The Throw-Aways

Prologue

If only you could see the thing I have seen. If you could have taken part in the things that have shaped this world, that have shaped me. If you could have had a roll in this great play, you would find yourself going from day to day with a sense of wonder that nothing can rival.
  It has been my great fortune, or my great misfortune, to have found my own self amongst things of such a spectacular nature that I have a difficult time remember the rest of the world is not like this. I do not profess that all people would react in the way that I have. I have seen some view it as though it is nothing more than an elaborate parlor trick done to amuse the foolish and pocket their money. Others have looked on with lethargic expressions asking, ‘Ah yes, but what else do you have to offer?’
Still, others have been consumed so completely that they wish nothing than to learn every secret there is and then to turn it on its ear to create something horrifying.
The standards we live by, the unspoken rules we all set for ourselves to follow, show exactly how we will react to something such as this.

  At the same time, things such as these choose who would participate in them. It follows us through our early lives, searching and poking about in our business to judge if we are fit for the experience.
I suppose that those who are not ‘suitable’ for a normal society are the ones who accept these gifts the easiest. Those who have been beaten down, kicked and cursed, maimed and mutilated; those who have found themselves to be not in their right minds " These are the people who are given chances the whole of the human race should be envious of.
Outcasts who have no place left in this realm have finally found a sanctuary.

  Yet not all who find their way to this place, this refuge, have lived their lives on the edges. I was never a beggar, a whore, a murderer. I was raised in a small town in a small house by a caring father who saw to it that I had everything I needed. Even so, here I am, in this world of abnormalities. It called to me just the way it would call someone from the streets. The difference is that I didn’t have a story to tell.
No, an English major raised by a single father who lives with two roommates in a flat downtown and has been struggling to find work is hardly a decent back story at all. My former life pales in comparison to a life of thievery done the old fashioned way " Sneaking around rooftops and window ledges; skulking into home to relieve weather people of precious jewels and possessions. Nor does it measure up to being the bastard child of a famous opera singer of Venice who was abandoned to a life on the streets of New York at the age of seven.
  To some it did not matter that I was not like the other in the aspect of my past. It was enough that I had been called in the same way as them and for that I was just as good as anyone else there.
That was one of those things that warmed your heart to hear, for the harsh words and comments from other came far more frequently than the kind words.

  I count myself lucky to have been called, though you may eventually think me daft for such a statement. They say it begins to call to you the moment the world acknowledges your existence. Debates have gone on for some time when exactly it is that this happens. It is different for everyone, I have come to believe. I suppose for me it was when I was fifteen, for that is when I first caught the sweet sounds of piano drifting to me on the wind. I felt its pull, like a fish hook in my jaw drawing me to some distant place. I wouldn’t come to fully understand this for another eight years.
It would be so long until I finally happened upon the source of the music that plagued my mind. That tiny hole in the wall that would open up to reveal a place larger than the planet we live on.
  My world seems small now; all of it contained in a single building that is sandwiched in a row of others that looked exactly like it at one point. Yet, even in a world contained inside one lowly theater, there are factions. There are groups that each of us fits into neatly, much like high-school in a way.
There are those who like to mingle with the outside, delighting in seeming alien to the population of the city. They are elegant and graceful, charming and witty. Compared to a normal person they look like gods and goddesses.
Then there are those who remain in the theater at all times likes nuns in a convent, venturing into the streets only when it is of the upmost importance. Spending their days making costumes or writing music, these are the ones who hate the world. Sometimes it is simply their gift that makes them do this; perhaps something extraordinary that would mark them as something different immediately.
And then there are those who ‘lurk in dark alleyways’ so to speak. They flaunt their gifts, not caring who saw the full extent of their abilities. ‘The misfits of the misfits’ as one dear gentleman put it.
  These parties are not divided by set lines or labels " They simply existed somewhere in the corner of everyone’s mind. In fact, I wouldn’t bother mentioning it at all if it did not play such an important roll in the story to come.

  Now I have spent far too much time babbling and we should get to the real story.
It was in the summer of…well I’m not sure of the year anymore. So many have come and gone now, I find it hard to keep track of which one is which. Seasons I have no trouble with, though. Let us simply say it was in the summer of the year…