Midnight

                                                                                                  Prologue

          A dirty street, a filthy alley tucked in between skyscrapers and darkness. There are rumpled newspapers with miscellaneous dates scattered across the ground and the dank smell of wet paper and filth pollutes the air completely. Near the back of the alley sits a cardboard box barely being held together by tape. It is a makeshift home for any world weary hobo in need of a place to shelter himself from the ravages of the rain and cold.  It is in here that a small boy no older than five is screaming for his mother.  His face is smeared with soot and dirt and his grubby little hands are clutching at the rags he calls clothes. There are several abrasions on his legs and arms and his eyes are red from weeping. He doesn’t understand why he’s been left to rot in the gutters nor why his mother abandoned him on the street corner in the middle of the night. Has it been days? Weeks? Months? He doesn’t know. All he knows is that he feels more pain than he can possibly understand and he wants to know why. He wants to be held, loved, cared for….he wants to be saved.

         A few blocks away there is the sound of smashing bottles and broken glass. A woman is crying and begging for her life. She is broken inside and out. She has been screaming for so long and so loud that she cannot stand the silence. Her face, her beautiful, porcelain face is colored with black, blue, green, and red smears. She’s been smacked, punched, slammed into the wall, and hit with a variety of objects. She used to fight back, but now she has no strength left. He comes at her hour after hour and by the time he’s done, the floor and walls are splattered with her blood and everything beside her is desecrated completely. The smell of booze and tobacco makes her sick and once she can get the courage to stand, she runs to the sink and pukes.  This has been happening every night for over a year. She cannot escape, she cannot live….she longs to be saved.

         Around the block and up a few side streets there is a park. It is barely illuminated in the deepest part of the evening and the path is overgrown with weeds and dirt. No one goes there. No one with any sense left at least.  The trees are bare and leaves and plots of dead earth are scattered all about. In the shadows mangy cats and vicious looking dogs walk around with hatred in their eyes. They hate the humans who left them to rot. They hate the town that refuses to acknowledge their existence. They hate that they are struggling to survive on the underbelly of this town. They have no hope left and the scars that litter their filthy forms ensure that they will trust any human ever again. Most wish for death but have no hope that even death will heal their sufferings. They want a fresh start, they want to know the love their owners once promised them, they want a home…..and they need to be saved.

         This is city is drowning. The despair and horror of each and every day is plastered on every street, in every home, and on every face. Hope is nonexistent. In fact, most people who live here have no idea of what hope even means. All they know is the dreary existence which only seems to get worse and worse.  To add into the scenery, the weather is always dank and dreary, it never seems to help. It rains and pours till the city seems to become an island. The puddles are endless and the streets are more like rivers than pavement. It is dark and shrouded by endless clouds and it is a cause of celebration each and every time a single ray of sunshine peaks through. No one deserves to live here and no one chooses to. The people here spend their whole lives dreaming of escape to find their life has slipped away before their eyes. No one can leave for this is the end of the line, this is Midnight.

                                                                                                  Chapter One

In this Hell hole of a town there is one man who stands out from the endless stream of faces, Aidan Dante Malone. Like everyone else, he grew up in Midnight and has never gotten the chance to leave the city’s borders. He lives with his younger sister, Maria, who is now twelve. Her pale blue innocent eyes mirror those of her brother and their late mother. Such innocent eyes have seen the horrors of this town already and it’s a damn shame. If it were up to Aidan, she would never be exposed to the darkness in this town. Unfortunately, he can’t always be there for her. He can’t watch her every move and see that no harm comes to her. All he can do is live on faith and continue to be as cautious as possible. After all, there is only so much a nineteen year old kid can do when his father has run out and left them for dead.

         That happened so long ago, poor Maria doesn’t even remember him and their mother’s face is nothing but a distant and fading image. It’s a tough life but they make do. Aidan works off and on as a cook at the local “Tik Tock Diner” and picks up the occasional shift at the hospital as an orderly cleaning up the rooms and such.  It’s far from glamorous but it puts enough food on the table for the two of them and enough money to keep up with the rent on their meager little apartment.  Had he been able to afford a good education, maybe he could take himself and Maria out of this dump of a town and live somewhere nice with a white picket fence and a big back yard with the prettiest green grass you could ever imagine.  That’s the kind of place Aidan would love for his little sister to know. It’s the kind of place that she deserves to live in. One day, yes, one day they will escape but for now they simply have to survive.

