Full Name:  Adrien Michael Winters

Date of Birth:  October 23rd, 1980

Place of Birth:  Las Vegas, Nevada

Years Living in Victoria, BC:  5 years

Eye color:  Green

Hair color: Blonde

Height:  5'11"

Weight: 157 lbs

Personality/Demeanor:  Level-headed and calm to the point of being accused of total apathy, Adrien's steady hand and unwavering voice often gives the impression of extreme confidence; a trait that he can not necessarily claim as his own. It is, in fact, his lack of confidence in many little things like his personal appearance or the way he handles situations dealing with those he considers to be friends, that makes him isolate himself within his otherwise social lifestyle. Despite the fact that he owns one of the most popular underground clubs in Victoria and spends almost every night of his life surrounded by people who all but worship the ground that he walks on, Adrien's insecurities when dealing with people one-on-one leave his life void of any kind of steady companionship.

 

However, calm and solitary does not mean kind and quiet. Adrien can be, and often is, a menace when things are not going his way. He can be abrasive, looming, and this threats are never idle ones. He is passionate without the dramatics, prone to jealousy, overly protective of the things he holds dear, and even somewhat territorial. These things make Adrien extremely hard to get along with, making it an absolute miracle that he and Natalia, who was always prone to shrills and dramatics, did not kill each other. Adrien realizes, now, that they probably would have, given just a little more time.

 

Ever since he was old enough to understand the value of a dollar, Adrien began thinking in terms of business and profit. As a child he would buy a pack of gum for a quarter and sell it at school for fifty cents a stick. This money making mentality stuck with him all throughout his life, and even followed him into his death. Anything to make a buck. In spite of being spoiled rotten as a child, Adrien practices a great deal of honesty and integrity. He wouldn't lie to save his soul, and he thinks lowly of those who lie, cheat, and steal. Similarly, he would rather die than beg for anything. He is also a secret romantic, fond of sending anonymous flowers and small gifts.

 

People often come to him when they need help, whether it's a financial crisis or a desperate need to 'disappear' for awhile, and Adrien will usually accommodate them. Their pleas, however, fall more easily on his ears when the favors that they ask of him will somehow benefit him in the long run. He never forgets who is in debt to him, and he never hesitates to call on any of these people when need be.
 

Style of Dress: All shades of grey and blue. Whatever's trendy, whatever's in, Adrien's choice in style varies with the occasion. With everything from cotton pants for lounging about at home to tight black fishnet-sleeved shirts for hitting the club scene, his closets are overflowing with superfluous ensembles; jackets bought at second-hand thrift stores and originals purchased directly from designers, costly pieces that had never even made it to the runway. To be his most comfortable, there is a preference for layers. Simple button up shirts sandwiched between a t-shirt and a jacket, old sneakers or boots, and pairs of fashionably destroyed jeans would have to be his favorite for a simple stroll to his favorite coffee shop.

Personality Quirks: Adrien is nearly obsessive about his hair, constantly checking it in his reflections as he passes by shop windows or, when he's at his worst, fussing over it for hours over the bathroom sink. It's no surprise to see him change his hair color or style at least once every couple of weeks. From blonde to black to auburn and back to blonde again; to his shoulders one day and nearly shaved to the scalp the next. Likewise, he is forever preoccupied with his fingernails, keeping them perfectly manicured at all times.

 

Everything has its place, and that's where it should be. Adrien is a bit of a neat freak, both at home and at work, and when he appoints someone to do the job of keeping things straight he tends to fire them within a matter of days because they could never do things as perfectly as Adrien wants them done. Everything that has anything to do with running the club takes top priority in Adrien's train of thought; yet another pseudo-obsession.

 

His worst, most dangerous personal oddity, is his tendency to succumb too freely to the temptation of impulsive lust. Always one to live in the moment without thinking things through, Adrien is easily consumed by this need for passion, and often he finds himself sleeping with whoever spends all hours of the evening wooing and seducing him. It is a habit that he cannot seem to squelch, and what makes it most deplorable is the fact that Adrien has tested positive for that certain, horrible three lettered virus. A secret. Yet he continues to do what he does, protected or unprotected, depending on the circumstances. A whole week of random choices in his sexual partners will inevitably lead to an acute spell of guilt and paranoia. But it's always a short lived bout of self-control before he finally falls back into a cycle of this unconsciously self-destructive behavior.

