EDWARDS, Bram Isiah

[bram isiah edwards]

BRAM ISIAH EDWARDS

FULL NAME: Bram Isiah Edwards.
NICKNAMES: None
AGE: 23
GENDER: male
SEXUALITY: Straight.
STATUS: Single.
GROUP: Citizen.
GRADE: N/A.
MAJOR: N/A.
JOB OCCUPATION: Crisis Counsellor.

HAIR: Brown, short, styled with wax most days.
EYES: Blue.
SCARS/BIRTHMARKS: None.
TATTOOS: Bram a full sleeve on his left arm with Japanese style pieces scattered throughout and smaller pieces scattered on his chest, ribs, and neck.
PIERCINGS: None
PLAY-BY: Gabriel Kane Day Lewis!

LIKES: Tattoos, rock music, pineapple juice, deep pan pizzas, ferns, volunteering, old furniture, deep red, motorbikes, cats, bees, old cartoons, playing guitar, being the sober guy who spends all night at a bar, classic literature, documentaries , hot nuts, fixing up old things, green tea, yoga, old movie reruns, music concerts.
DISLIKES: Alcohol (for himself), drugs, wasting money, arrogance, chewing gum, guns, cereal, thunderstorms, wallpaper, spinning rides, laundry days, thick woollen jumpers, movie remakes, ruined books, his hair growing out, too tight clothes, lingering cooking smells, hard candies, the thought of going home.
FEARS: Heights, having children, flying.
SECRETS: He doesn’t always tell the real reason why he ended up homeless as a teenager. He tends to gauge whether people will judge him for the truth or bother him less with the lie. Sometimes he won’t tell people anything.
PERSONALITY: Bram is reliable and trustworthy. He’s typically very loyal to those in his life, but he takes betrayal very seriously. It can literally break a friendship for Bram. He’s pretty reserved, but he’s still a familiar face in sports bars and on nights out with friends. Bram just prefers to be the responsible one. He’s caring towards pretty much everyone unless they give him a reason to blank them. Charitable, Bram enjoys dedicating his time and money to a worthy cause. He can be protective over the people in his life, but Bram isn’t typically prone to fighting. He can handle himself if he has to, but Bram is typically not prone to bouts of aggression. When it comes to love, Bram likes to take things slow. He prefers to have patience when it comes to matters of the heart, indulging in conversations and casual dates before he jumps on in. Bram has seen far too much heartbreak to add his own to that pile. However, when he does decide that someone is worth the fall, he’s completely committed.

MOTHER: Martina Ann Edwards, 41.
FATHER: Troy Martin Edwards, 47.
SIBLINGS: N/A.
OTHERS: Jamie Price, 23, childhood friend.
PETS: Cleo, a ragdoll. He doesn’t know her exact age since he found her as a stray when she was a kitten!
HOMETOWN: Albany, New York.
HISTORY: Martina and Troy heightened the worst parts of each other’s personalities. They both had furious tempers, and could be insanely jealous. Troy hit plenty of other men who had completely innocent intentions when he first started dating Martina. Plenty of people told them to walk away, but they were both stubborn and as bad as each other. Martina claimed she was happier married to Troy even if she kicked him out every other weekend, or he smashed up the kitchen when his football team lost. They had Bram almost completely by accident, Martina hiding the pregnancy until after they were married so that she’d get fewer lectures from her father who had been away with the military for most of her life anyway.

Bram was never physically abused by his parents. That’s something he always makes clear. However, he was around them when they were fighting with each other, and many a night he had been woken up by their shouting and screaming. He had been witness to the punches thrown by Martina, or the furniture broke by Troy. There were times – especially when he was older – that he’d be screamed at too; told to go to his room, or get out of the way. It wasn’t too bad during the earlier years of his childhood. He made a friend in kindergarten called Jamie who would stick by him for those formative years. Jamie’s mother didn’t mind having the two boys in her home, cooking for them and looking after them whenever Bram showed up on the doorstep. He spent many weekends there, playing games and eating ice cream. Jamie’s parents even took Bram to theme parks and bought him presents for Christmas and his birthday. Jamie’s home was a second home to Bram, and he could have happily spent most of his life there with them, enjoying the idea of a normal family.