         To survive Midnight, one must stick to oneself and not getting involved in anything or with anybody; everything here equals trouble. To survive, one has to be all but invisible and be willing to turn a blind eye towards all the foul things that take place here on a day to day basis. If you don’t, you face danger on every street corner. Luckily for Aidan Malone, his personality and street smarts allow him to mingle with even the worst types of people and not get pulled into their world. He knows how to play both sides of the law but always strays towards the “lighter” side of life. He has friends everywhere and connections that stretch from one side of town to the other. A very important connection being the Buchanan’s, the oldest family left in Midnight. They are the city’s most powerful family and have a hand in all the local businesses; everything from the Laundromat to the one and only public school in town, Buchannan High (which serves all grades despite it being set up as a high school).  In this town, you were either with the Buchannan’s or you were against them. There is no in between, except for Aidan Malone of course.

         It wasn’t a very well-known fact but the Malone’s and the Buchannan’s had a long history together dating all the way back to the 18th century when the town was first built. The whole story has been changed and modified a thousand times to fit different generations but the general idea of a  Malone boy saving the life of one of the Buchannan’s daughters way back when stayed intact. Supposedly this honorable deed was a matter of pride to both families and served as a sort of allying bond. In fact, if one were to search back into the genealogy of both families they would probably find that through one or more generations the families were actually linked by blood, marriage, or both.  Now a days, however, this fact is lost and the Buchannan’s and the Malone’s are simply families who have remained acquaintances through many generations. It works and has serves them both well in their own ways.

         Family threads like this one, however thin and tenuous they may be, are never forgotten. In a small town like this, nothing is forgotten and one’s reputation is everything. One’s reputation can determine just about everything in Midnight. It can determine whether or not a loan is granted, though in these tough times they rarely ever are, and it can also determine how long it will take this town to swallow you whole and devour you piece by piece. In Aidan’s case, he would probably get the loan and if he’s lucky he’ll survive another 15 years here. That number will lessen dramatically if he doesn’t quit saving those poor wretches that litter the streets. One of these days he’s going to go too far and when that happens, God help him.

                                                                                                            Chapter Two

Boom, boom, boom. The throbbing, pulsating noise pounded through his skull. He tried to ignore it. He tried to sleep through it and yet it continued and seemed to get louder and louder. He growled and tore at the tangled sheets wrapped around his body. He crawled to his feet and slithered to the door, gripping his head. Upon reaching it, he opened the door and shouted, “What the fuck do you want?!” without even bothering to see who it was. Silence answered him and forced his eyes to peel open and gaze into the brightly lit figure of a woman who was at least twice his age, Mrs. O’Hare.  Immediately he felt a wave of unadulterated guilt wash over him and he sighed deeply, “Mrs. O’Hare, I’m so sorry, long night. Would you like to come in?” He stepped back from the door and gave her room to enter.

         He felt like a jack ass and what’s worse is he now looked like one in front of this sweet old woman. “I apologize for the mess” he said hastily as he tossed clothes and miscellaneous items from the living room love seat.

         “It’s quite alright, dearie and I’m sorry to wake you like this but I had an urgent matter to discuss with you and I didn’t think it could wait.” The lines that traversed the contours of her face were creased with worry and her dull grey eyes seemed drowned in sadness.  This was an unusual picture of this colorful and normally charming woman. On an ordinary day, she would show up at his door with muffins or some hand me down clothes for his sister Maria. Today, she comes over dressed in widow’s rags tinged with blacks and greys looking as if she hasn’t slept in at least a century.  It was odd and more importantly, it was distressing to see.

         “You never need to apologize Mrs. O’Hare. I’m glad you came to me.” He sat down on the edge of his broken down lazy boy and gazed into her eyes warmly. “Now, what’s wrong? Something happen to Mark or Addy? Money trouble?” His voice was calm and sincere and he hoped that if had anything to do with her son or granddaughter that it wasn’t another disaster like the last time.  Whatever the situation, he would handle it and see that she got out of it with as little damage as possible.