cassel resident : des murphy.
full name. desmond ‘des’ murphy. age. thirty two. birthdate. september 23, 1988 zodiac. libra gender. male pronouns. he/him occupation. owner of cassel antiques & thrift store / cameraman for wandering souls. lives in. main street
about des murphy.
Small towns and religion are a more classic pair than bread and butter. You couldn’t grow up in the Midwest without the constant reminder that HELL IS REAL and it’s waiting for you. As the youngest son of Cassel’s resident preacher, Des knew this well. He’d been adopted by the Murphys as a child and raised with a firm Christian hand. He was meant to be the Murphys success story: a destitute orphan turned into the All American golden boy by the power of faith.
It was a fantasy that Desmond found was difficult to live up to. He had three older siblings that his parents - Paul and Elaine Murphy - very clearly favored. Try as he might to live up to the expectations of him, he seemed to fail most of the time. That didn’t stop him from trying. By high school, it was hard to tell whether his straight As and community service hours were born from a desire to please his parents or an even stronger desire to get out of Cassel after graduation.
This wanderlust was stoked by the two adults in Des’s life that treated him like a person instead of a personal failing. Cassel High’s resident art teacher, Judith Coleman, and her father, Sterling Coleman, who owned the town’s antique & thrift store. Art had always been a form of escapism for him, the only acceptable means of slacking off. And once he got close to Judith, he began to spend volunteer hours at the thrift store, helping sort and rack the donations that came in. In his youth, Sterling had been a wealthy world traveler and he filled Des’s imagination with stories of far-off places, people and cultures so unlike the life he knew in Cassel.
Why Sterling had settled in Illinois was a mystery to Des. “When the love of your life tells you her favorite color is yellow, you start to see dandelions as more than weeds,” Sterling had told him, with a fond glance toward a framed photo of his late wife. Whatever that meant.
Ironic, then, that the reason Des stuck around Cassel as long as he did called themselves the Wandering Souls.
Their first ever video was shot while Des was on break from the University of Chicago. College hadn’t been going as well for him as most would’ve assumed for Cassel High’s valedictorian; he crumbled under the pressure and spent most of his time binge drinking and creating art rather than participating in academia. When he inevitably failed out, it wasn’t something he could tell his parents. The shame would’ve been too much. So he lied, continuing to accept his father’s money for university tuition, but spending it on filming equipment and a room at the local motel. The stealth job was easy enough, as long as he stayed behind the camera and kept to the places that Paul Murphy looked at as beneath him.
Surprisingly, that ruse worked for an entire year before it blew up in Des’s face. The result wasn’t as dramatic as he’d been afraid it would be, however. Paul Murphy’s fury was only outmatched by his need to keep up public appearances. He paid Des off just like he’d once paid off Des’s mother: you can have financial stability if you keep your mouth shut.
Then, the fight happened. The Wandering Souls parted ways and Desmond found himself with little reason to stay in Illinois. With his father’s hush money and Sterling Coleman’s stories in his head, Des spent a few years backpacking through various countries. His goal was to hit all seven continents, but he only managed four before fate called him back to Cassel.
Sterling Coleman’s death wasn’t unexpected; he was 88 and went peacefully in his home, with his daughter by his side. Judith was the beneficiary for most of his will, except for one thing: the store. That he’d left to Desmond.
Judith told Des that he could do whatever he wanted with it. Hire a manager and own it from afar… sell it off so it would sit in real estate purgatory for years like other vacant buildings downtown… But all of those options felt like cheapening Sterling’s legacy somehow. So Des settled back in the small town of Cassel, hoping maybe this time the dandelions would look different.
Besides… the Wandering Souls had started making videos again, and someone had to make them look good.
four songs. arsonist’s lullaby ( hozier ) / saint bernard ( lincoln ) / shotgun ( george ezra ) / bang ( ajr )
↳ des murphy is faced by avan jogia and penned by bailey.
