Emotion's Bulwark

He walks the streets. Alone at night with music deafening the cars and drunkards laughing as they enjoy the night, he can only watch in envy as they do.

The night with it's fresh breeze reminds him why he's here.

As he walks down shadowed alleys you wouldn't enter even during daylight, in alleys you wouldn't expect a suit like him to be in, unless he wasn't exactly a man with good intentions.

Yet he walked here with intent and reason unknown to even him.

It's these kind of nights he roams aimlessly in his mind and in the lonely cool streets.

With the moon and stars his only spectators.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls a cigarette out of a pack.

He wasn't one for smoking but here, in this moment he allowed himself.

Because he was alone, because he was here, because he wanted to feel alive again.

In his mind, life only existed should you waste it away. In health and reality, his life meant so little, but in this moment, in the street, in the back alley, in the night, he was alone and insignificant.

That feeling that he could be gone with the shadows of today was something only he could revel in. A mindless self indulgence, the sacrifice of self to the night, that of which he so much desired.

He passed buildings he recognized from his youth, buildings long forgotten in the past or forgetting of his past, his truth.

Proof he existed.

In these fleeting moments, he recalls how on this very street a woman, drunk and driving, crashed, killing a little old man and placing herself in a coma.

No one will know her after this, few will remember the old man. Terrible news that change whole families and people, rarely change the world.

Just how far would his end, his erasure, reach? How many would recall him, know of him, remember his feelings?

Will he be erased from human memory or will he leave a stain upon this world?

The future was in his hands, and he thought, who was I to tell him that?

On and on, he walked with the future following him right at his heels.

It's just that he never once felt its presence.

The lights behind him meshed into a haze and in that haze a bull appeared. The bull with its rippling muscles saw the man and its hate welled into tears.

It was so sad. It hated how sad it felt and it was all that man's fault.

The man had long felt glaring eyes on the back of his neck. He wondered if it was someone he knew but to his surprise it was the strangest sight, a white bull in the darkness of the city streets whose tarred, glossy asphalt brightened the bull's hide.

Its horns of ebony and mouth fuming hot breath contrasted that alabaster hair.

He felt the urgency return to him, his quiet night spent dazing and smoking became a nightmare in a moment.

His cigarette plummeting as his heart did.

He ran, feeling the bull's hooves, its crackling stomps on the asphalt, reverberate inside his body.

It was right behind him. The bull juts his head left and right so as to catch the man from behind, even if it was the very tail of his suit, even that would be enough to satiate the sadness.

The pain.

This man ran until his heart pumped acid and his legs quivered with each stride. His lungs breathed water and his mouth was null to its sweet relief.

Hiding miraculously in a back alley. He no longer sees the bull giving chase.

The night had grown quiet. The low roar of cars and people was gone.

It was like he and the bull were the only ones in the city streets.

The breeze shifted from one direction to the next. The lights were so bright and his eyes struggled to see beyond them as though a deep mist obscured the background.

It was then the bull's body formed itself in the mist. Its whitened hide and charred horns as though it had broken through some wall, came crashing.

Demolishing pavement and street lights in this mad dash, the bull set its eyes on the man.

Those eyes, with tears at their sides.

The sadness and maddening rage they gave froze the man as he watched it run haphazardly at him.

Not in a straight line but in a curve going left and right, as though the strength had left this bumbling beast.

The man felt his legs shudder, his heart pounded into his ears and he begged his body to move.

Those eyes that cried when they see him, looked as though they were begging and in that plea the man pitied the bull.

That bull was pained. As though forced to chase him.

The man, in the final moments before it was too late, remembered why he was even out there.

For weeks now his niece had been comatose.

While visiting her he'd whisper to her to wake up. He loved her and assured his sister, her mother, he'd help any way he can. That girl was his daughter as far as he saw it.

From the moment she was born he helped raise her as a substitute for a useless drunk.

He only walks at night to smoke, to feel the breeze and, remind himself that he's alone here, in the belly of a whale.

Should he be late on rent, left by a woman, rejected, spilled coffee on his way to work, made a fool of himself publicly, or even felt like crying, he'd walk the streets and bury those feelings.

Money was scarce and his nieces bills rising. He was scared, would it be any better if he never got involved? If he never bothered raising a little girl that wasn't even his.

Then maybe this whole thing could be avoided.

He regretted his failure. He resented his lack of power and he despaired at his feelings, his incompetence, his complacency.

Complacent that this is as far as he gets. This will be all he can be become.

It were these thoughts that made him move away from the bull's path.

Narrowly being trampled.

The bull crashed into a wall. Letting out only a small cry of a person.

A soul within the white bull.

In between the bulls heaving, dying huffs, the voice cried.

And the bull's eyes cried as they watched the man, standing tall with resolve that steeled in his heart.

The tears stopped and in one huff, the soul within smiled.

In another, the bull ceased seeing the man. The man was a sight to behold for his red eyes and a view that set him free.

The bull had been outdone by runaway resolve.

Lighting a cigarette, as if this happened everyday, the man walked home. Wanting to change his life the way the bull changed the face of a brick wall.

In the morning, people bustled about with murmurs of an earthquake, rumors of a blatant robbery, talk of many strange things going on, from endless sunsets to drunks ruining lives, disappearing mailmen and a suicide in the mountains. This town never saw a dull moment, and only the man, with a sad look on his face, knew who made the hole in the wall.

Though if he told you, it'd be a load of bullshit.