Nonconsensual Connections: Curses and Pure Luck
In the hush of the sleepless city at 3 AM, the pharmacy's lights flicker and buzz like anxious ghosts above deserted streets. Daytime’s clamor has long faded; now the sidewalks lie empty and the stoplights cycle through colors for no one. In this lull, the city bares its soul. I can almost feel it: all the negative emotions and stray sorrows of a million lives hanging like mist in the air. It is a witching hour of curses — not fairy-tale hexes, but the lingering residue of hatred, grief, and longing that daylight left behind. These unseen energies cling to brick walls and gutter edges, attaching themselves to memory and matter. Under the sodium-vapor glow of streetlights, every shadow feels heavy with unseen burdens, every distant hum seems to carry a lament.
As I walk these empty streets, I become aware of subtle presences—a quiet storm of thought and emotion stirring in the darkness. In the stillness, I encounter a handful of souls who remain awake, each caught in their own midnight reverie. A woman at a counter with a cold cup of coffee. A ragged figure in an alleyway, muttering secrets to no one. A man at a lonely bus stop, head bowed in contemplation. Their paths seldom cross in daylight, but here in the small hours they are united by an invisible thread: each carries a curse, an inherited or self-made burden, the weight of which shapes their destiny.
First victim : Cold Coffee and Heavy Eyes
Through the window of an unethical McDonald's, I see the first of them: a woman sitting alone at the counter, cradling a cardboard cup of coffee that has long gone cold. The surrounding stools are empty, and fluorescent lights cast a pallid glow on the linoleum and her drawn face. She stares through her own faint reflection in the glass, out into the darkness I’ve just come from, as if expecting some answer from the silent street. Her eyes are glazed with exhaustion and something deeper—a kind of defeated wonder, the look of someone who has witnessed hope die slowly over many days and nights. And then it comes, crawling up my spine, thick and ugly—the fear. That I could end up like her. That one day, I’ll be the one sitting there, hollow, waiting for nothing. And the second I think it, I hate myself. It’s disgusting, this selfish, gut-deep terror, this instinct to recoil as if her life is some cautionary tale meant to scare me straight. Like suffering is only unbearable when I imagine wearing it myself.
Her rumpled uniform bears a name tag, a small reminder that she has an identity, though at this hour she resembles a ghost, a machine haunting the place she works. With slow, mechanical motions, she turns her keys over in her hand; the metal clinks softly, a steady, unending rhythm. Each rotation feels like the ticking of a clock, an incantation of habit—a spell to ward off exhaustion, a ritual to keep herself from unraveling. I imagine the bitterness in that cup is more than just stale brew: it’s the distillation of countless rude remarks bitten back, of wages too low to break the cycle, of dreams deferred to another lifetime. Around her, I sense an invisible shroud of weariness, an aura of emptiness that no amount of sugar or cream could ever sweeten.
She carries her burdens quietly. Perhaps she works her graveyard shift to pay off debts that aren’t even truly hers — medical bills for a sick parent, or loans inherited like a family curse. Perhaps she is haunted by the memory of a love lost, replaying old conversations in her mind to pinpoint where it went wrong. Every regret and responsibility, every insult and indignity suffered without protest, has settled on her slender shoulders, layer upon layer. Humanity breeds its own curses, and hers is the curse of endless obligation: to keep pouring coffee for others while her own grows cold, to smile on the outside while something inside her withers from neglect.
And yet, in that slumped posture, there is a hint of defiance. She hasn’t surrendered completely — if she had, she wouldn’t be here, night after night, enduring. The very act of making it through this night is a quiet rebellion of the spirit against a world that has pushed her to the margins. In the silence of the diner, with only the hum of a refrigerator for company, she closes her eyes for a moment. Maybe she dreams of being elsewhere, of mornings without worry or nights filled with peace. Or maybe she simply gathers the strength to face the dawn when it comes. Watching her, I feel the curse on her life as if it were tangible fog around her; I also sense the faint stirrings of resilience, a resolve as steady as her heartbeat. Cursed she may be by circumstance and sorrow, but she remains, in this fluorescent solitude, undeniably alive. And so I cry...
