Even if the guy pays for the tickets Zombieland does not count as a romantic movie, Sarah Zane thought resentfully as her and young Brady Alpha left the local cinema at around midnight. She angrily looked back at Brady as he finished holding the door for another couple obviously checking out the leopard clad ass of the other woman as he walked along behind them matching Sarah’s quick pace. I’m definitely not going out with him again, she thought as she hastily kept walking. Without looking she stepped off the sidewalk landing with the inch thick heel of her pink stiletto shoes in the middle of a drain.
As she tried to get free, her heel snapped in half- probably due to the cheap material that they had been produced with or the fact Miguel, a factory worker in Malaysia, had not been feeling well the day that he put them together- causing her to fall into the street. As she descended to the dark asphalt she placed her palms in front of her, suddenly she was back to seven years previous, she was riding her bike and she fell into the road with a car speeding towards her. The red Toyota stopped meters in front of her small frame, her blonde hair that had once been in a tight bun was then in disarray. The green OKL 566 was forever imprinted into her mind. But right now she is not the young girl from Nevada but the twenty year old from Boston.
To say her youth was wasted would be harsh but not necessarily untrue; in fact it was wasted with many boys like young Brady, many young football players not the future accountants and lawyers her mother had pleaded with her to show interest in.
Sarah was a beautiful girl in high school where she took part in cheerleading and field hockey, where she was the loudest at all school rallies and the perfect role model for her younger sister, Jasmine. Now, however, she was not surrounded by her perfect friends but the dirty streets of Boston as broken glass digs into her palms as they hit the dirty asphalt road. She looks up, eyes already wide, expecting to see a car zooming towards her, expecting to hear the rev of the engine as it approaches her but instead she sees the darkly illuminated streets of Boston, instead she hears the falls of Brady’s feet as he runs to her and the chuckles of a homeless man across the street.
Sarah looks up to the sunken eyes of a lost man, he sits leaning heavily on the wall of the coffee shop across the way. Covering his top half lay an old western jacket and his legs covered by an old ratty blue blanket. The higher you look at the blanket the more evident the sticky looking stains near his midriff become. Little does Sarah know that those stains were not urine but blood from the wounds that he had suffered only the previous night when friends of Brady had been feeling rather rowdy and took it out on the weird homeless man in the square. A weird homeless man that would tell stories of a time when he had ambitions and fame, a time no one but himself remembered.
Sarah thought no more of this man as she walked back to Brady’s yellow Hummer no longer wanting to end the date with meaningless sex as she once had planned, but rather to go home and purchase another pair of shoes online, this time, she thought, maybe I’ll get orange.
Brady thought after his amazing rescue- where he didn’t laugh once as Sarah plunged into the street- that he was definitely getting laid tonight. Brady failed to realize that when girls experience embarrassment that they are less likely to have sex afterward. However, Chris Bradley, the town’s friendly homeless man, knew Brady was not going to be lucky tonight. He had been through almost everything; he knew just about everything, he even knew that he was not going to survive the night. He realized that these wounds were more than skin deep, he had been bleeding internally as well through out the night and the day, and he also realized that there was a very small possibility that a person like him would survive another night. As he tried to get up he stumbled, light headed by the pints of blood lost during the day, he stumbles and falls onto the rough sidewalk, small pebbles embedding themselves into his dirty palms.
He wished he had lived longer, he wished he had gained fame like Vonnegut, like Updike- god, even like King, that commercialized bastard- anything that would make sure that he got his recognition. He wanted to be remembered for how he had been as a young writer, but he knew he would be remembered like this a drunkard in front of a coffee shop- not even a Starbucks (Ralphy got that spot, Ralphy had been homeless for five more years than Bradley, reserving him a better spot) - he only had some nameless coffee shop.
