David was standing outside the pawn shop looking into the window at the brass trumpet. It was pretty cheap and it looked banged up a bit but for some reason David really wanted it. He hung his head because even as cheap as it was, he still couldn't afford it. Plus, where would he play it. The walls in his apartment building were nearly paper thin. And yet here he was looking at it and longing to own it so that even if he couldn't play it, he could hold it and remember the few good memories he had from high school when he was in band. Before the dark times. Before the Heather.
He shuttered at the memory of even the name.
He took in a deep breath and let himself look just a moment more and reminded himself that tomorrow would be better. It had to be. Anything would be better than the day he'd just suffered through. On his way to work that morning he'd been pushed into muddy water by some bitch who wanted to get through the crowd at the crosswalk. She didn't even say sorry or turn to see what she'd done. David had to run back home and get changed which of course made him late for work so he was going to see his salary get deducted.
He had come to this new city and gotten this new job in order to get a new fresh start in life but it was the same old crapfest all over again just like in the previous city and the previous job.
At work all day he had two different bosses yelling at him with conflicting orders. He might have been able to manage if Eddy the tech guy would have done his damn job and fixed David's workstation but it was abundantly clear that Eddy didn't know a fucking thing about computers other than 'light must mean on'. Eddy was the typical good old boy who got his job because he'd played college basketball and one of the executives was a fan. David had heard that some athletes were brains as well but Eddy was clearly not one of them. He strutted around the office just smiling and trying to be friendly by inviting people to do things with him outside of the office. He wasn't a bad guy but he just couldn't do his job and David really needed him to do his job.
Now David was pretty sure he knew what to do to fix his own computer but he didn't have authorization to open the terminal and he didn't know the super user password. So while he had two different bosses demanding he do two completely conflicting jobs he had no computer to work on and he wasn't allowed to get up and go to another station. But hey, they paid him so if that was how they wanted to spend his time then he guessed he shouldn't complain but why did they have to yell at him all day.
David had problems. Granted none of those problems included him turning into a huge green rage monster when he got angry. Yet still he often thought about how refreshing and liberating it might be to just let the world believe he was dead and run off to wander from place to place like a homeless bum. Yeah, on second thought maybe his life wasn't so bad but did it really have to be so hard all the time. Maybe he shouldn't complain but this was getting ridiculous now.
David was the black sheep of his family in that he was the 'normal' one while everyone else seemed uniquely crazy in their own way and so they all had solidarity with each other while David was always on the outside. David just couldn't understand his parents or their trippy hippy sick and twisted sex thing. David marveled with jealousy at just how easy everyone else's life was while the universe kept throwing road blocks up to stop him from even the most basic tasks.
Try to go to college, get put on the wait list. Sure he eventually found a no name open admissions state school that would let him in but why had the better school rejected him? He had nearly a perfect score on his SATs.
Try to actually learn in college, breeze through and finish his four year degree in only two years because he already knew everything the teachers were allowed to teach. He thought that was a good thing at first. He was super eager to get away from Sandy his college girlfriend so he wouldn't have to deal with the fact that she'd cheated on him. But then when he was out trying to get a job everyone thought it was super suspicious that he had a four year degree but was only in college for two years.
Try to get a driver's license, the tester thinks he doesn't show enough confidence. He didn't do anything wrong, the tester just thought that David was just too timid to handle the vehicle.
Try to get an apartment, he needs a job and references. David already had the money to pay for six months of rent, why was he being pushed away?
Try to get a job, you need two years of previous work experience. For an entry level job? Really? It was fucking ENTRY level, as in the first fucking job you get after college. What the fuck? Also, his degree diploma and transcript somehow wasn't enough for him to prove to them that he wasn't lying and had actually graduated.
Struggle, struggle, struggle and then more struggle and finally David was at the point where he wasn't about to fall off a cliff in his life and he had himself settled and together. He had finally gotten his first job after college and it wasn't that far from where his parents lived. All it took was giving up on his dreams and losing all faith in humanity. He wasn't going to change the world. He wasn't going to have the bright future he was always told about in school. He was barely hanging on but he was in fact hanging on. In order to make it in the world he had to be an asshole and look after himself first. Really himself only. If he didn't do that then without warning he'd have no money in his bank account and would instead have huge overdraft fees. One mistake and he'd lose everything and there was no one who would even give a thought to helping him.