Bad Habits: Tuning people out during important conversations. Losing sleep to television show marathons. Dismissing warnings from friends about his promiscuous lifestyle. Leaving letters and emails to distant friends only half-written, never sending a thing. Spending too much time fretting over his hair. Carelessly passing beggars on the street without so much as a second glance. Sleeping around. Lighting and holding cigarettes that he never smokes.

Hobbies: World travel. Shopping online for shoes, clothes, and jewelry. Sitting through auditions with bands and DJs for Delirium. Thrill Kill. Fraternizing endlessly with the patrons in his club. Doting over his assistant and her son. His feeble attempts at sculpting. Extrasensory perception and the paranormal.

General Likes:  Folklore and fairytales. Visual patterns. Urban legends. Italy. Coffee accompanied with long conversations. Greece. Tiny Mediterranean islands. Ancient mysteries like Stonehenge and the Pyramids. Unpredictable weather. Classic muscle cars. Reflections on the water. Unique epitaphs on old headstones. Antique furniture. Heirlooms. Pidgeons. Ouija boards.

General Dislikes:  Gambling. Flowery scented cleaning products. Women who are anything but ultra-feminine. Lies, even little white ones. Generalizing. Ridiculous Sports Utility Vehicles. Any other huge waste of money.

Occupation:  Business Owner, Delirium

Favorite

Movie Genres: action/comedy, historical fiction, psychological thrillers, murder mysteries, independent, anything with subtitles

Movies: Indiana Jones trilogy, Shawshank Redemption, Kids, Gummo, Sixth Sense, Idiocracy, The Dead Girl, Mysterious Skin, The Simpsons Movie, The Gift, Little Miss Sunshine

TV Shows: The Daily Show, Heroes, Iron Chef, South Park, Family Guy, Gone Tribal, Amazing Race, MASH reruns, Three Stooges

Actors/Actresses: Heath Ledger, Jennifer Garner, Jake Gellynhaal, Michael Pitt, Steve Carell, Giovanni Ribisi, Cate Blanchett, Julia Roberts

Music Genres: Some hip-hop, industrial rock, alternative rock, experimental, ethnic, classic blues, classic rock

Bands:  Nine Inch Nails, Eminem, Aaron Lewis, Muse, Queen, Prince, Our Lady Peace

Do you live alone? Yes.
Describe your home/apartment:  Within the beautifully old buildings of Victoria's industrial district sits Delirium, an on-the-rise underground club that rattles the floors of the buildings around it every Friday and Saturday night. People line the sidewalks outside, hoping against all hope that they may be able to slip in, despite not even being on the VIP list. The drinks are perfect, the music is outrageous, and the price of admission is low enough to draw even the most impoverished of Victoria's youth. Atop this club, filled with lights, bass, and people packed shoulder to shoulder on the dance floor, sits two enormous and wide open lofts, one on top of the other. Adrien has made a home of the lower of the two flats. Picture windows with a serene view of the city below are the perfect background to the modern furniture and industrial atmosphere of Adrien's living pristine living space. Earth tones, rich shades of red, pieces of black and gold, and a wall full of shelves stocked with nothing but rows of ornately trimmed bonsai trees complete a decorative style influenced solely by the far east. Hardly anyone sees this, however, since the occasions where Adrien invites anyone upstairs are extremely far and few between. His apartment is his sanctuary. Quiet and still.

 

Above him is another loft, occupied by Adrien's one and only trusted assistant, Sophie and her four year old son, Kieran. Sophie serves as both a personal assistant and a housekeeper, as well as the occasional confidant. She keeps his appointments, makes his bed, signs for his packages, and brings him freshly made desserts. She was enormously pregnant when Adrien first met her in New York City, abandoned by her husband and left with overdue rent, bills, and a whole ten dollars in her savings account. Whether it was her fragile state, or her desperate anguish, Adrien couldn't be sure, but whatever it was caused him to take pity on her. Two days later he gave her a job and whisked her away to British Columbia. Sophie has a sophisticated elegance about her, intelligent and beautiful, and it has been only recently that Adrien has realized how much she resembles his dear Natalia. And yet somehow, she is nothing like Natalia. Incomparable to her. Just like everyone else.

 

Sophie's son, Kieran, Adrien finds especially endearing. He is as intelligent as his mother, with the same black hair and curious green eyes, and in the middle of the day as Adrien lies awaiting sleep he can never help but to smile at the sound of Kieran's little feet running back and forth across the floors above him. And though he has insisted on several occasions to be called by his first name, Adrien can not seem to convince Sophie or Kieran to call him anything but 'Mr. Winters'.