Resentment is not the word to describe how he felt as his soul hovered over his now rotting corpse, it was self loathing. The young couple young Brady had let out of the cinema came running over as old Bradley did not get up, moments passed before the ambulance came. Though this was not what Bradley wanted, a nameless girl crying over his dead body, he found it only appropriate. He had been a deviant growing up, waking up next to an uncountable amount of nameless girls- not literally, he was sure their parents had given them names, he just did not know them- many did cry over him after losing a little piece of themselves to his Casanova persona. But those days are long since passes, now he is lucky when women don’t cringe as they catch sight of him on his street corner.
His street corner is a very important part in understanding just who Chris Bradley is, his corner connects Berkshire Pl and Cardinal Medeiros Ave, he has decorated it with what some might call “the ramblings of a mad man,” but if you were to put all his signs into the right order they would reveal the story of a mastermind. A mastermind who fell into the sweet trap of disillusion and depression, helped down with a hardy helping of Jack Daniels. Many blame the combination of anti-anxiety and bi-polar medication and alcohol to his undoing; many even make the jokingly serious comparison of Bradley to Kilgore Trout from many Kurt Vonnegut novels. Though many men might have been insulted at this barely veiled insult, he was excited to be noticed by the few people left who actually understood the reference.
To say the least, this forgotten genius has lived a full life of trials, tribulations and one too many sexual encounters (one of which resulting in young Sarah Zane, a fact still unbeknownst to Sarah, Mr. Zane and Mr. Bradley but that’s a different story).
That night, as Brady was falling asleep alone, Bradley made his descent into the bowels of hell. He felt uncomfortable as his translucent form slowly sank down into the earth, as if his feet were tied to cement blocks, into the crust of the Earth then straight into the mantle, then the outer core, the inner core and finally into the pits of hell. Though the ride was extremely long - some might say an over kill - Bradley was shocked at how right the movies were; there in front of him stood the devil himself but of course the sticker over his right breast said “Hello, My Name Is Lucifer” - the Lucifer of course written in red sharpie - this was part of a decade long attempt of trying to deter people from calling him “The Devil,” “Satan,” and in some rare cases “Damian” …can you really blame a guy when all he wants is for someone to get his name right, just once.
Of course, Bradley being a trouble maker said “Hey Luke,” but little did he know that when Lucifer was just a child larger boys at school would mock his name while making references to Star Wars (it did not help that he did not have a father, making the “Luke, I am your father” remarks that much more hurtful), so when Bradley called him this long forgotten nickname St. Lucifer was rather displeased.
“I am Lord Lucifer and I hereby sentence you, Christopher Bard, to a century in the room of eternal S Club 7 songs, then another century in the loop of Master of Disguise-” after that Bradley stopped listening, fearing that it would only get worse but then something clicked.
“Wait I’m not Christopher Bard, I’m Christopher Bradley.”
At this The Devil looked up and looked the man over, after doing so he placed his out-dated reading glasses on - watching out for his horns - and again looked at the man from hairy head to hairy toe. “Well, this is awkward; Mr. Bard is supposed to be a thirty year old bald man.” Satan said while reading from a manila folder in his hand, labeled BARD, CHRISTOPHER and then under it - in parenthesis - read: (A real asshole).
To call Christopher Bard an asshole was not an insult as much as a fact. At the age of five Bard realized how very little he enjoyed his baby brother, Zack, and then developed a plan to rid himself of this nuisance. However none of his plans seemed to work. Recently he has created his own business and raised it into corporate standings, sold it and made no effort to help is employees keep their jobs after the transaction. This might explain why he was surprised when after the large AGAR truck hit him that he went to heaven.
As the truck rammed into his lean frame his tall mocha latte with soy milk went flying hitting a small baby in the head and burning a puppy with only three legs. He looked about the scene as he started floating from his body, surveying, he noticed that there were two women in particular he would like to know a little better, but before he could make his move his soul swayed and lifted upwards towards the heavens. At Saint Peter’s Gates St. Peter, in his long swaying white toga, called out to him, his thick white beard trembling at his strong voice, calling him “Christopher Bradley,” and it suddenly made sense. Christopher Bard whispered a quick “thanks, suckers” as he ran through the pearly gates, never correcting the error.
-J. Scib
