Aggie James
Character Background
When we first meet Aggie, he is in desperate straits. He was a heroine-addicted bum, living on the streets of San Francisco. However, he was not always homeless. He was once a thriving businessman, who owned an Internet café located in Detroit, Michigan, which he ran with the help of his wife and daughter. His café was counterculture in nature and tended to attract an antiestablishment clientele. Shortly after his business was vandalized, it was violently robbed. During the fray, he was shot in the chest and the leg leaving him incapacitated but conscious. He then witnessed the thief murder his wife and daughter. His wife was shot in the head and his daughter shot in the back while running for the door. When the shot didn’t kill Aggie’s daughter, the gunman brutally kicked her over with his boot and shot her in the face as she screamed for Aggie’s help.
In desperation Aggie had turned to drugs, which in turn left him homeless. His addiction, along with the exposure of sleeping in the open, made him susceptible to abduction by the members of Marie's Children. This in fact, is exactly what happened to Aggie as Sly and his partner Pierre, both members of Marie's Children, captured him while he was in a heroin-induced stupor.
Aggie awakes in an underground dungeon with white painted walls. His cell mates are none other than mob boss Johnny Yee, who was attacked his headquarters in the basement of the LiPo Lounge, Johnny's wife Barbara, and their son Eric.
Aggie doesn’t know why he was brought to this dungeon and doesn’t know what his fate will be, but after witnessing strange, misshapen, little men dragging the Yee family away one by one, Aggie is more than willing to acquiesce to his captor’s suggestions and demands.
Attributes
Name
The character’s full name is Aggie James. There are no known nicknames and it is not clear if the name “Aggie” is short for a formal name.
Outward Appearance
Aggie is described as being a black man. While he is homeless, he is filthy and strung out on heroin, sleeping in dirty blankets, under cardboard boxes or behind dumpsters. However, after he is abducted by Sly and Pierre and brought the underground prison cell, he is cleaned up and given worn, but clean pajamas to wear.
Personality
Aggie is a tortured soul, as the brutal murder of his family remains a scar on his conscience. Since the attack, Aggie had taken a myriad of drugs in order to forget the pain of losing his family. He damaged his body with drugs because he felt he had no reason to live and he couldn’t bring himself to commit suicide. He felt like the torture and slow death by drugs was deserved, as he couldn’t protect his family when they needed him the most.
Aggie’s tenure as a homeless man in San Francisco has made him submissive and he tended to opt to remain inconspicuous. His familiarity with the street life in San Francisco made him wary of the gangs and their leaders, which is why he was so distressed to be held in the same cell as Johnny Yee.
At this point in Aggie’s life, his main purpose was to fulfill his desire to forget his pain through drugs, but that desire has been quickly overrun by his will to live through his current insane imprisonment and to try to make it out with his life in tact.