 

Personal history:   

Las Vegas. Casinos, clubs, hotels, theme parks, and churches all crammed together into one little city. A place where men dance with tigers and where young people and old people alike flee to get married. It didn't matter that Las Vegas was one of the biggest tourist attractions in all of the United States; Adrien couldn't wait to get the hell out of that town. He was born into poverty but delivered into the loving and devoted hands of a single young mother by the name of Miranda Winters. Once upon a time, she had been a teen runaway, disappearing from a likely abusive home in search of her chance for fame and fortune. A good life. It was something she never found.

 

When Adrien was born, Miranda simply held her breath and plunged into the cold and desolate waters of single motherhood and from there she took on what responsibilities she had to. There were more part-time jobs than she could keep track of. From waitress, to exotic dancer, to cab driver, to the occasional romp for a pocketful of extra cash, Miranda did whatever she could to provide for her son..

 

Adrien attended a lower end private school as soon as he was old enough, and his mother bought him expensive clothes, must-have school supplies, and whatever else would make her son fit in with the privileged crowd. And fit in he did. It could have been Miranda's extra efforts or it could have been true that he was born with a pleasing demeanor; whatever the case he was never left wanting for friends. When Adrien was seven, Miranda gave birth to another little boy, Jonas, a baby brother for Adrien to dote over and protect. Yet another fatherless boy. The small family seemed happy enough, and Miranda was able to sustain them by working herself to death day in and day out. As Adrien grew older, he started questioning his mother's ways; like why she bought them things they did not need and why they were sent to expensive schools when they could just as easily walk across the street to a public one. Miranda would simply snap at him, telling him to quit asking stupid questions and eventually he did. But this was the way the Winters functioned. The mother working insane hours at insane jobs to give her boys everything they ever wanted, and then some, but never giving them the attention that they both longed for.

 

Adrien was thirteen when he lost his little brother to a rare form of bone cancer, and the struggle up until Jonas' death had taken a toll on Miranda. She lost one job after another and had recently gotten herself hooked on a handful of drugs. Instead of comforting and caring for her remaining son, Miranda started to lose her grip, and was soon entangled into the world of Las Vegas' ugly underbelly. A world of drugs, sex, and endless grief. Adrien could only resent her after awhile, repulsed by his own mother yet crushed by the idea of her wasting away like she was. High school was a terrible rough patch, yet against all odds, after cycling through dozens of friends, pastimes, and classes, Adrien was able to graduate. It was the last straw when Miranda failed to show at Adrien's graduation ceremony. He packed his bags with a few days worth of clothes and hopped on the next bus out of town, heading northeast to Chicago.

 

It was there, in Chicago, that he met her. The mysterious. The beautiful. Natalia. He ran into her, time and time again, always questioning the likelihood of bumping into someone so often in such a big city. It was in a club similar to Delirium that they first really got to know each other, shouting over loud music and smiling from ear to ear. She was exotic and intoxicating. In a matter of days they were an item, inseparable and completely in love with one another. Their dispositions conflicted regularly, leading to passionate debates, arguments and fights that always ended with the same passionate fate. Adrien couldn't count the number of times he'd had all of his belongings flung through some apartment window and onto the sidewalk where he stood waiting for his reconciliation with this mad woman. He couldn't count the number of times he'd been slapped in the face, or how many times he'd had his shoes spit on. Eventually, the fights grew out of control, and Natalia's tantrums turned into spiteful disappearances. Sometimes she'd be gone for days at a time. Sometimes weeks. But with every abandonment came a heart breaking reunion, and Adrien being as stubborn as he was, could never give up on the relationship.

 

Then one day, after a particularly brutal argument over which Adrien can't even remember, Natalia disappeared and never returned. Months passed, and then years. Three years later, Adrien finally attempted to move on, moving south to Saint Louis and opening up a small coffee shop with the money he had saved working pointless part-time jobs in Chicago. It couldn't have been two weeks after the grand opening that he got a small package in the mail. A letter wrapped around a plane ticket to Canada. Come find me. It was from Natalia. Three perfectly crafted words was all it took to have Adrien abandon his entire life in Saint Louis. He boarded his plane that night.

