Archive for Character Sketches

The Girl with the Glasses

{ March 8, 2009 @ 6:34 am } · { Character Sketches }
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This was the third time she came into the store this week. It would be hard not to notice her, not to remember her. She had jet black hair hanging straight down her back framing her pale face. Black eye-liner lined her dark eyes. There was a piercing effect held within those eyes. When caught just right they seemed to look right into the soul as they stared out of windowless frames. A pair of glasses framed her face, they were round as owl eyes with black frames, but when you caught just the right angle you could see that they were lensesless. It was not often you caught her eyes, she usually kept her head tilted at a downward angle. Not bowed in shyness or embarrassment but perhaps concealing, or simply oblivious to the world around her. She wore a pair of short shorts, frayed around the edges, colored back, with black tights covering her skinny legs which jutted out and a pair of large black boots stopping just below the knee, velcroed straps along the sides. She had a sleeveless black shirt which along the back was lined with safety pins. Flicker silver metal as it caught in the artificial light. She was perhaps 17 or 18 years old and it was always the same routine. She made her way for the racks and began on trying on glasses. She might try on 4 or 5 in a day and then she left, always, never approaching the counter, never speaking to any of the attendants who worked in the store, or making an appointment. She never bought a single pair of the glasses she tried on. She turned it into a ritual. Waiting in wonder everyday to see if she would come in again, anticipating it, oddly enough this routine became a break in the routine. She could be predicted, depended upon and yet, it never failed to fascinate. Sometimes you could catch a glimpse of her face reflected in the mirror as she tries each pair one, studiously observing herself, savoring the moment. To her this is not a game. She takes it seriously. It is her form of worship. Her fingers sing quiet praises to the glasses as they ponder over them. Comparing them by twos and threes. She will walk around the store holding two or three pairs in her hand as if weighing final decisions, narrowing down the field and yet in the end she always puts each one back and walks out.

Midnight Cafe

{ March 2, 2009 @ 6:56 am } · { Character Sketches }
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A cafe, shall we say a Midnight Cafe, is the perfect setting. A place lost within time, that belongs to its own reality, were a quiet solitude might be found among the hurried noise of those who pass by. Clink of glasses low voices in conversation, occasional out bursts of laughter. Yet it is a place where the mind can draw into itself, let the rest of this form a painted background. There is a soft illumination of lamp light. Paper lamps strung from the trees, hanging in their very colored globes. The streets of course can only be made up of cobble stone. The air cool with a sweet smell of something exotic tingling upon the currents which pass by. There is lingering mystery behind dark veiled eyes. A pert smile perhaps a touch cruel, deeply knowing, uninviting, and yet devilishly enchanting rests softly upon the lips of our mistress. Of course she smokes french cigarettes and appears like an actress from the 40’s. Elegance divine, with a cold hard kept hidden deep inside. Her laughter is biting and her eyes flash in quick movements. No, she misses nothing. She is on the prowl awaiting for the right victim to show themselves before her.
 
But she is enchanting with her head tilted just so against the whispering tongues of fire lapping hungrily at the air from the candle centered upon her table. It is tempting to give her wine, perhaps a nice red, but we must not treat her to such cliches, let us think of something else. Something warm, something exotic, with a touch of spice it will contrast her nicely. Of course her clothes are vintage, sophisticated, a hat with a partial veil falling just before her eyes, shading her face from view at just the right angle, tilted upon her head. her hair, dark auburn, pinned up. Her every movement seems to be a deliberate and conscious action, as if she is aware of always being watched, of always putting on a show. She is precise and never misses a mark. Her words are clipped as they froth forth from her lips in a dusky voice that makes one think of an opium den.
 
Everything about her is measured and her angles are perfect, sharp, motionless she is like a dancer. Others drift toward her, around her, and she remains unphased. All it takes is a cock of her arched brow to drop one to their knees, and this she shrugs off. She has no use for this world anymore, but sometimes it still amuses her on nights while sitting at a cafe and the stars swirl above merging with the city lights. A curse as reality blurs upon the scene and we are drifted out of the dream. But she is leaving now, departing as a ghost, a shadow which has never truly been.
 
Well she leave any mark of her presence? A whiff of perfume that wakens a sleeping poet who strums upon the strings of a lute playing old sad songs. A single glove abandoned to its fate, a token that now lies limp like a gentle sigh of the wind through the trees. Or perhaps there is nothing. Nothing but the empty space, which one imagines must have been occupied once.
 
And so she fades………

Behind Closed Doors

{ October 20, 2008 @ 4:30 am } · { Character Sketches }
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Everyone wonders the secrets that lay hidden behind closed doors. To the unassuming, and unobservant eye they would appear to be the picture-perfect family. But that is all it is, perfection as it can only exist within a photograph. A moment caught, with the intent of creating an illusion to preserve some happy memory. With forced smiles, and stiff poesies meant for others to view. But to those that are inquisitive, to those who make their life at putting together the pieces of the puzzle when they do not have the picture to guide them by. There are tells of the vainer, a subtle tension felt, everyone has their secrets laying deep inside. No one told them the All American family was just a hoax, and those that strive most to portray themselves in public as the mythos. The happy, average family, the ones that say things like “Pickles” on the count of there when having their picture taken. They are the ones with fetishes in their basement, affairs in the shadows, over controlling, over criticizing.
 
To look at him, there is nothing particularly striking, clean cut, graying hair, cardigan sweater tied around his neck, dressed in casual Khakis, yes, they are one of those couples that have children which should be their grand kids, but the kids, use words like daddy. You imagine he is the perfect candidate for some at home businessmen. The type that do not like under any circumstances to be disturbed while in their office. Working with the doors shut, perhaps with too much Internet porn flashing upon the screen. Or living some double life, where he enjoys leather and chains. They live in a two story house, and go about their lives stale and discontent.
 
Why did they wait so long to have kids, one too caught up in work for it to be “the right time” or perhaps, they had tried and failed, turned to fertility drugs. Which one failed to produce naturally. She speaks with a slight tension in the voice. Perhaps behind closed doors she takes a firm hand he looks just like the type that would cow before his wife, she must have everything just so, while the kids prattle on oblivious.
 
One must always seek to look beyond what is offered where intrigue and scandal lay just waiting to be told.

Man in a car

{ August 31, 2008 @ 2:34 am } · { Character Sketches }
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He was the most absurd man I have ever seen. He was driving a sky blue volvo. One has to wonder at times what goes into the mines of others. He appeared as a character more than a real person. As if he must have been illustrated into the car, while the car itself was animated. The rear view mirror was titled in such an angle that he must spend more time looking at himself than the road behind him. Which could perhaps explain the dent.

Desperately he was clinging on what few strangling stands of hair he had left, combed over his round yellow head. Beside him within the passengers seat, strapped securely with a seatbelt, he carried an ice chest. Seemingly unaware of his surroundings while he put putted along in his own oblivion.