The Beguiling Intelligence That Is...

Prologue

CHAPTER ONE:

   The wind picked up heavily as I stepped with a effortless abilty to be as clumsy as possible across the rough sandstone that was the pavement beneath my feet.  My arms swung carelessly with the wind, thrusting and pulling at the hard black guitar case that was being held firmly by my callused yet delicate fingers and was being thrown to and fro without a care by my flailing arm . A surly expression crossed my face as all the passing pedestrians stared at me with their expressions twisted into hurtful portraits of abhorrence; true scowls of loathe and disgust at the first sight they are greeted to when their eyes wonder and gaze curiously among other passerbyers. I know perhaps I wasn't dressed to meet the bloody president, but nothing was wrong with a pair scuffed converse, torn jeans, and leather here and there for the slightest amount of flare. Apparently it was too much flare for the citizens of Toledo, Ohio, as it seemed I was never getting home in peace; another blow to my ego and joy as I continued apathetically frowning down the street, face illuminated by the gentle glow of the yellow, artificial sidewalk lamps. I wanted to rip those lamps from their fucking sockets in the damned polluted soil and toss them at the next critic to look me up and down.

    I sigh inwardly, stopping to hang my body in the air, slouching effortlessly and pushing all possible responsibility for my weight onto my aching legs. To arrive at an audition for the chance of a lifetime and to find out it was a complete sham was a total bust to the adrenaline that hyped me up like American coffee. To have walked who knows how many miles  to get there on patched and ripped cheap combat shoes from the depressing thrift store down the street that could barely hold up for a walk to the bus stop for a hoax was terribly infuriating. To have to deal with all the following, and be constantly stared at by hypocritical motherfuckers on the street for doing what wrong: absolutely nothing was the definition of a horrid day. That was my day: lovely, bloody fucking lovely.

    I lifted my head- and the rest of my tiresome body, for that matter- and trudged through the cascading waves of idly chatting preteens and teens and middle-aged woman, looking for a simple escape route to home. As my gaze lifted from the well shitted on and crackled roads of one Toledo's finest suburbs, a comical blur of black and red skided through the crowd, earning a heap load of surprised 'aw' and 'oh's, and the oh-so famous: "Get the fuck out of the street, you blasted moron!". Squinting didn't help much, but I decided to do it anyway and risk my cool, calm physique for that of a imbecile standing idiotically in the middle of a swarm of temporarily silenced personas with narrowed eyes and their head cocked to the left like a child trying to pronounce a new word. In the end, I realised that most people were getting their daily gossip feed on either the screams and speedy dashes of the mysterious silhouettes, or of my hideous outfit.

   I was snapped abruptly out of my ever-so-important reverie by people shoving and pushing past me, cursing and mumbling complaints of the loss of the show and that's when my slow-ticking brain has a realisation of its own: the man, who oddly seemed to be running for his life, had disappeared right before my- and apparently everyone else's- eyes. They all walked along without a care as I stood here much too overwhelmed with the possibilities of that scene. I shake my head hastily and decide it's not important to me right now. Any emotion related to anger or acrimony at all have emptied out of my system like the people had emptied out of the street:  quick and unexpected. I was left with a weird burst of both curiosity and knowingness that uncurled and arose in my stomach and mind. Fuck, I'm going to be sick.

  Once again, I throw my head from left to right with a furious attempt at clearing my mind. I normally don't get hung up on the bullshit that happens around here, all I know is I want out. My feet find their function of walking again and I drag them across the ground taking in the screeching sound or rubber against mineral. My mind is translucent and I'm in a daze. A daze of what exactly?