 

Natalia was all laughs when she greeted him at the crowded airport in British Columbia, and while Adrien should have hated her he had never loved her more. They rattled on for hours about their lives, and the things that had happened to them during those three long years. There was certainly something different about Natalia, her color was poor and her eyes seemed so tired, but Adrien's focus was on everything but her flaws. For weeks after that, she toyed with his mind and his emotions, leading him on only to lead him astray. Promising him things he's always wanted from her and denying him them in the very same breath. Finally, when he'd had enough of these cat and mouse dynamics, he threatened to leave. This brought out a side of Natalia that he'd never seen. Desperate and strangely amicable. The next night, she made her confession to him. What had happened to her three years ago, and why she had vanished. A disease. THE disease. She was sick and only getting worse with time. Adrien's initial reaction was one of fear, his thoughts rushing instantly to the innumerable times that he'd slept with Natalia, but before he could allow himself to worry too much, his heart swelled with sorrow for his long lost lover. Her reasons for disappearing were suddenly extremely valid, and Adrien silently vowed to take care of her. Whatever she needed; he was there.

Together, Adrien and Natalia traveled the world. They settled several different times in several different countries, but even with the new stresses of her illness only exaggerated Natalia's wild emotions. They fought even more viciously that before, and Natalia had only grown more controlling and demanding during the time they'd spent apart. With each passing week, she only seemed to get more and more crazy. They parted ways several times, just like in Chicago, but they were always drawn back to one another like magnets pulled apart and placed on opposite sides of the world.  A simple beckoning was all it would take for this young woman to get whatever her heart desired. Adrien could think of no other, and he  never even tried to  fall in love with anyone else, fearing that the moment he did so, Natalia would phone him to tell him that the time had finally come. That her time was finally over.  It took time, lots and lots of time, for the two to finally just grow apart. And Adrien, who had once sworn he would love Natalia forever, had finally began to realize that  forever was a long, long time.

Of all the cities in all the world, it was Victoria that Adrien couldn't seem to get enough of and it was in Victoria that he started sinking in some real roots for the first time since he left Las Vegas. He still enjoyed traveling, and for a short time he became obsessed with spying on his mother back in Nevada, but Adrien always came back to the British Columbia. He made new friends and left them, time and time again. Finally, Adrien decided to try his hand once more at starting his own business once more, for the distraction alone. It was Natalia who gave him the money to do so, and so began the trial and error stages of Delirium. The club had a few changes in location and many different names, but it was always the same young man behind the attraction.

Adrien's inability to settle only set him up for disaster in the business word. If he wasn't there to oversee every little thing, it seems the whole project would fall to pieces.  When Natalia sent a letter, demanding that Adrien come right away to New York, where she'd been living for months, Adrien was at her bedside in hours, just in time to hold her hands in those final indescribably painful moments.

For weeks, he mourned in solitude, and when he could no longer stand worrying about the inevitable, he made a long and lonely drive to a clinic for testing, returning a week later for a consultation over the results. The fact that he even needed a consultation was enough to know that he had tested positive for HIV, but Adrien went anyway, sitting across from a sympathetic nurse with his face in his hands; tears smashed against his palms.  It didn't occur to him until that moment that he could have spread this curse to Natalia, instead of the other way around as he'd imagined all this time and inevitably blamed himself for her death. Sickened with guilt and dismay, he returned to Victoria only to find his attempted club had once again failed in his absence and for a time, Adrien went into hiding. Vanishing completely from the world for nearly a whole year.

Adrien eventually crawled from his hiding place once more, lured by a friend who always seemed armed with hope and encouragement whenever he visited. With the moderate sum of money that Natalia had given him in her final moments, Adrien decided to try, one more time, to do what he'd always dreamed of doing. To be around people that he'd never have to know. To be the creator of something huge. To be anonymous and Godlike all at the same time.

And so it was that Delirium was born.

Thoughts on the killings in and around Victoria:

Adrien hasn't gone so far as to avoiding the ferry altogether, but he thinks twice, if not several times before making any trips out of Victoria. He'd be lying if he said he didn't have a morbid curiosity about the killer; who he is and why he does what he does and though he doesn't like to admit it, he finds himself on edge when walking the streets alone, even in the daytime, though most times he considers the fact that he probably deserves to be the next victim. On the other hand, Adrien feels especially protective of Sophie and Kieran, practically forbidding either of them to go anywhere alone, especially on the ferry. Like every other young person in Victoria, Adrien tunes in to WTFM regularly, waiting with surrealistic attention, fearing yet hoping to hear the voice of the deranged creature that Kill O'Really continues to toy with.

It has crossed Adrien's mind several times that the killer could have, at some point, visited Delirium. That he could have danced on her floors or sipped from her glasses. And it crosses his mind, still, that every strange face could be him. Scarier yet, he doesn't have to be a stranger. One would never know.