The night's sky was black, the street lights were bright and Isaac was stumbling out of an alleyway, drunk and bleeding onto a submissive pavement. Why was he bleeding you ask? Well, he had performed an acoustic set for a local music club, the crowd there had been small, but pleasingly affectionate and Isaac's compensation for his nights work had been described as exposure and free drinks. These free drinks would prove to be a strong influence leading to Isaac bleeding onto a sidewalk that he was walking over. Everything was peaceful whilst Isaac played, couples swayed delicately from side to side to the soothing tone of his voice, friends laughed and drank together, people were having a good time. Calm. Only once Isaac had finished did trouble begin to arise. He finished his final song and then thanked the crowd politely for their attention and their applause. He even went as far as to thank them for not throwing anything at him to which the crowd responded with smiles and light laughter. Once Isaac had packed away his guitar he was escorted to a reserved table, upon seating himself a drink was in the process of being placed on the table before him, he took out his cigarettes and his lighter and put them on the table, he then thanked the waiter who brought over his free drink. The notion of a tip crossed Isaac's mind for a moment which was brief but prominent, understandably he dismissed the idea. He was a struggling musician in a city and country that was far from his own, in addition to this he had a frighteningly temporary place of residence and not enough money to replace the pair of hole ridden shoes that he was currently wearing. The waiter did not look disappointed with the absence of a tip, Isaac was probably not original in his impoverished musician routine.
This is where Isaac's decent began, with quite frankly too much alcohol and a delusional, narcissistic belief that somebody with his considerable talent should not have shared the same stage on the same night as the next act. After drinking half of his current double shot of Jack Daniels Isaac looked upon the act that was to succeed his own.
A maternal, sweet looking older lady approached the mic, she walked in a fashion that resembled apprehension, as if a part of her believed that she shouldn't have been stood there on that stage, in front of all of those people. Around fifty people were seated, drinking their drinks and staring curiously upon this older woman. She reached out a right hand and took the mic off of its stand, slowly. This action was carried out tentatively, as was probably every other action that she had made that night. She spoke quietly, passively, possibly acting in the logic that if she did so then she would be able to avoid causing anybody any unwanted stress or cause for concern. She didn't look scared exactly, more worried, worried of criticism. Through the cloudy smoke filled room emanated a strident, jarring voice.
"Thank you, I'm Maggie. I don't do this sort of thing very often, as you can probably tell, huhuhu... so please bear with me." Said the voice. Maggie, whom the voice belonged to then placed the microphone back onto its stand and lowered it to a practical height, she then lowered herself to a practical height by sitting down on a stool which had been kindly provided for her. She moved closer to the microphone.
"This song is called five hundred miles." Then she began.
Maggie's cover would have been described by most in attendance as pleasant, not perfect, but fine. See, the fact that she was old and was, "giving it a go" was enough to endear her to the majority of the crowd and because of this endearment the majority watched her with something that resembled, to Isaac at least, admiration. "Fair play to her," he imagined they were saying to each other. Schmucks, the lot of them, the majority. Isaac, as was characteristic of him, chose to be in the minority, this minority in particular was seemingly made up of him alone. Maggie carried on singing and so Isaac carried on drinking.
Maggie had been singing for almost thirty minutes and subsequently Isaac was at the bar for what would ultimately be his eighth and last drink. Isaac was grateful just to be able to look away from Maggie, she disgusted him. She was no better than a con artist. No, she was a con artist. The way she looked so innocently towards the ground when she spoke into the microphone, as if to avoid eye contact, the sweet concern she showed towards her audiences satisfaction through questions like "I hope you didn't mind that one too much." And the way she sat so elderly and innocently upon her stool. It was all a con, it was her only way of justifying her appearance upon the stage and the majority fucking loved it. She was not deserving of this opportunity through talent, she was only there because of her age coupled with her "benevolent" outward personality and her "go get 'em" attitude. These things added together equalled public sympathy and affection. This affection that derived from the con artists false characteristics lead to the round of applause and the cheers that rang through the music club when she almost reached her high note. It was a joke, a mockery, a disgrace to the profound musical art form. And so because of this Isaac got drunk, can you blame him? He'd given up everything for his dream and thus far it had yielded him nothing, could he truly justify his decision to leave the girl he loved for a selfish dream that sacrificed nothing in return? So he got drunk, excessively so, he got so drunk that when he was asked by an elderly smiling spectator what he thought of the old gals performance he told him the uncensored, brutal truth. A truth and analysis of the woman so scathing and unnecessarily vicious that before the spectator dragged Isaac out of the club by his collar, his eyebrows lifted and his jaw visibly dropped. It just so happens that the reason that this particular spectator was standing and watching the performance with a smile wider than the area between two football posts was because he was the performers husband. And so that's why Isaac was beaten bloody, because it turned out his childish outburst had a consequence. He had been rendered beaten, battered and bruised because he couldn't handle his drink, but more significantly he couldn't handle his own inflated ego and narcissistic tendencies. He couldn't accept or even truly comprehend the notion that somebody might have enjoyed Maggie's performance as much as his own, or even, God forbid, more than his own. More than this he perceived it to be symbolic of his time as a musician.