Second Victim : Street-Corner Oracle
Outside again, I follow the street toward a faint sound — a low muttering that at first seems like the wind. At the mouth of a narrow alley, under a sputtering streetlamp, a woman sways and whispers to herself. Her clothes hang loose on her frame, a patchwork of old coats and cast-offs that have known many seasons. She might be homeless as this system claims, or simply lost in a realm of her own; in the half-light, she could be mistaken for a heap of rags except for the glint of her eyes each time the lamp flickers back to life. I hesitate at the curb, unsure whether to approach or remain unseen. That’s when I begin to catch the words tumbling from her cracked lips.
“…cursed, all of us…Japanese babies.... you can’t see it, but I do…??” she rasps. Her voice is thick with emotion — anger, or grief, or both. She speaks to no one and to everyone, pronouncing judgment on the empty street. In her tone there is a prophetic cadence, a poetry in her pain. She warns of things taken and souls forgotten, of children hungry and lands stolen, of evil hidden behind bright smiles and poison baked into daily bread. These are not the trite incantations of fairy tales; they are raw truths born of experience, each phrase sharpened by suffering. The curses she utters are the kind that stick to the air like tar, the kind that settle into the bones of this alley and do not easily leave.
This woman seems to carry the hatred of the whole world in her frail body. Perhaps once she was hurt beyond repair—betrayed or abandoned until her mind cracked under the weight of it. Now all those negative energies, all that cruelty endured, have manifested as the demons she battles in the dark. She gestures sharply at empty air, as if warding off invisible assailants. I think of the word “cursed” again. Is she cursed by mental illness, or by a society that looked away? Or is she cursing the world right back, flinging its own venom at it like a mirror shattering under the force of its reflection? Maybe that’s all guilt really is—a mirror warped by Westernization, reflecting not just a lost self but the violent contradictions that birthed it, where empire’s ghosts haunt the very rage they claim to condemn.. The very bricks around her feel charged, as though they’ve absorbed her rage and sorrow. Graffiti scrawled on the wall—illegible in the gloom—seems to writhe and rearrange, animated by the force of her emotion. In her incoherence lies a clear truth: suffering like hers doesn’t vanish when ignored; it accumulates, attaching itself to everything that comes near.
She notices me for an instant—her eyes flicker toward me, catching the light. There’s no recognition in them, only a brief pause in the flow of her oracles. In that pause, I glimpse a lonely spark of humanity beneath the wild exterior, a flicker of need that hasn’t entirely been extinguished: perhaps the need to be seen, to be heard, to matter. Then, just as quickly, she turns away and resumes her hushed confrontation with ghosts and gods. I step back, slowly retreating with my heart heavy. I cannot help her; perhaps no one can. Yet she persists here, night after night, raging at unseen forces. It strikes me that this is its own form of resistance — to refuse to go quietly into oblivion. In her brokenness, she fights. Cursed by the world, yes, but also cursing it back with her every breath, refusing to be silently erased.
Third Victim : The Waiting Man
A block further on, at a lonely bus stop illuminated by a single weak fluorescent tube, a man in a rumpled jacket sits hunched on a bench. The last bus is due any minute, or perhaps it’s already come and gone; time blurs at this hour. He is slumped forward, elbows on his knees, a scuffed briefcase at his feet and his hands clasped as if in prayer — or despair. There’s a weariness in the set of his shoulders that goes beyond lack of sleep. It’s the sag of a soul weighed down by years of routine and sacrifice. He doesn’t look up as I approach; his gaze is fixed on the ground, eyes unfocused, as if he’s staring at something far away in his mind.
He has the air of a man haunted by the life he’s led. I can almost see them gathered around him—the phantoms of missed opportunities, the ghosts of dreams he shelved to make ends meet. In the foggy reflection of the advertisement poster behind him, a wearier version of himself peers back. Perhaps he once aspired to be an artist, or to travel the world, or to build something of his own—but the need to survive wrote a different script. Now his days are governed by timecards and bills, his talents and passions traded away for a paycheck that barely justifies the pieces of his soul it consumes. It’s a curse so ordinary that most don’t even think to call it one: the slow suffocation of the spirit beneath the weight of practical necessities.
