Tragedy On 8th Avenue

He took a rapid drag off his cigarette. In the cold depths of a Seattle evening, he didn’t seem like a lone rebel stirring the nicotine pot. People around him were exhaling smoke through their mouths, one unlikely to hurt a secondary smoker. He tugged at his overcoat till it fit him snugly. The cashmere apparel was well complimented by a muffler a fan once sent him. “Thank you, for enriching my life”, the note had said. He couldn’t remember why he retained this. Other offerings were promptly dispatched through his man Friday for encashing, sometimes, even without opening them. “Enriched indeed”, he thought, allowing himself a smirk. Another drag from the cigarette followed as his imposing frame grew taller, waiting to exhale. It was impossible to escape his presence. Certain people are born with a striking personality, and those that enhance it by way of mystique and intellect earn the epithet magnetic. He was nothing but a strong magnet drawing people by the droves.

At that moment, he was drawing someone else altogether. A destitute man walked up to him, hunched with the burden of hardships, extended hands exposed in places where his gloves had torn off. “A quarter Sir, for some warm soup”, a raspy voice emanated from the depths of that slim frame. A man’s pride has a tipping point after which there is a gut-wrenching free fall. The penniless man teetered on the edge as he waited for a response from someone who seemed perfectly capable of giving. “Get lost, you old fool”, was the response he got, in tones, both irritating and insulting. The scales tipped over, and a shaking teary man wracked by penury and ravaged by hunger took the free fall.

A moment of panic ensued, as someone was dispatched to go out the backroom to find the speaker while the announcer took to the stage. “… my honor to introduce the famed author of ‘The compassionate soul’ …”. The murmuring anticipation gave way to a rapturous applause. It all but drowned a blood-curdling scream from the back. Wide open eyes stared back at the source of the scream, face morphed in surprise, hands limp on the side while a muffler unwrapped itself from its death grip. Dispatches to newspapers screamed its telegraphic headline: “Street crime claims friend of the poor”.