehow another regular at the diner, a woman who was always wearing a fur coat, had seen his identification card and now she greeted him with a kind “Hello, Balthazar” whenever she came in. He didn’t want to engage with her as she seemed lonely and was likely, therefore, clingy. Thus he didn’t correct her. Shown here is Benny considering the hassle of a permanent name change.
Harold always took his coffee and bourbon to the darkest corner of the diner. He could watch the people coming in and out all day and since he didn’t take up a booth, Cheryl, the waitress, didn’t bother him. Today’s winner of the “interesting” award went to the man with the tub of mayonnaise in the sharp suit. This photograph shows Harold, having just kicked off one of his shoes, with the slow realisation that he should probably put it back on right away.
Sigfried was very much aware that his concoction of mayonnaise and napalm wasn’t going to find an audience inside of the diner. He wasn’t there to sell it, though he did need to sell at least some of the 500 tubs he’d produced. No, he was there to see if his heart still felt tight when Cheryl flirted with the cook. Pictured is Sigfried moments after smearing his self-made “Maypalm” on the side of the counter.
Attribution: These “photographs” are not photographs, they are AI generated by Doug Belshaw in his series Time’s Solitary Dance. I started the narrative as comments in this PixelFed gallery. CC-BY Laura Hilliger and Doug Belshaw