CHAracters
Jack works at a furniture store. Life has been hard on him for the last 10-12 years and repeated failures have made him lose confidence in himself. These failures have made him almost dumb.
If someone approaches him with any kind of self-assurance, he cannot speak; even if he knows what he wants to say. He can’t look anyone in the eye when he does talk and if someone is dominant, Jack immediately gives up. He fears enjoyment. He is conditioned to being controlled by others.
Inside, Jack is envious of the world. He is envious of friends because they are successful and he is not. He goes to work and moves about in the world but only because life has programmed him to do so. Otherwise he is simply useless.
Jack is full of hatred for the world, and his depression has pulled out of him the ability to express that hatred. He vents by writing his feelings on walls.
Jack has been pulling himself away from all his relationships because he cannot face questions about his life. He has insulted his close friends out of envy and broken all ties with them. Now he has no one he can talk to.
The only two relationships he has left are the ones with his boss and his landlord. Both of those, although bitter, are the only human interactions that he has and he is conditioned to hold on to them.
Jack is addicted to the pain in his relationships, and that pain unknowingly keeps him going.
Jack does not kill himself, but only because no one tells him to. He even lacks the confidence to make that decision.
Victor is a loser. He is hypocrisy personified. He is the manager of an unsuccessful furniture store whose owner doesn’t care how it is run. Victor, after looking for a job where he can control and dominate, has landed in this place where he is completely in charge.
Victor is not interested in making money for the store or serving customers. He just likes to control anyone who works there. Victor has been fired from a lot of places for his petty games, inefficiency and hypocrisy, but that has not changed his attitude.
Victor takes pleasure in the pain of others. Thus he and Jack were made for each other. Victor has no sympathy, no heart.
Victor has no friends or relatives. His only relationship is with Jack.
Petelka is Jack’s landlord. Externally, he seems to be a bitter, money hungry man who likes to yell at his tenants. Because of this, all the tenants in his building are late payers or freeloaders. Yelling at his tenants keeps Petelka going.
Internally though, Petelka is deeply aggrieved of his loneliness and negligence by friends and family. The pain of his loneliness is so great that to mitigate it he yells and gives pain to others. This brings him a kind of relief- seeing others suffer.
Petalka has lost all relatives and friends because of this behavior.
Tasha is a middle aged psychic who likes to help people. Whether or not she has psychic powers is questionable, but she is expert at identifying people’s needs and supplying a way to fill them.
Tasha’s confidence is insurmountable, and so is her empathy. She knows how to deal with different kinds of people. Her desire to improve someone’s life gives her the confidence to do what she is doing. That confidence takes over people’s lives without their even knowing it. This is Tasha’s magic.
Shirley is an elderly woman who lives on Social Security in a senior citizen facility. She has worked hard all her life and never compromised her principles, yet somehow she could never make a good living.
She has always wanted her only son, Jack, to settle down in life. But Jack, being dissatisfied and impatient in his youth, abandoned her to seek his own way. Every time he called her, Shirley would ask Jack about his work situation. Not wanting to continually face his failure, Jack eventually stopped calling.
Shirley is very angry about Jack’s behavior.
Alan is Jack’s oldest friend. He is a conservative, sober man who believes in constructive career growth. He had tried to advise Jack in his earlier years to be practical, but Jack wanted to shine overnight. Repeated failure grossly humiliates Jack, while Alan becomes more and more stable with each passing year.
Alan was always sympathetic toward Jack’s depressed condition and would keep calling him for some time. But when Jack started speaking and acting bitterly toward him due to his extreme envy, Alan reached the point where he had to break off his friendship with Jack.