Whispers in Mana

1-elliot dies

It was an inauspicious start to another day-typical and boring in middle America. Partly cloudy, concrete commercial plazas as far as the eye could see. Greasy cheeseburgers, pizza, suburbs, cheap apartments, check cashing, and liquor stores.

Life in Elliot's city was a massive sea of cars, caught in an unending loop that filled the air with exhaust and brake dust. All of it was set to a massive conglomerate backdrop of capitalist anonymity in the desperate guise and dread of living paycheck to paycheck.

Elliot knew that his life could be better. And it was, sometimes.

From the leisurely afternoons where he could relax on his couch and smoke large amounts of cannabis and watch mindless shows or large swaths of anime, to the surprise of discovering an extra chicken nugget in his takeout bag, and even to the random occasion where his commute to work would see the planets align and all the lights would turn green. It didn't happen often, but when it did-the glimpse of positivity helped to stave off the flood of intrusive thoughts.

At various points through the years, high school, jobs, or relationships-he'd assumed that he had a grasp on the world. That he'd reached a point where he could grasp and understand his place in the world. And yet, each time he'd begun to feel a little confident, a little more sure of himself-his feet were then kicked out from beneath him by one of life's unfortunate events like being broke, homeless, or a sudden and costly doctor's visit. He shivered, remembering that horrid summer of sleeping in his car at the public library. The pain in his neck and back had stuck with him to this day. Possibly in the form of a bulging disk...

Life wasn't supposed to be easy, and yet the basis of opportunity was largely predicted on the guise of luck. Where a person started out in life, the types of opportunity available to them, all of it could be boiled down to a simple stroke of luck. To blame and attribute a series of unfortunate events to the whims of a higher power, a person would be better off accepting the possibility of coincidence. In his opinion, a semblance of chaos was better than blind faith that routinely led nowhere.

Elliot covered his mouth and coughed as truck exhaust filled his mouth with its acrid stink of diesel and black smoke. It seemed that standing on the sidewalk and waiting for his turn to cross the street was becoming deceptively hazardous.

Also, he could feel the sunbaked sidewalk beneath his feet. The intense heat was enough to imagine himself standing on a bed of glowing coals or frying pan.

Eyeing the road's black asphalt, it was all too easy for him to imagine his shoes melting under this heat, or worse, getting hit by a distracted driver.

It would've been safer to take care and avoid said danger, to return to where he'd parked his car and drive. However, he'd long since become the type of person who lacked the care of caution-or the drive to make meaningful change in his life. Be it crossing the street, finding a new career, or engaging with the opposite sex to build a meaningful relationship, the end result had long since beaten him into submission.

Yes, he'd made some efforts in the past. Staying late at work, getting a community college degree to increase his documented value, and anything else he could think of short of letting his boss use him as a physical footstool. But at the end of the day, his efforts till now had failed to yield any tangible benefits.

In all his jobs, there was always a reason for his failure to secure a promotion, which was quickly followed by the business having to let him go. The list of excuses were too numerous to count. A slowdown in the economy, a bad loan on payroll, an owner choosing to retire and sell the business.

Then there was the interpersonal office politics that tended to sabotage the employer's view of him. No one had ever sat him down and explained what it was they found so off putting-be it his sharp, intense eyes and an inability to conjure a genuine smile on command due to a debilitating fear of being phony, it could be any number of things.