Main Character Vibes

A country song of a man

Present-day

After a brief respite, the October drizzle picked up again to a violent deluge from the sky. At this hour of the night, the rowdiness of Toronto's bustle was fast asleep, dreaming of worldly ambitions, solutions to profit-curbing problems, and plans to perpetuate economic prosperity. The serenity the city exuded when it slept made it seem angelic, innocently so, before it woke up again in the morning with that glint of single-minded ferocity in its eyes.

In the relatively quiet streets, the blaring sirens of a police cruiser escorted by the incessant wailing of the ambulance were the only sharp sounds that pierced the wet air until they came to a stop in front of Wayne's art gallery. The damp and dark atmosphere was a heavy medium through which sounds and voices strained to traverse. The puzzled ears of police officers and paramedics had to speculate about the source of verbal commands that sprang from rain-muffled mouths.

The doors were already wide open. Detectives and police officers riddled the art gallery with investigating eyes and sharp deliberate movements. Police tapes were unrolled and had already encased the pool of blood already beginning to dry in crusted blotches at the circumference. In the middle of this red warm sea on the floor was Wayne's corpse covered in a blanket. His body still warm in some places retained some color as the cold grip of nothingness was slowly swallowing traces of life in its path. Although it was covered to protect any contamination of the body in order to preserve any traces of faint evidence that were yet to be discovered, it also added a sentimental element of preserving common decency for the deceased. He was a human first, and a body to be examined in an open investigation second.

The flashing lights of cameras popping and exploding in the still darkness of the art gallery blistered the air intermittently like the strobe lights of a morbid ball.

The sharp knife was crusted with dried blood as it was carefully dropped into a translucent Ziplock bag before a pair of white gloves meticulously sealed it tight Everything was being preserved in the photographic memory of cameras whose lenses must have been traumatized by the deathly scenes of such goriness...theirs was a life reserved for witnessing death and tragedy. Eleven blocks away there was the exact scene, only in Elias' apartment. The body was Tilly's...

In the wake of coming down from the rush of her metropolitan escapades, Marie was entering the dark and quiet suburbia of her neighborhood. Her thrills of pleasure were slowly waning as she was acclimating to the stillness of her environment and its overall slower pace. Out here in the suburban universe, the stagnant night conferred upon the domestic houses a certain mellowness that made visitors feel self-conscious about disturbing it. Dim porch lights hummed their glow out into the quiet night. The hush of it all made everything seem to overzealously tiptoe around themselves.

Marie stood in front of the door of her house and hesitated before entering. She took out her phone and turned on the front-facing camera as she inched closer to the glow of the porch light. Her face sufficiently illuminated, she began examining her hair and visage for the ruffled signs of her infidelity. Her hair was slightly tousled but not so much as to arouse her husband's suspicion. The October wind was always to blame like an all too willing patsy bearing the blame of her own misgivings. Her lipstick was almost perfectly applied, except for faint smudges of her careless coloring outside of the contours of her lecherous lips. Too faint, however, for Francis to ever notice.

Satisfied with the state of her affair, Marie felt well-prepared to assume her suburban character. It required her to contort her character into a mold to fit the role of a loving wife and a caring mother. It was a role that she played like a masterful thespian.

She pushed down on the door handle as she instinctively leaned in. Her head clumsily bumped into the defiant door that stood uncharacteristically locked. Francis never locked the door behind him unless all family members were safe aboard his ship.