A faded wedding band catches the light as he runs a hand through his graying hair. Maybe there’s a family asleep in a small apartment, waiting for him — faces he loves and works tirelessly for, ties that bind him with both joy and obligation. Or perhaps he’s alone, returning to a one-room flat where only silence greets him. Either life can be its own curse. As he waits, he seems to grapple with the sum of his existence — all the sacrifices made, the little betrayals of self, the moments of beauty he traded away in the name of responsibility.
Above him, the city skyline looms. By day those skyscrapers gleam; now they stand dark and indifferent, ugly, cold, jagged silhouettes against the overcast sky, like colossal tombstones for the countless ambitions sacrificed to raise them. In their shadow, the man at the bus stop feels utterly small. He closes his eyes and releases a long, trembling sigh. I somehow sense what he will not say aloud: he is angry in a quiet way — angry at a world that promised meaning and delivered only toil, angry at himself for not finding a way out. That anger doesn’t explode; it has no outlet. Instead, it coils inside him like a snake eating its own tail, a curse turned inward, despair by another name. And yet, he waits. Every passing minute that he remains on that bench is a choice, however reluctant, to see another day. In that choice lies a glimmer of defiance — a faint light still guttering against the darkness that hounds him.
Curses of Our Own Making
Three people, three lives, bound by the late hour and by burdens no one else can see. In them, I recognize different faces of the same truth. Humanity carries its own darkness, and often we pass it on like a bitter inheritance. The woman in the diner, the oracle in the alley, the man at the bus stop — they are strangers to each other, yet connected by the invisible web of curses that humans spin every day. The places they inhabit are saturated with these energies. McDonald's plastic seats remember years of quiet tears, bursts of forced laughter, and the hollow echoes of conversations no one will recall. The alley’s bricks are heavy with the echoes of angry rants and anguished prayers. The bus stop bench is imprinted with the weight of countless exhausted bodies. Even after these individuals move on, a part of their pain will linger behind, a phantom presence waiting for the next unsuspecting soul to brush against it.
We like to imagine curses as ancient spells or the work of vengeful spirits. But in truth, we forge many of our own curses daily. They take shape as the unseen consequences of our deeds and our systems. A child grows up carrying the trauma of a war fought before she was born. A laborer is broken by the impersonal machinery of the modern economy. Greed takes root in a man’s heart, disguising itself as ambition, as love, as something noble—until it devours everything in its path. The more he takes, the emptier he feels, and still, he is never full. Love, too, can turn to hunger, twisting into possession, into control, until what was once tenderness rots into something monstrous. Every act of cruelty or neglect unleashes a silent curse into the world—a ripple of pain that spreads far beyond its origin. We raise gleaming towers and grand empires, often on foundations of unhealed hurt.
“And whatever affliction befalls you, it is because of what your hands have earned, yet He pardons much.” (Quran 42:30)
Is it any wonder that so many lives, like those of the people I’ve seen tonight, seem haunted by something unnamed? The weight of our own hands lingers in the air, shaping destinies, binding souls to the unseen debts of the past. The echoes of what we have done—and what we have failed to do—never fade. They live on in broken people, in cursed cities, in the silence that follows suffering left unspoken.
And yet, acknowledging these curses does not mean accepting them as final. In the gloom of this night, a sliver of light persists. The curses we create are powerful, but not absolute. Look again at these three souls: each one continues on in spite of the weight they carry. For every invisible chain that wraps around them, something in their heart resists captivity. Call it hope, call it stubborn will — it keeps them moving. The woman’s steady endurance, the outcast woman’s unyielding voice, the man’s decision to wait for the dawn: these are small, quiet acts of rebellion against the capitalist fate that has been dealt to them.
I linger in the dim light of the sleeping city and feel a strange kinship with their struggle. In some way, we all share it. We have all been, at one time or another, that exhausted soul nursing a cold cup of coffee, or that lonely voice crying out a truth no one wants to hear, or that weary traveler questioning the road ahead. We live under the weight of invisible burdens, and yet we live on. The night is deep and melancholic, surreal in its hush — but it will yield to morning. This hypnotic darkness, this quiet storm of sorrow and resilience, will give way to light. And when the sun comes up, perhaps some of the night’s curses will evaporate like mist — if only for a while — granting us a brief reprieve to breathe anew. Until then, the city and its silent wanderers remain locked in this unforgettable vigil, breathing in pain and breathing out defiance, together alone beneath the indifferent stars.
