THE REGULAR JOE

He completed his day's work as always. He got back from work in the bus. The sun was about to set. Regular Joe had completed another day in his regular, quiet and mediocre life.

Soon enough twilight took over. For most it evokes happy and fond memories of the day that was, or the day that is to come. Some use it as an excuse, to become nostalgic, to debate the crossroads that they find themselves in. But to Joe all that it brought out was a morbid response for what he had accomplished in life. He gulped down his saliva . His neck-tie was apparently getting tighter, so much so that he though it would strangle him. Blood thirsty mosquitoes and intense humidity now encroached the immediate atmosphere. It rung the death knell that he had been hearing for a long time now. It was ringing to ascertain his existence, mundane and monotonous. The twilight gave way to darkness which eventually lead into a brand new day. But he had neither hope, that there was a ray of light at the crack of dawn nor relief that the darkness befalling him every night was over.

He remembered looking at himself in the mirror when he was younger. Life was filled with opportunities. The wonderful cars, the women, the food, the wine...... everything was possibly out there for him to take. Then he looked at himself in the mirror, a shadow of what he used to be, a shadow of what he could have been. He thought of how much a soul could be destroyed. Day by day, hour by hour, moment after moment until the only significant time interval that he recognized was the time it took for him to gain excessive wight, white hair and a timid physique. He resigned to his fate, resigned to the abyss that surrounded him. The thought of a life of no consequence, purpose or meaning, no longer troubled him.

Then at the crack of dawn, the birds began chirping, the blades of grass had drops of dew, the sound of an optimistic and hopeful world around him...............did not penetrate into his ears. He knew that as always this new day would end, that twilight would manifest itself again, that darkness would once more befall him and his life, his mundane, monotonous and mediocre life.