Out Of Place

It might be a day later than I'd hoped, but here it is. I may tweak it slightly more, but I was reasonably happy with it when I finished with it last night.


The man wandered incoherently in the almost faded light. He stumbled ungainly on road and pavement, with a gait reserved for those whose perceptions are addled. His hair was unkempt, his large black overcoat torn, his shoes drowning in fresh mud and slime. There was a faint hint of alcohol about him, though his glazed eyes suggested that was not the full extent of his stupor.
People shuffled uneasily out of his path as he moved, not wanting to pass close by. They exchanged glances as they saw him and as they left him behind, their looks varying from vague disdain to obtuse contempt. He was not something that belonged. This displaced vagabond was encroaching upon the serenity of their suburban dream, and they were making their disapproval known.
The hushed whispers continued as they walked on: a lingering taste of his trespass in their utopia; a discordant note in the normally bubbly atmosphere of a Friday night; an unmelodic hush trailing in his lumpen wake.
Everything about his appearance was loosely amiss. His dishevelled aura diminished the class of his clothes, possibly expensive, assuredly stolen. He bore a manner that was an incongruous mix of oblivion and haughtiness, only serving to amplify the distaste he was cultivating. He lingered outside a restaurant, the fragrances of evening meals demanding his vapid attention.
Halted in the divide between people inside and those seated at tables and chairs situated in the humid evening, an air of disquiet loomed. A young man and woman stared at him briefly from under the refuge of an umbrella, noting him as the aberration that he was, surrounded by a wealth of upper-middle class socialites and couples. His presence impinged on their enjoyment of the evening, what the people around would call a slovenly social outcast or degenerate, casting a disagreeable pallor upon the otherwise pleasant surrounds.
A zealous waiter hurried the man along anxiously, worried of the effect he was having on business. The unceasing stares eventually served their harsh purpose, and the man found his path weaving towards the dishevelled streets and ramshackle slums that were declared too close by the unashamedly pretentious.
Yet he would find no quarter that posed as friend here either, for interlopers were not welcomed with open arms. A cramped warren of makeshift sleeping arrangements and unmarked territories was no place for a newcomer, not when there were already too many arguing over far too little.
Here the reception was not one of distaste, but instead of seething hostility, a bubbling hatred constantly threatening to tip over into forthright action against him, be it a venomous outburst or physical violence. That anger held in the balance of manifesting several times; a brief pause in his step, a carelessly condescending gaze, and an expression of excess interest, all straddled the infinitesimal gap between antagonistic caution and catalyst.
His formless drifting shortly found him at the entrance to a seedy nightclub, the air redolent of testosterone and oestrogen. The throbbing aura of music wafted from inside and the hormonal desperation of youthfulness filled the senses of the eager partygoers, their desires hinging upon the generosity of the inexorable bouncers at the door.
In his disjointedness, the man attempted to cut across the line and wander inside without the requisite assent from the impassive sentinels. Their emotionless façade dropped instantaneously at this grave insult to their station, and ungraciously yet with characteristic indifference expelled him from the mouth of the hubbub. The unexpected movement gave rise to a quick dash for containment from the front few people of the procession, who capitalised on the momentary distraction to make their break for the sexually charged atmosphere waiting indoors.
This surreptitious migration went largely unnoticed as the man catapulted backwards with unexpected rapidity, his loose frame proving more flimsy than expected as evidenced by the ease with which he was propelled. A quick flash of light took all by surprise as the last of the interlopers disappeared inside, perception proving an abstruse faculty for that brief instant as it drowned in a cacophony of misfortune.
The car pulled to with the brusque shriek of rubber smearing across the road. A distraught figure convulsed with her hands gripping the steering wheel with a cement grip, unable to move except for the involuntary reaction that consumed her. The man’s body had been thrust hideously in a fresh direction from the impact from that new quarter, the violent switch twisting him in perverted means before depositing him callously across the kerb.
An atmosphere of vile reality accosted the onlookers, transfixing them with its tyrannical volume. A silent scream of terror ascended from each mind, but all were suffocated by the piercing anguish of the overzealous bouncer who was falling beyond reprieve into a pit of culpability summoned in an instant by his mind.
An ostentatious youth flew forward to lay his impact upon the scene, demanding attention as the first to recover from the jarring display that was continuously replaying in a trance grotesquely matching the pale rhythm of dance music. He crouched rapidly over the body, the unnatural pose of the head indicating without doubt the veracity of the nightmare.
The driver eventually opened her car door tentatively, as though by moving slowly the man might not be dead when she got there. Yet there would be no salvation from the empty guilt that washed her in a wave of blackened horror, no redemption from a faultless inability to react to prevent that ephemeral instant of catastrophe.
The crowd paused in united uselessness against the sobriety of this moment on a backdrop of mirth. Not a single person had noticed the furtive movement thieving the man’s wallet, a final act of indignity against this victim of wretched circumstance, only hinted at by the mangled key ring clutched tightly in his battered hand and the shard from a bottle of wine lying anomalous in his coat pocket.