A noir fragment
San Francisco Night by StefanWorks, Creative Commons License
It was two in the morning and unbearably cool. A forceful gust chilled his teeth to their core. The dark green foliage surrounded him with the ghostly moans of rustling leaves. The man in the flannel pajamas and the raggedy tanktop walked anxiously down the quiet road, his pudgy feet swollen from miles of walking on prickly concrete. Not a soul was around to bear witness to his isolation. He was uncertain of how much longer he could persist. So great was his anguish, both bodily and mentally, that he wondered if it would be better off simply keeling over and surrendering to the elements, rather than awaiting the day’s eventual arrival, when his cover would be blown, and then there would be no more shadows to lurk amongst. Then, the thugs looking to end his life would more easily find him. Perhaps not today, but certainly tomorrow. The men looking for him were professionals. They had easily captured more cunning fugitives than him. He was nothing special in that regard. To think that he could be so lucky to escape their clutches and find a life of anonymity in some other town was pure fantasy and arrogance. He was so ready to surrender that he wondered if he would invoke the grace of God once more and mean it this time.
He couldn’t remember the last time he truly believed that God would help him. The last time he had prayed was years ago, at one of his self-help meetings. Even then, he knew his prayers rang hollow in the ears of his fellow deplorables. There was no faith in those incantations. There was no desire to become a better person. Once a scoundrel, always a scoundrel. In his discomforting chill, he contemplated back even further. He thought that if he meant his prayers at any point, it would have been in the innocence of his boyhood when he sat in a church with his doting mother and hurtful father. There in those pews where he used to pray with feeling and love. He prayed for his father to treat him better, and for his mother to find the strength to leave him. He prayed so much, thinking that one day they’d be answered. Until that fateful day when he saw his mother lowered to the ground. The man didn’t think that that was the exact moment he stopped believing in God, but it was the moment that he took the deity to greater scrutiny. Years later he had become what he was today. A man on the run, fleeing from some thugs, hired by a powerful man he had angered greatly. His time alive was fading away, and he had little recourse to save himself. He realized then that soon he would be a dead man. This desperate march through the Presidio night was merely a pathway to his glowing afterlife.