Main Character Vibes

A lonesome chuckle at a funeral

Francis sat there on the sidewalk, wallowing in his sadness under the faintly subsiding rain. The crowding of Toronto's towers and its riot of glimmering lights elbowed themselves over him in a smothering imposition that left him feeling like his mind had no room to stretch, to collect itself. Although the rain was fading, the gloominess of the October weather remained. His body seemed to be wilting as if the animating force in his life had been suddenly subsumed, a gravity that was crushing him under his own weight...leaving behind a pulp of a man.

He sniffled sharply wrapped his stiffened lips around a soggy cigarette. Frustratingly flicking his lighter, he struggled to produce a flame in the harsh wind. He finally crushed the cigarette in his angry fist before he tossed it into the busy street.

He slowly stood up, sharply took in a deep breath, wiped his mouth with the arm of his coat before he spat out the taste of vomit from his mouth. He reached into his pocket for another cigarette. Maybe at this altitude, he reasoned, the cruel wind would show mercy It worked. He tersely inhaled the rush of chemicals and held in his breath for a few moments until nothing came out when he exhaled. He was adamant about suffocating his sadness in nicotine and other ameliorating ingredients.

The intensity and the fast tempo with which he was huffing and puffing his cigarette made him slightly light-headed. But it was a kind of light-headedness all too eagerly welcomed if it would anesthetize a sliver of the angst he was wrestling with.

He began wandering the darkening streets drifting aimlessly. His fear of the big city after dark was completely nonexistent. After the worst had happened before his eyes, everything else paled in comparison.

A gut-wrenching nostalgia was throbbing in his aching heart; a nostalgia for the life he had, merely this morning. It was a terrible feeling to be homesick for a place in time.

Under the weight of this longing, he even wished that he had not followed his wife, that he had remained in the bliss of his own ignorance. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil...to be blind, deaf, and mute in the comfort of his suburban slice of Eden was more tolerable than to be cast out of it, out into the lonesome world with the knowledge of good and evil...but that apple could never be uneaten no matter how many times he would get himself to retch.

After walking for what felt like a lifetime, Francis came to a stop in front of a rundown establishment in a derelict part of the city that existed in the underbelly of the grand and lofty high towers. In this area, destitution was a symptom of the depression that precluded decay. The faded brick building was ensconced in spray-painted murals and other miscellaneous graffiti. It was like a canvas where the creative spirit of the poor, the tired, the downtrodden, and the deprived found free expression. There was beauty in this destitution. The indomitable human spirit always prevailed...always found a way to carve out some beauty from the ugliness of its own reality.

The neon lights of a late-night pub flickered like a beacon behind the opaque gloominess of the air. It was like a lighthouse beckoning all city drifters and lost souls to come inside and seek refuge, to find answers, and to disremember any sorrows and painful memories. This was a place where he could lick his wounds and brood in relative peace.

Inside, the pub was hazily lit and was not too crowded. The sporadic darkness, between the faint lights of the bar, was illuminated by suggestive neon signs hung across the walls without any pattern of arrangement. The ramshackle of the booths, the scratched wooden tables, and the wobbly barstools matched the exterior shabbiness of the building. Dreary colors monotonously draped the interior of it all, including the clothes of the people who were there.

It was evident that no young people ever frequented the bar. The patrons of this establishment were the outcasts of the city's gentrification programs. Everyone seemed to know each other on a first-name basis. And from the weariness of their eyes, you could tell that they were surviving but were certainly not thriving.

There was the nurse, still in her work clothes, drinking by herself on one of the stools. There was the old man, lurking in the shadows of one of the booths tucked away in the far corners, visibly overworking his liver with yet another tall glass of some alcoholic concoction. There was the middle-aged woman who was pouring her heart out about her life to whoever was listening. The bar was an oasis of some dejected community in its own right.

A non-functional jukebox stood defiantly at the end of the narrow bar; a token of the owner's tenacity of spirit and his rugged unwillingness to get along with the times. It was a place of inherent conflict and subliminal tension as if it was fighting everything around it. The perfect space and company for a man with an internal struggle. The place had a melancholic charm of its own. And in it were the forgotten bunch that existed on the other side of midnight.

Francis wearily made his way to the bar and sat at the furthest stool he could find, away from any prying eyes. Even though the place had an innate solitary atmosphere about it, he felt like he wanted to be more alone; in the eye of a storm of isolation.

"What can I get you, friend?" the bartender asked

"Whisky, triple, neat. Thanks." His lowered gaze was commensurate with the downcast slouch of his back. But more so, in the state he was in, he could not bear to make eye contact with any human being. He felt that a part of him had died, and what remained of him left him feeling like a fraud. Even though Marie was the perpetrator of infidelity, he felt like an imposter in his own skin. In the fervor of questioning everything he thought he knew, it seemed that even who he was, was not exempt from that probing. The eyes being windows to the soul and all, he was afraid of making any contact lest other people see through his thin veneer of nothingness

"Whisky neat," the bartender announced as he placed the glass on a small square napkin in front of Francis.

"Thanks." Francis instantly quaffed a hearty swig of it. The afterburn was wreaking havoc in his throat and his chest which immediately prompted him to cough. No sooner had he finished his glass in two gulps than he motioned the bartender for another one. The bartender immediately obliged. This was a place where no questions were asked...and if you could hold your own, then the flowing tap of liquor would be endlessly accessible to you.

After downing the third glass, Francis was numb enough to replay that disastrous moment in his mind over and over again. Not that he could help it. His mind kept flashing it mercilessly. Each time it did, it chipped away a small piece of his heart and with it, his ability to feel sad about it.

Marie had snatched his ability to dream. Heartrendingly dreadful. The day you stop dreaming is the day despair sinks in, for what was depression but a failure to construct a picture of a beautiful future.

Marie's treachery was unexplainable. He had given her everything that was in his power to give. He devoted himself to her happiness. She had everything that any woman would want. She must have been coerced by the man with the silver hair. "What could he have possibly offered her that she did not already have?" Francis noticed that he was talking to himself like a mad man.

But his trauma overshadowed the bizarreness of it and his mind continued its relentless obsession over the mystery man whom he now fully blamed in anger for ruining his life. 'He must have given her something that I failed to give her,' he obsessively thought to himself, 'otherwise, why would she throw everything away like that?'

His mind was completely possessed, completely transfixed in the fruitless attempt of figuring out what the man had, that he himself lacked. All these questions were asked a thousand times over in his mind and were answered each time in a thousand different ways. He was going in loops over the madness of this sticky thought...until the discomfort from his preoccupying obsession was manifesting itself physically. He was suddenly restless and needed to move.

He quickly motioned the bartender for the bill. Without even waiting for his change, he briskly made his way out into the cold world...and in an instant, he was doggedly trudging the dark and forlorn streets with what seemed to be a single-minded determination.

It was a dangerous tragedy that the mind remembers easier than the heart forgets...