The Fearless Coward

    A cocktail glass, with dregs of vodka martini, lay on his coffee table, and clothes were strewn about at the foot of his bed. Drawing the curtains aside, he was overtaken by a blinding cascade of light spilling into his east London flat. “Damned postie forgot my bloody paper again”. He would have rung the newspaper company and given them a piece of his mind if his phone line hadn’t been disconnected. He decided to grab the milk at his doorstep, and trudged over to the door. He swung it open, half-expecting the milkman to have forgotten his delivery. “Bloody Hell!”. A Calico cat darted into his flat, knocking over several empty bottles of Olde Greengrass beer. “I’ll be damned if that old hag’s bloody cat comes in and disturbs my peace one more time!”. He picked up the writhing, hissing creature by the scruff of the neck and marched her over to Ms. Davies’ place.
    Knocking rapidly a few times, he waited a few seconds and started knocking again. The door opened and staring at him from a deep lilac-themed room was a weathered face of about 75. He started to open his mouth to shout at her for being so careless as to let her cat run about uncontrolled when something caught his eye. Rather, it was something that was caught in her eye: a tear. There was simply a “shame on you” as she snatched the cowering cat from his oppressive grip. The door slammed with surprising force and he found himself face to face with a lavender patch of embroidery upon the door frame. It read “It requires less character to discover the faults of others than is does to tolerate them.”
    He thought back to last night, the party, Marissa (or was it Melissa?). It had been ages since he had remembered a woman’s name for longer than the time spent in the same room. Each face in his life was just a blur: no names, no memories, just people put in his life to give him pleasure–or pain. His cynicism was not what worried him. It wasn’t his womanization, his misanthropy, or his constant bitterness. It was neither his spite for the world nor his constant criticism of others. More so than his absence of compassion and love, his absence of fear was what scared him the most.