Drawn To The Flame

 Smoke curled upward in lazy curlicues, tendrils of blue-grey, dancing with the muted light that struggled to penetrate the nicotine yellowed windows. The air was thick with the sour reek of whisky and the muffled murmurs of men nursing their regrets. In the corner, a solitary figure sat hunched over the sticky bar, nursing a glass that more space than liquid.

He was no butterfly, this man. No delicate creature adorned in vibrant hues, fluttering through sun-dappled meadows. No, he was a moth, drawn to the dim glow of the long night of the soul. His eyes, like the wings of the sightless moth he resembled, were a dull shade of grey, reflecting the shadows he favoured.

The barman, a compact and stoic man with hands that hosted red, sausage fingers, approached the solitary drinker. Without a word, he poured another shot of amber liquid into the glass that glinted between grubby fingerprints like a jewel in the rough.

“And don’t think that one’s one me,” the barman grumbled, his voice a gravelly whisper that was the product of years of smoking too many cigarettes and shouting over raucous drunks.

The moth-like man raised his glass in a silent acknowledgment, his gaze fixed on some distant point beyond the smoky haze. “Thanks very much, for nothing,” he said.

His journey had been one of obscurity, of navigating the shadows cast by the harsh light of reality. He had never been one to bask in the warmth of the sun, preferring the glow of street lamps in a nearby street and the darkness of alleys where the occasional sad bulb flickered like a dying star. He was the muted tone of survival.

Some drunk put some money in the jukebox and a man long dead crooned a lament, weaving a tale of heartache and redemption. It was a melody that resonated with the moth, its melancholy notes wrapping around him like a tattered cocoon. He took a sip of the whisky, feeling the burn in his throat and then down his gullet.

As he listened and his memories hung between sips, he remembered childhood marked by the absence of laughter, a youth spent in the alleys and forgotten corners of the city. Love had been held out to him a time or two, but it had proved elusive, slipping through his fingers like grains of sand through an hourglass, leaving behind only the now. Not even an echo of what could have been. An empty chrysalis.

That’s not to say that he was particularly unhappy, he embraced the solitude that clung to him like a second skin. The world had chewed him up and spat him out, leaving him battered and bruised, but unbroken. He felt drawn to the flicker of a dying flame, he had sought solace in the darkness and found some strange beauty in the wreckage of his own existence.

As the last notes of the jukebox faded into the background, the man finished his drink, the glass now empty and devoid of the liquid courage that had sustained him. He paid then pushed himself away from the bar, his movements deliberate, like a creature emerging from a cocoon.

He stepped out into the night, the darkness enveloping him in a familiar embrace. The city sprawled before him, its myriad lights flickering in the distance. He drew his knife and turned onto a main thoroughfare. He killed, he smiled, he flew.