And then David made that one mistake. It didn't take long for the universe to come fuck with him. If there was ever a moment when he had anything good the universe had to come and take it from him. Her name was Lisa and David fell for her almost instantly. Certainly she'd reject him if he approached her he thought. Yet approach her he did. He just couldn't help himself. In fact, knowing for sure that she'd turn him down sort of made him feel like he had nothing to lose in asking her out. She would in fact be the 47th woman he would approached for a date since ghosting that slut cheater Sandy. He was getting good at getting rejected. Lisa was so much different from either Heather or Sandy. Heather was just a goof in the end and Sandy was the allegedly good and modest girl but she really went and stabbed people in the back. When David saw Lisa he knew that she wasn't a good girl. She wasn't a modest girl. She was a blonde bombshell and that certainly meant that she would not give David the time of day.
He asked her out and to his surprise she accepted. David was so shocked that he didn't even know what to do or say next but Lisa was kind on that end and things just worked out. The relationship was easy to start and seemingly easy to maintain. David finally started to feel like his faith in humanity was restored and the world could be a good place. With Lisa in his life he started to feel more than just that he was just simply hanging on. He felt happy. Sure she was about as smart as a squirrel but David wasn't judging. She made him happy and that was all that really mattered in the end, right?
And then David found out that Lisa had started fucking his one and only friend John behind David's back from the moment that he first introduced them.
The next couple of months in David's life were sort of a blur if David went back to think about it all. In quick succession he'd lost his job, his apartment, his bank account, and his license. He narrowly avoided getting arrested for failure to pay one of his bills and shame of shames he found himself back at home living with his parents with his little sister as his new boss when he was forced to help out at the flower shop his parents owned under the pretense that the siblings needed to spend time together while the unstated family expectation was hanging over them.
Even with all his other problems it was Lisa's betrayal that haunted him. Secretly to himself he started to wonder what the point of even living was. The world didn't need him. People died all the time. Animals went extinct all the time and the Earth didn't give a fuck. It just continued on its way with no regard for anything. The world was not a fantasy land of beauty, bloom, and color. The world was an ugly, dark, and cruel place and he was tired of putting up with it.
David could find no happiness and no joy in anything. He moved to a new city to start over and again he had to scrape and struggle to get established. He was one paycheck away from being homeless again but he held himself together in the city that seemed to be even crueler than the previous. It was in this new city where he worked in the office with Eddy the former basketball player where David knew more about how to fix the computers than the alleged IT guy. And now he was standing in front of the pawn shop again looking at the trumpet, at the one thing he'd seen in the city that maybe might bring him a faint glimpse of happiness and all he could ever do was look at it but never have it.
David forced himself to turn and walk home and it started to downpour. Unlike everyone else on the street who took to using all sorts of objects to try to cover their heads David just shrugged and let it come down. He would slosh in his wet shoes all the way home. It was par for the course after all.
Then as he was walking in the rain he saw Lisa of all people being helped out of an expensive car and going into an expensive restaurant. The sight of her struck David and he stopped in place. She didn't see him or if she did she paid no notice of him. He had moved three states over to get away from her. What the fuck was she doing here?
For a time David just could not even bring himself to move from that spot. He stood there unable to think. Unable to breathe. Unable to move. Unable to even cry so the clouds had to cry for him.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEETCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BOOM!
In the wet road conditions a truck had hydroplaned and hit one of those cheap knock off Chinese battery cars which for some reason exploded. In that moment David was no more. That isn't to say he was involved in the accident but rather seeing a situation of life and death right in front of him, all his own problems, any thought to his own safety, and even his personality and name were all just dropped. He sprang into action and rushed to the scene, narrowly missing getting hit by a car that was driving fast with one tire up on the sidewalk just so the driver didn't have to wait and could carry on towards her destination.
The flames were hot but David was already so soaked by the rain that he could hardly feel it. The person in the truck seemed to be ok. He was moving and getting free of his seat belt. David turned to the car. Two people. One wasn't moving at all and the other looked like they were in pain. The metal was hot and some of the plastic of the car body was melting even. David didn't pay any regard to getting injured. He pried and pulled until he could get the first person free. He lifted them up and carried them over his shoulder back towards the sidewalk away from the fire.
When David turned back he saw the truck driver trying to help the other person in the car but he was having no luck being hindered by the heat of the flames. David rushed back over. He pushed past the truck driver and crawled into the vehicle. David didn't know how to check if a person was alive or dead or anything and he really didn't think he had time to do any of that anyway. He braved the fire, allowed himself to be burned so he could get the belt free and then he pulled the unconscious person out of the car.
