Afterlove

Death Awaits - Part 1

It was cold April morning in Toronto. Nothing quite unusual. In one of the many mid-height building in the midtown region of Toronto, there's an apartment with brick walls, neatly decorated with a homely, cozy feeling, covered in faux plants and black and white beautiful pictures.
     Those pictures were taken by Shane Chrishaker, the owner apartment. The decorations were all his and the place was designed as if anyone else would be seeing it, which is wrong.
     Shane is quite the ordinary "see 'em and walk by 'em" kind of person. He keeps to himself except for when he's around his best friend, Jersey who lives out of town. Shane is alone in the terms of having a boyfriend or girlfriend. To him, along with a lot of other young people, having a relationship slows you down. And in Toronto, slowing down is losing and you can't be a loser if you want to make it. That is why he's in Toronto anyways, to make it as an artist. He left his family and best friends in the rural town of Ashville to come to Toronto to pursue his dream of becoming a famous artist.
     To pursue his dream though, he had to start somewhere, and that somewhere was a quaint art studio in downtown Toronto. Shane didn't like going downtown that much as he wasn't one for big crowds and bustling traffic. He didn't like commuting back and forth every morning. But it's what he had to do for now if he was ever going to make it big.
     Shane opened the sliding door that led out onto the balcony of his crafty studio apartment. The sun hadn't risen yet, but traffic was already moving on the streets. It was around five. Shane didn't have to wake up that early but he did anyways to get a head start for the day. He had just gotten out of the shower, his blonde hair still wet, wearing nothing but a beige robe. He was still watching the city wake up from his balcony. The wetness of his hair made his head cold and he decided to go back inside.
     He sat down on his bed and lay there for a moment enjoying the silence. He walked over to his phone, grabbed it, and started scrolling through instagram. He checked the time on his phone, saw it was now around five thirty, and went to the kitchen to prepare his breakfast.
     Shane opened one of the top cabinets slowly in order to make little noise as his walls were paper thin. He pulled out a loaf of packaged wheat bread, untied the packaging, pulled out two pieces of bread, and stuck them in his toaster, just like he did every morning.
     While waiting for his bread to toast, Shane walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. He was hit by a wave of sadness as he looked at his reflection. Shane almost always tried to avoid looking at himself. It wasn't his appearance that made him sad, it was that he was lonely was desperate to advance at work.
     Almost ten months after moving to Toronto, Shane had not gotten closer to following his dream. He started criticizing himself, telling himself that he needed to try harder, or his family would be disappointed. A lack of accomplishment pushed him deeper into a hole he was digging himself into.
     He continued to stare into the mirror. Then he blinked and kept his eyes shut. He reopened them but he still the the same thing in the mirror he saw earlier: failure.
     From the bathroom he heard the bread pop up out of the toaster. He grabbed his plate, removed the toast, cut an avocado into slices, and placed the slices on the pieces of bread. He took the plate back to his bed and started eating. Across from his bed was a TV that was hung on a pillar that was in the middle of the apartment. He would turn it on but there would be nothing to watch. He quit couldn't pay another bill just to watch TV. He liked the silence anyways.
     Shane had little money coming in, but everyone assumed he was fine including his family and Jersey. Shane, however passive he was, was still a fighter, and his friends and family especially Jersey thought he'd be ok in Toronto. They were wrong.
...
     It was around six when Shane finished getting ready and headed for work. He walked to the parking garage that was next to his house. He got into his gray 2003 Toyota Prius, feeling sad knowing that he'd have to sell the car for money.
     As he drove out of the parking garage and into the road, he changed the channel to whatever he could listen to knowing he couldn't listen to any good channels because he couldn't afford radio. He changed it to some early morning radio show but he didn't listen to what they were saying. He just stared at the road and kept driving, thinking about his lack of money. He'd spent most of the money his Mom and Dad gave him to head start his career, not worrying because he thought he'd make it back almost instantly, but that, of course, was wrong.
     Shane began thinking about how much better it'd be if it was over. If his struggle, his failure, his life was over. He began revisiting his earlier thoughts of how he's letting everyone down and how he's a disappointment. He began thinking of how he'd lied to his parents and Jersey about his success, about how he was pretending to be fine, about how his dream was fading in the distance.
     It would be so much better, he thought, if it was all just over. I've been lying to myself about how things are supposed to get better and that I need to try harder. I can't try harder because there's nothing to achieve anymore. I killed my own dream before it started. There's nothing left for me anymore. There's nothing left to live for.
    He came to a red light. He looked up at the lights, waiting for them to change, and while looking at them he saw a polaroid picture of him and Jersey at dinner to honor his going away to Toronto hanging on the rear view mirror. He thought about how sad Jersey would be, and how he'd let her down even more if he took his own life. He shook his head to clear his mind. He looked at the traffic lights again, saw they hadn't changed, and looked back at the picture. He smiled. Maybe things won't be so bad after all, he thought to himself. Everything's going to be ok, he told himself because even if it wasn't true, it was still reassuring. At that moment the light changed from red to green and Shane started to drive again, knowing there'd be something to live for.
     But before he could make it through the intersection a black Chevy Tahoe, ignoring it's red light and going to fast to slow down, t-boned Shane's car right on the driver's side door. The Tahoe immediately burst into flames, but the sudden fire didn't affect Shane, as when the Tahoe hit him, he died almost instantly.