A MAN WITH NO HOME
Tell me, sweet stranger, do you know the story of Normant Lumensky, the man from a mystical land universes away from Earth? Making an ark out of his chains, he turns from a prisoner of war into a fugitive.
A WOMAN AGAINST THE WOR...
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30 August 2016
SIN WAS WITHIN EVERYONE, even among the ones with the noblest causes, ideas and intentions. Headquartered in our core, it stained pure hearts and deflowered good lives. A force so eternal that it coated entire generations, humanity itself. We could make a conscious effort to work against it but when reality struck again, all we could do was accept the fact that being a combination of sinister and angelic forces was inevitable. The thing was that ever since I had started working for Pioneers—a big, philanthropic foundation with global impact—the angelic forces in me had perished like sunflowers being forced to stare at the moonlight forever.
It was a forlorn story of me trusting people in black suits and important roles because I was a desperate hustler, needing the money to build a name of my own. Looking at it now, my dreams seemed superficial, clouds that held no rain. I could barely recall what I had been so recklessly fighting for. Fitting in with all those new-money people with the Range Rovers and the sarcastic remarks about everything? Buying my own condo? Travelling? In my defense though, I had just stepped into my twenties and had not cared a bit if the road to decay was rose-colored, luring people into it with benevolent promises and high ideals. I just wanted the money.
Being part of a company whose mission was to create an online community of mindfully motivating content would not have me standing at Yonge-Dundas Square with a gun in the inner pocket of my bomber jacket. Yet here I was, ready to ruin the whole city if needed, if ordered.
Coaxing the masses into believing that protesting was the only pathway to social justice had resulted in hundreds of people gathering at one of Toronto's downtown squares instead of getting drunk in some far-away dive bar. There was a feeling of rebellion swirling in the air, dancing over the skyscrapers like neon kites in the night sky. For a moment, I let myself get steeped in it, become one with the crowd, and as I did, the teenagers next to me became my companions, my brothers, my chosen family. We were back in the Roaring Twenties, in pages of old history books that furled at the edges and wrote about those years of tremendous social dynamism, when rights got earned and lives changed for the better.
People were scurrying in different directions, enthralled by the promise of justice. A few days ago, at that exact square, a homeless man had sexually assaulted a young woman while she had been returning home from her night shift. Thankfully, a group of teenagers had happened to pass by, helping her, before the scene turned into something worse. The cameras from the nearest grocery store had documented everything—the woman flinching when the man touched her lower back and then walking faster to get away from him; the man running fastrer and wrapping his arms around her waist, making her fall on the ground; the teenagers noticing it and shouting at the man who stood up with his hand in his peni. In a matter of hours the video had gone viral. The riot had been planned by Pioneers to rally support for the young woman—and for all women in general.
I would have fallen for it too had I not been aware of what was going on behind the scenes. And what was actually happening was a sideshow, a form of distraction from what would soon take place on the other side of the city. Tomorrow, the Globe and Mail would write about the protesters and the petrol bombs that had left trails of smoke and embers in their wake, the rioters and the wounded. There would not be a single word written about the four middle-aged men that Pioneers was about to kill in a few minutes.
