Prologue

Paula sat on the street. Actually she didn’t sit, she lay, in the middle of the pavement. The people around her just wondered or doubtingly glared at her. Clouds, white and gray ones, moved slowly across the blue summer sky. It was a wonderful, warm day. The buzzing noise of cars passing by did not bother her anymore. It was not the first time she lay there. Only a faint layer of moisture covered the streets, a remnant of the midnight rain. Some people still carried their umbrellas, for the rain had stopped only a few hours prior. But all that, the whole world around her, did not reach Paula at all. The damp smell of concrete, the cool breeze, the clouds, it all vanished as her mind went astray to places beyond anyone’s grasp.

Her thoughts were then abruptly interrupted by a passerby. Many people did not like how she was lying there, staring at the clouds. Almost angrily the man yelled at her. “Get up, you weirdo! The sidewalk is not a place to sleep.”

“Crazy girl!”, “Psycho!”, “Go home, weirdo!”, “You don’t belong!” Paula was used to this, to people insulting her because of her behavior. She didn’t bother, if anything, she kept going on because of it. It wasn’t she, who was crazy, but the whole world with its morals and conventions defining what’s normal over everyone’s head. Paula had learned to laugh at it, ignore it. From time to time though, people came, who did not let her be or left with irritated glances. From time to time, she encountered someone like him.

Again and again the tip of his shoe nudged at her arm. What was it with him? Aren’t you even allowed to lay on the pavement anymore? Should she leave for his sake, or should she stay for her own? Scrutinizing she looked up at the passerby, who didn’t actually earn that label anymore as he had stopped passing by. An average person, probably married and two kids, maybe even three. One of those, who wanted to keep the natural rules of society at any cost. Expelling another human from their comfort spot seems to belong to those rules. She sighed and got up. “There you go”, he said and went on his way. And Paula? Paula just watched him go, lay down on the faintly moist, warm pavement again and stared into the clouds.