Dark

Night.
Rain. Incessant rain. Without mercy or regard. Occasional lightning and thunder clap.
The city.
Graffiti covered walls, standing tall and proud against the onslaught. Or maybe just indifferent. Maybe even hopeless. Standing until the day they can’t stand anymore.

Suburbia.
He wakes up to a dark room. As if it is pre-ordained, his eyes meet the bedside clock. Splash of red. Blink. 21:00 in one-inch-tall numerals. That damn blinking colon. That nagging pain in his head that won’t leave him be. Shit. What an hour to wake up. What a city to wake up in. What a life to wade through.

Thunder shatters his thoughtlessness. Coaxes his mind into thinking. And he doesn’t find it fun. He hates the rain. He looks toward the window. Wild wind outside, as the draft tells him. The two halves of the curtain dance the mating dance of an ancient tribe, as if around a fire. Moving in spirals of decreasing size, finding it futile at some point and starting over again. Thunder is the drumbeat. Lightning is the fire. The curtain-halves are the lovers. And him? He is the outsider. The spectator. The One without any physical locus standi. A ghost. Just like he’s been all his life.
A bad day to be out, this. Can’t be worse than the rest of his life, he reasons. He grabs the raincoat. Exits, not bothering to lock the front door. Why should he? He’d love a break-in. He’d love the chance to go after the poor sonofabitch who violates his shithole apartment with nothing worth stealing, just so he can justify kicking the poor sod’s teeth in, when, sure as hell, he catches him.

Outside.
The Street. Still raining. Raincoat barely does its job. He’s drenched within a minute. Fumbles for and locates the crushed soft pack of cigarettes. 20 Class A cigarettes. Fine tobacco. A carefully selected blend, chosen by discerning idiots who never had the sense to buy a hard pack, that would at least hold up against violence. Of the natural kind, and the human. He finds a cigarette and, despite the rain, tries to light it. There’s an awning barely a step away, but he disregards it completely. He wants to light it as it pours down hard. Very stupid. Very defiant. Very Him.

To be continued...(or not!)