It had always been 3:00 pm for Eddie ever since he moved to this planet. Eddie walked straight along the equator, exactly as fast as the little planet rotates, in the opposite direction. He walked through bazaars made of orange tents bustling with the old lady’s bargaining shrieks and the butcher’s crisp chop down a pig thigh and chicken bicker and fluster and the roaring fire of wok fry, through a pair of teenage lovers as they were about to make out, through immaculate dining halls and even on top of the century old tables in them, trudging through garbled roast lamb drowsed in Syrah and splashing over dainty bowls of clam chowder.

He walked to sing, he walked to think. Frail and always slightly hunched, one hand on his knocking cane, the other tucked behind his back. He liked to sing lines from Wagner’s opera, so out of tune that people would politely blast Spice Girls songs or get their Chihuahuas to bark.

He walked to sleep, he walked to dream – if you ever heard snoring, you’d be pretty sure that it was Eddie’s. He walked to talk. Barefooted little kids in their hand-me-down tank tops and shorts would swarm after him as he told stories. Well, they couldn’t actually hear the whole story, only caught bits here and there the way they slap onto their palms dandelions drifting in the wind. After a while they’d be tired from running to keep up with his splayed gait, and the older kids would piggyback the younger ones. But one by one the children would bend over by the road, panting over their knees, angry at their powerless little limbs to have missed the stories. They would rub the sweat off their sunburnt cheeks, and squint at Eddie’s slanted silhouette as it shrunk and shrunk and evaporated in the horizon.

And so eventually the people of the little planet named that little equator trail after Eddie. Every 3:00pm, you would sure hear the staccato of his cane. Little kids would wait along it, sucking flavoured ice cubes or napping on the shoulders of their sisters, waiting for his stories or giggling as he snored past.

But one day, Eddie’s spot was empty. The kids squinted, waiting for Eddie’s head to poke out of the horizon. A Chihuahua barked tentatively. They stared at the gigantic maroon clock glittering by the train station. 3:02pm. 3:34pm. 5:00pm. Still no echo of his cane. One by one, the children stumbled along the direction of the rotating planet. At first they were skipping. Then they started to run, faster and faster into the night.

In the darkness they saw him, pastel in the smoggy sighs of city lights. He was sitting on a big rock, leaning into his cane. The kids slowed their pace, and silently sat around him, waiting to finally hear his stories. Accustomed to seeing his back as they would try to catch up to him, they were a bit surprised to see his face, bushy brows and a bushy beard. His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t snoring, nor talking, nor singing.

After a while, a kid sneezed. Most of the little guys had fallen asleep amidst the flitter and chatter of night creatures. One of the older girls stood up to poke at Eddie’s big, callused hand, and realized that he had frozen into a stone statue.