Tag: short story

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Transient

to-homeless-grate2The harshness of the grate ground into his back, making it hard to draw in breath, but the hard chill in the air made it a necessary evil. His teeth still chattered in spite of himself, and in spite of the hot air billowing all around his clothes, emanating from the deep machinery underground that produced the hot, slick steam.

Sweat drenched the small of his back, but he dared not move for fear that someone else would take his position on the coldest night of the year. He opened his tired eyes to see two others of his ilk crouched low over the next grate over, trying to warm up their gloveless hands as if over a campfire. It had been years since he’d seen an actual campfire, but it still brought back memories.

He remembered his mother bent over the pile of already charred sticks left over from the campers who had passed through the night before they arrived, an occurrence she found fortuitous, her back hunched over from years of hard labor. Regardless, she was the epitome of grace to him, but even her memory was a bit faded at the edges she had been gone so long. Where her face used to be in his mind there was now a blur, not unlike when someone doesn’t want their identity known on a show of Cops. But he still recalled her movements, most as subtle as ash drifting low over the ground on a puff of air. She taught him how to be a man.

His back cried out to him for salvation, but it was better than being a frozen corpse, he reminded himself, so far removed from that boy he had been in the woods with his mother, so jaded by what the world had turned into while he had stopped looking. He wore a thick jacket that had been eaten in sections by the rats who often sought the refuge that his body heat provided, and he had long since let them shelter near, something that had seemed an abomination when it first started happening. But he postulated that it meant they felt comfortable with him, that he had somehow assimilated into the world that the rats inhabited, had become one with a nature that lived in harmony with the city that it too inhabited.

Another quick glance across the street at his two peers still warming their hands, but he could tell it wasn’t working, their faces trapped in looks of desperation, looks he knew all too well from more than ten years living and breathing the streets. Continue reading “Transient”

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In the Morning Hour

stock-footage-flock-of-birds-fly-around-dilapidated-barn-surrounded-in-golden-mistA mist hangs over the valley, sticking dew-like to the leaves on the old maple tree out behind the coffee-colored barn. Eerily it dominates the space as nothing else is stirring in the cool breeze that accompanies the overwhelming moisture. A gray house stands sentinel over the property, approximately 20 paces to the south of the old barn, with all of its shades closed, shutting out the muted morning light. Across the cobblestone road there is a rusted cistern that sits isolated from everything else, like a middle child who often gets forgotten in the hustle and bustle of family life. Water swirls around its basin in a clockwise fashion, indicating its position in the northern hemisphere, and its slow gurgle is the only sound that can be heard in the area.

In one of the small rooms upstairs in the gray house there are old-fashioned bunk beds, upon which lie two children, dead to the world. The younger one snores loudly in a syncopated rhythm from her perch in the top bunk, covers pulled up under her chin just as they had been when her mother tucked her in late the night before. She dreams classically of fluffy, white sheep sliding over and under a perfect picket fence in pursuit of one another, and there is a smile on her lips. Her older sister tosses and turns in her sleep, plagued by nightmares that luckily don’t impinge upon her waking hours, complements of an overactive imagination that serves her well at playtime. They share a bedroom out of necessity, but they are also best friends, a happy coincidence.

Outside the mist begins to clear, no longer obscuring the sun that has risen in the eastern sky, as it slides off against the backdrop of the multi-colored horizon. Continue reading “In the Morning Hour”

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Playing Games

tn-airport_gate-550x450-rd10A young boy sits in a hard plastic seat, head bowed, intent on the pixellated action on the GameBoy in his lap. He sits next to a woman who is obviously not his mother, in her faux fur coat with tan lining and her mini-skirt that is not at all weather-appropriate. She fidgets in her seat like you would expect from someone the boy’s age, but she’s easily three times as old. Perhaps she’s his older sister, or maybe even an aunt, but she’s paying him virtually no mind with her headphones on that blare an Eminem song on a high enough volume to disturb other travelers in nearby seats. The boy doesn’t even hear the music, so intent is he upon proving his dominance over the game on his lap. He wears corduroy pants, awkwardly hemmed as if done in haste, and an old, ratty sweatshirt proclaiming him a Philadelphia Eagles fan.

They are sitting outside of Gate A in the Newark Airport, two people adrift in the sea of chaos that is New Year’s Day, with so many people heading back home after a vacation of sorts that has come to a swift conclusion. Most are hungover even in the early afternoon, waiting for flights with cups of coffee in hands that need warming up. An old newspaper with yesterday’s date sits on the chair next to the boy, but it might as well be his companion for all the attention he gives to it. If he cared to look, however, he would realize the front page of the paper is all about him, but he doesn’t look, and the woman’s eyes are closed so she misses the implication as well. She seems lost in meditation but she is in actuality thinking about all the money she could get if she plays her cards right. Opening her eyes, she glances at the game the boy is playing, then turns her attention to her watch that tells her they have half an hour until their plane will begin boarding.

Time has never been her friend even from the start when she was born three weeks after her due date. She was also the fourth child out of six so there was never any time for her needs, for her wants, or for her in any other way, shape, or form. But she hadn’t spent much time lamenting her fate, instead choosing to use her endless time in planning the great escape. The boy next to her was her youngest brother, the sixth of six, and she had saved up to get him the GameBoy he is playing. It had been worth every single penny because he hadn’t asked a thing about what they were doing or where they were going. In fact, he had spoken only a single word since he had started playing the first game, a word that she won’t repeat and that she didn’t even know he had in his vocabulary.

He is not as oblivious as she thinks, however. Continue reading “Playing Games”

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@ 30th Street Station

Amtrak30thStreetStationInterior2007An old homeless man is screaming at me. He is as drunk as the day is long, and I wonder where he procured alcohol from. Did someone hand over some of their hard earned money knowing what he would do with it? Is it possible he was holding up one of those “Will Work For Food” signs that seemed so popular in the ’90s and suckered in some bystanders, thinking he would actually work for them or that he actually wanted food? And he’s yelling at me in some language I am not familiar with as I stand in line to get tickets for the next train to New Jersey. I don’t even want to go to New Jersey, the land of a thousand sewers and of the Holland Tunnel, or at least a part of that illustrious tunnel. I would really rather go home and go to sleep but I know she’s waiting for me in Secaucus, in the Radisson Hotel where they put mints on the pillow and the keys are really cards.

He finally moves on after I pay him no mind, that homeless man who is drunk on cheap wine, replaced by a woman who had been hidden by his bulk. She is his opposite, sporting a stylish tweed jacket with jewels for buttons and smelling of jasmine with a hint of honeysuckle. I only know those scents because my soap is made of the self-same, and I wonder if somehow the two of us, strangers until this moment, share the same soap. I also wonder what else we possibly share, and I am reminded that this is a small world after all, whether or not we’re on that creepy ride made so popular in the Magic Kingdom. We are six degrees separated from each other, but we probably share at least one Facebook friend. I don’t talk to her, though, as the sounds of the old man’s screams still echo in my ear.

And she’s wearing white pants, even though it’s after Labor Day, but they still suit her, fitting tightly to her body. I don’t stare too long, though, because I know she will notice. She seems like one of those women who notice those things, not like the millions who are oblivious to leering guys. Continue reading “@ 30th Street Station”