A Sense of Defeat
A Sense of Defeat, or Beware, The End Is Near
- Prophet -
Every morning, a shadow of a man paced up and down the intersection of 39th and Biscayne Boulevard. He walked defeated among the endless stream of cars, shit-stained khakis still dripping after the storm, and arms wobbling inches away from side mirrors hissing by. Teary eyes told a story of the previous night. They spoke of the crack he stole from a friend by the railroad tracks, and of Sandra, the elderly Colombian who slept outside the pharmacy in downtown. He had fucked her in the back alley before she took half of his stuff and threatened him with a knife. A fair price to pay.
He was holding the cardboard sign in his left hand and a plastic cup in his right. The sign, nobody read. A few cars did drop a coin or two into the cup. “God bless you,” the anonymous heads would say from the cool darkness. “Why,” or “Which god,” he’d ask. They couldn’t hear him, or didn’t care, or probably both.
At first, he would cry himself to sleep every night, but he was not a man any longer and only men can cry. Now, he thought mostly of his mother. A lifetime ago she had given him the khaki shorts for his birthday. She was gone now, having died hoping until the very end for her son to fulfill his dreams, and hers. In life and death, it was her unconditional love and broken wisdom that dragged him forward. The woman had been a saint. Her son, a shadow.
A growling stomach often displaces love as the most urgent need in broken minds, but never without a fight. He remembered the taste of key lime pie. Years earlier, he had shared one last slice with mom while looking at old pictures from back when dad was still alive. Those were better days, not spent postponing inconsequential deaths. Now, time was all that stood between him and being run over by a car or stabbed in some dark alley. How soon that would happen, he didn’t know.
Few memories kept him company, carving faint smiles on his face every now and then. He had no teeth left, but the intention was still there. His eyes and ears also failed him. Balance and coordination were both things of the past. Looking at what remained of the sign, he could no longer read it or remember what it said. The message must have been important; that much had to be true. He had sacrificed his life and love to share it with the world from the corner of Biscayne and 39th.
While struggling to remember, he felt a sharp pain above his right elbow and collapsed onto the pavement. The day had come. Better run over than stabbed, he thought. For the first time in years, he cried, calling out in vain for his mother as the sign flew into the overflowing gutter. Holding on to consciousness and the now empty plastic cup, his mind drifted in and out of darkness to the sound of angry shouts. “Get off the fucking road,” yelled the drivers passing by. He didn’t have the strength to ask them what had happened to their god and its empty blessings.
- Madman -
Junior didn’t have time for freeloading vermin. He was already late for his interview. Besides, what is another dead bum on the streets of Miami? An inconvenience at worst, since now he had to worry about fixing the broken right-side mirror. Could he file a police report downtown? He sure hoped so. A useless drunk, probably even a criminal, should not be left to walk the roads, endangering the lives of productive citizens, and damaging their hard-earned property.
He looked right and then left before running the third red light in a row. Miami was his turf. A place as lawless as his hometown, but where he made dollars instead of pesos. What’s there not to like? The thought alone made him smile. He went over his preparations for the interview one more time and ran yet another red light. Unbeknown to him, it would be his last.
- Agents of the Apocalypse -
The good doctor waited anxiously in a narrow corridor between CSQU3054383 and CSQU3054386. He had always seen the port of Miami as a microcosm of the Americas, each container bursting with toys, tools, and stories waiting to be told. Every metal box was a new world in transit. Day in and day out, boxes entered and exited the machine, branded with sequences of meaningless, bureaucratical gibberish.
The black sedan from the photo arrived to pick him up, but he had to be certain. There was too much at risk. He inspected the contents of the metal suitcase on the passenger seat, looked at the driver, and let out a faint sigh of relief. All six canisters were there, sealed, labeled, and ready to be destroyed before they could destroy us all. It was contraband of the worst kind, on the last leg of its long trip to a clandestine lab near MIA.
Someone was supposed to meet him there. A woman. She would take care of the briefcase. The contents were to first be incinerated, and then forgotten by anyone to have seen them along the journey. No more than a handful of people knew. Those who did understood the urgency of their mission. It was the reason he had abandoned his family and smuggled the canisters halfway around the world. A good reason if there ever was one.
The doctor sat in the back, holding onto the briefcase resting on his lap. It would be a twenty-minute drive to the lab, give or take. The driver, a mute Haitian man, couldn’t have known about the canisters as he accelerated past a yellow light to cross Biscayne Boulevard. How could he have?
When the doctor saw a red car coming straight at them, it was too late to react. He knew the end had come, for him, the driver, and everyone else. He knew.
- Beware. The End is Here -
Junior had enough time to make out a face in the back seat of a black sedan, looking terrified beyond someone who is about to die. The stranger’s eyes told a story of what was about to unfold. A dark world would be born on this day, out of a dying city of beggars and grown, selfish children. It was a world not fit for humankind.
His body crushed under the weight of both cars, Junior slipped in and out of consciousness while people passing by took pictures of the crash. He could see a stiff body laying flat on the pavement. It had the face from the sedan, now swollen and broken. Fumes from the dripping gasoline distorted his view, but he saw a crowd gather a safe distance away. They were standing near a mangled metal briefcase on the edge of the road, a dark substance oozing from its side and into the gutter.
The shadow pacing along the intersection of Biscayne and 39th had known all along. He knew how and where the end would come. He even knew its protagonists, down to Junior and the mute Haitian, but could no longer remember any of them. What better day for the sign, now drifting away down the gutter, to finally reveal its message one last time? “Beware. The end is near,” it said. Too bad not a soul had ever listened.
It took the ambulance over an hour to arrive, and the shadow was gone by then. No point in waiting in vain. After all, who would rush for a homeless man, or prioritize his broken body over the three casualties a few blocks south?
That night, he killed his old friend near the railroad tracks and Sandra in the alley behind the pharmacy. It was one last act of mercy before taking his own life. A fair price to pay for avoiding the new world.