Jamie and his family moved away, out of state, when Bram was fourteen. His dad had been promoted, but it was a five-hour drive away from Albany. It wasn’t easy for Bram who suddenly found himself alone in the world. He didn’t have many other friends since it was hardly a secret how dysfunctional his family could be. They moved homes at least three times by his teenage years for how they trashed the places they lived in. Neither Martina or Troy held down steady jobs, instead flitting from bar to bar and between odd jobs. With his parents holding such a reputation, many of the adults in the neighbourhoods expected Bram to be the same. He dressed in dark clothes, enjoyed loud heavy music, and seemed every bit the sullen teenager who was going to cause trouble at the first chance. Bram wasn’t at all like that. He only hit back – never started a fight. Still, the kids in his classes had been warned away from him. Or they just thought he was weird. Bram never listened to the stories they whispered about him. He doubted any of them were true.

When Bram was seventeen, there was a huge blowout fight between his parents. During the smash up of the kitchen, Troy managed to hit Bram with a glass he threw. Somehow, that only infuriated Troy further and caused him to blame Bram for pretty much everything that was wrong in their world. Bram ran away that night.

He didn’t mean to stay gone forever – he didn’t even mean to be gone more than the night. However, it seemed the neighbours called the cops on the ever-fighting parents and they had been carted away after resisting arrest. After that Bram didn’t really know what to do. He had nowhere to stay and no one to turn to. Even the teachers at his less than great school barely gave him the time of day. He made passing grades and they were content to leave him be. Bram spent the next few nights sleeping rough, crashing on a park bench. When he tried to go home there was no one there, and eventually the place was put up for sale with no sign of his parents. A neighbour told him something about a move to New York City. Bram spent the last of the cash that he had to get a bus to New York City. He figured he could find his parents there but it wasn’t as easy as he naively thought it would be. However, with his eighteenth birthday looming, Bram didn’t want to end up in the system.

For the next few years Bram lived rough in NYC. He had a few changes of clothes and figured out ways to make himself comfortable. There were a few nights when he managed to get a place in a shelter, but for the most part it was him, the bag on his back, a tarp and worn out sleeping bag. There were plenty in the homeless community worse off than him. They had nothing to change into, had been out there longer with declining health. Bram was healthy, aside from a few bad cases of the flu, and he had a backpack with the basics in. He earned a few dollars here and there when he begged, and if he wasn’t going hungry he used it to buy essentials like a toothbrush and toothpaste. Most of the time, Bram managed to walk through the city looking more like a turfed out boyfriend than he did a vagrant. He would earn small cash helping people who were moving, or showing tourists to their destination. He realised that while his appearance was passable, he could survive a little better. He used his money to sometimes buy a pizza for those he shared an alley with, or to buy new gloves and scarfs for those in the community who were struggling through the bitter winter.

When Bram was twenty, he was approached by an outreach worker. There was a programme she thought would be ideal for Bram. He could finish his high school education and have his pick from a list of courses that they had on offer at a local college. Bram didn’t want to be on the streets forever, and he realised that his parents didn’t care to find him so he shouldn’t care to find them either. He had only been out there as long as he had because he hoped to spy them one day, bickering outside a bar or something. Also, the lack of high school education with no plans for his future hardly impressed anyone who might help him. And the lack of an address closed doors for him too.

However, while he was on this programme, he got a room in a centre, and an allowance weekly to buy any necessities and food. They also had odd jobs posted every Monday for anyone who had the time to spare and wanted the extra cash. It was a friendly system and Bram came to figure a lot out during his time there, both with the patient teachers, and the social workers who specialised in helping people get off the streets for good. Bram got his GED and then chose to enrol on a course that would set him up to be a crisis counsellor. Bram still didn’t want to turn his back on the community that had been his family for the last three years. Instead he wanted to work with them, and to help so many others from ending up on the streets. His job mostly focused on those battling with mental health, but Bram would also give up his time to work in the city’s soup kitchens or spend the coldest nights handing out coats and warm drinks to those who had yet to find a roof over their heads. It hurt sometimes to see the familiar faces when he was doing so much better, but Bram knew they all had their stories and their reasons.

A few years on, and a few more certificates to shove in his drawer, and Bram works at the Creative Collective, alternating day and night shifts with the rest of the team. They like to keep their doors and phonelines open at all times, even on the holidays. Bram is happy with how his life is turning out, even if he’s not some college grad like all the teachers told the students they ought to be. Helping people gives him more satisfaction than a fat salary.

YOUR ALIAS: Kim.
RULE WORDS: kidnappedbykim.
WHERE YOU FOUND US: Down the road, that way.
SAMPLE:

meh.

[kim]