“Now, the last time I was in this much pain, I was living with my momma”, said the comedian as the crowd he was performing for flared into laughter. As far as the man on stage could see there was a motley group of smiling faces that were all so different, yet so much the same.

“Any of you guys live around here?”, a few hands were raised, “well shit I feel bad for you guys”, more laughter.

“Nah, Nah but seriously I lived around here too, and it feels pretty good to be back home”, cheering from the crowd, “I remember I once got a coffee and asked for extra sugar and the cafe guy, he not a barista unless he's at a Starbucks and is there Starbucks here, am I right?” the crowd blows into laughter but dies down as soon as he continues to speak, “Yeah but I guess this guy thought I meant sugars illegal cousin and slipped me a bag and I was like ‘WHAT?’”. The audience laughs as he thanks them for a wonderful night and walks off stage.

“Great show out there, Mr. Glov.”

“You made up all that stuff yourself, wow what great material!”

“I’ve also been trying to get my feet out there, maybe you could help me out a bit?”

“Mr. Glov”

“Mr. Glov”

“Mr. Glov”

He replayed the empty sentences in his head as he walked in the dark empty street, in case there were any important details; there weren’t, causing him to practically delete it all from his memory, which he responded to with a smile. All he could remember was some lights and some callow waiter messing up his request for sparkling water. He recalled yelling at him and making a big show of it, which got him to a better room in a better part of the building.

“Always have to push people to get what you want in this world”, he quoted from a memory of his mother.

At last, he reached his destination, a deli on the corner. A wave of deja vu washed over him as he saw most of the place empty, causing him to reminisce on his childhood. He shook his head to push images out of his mind as he stepped foot inside, pushing the wood and glass door, and was greeted with a bells jingle and cheap fluorescent lights illuminating the structure. Small pale blue tiles welcomed his dress shoes as he eyed the large rack half-empty with sweets. He was looking for something specific, concentrating a bit, but was jolted back by an annoyingly overly pleasant voice.

“2 for 2, 2 for 2”, said the deli man behind the counter.

The comedian mocked his voice perfectly, “2 for 2, 2 for 2”, causing the deli man to quiet down into a quiet grumble. Returning to his search on the food rack, his eyes glossed numerous artificial, glazed sweets. He seemed more like an outsider than ever; poverty was prevalent in the deli, while his trench coat was high-end, expensive, yet plain, his hair and facial hair fashionable by today's standards. His hand was spoiled as well, wrapped in a leathery white glove that had his last name embroidered on each knuckle, All this gave the look of a man who was, with respect to the setting, a satiated parasite feeding off a soon to be dead host. He finally found his prize, a glazed chocolate circle with marshmallow cream filling cocooned in a small plastic bag, and laid two of the sweets on the counter.

“2 for 2?” he questioned mockingly to the deli man who reluctantly took the comedian’s money.

Still mocking the counterman, “Hey boss, I only got 100 that good?”.

The deli man responded, “No”.

“Why boss why”

“No”

“That the only English you know?”, said the comedian, hoping to get a ride out of the deli man.

The deli man responded with two new words to the comedian, causing him to go into a fit of laughter.

The comedian, starting to smile, “Oh funny ha ha”, he said right before he slammed his money on the counter, to which the deli man started cursing at him even more. “Come, take money, I no take 100”.

The comedian responded, “You're gonna need it”, as he stomped his foot through the door causing it to shatter, whilst doing so brought him into a wave of laughter as he sprinted down the street. The man behind the counter reached under the countertop and pulled out a long baseball bat, but it was too late, the comedian was already out of sight.

He ran a number of blocks in the night. For some reason, there were no people outside, the night was something he never thought could come from his neighborhood: quiet. In the silence he replayed the events of the deli in his mind, combing for any details he could use. Seeing none he forgot about the whole endeavor and looked at the street around him, smiling. Memories of playing in the street with a fire hydrant came to him as he made his way to an almost dilapidated old project house. Looking to his right he could see a young boy being scolded by his mother for smart-mouthing a teacher, and to his left, he could feel the insults he inflicted on some unlucky kid who was trying to walk home.

He trudged inside the house, his sweets tucked inside his coat pocket. The lobby was small and the lift to his right was broken, as was usual. He climbed the stairs as he did so many times before, his footsteps reverberating throughout the building. In this stage, there were no other characters as he climbed up 3 floors into a long narrow hallway with doors on each side. He reached the 7th door from the landing and fished in his pocket for a key which he pulled out and pushed the door open.

He flipped a switch and a light bulb illuminated the project house. He walked over to a chair that faced a coffee table and a sofa. “God, I can still see her”, he whispered to himself. He remembered the image of his mother laid on the couch watching the door. In an instant he was 15 years old again, ditching school and expecting an empty house only to be welcomed to his disapproving mother.

Reaching into his pocket, he plucked out the chocolates and laid them on the coffee table, one on each side.

“See mama I think I made it, but I don't feel like its right for me”, he said to an empty chair.

He put the cheap food into his mouth and spat it out, it was tasteless, almost like plastic, and stared at the hunk of marshmallow filling and saliva. He remembered it tasting golden and left the other one on the table as he made his way to his old bedroom. He smiled as he forgot the taste and made his way to his old bedroom.

The bedroom was small, nothing outside any normal description, except for a desk with a blank notebook open. A pencil was laid next to it as the comedian sat down. He stared at the empty book for a while, until he pulled off his gloves exposing his dark burnt hands. They never caused him any pain, except for when he wrote. He picked up the pencil and combed through his mind for anything to put on paper.

He was thrown back to his teenage years where he used to write for hours in this notebook, stories, and accounts from his memories were the main actors on the stage of the book. Though when he reached inside his head he surprised to find absolutely nothing that could go on paper. Only empty faces that were all different but never changed. Coming to this realization, his tears replaced what would have been pencil marks on the paper as he cried over the notebook. He buried his face in his hands and sobbed, sobbed profusely into the quiet, empty night. He cried thinking of an empty life and an empty heart that could never be filled, he didn't know whose heart it belonged to but it made him so very sad. He fished into his pocket for a small bottle without a label and unscrewed the top. Feeling the inside of the bottle, pulled a small white capsule and felt it around his tongue, before swallowing. He climbed into bed and thought of nothing at all as he fell asleep.

The news reports the day after headlined, “Ronald Glov, 24, overdosed on cyanide in his old project house”. When the police arrived they found a 44-year-old woman, stabbed multiple times, hidden in a closet. The knife laid next to her had no fingerprints on it. There was no note, only the woman's body, a smiling man on his deathbed, and an artificial sweet laid neatly on a cheap coffee table.