World of Redemption

Willy Curlls is a man who looks as though he's been through a war and never quite came back. He is middle-aged, with a weathered, scarred face that tells a story of hardship. His most striking feature is his missing left eye, the socket a web of scarred tissue that he often unconsciously traces with a finger. His one good eye is dark, weary, and often bloodshot. His dark, stringy hair is long and greasy, sticking out from beneath a dark, wide-brimmed hat that’s permanently pulled low, casting his face in perpetual shadow. He wears a worn, dark coat over a stained shirt and a patterned tie that is always askew. He is often hunched over a saloon bar, his posture one of permanent defeat, a man whose once-strong frame has been stooped by the weight of memory and whiskey.

Willy is a man whose friendliness is a desperate plea for an audience. He is quick to offer a drink or a story to anyone who will sit with him, his outward demeanor affable and engaging. This is a mask for his profound trauma. When he tells his stories, he becomes animated, almost manic, his one good eye alight with the fire of memory as he relives his past glories and horrors. He is a man haunted and broken, his entire identity wrapped up in the soldier he used to be. He is not malicious or unkind; he is simply lost, his world having shrunk to the confines of a barstool and the validation he gets from strangers who listen to his tales. He is a ghost in his own life, forever fighting a war that ended long ago for everyone but him.

There was a time when Willy Curlls was a soldier, a proud man serving in the United States Army during the violent campaigns of the Indian Wars. He saw things that broke him, but the final, shattering blow came during a brutal, chaotic skirmish where an enemy's blade took his eye and nearly his life. He survived, but the man he was did not. Discharged from the army, he was unable to cope with the horrors he had witnessed or the quiet pace of civilian life. He began to drink, finding that the whiskey could temporarily silence the ghosts. He drifted from town to town, a tragic storyteller trading his harrowing memories for the price of another drink, eventually washing up in Valentine, a town where a man could easily lose himself in the bottom of a glass, forever reliving the moment his world went dark.