Two in the morning. Darkness hangs around the bar like the smoke after a gunfight. Dirty patrons hunched over their tables, stewing under trenchcoats and ball caps, greasy hair hanging down over the eyes. Private mires in the ocean of misery. I take a drag off the cigarette. I don’t come here to drink. I come here to drown. Immerse myself in the misery and the grit and the pain of men who don’t need to speak. Ride the wave of suffering for a misanthropic high and then get dumped out in a reservoir so deep and baseless it makes me want to curl up and die. The contrails of the journey are raked deep around my eyes, the passive etchings of a tortured mind, the perfect portrait of a broken man.
Outside, the trashcan fires cast long shadows along the ground while men like rats shrug up their coats and rub their hands for warmth. Whores congregate under streetlights, calling out passersby, selling their haggard bodies and glazed eyes. Dopers, half of them. What do they see through those hazy, dilated pupils? Do they see me? Do they see through me..? I flip up my collar, take one last drag. Scan for threats. Mark the movement in a peripheral space. Action decisive enough to burn a white-hot hole through the monotony and the depression and the stagnation. I pick him out thirty feet away. Dressed like a bum, but too sure in his stride, too practiced in the way he pretends to watch his feet, the way he holds his hands in his pockets. We are the pretenders, he and I. The last living souls in a land of hollow men and cracked facades. There is no hiding it. The qualities of a mind unhampered by the substances and the conformances of life, a mind unwilling to bend itself to the popular regression, are not easily concealed. He’s made me as well. He slows down. The hands come out, relaxed, non-committal. A predator surprised must reassess his chances. The eyes, unblinking, fire bullets at my own, but I am not fazed. I’ve seen dozens like him. Blood-spattered, shattered, pieced together like him. A wild animal with a broken leg. He threatens the order of things because his order is turbulence and greed, and he lives moment-to-moment, piecing together what he needs to feed his macabre and gruesome psyche.
He breaks the contact. Unused to dealing with a veneer more icy, more impenetrable than his own. He shuffles across the street, looking the other way, ears pulled back for an early alert. I drop the remnants of the cigarette, crush it. Watch hot red embers shoot out from under my heel. The gun is heavy. It wants. I cross my arms to ward off the cold and trudge after the man. His pace as my eyes bore a hole in the back of his head and I am committed. I see his crimes, I see his thoughts. His fear. I know his future. I see him as he never will.
Two in the morning. Darkness hangs around the bar like the smoke after a gunfight. Dirty patrons hunched over their tables, stewing under trenchcoats and ball caps, greasy hair hanging down over the eyes. Private mires in the ocean of misery. I take a drag off the cigarette. I don’t come here to drink. I come here to drown. Immerse myself in the misery and the grit and the pain of men who don’t need to speak. Ride the wave of suffering for a misanthropic high and then get dumped out in a reservoir so deep and baseless it makes me want to curl up and die. The contrails of the journey are raked deep around my eyes, the passive etchings of a tortured mind, the perfect portrait of a broken man.
Outside, the trashcan fires cast long shadows along the ground while men like rats shrug up their coats and rub their hands for warmth. Whores congregate under streetlights, calling out passersby, selling their haggard bodies and glazed eyes. Dopers, half of them. What do they see through those hazy, dilated pupils? Do they see me? Do they see through me..? I flip up my collar, take one last drag. Scan for threats. Mark the movement in a peripheral space. Action decisive enough to burn a white-hot hole through the monotony and the depression and the stagnation. I pick him out thirty feet away. Dressed like a bum, but too sure in his stride, too practiced in the way he pretends to watch his feet, the way he holds his hands in his pockets. We are the pretenders, he and I. The last living souls in a land of hollow men and cracked facades. There is no hiding it. The qualities of a mind unhampered by the substances and the conformances of life, a mind unwilling to bend itself to the popular regression, are not easily concealed. He’s made me as well. He slows down. The hands come out, relaxed, non-committal. A predator surprised must reassess his chances. The eyes, unblinking, fire bullets at my own, but I am not fazed. I’ve seen dozens like him. Blood-spattered, shattered, pieced together like him. A wild animal with a broken leg. He threatens the order of things because his order is turbulence and greed, and he lives moment-to-moment, piecing together what he needs to feed his macabre and gruesome psyche.
He breaks the contact. Unused to dealing with a veneer more icy, more impenetrable than his own. He shuffles across the street, looking the other way, ears pulled back for an early alert. I drop the remnants of the cigarette, crush it. Watch hot red embers shoot out from under my heel. The gun is heavy. It wants. I cross my arms to ward off the cold and trudge after the man. His pace quickens as my eyes bore a hole in the back of his head and I am committed. I see his crimes, I see his thoughts. His fear. I know his future. I see him as he never will.