The cold of the brick made its way
through the threadbare coat wrapped around Paul's shoulders. The cloud of
breath blown into his cupped hands did little to warm them. His favourite jeans
were held together with duct tape and safety pins.
A soft clink let him know another
coin had been deposited into his out stretched cap. Their once shiny surface,
all worn for being repeatedly passed from one person to the next, yet each
still held the continued promise of survival. Another meal, another day. Maybe,
enough soon, before the store closes.
Fake lights turned the ground into
an artificial day, the scurry of the normals pulsed at a continued and regular
pace. Each surge brought about by impulses sent increased and decreased the
flow. The city moved and thrived. Yet he sat by his wall, lodged on place,
feeling their flow and movement until the deep of night finally settled in
cutting the flow and giving the city a sense of still.
Paul's gaze travelled up. The flicks
of movement played across the sky's backdrop. Swirling specks of white danced
across the night. Greeting, touching, dancing, playing together as they made
their way from heaven to earth. Vibrating to him they seemed, to there own
frequency or from the shivers shaking his body. Each unique, a life of there
own, until finally descended into the slush of the sidewalk, each promise of a
wonderful white world turned stale.
The cold settled into Paul's body.
He closed his eyes and pictured better days. His mum had taken the two of the
to the coast for that last summer. The brilliant blue sky barely broken by any
intruding clouds. The itchiness of sand and how it had simply gotten
everywhere. No matter haw often he washed or brushed it still had grained
itself into his skin.
His memories brought him back to the
sea itself; it's gentle tug on his skin pulling him, pushing him. He liked to
just float and let the sea take him, to surrender to its forces and become one
with it. It's green colour, his favourite, reflecting the warmth from the sun,
shinning, shimmering, lifting his heart each morning when him mum would pack
the basket full of food and bring him down to it's joyful fun.
But the memory he clung to was the
one's of her. How she would sit in the chair and watch him all day, how she
smiled as he ran around the beach terrorising the seagulls and laughed at his
expression when she showed him how to hear the sea in a shell. Hundreds of
little things that brought the life back to her eyes. Life that had been
missing from her for the past several months. He loved how her soft chestnut
hair grew and she began to look less pale. That summer brought his mother back
to him, if only for a brief time.
The rough hand roused him from his
sleep. Blearily he looked around, coming back to the city. The cop picked him
up and put him on his feet. Paul ignored his words instead looking for his hat,
his money, but it was gone. He knew that. This was not the first time it had
happened. The cop shook him. He pointed to a waiting car and grabbing the
jacket walked him forwards. Paul new what was coming, a station, then a group
home. One more abuse after another. With a start he was out of the jacket and
running. His bare chest stood out against the dirty snow.
He tore down alleyways and through abandoned
buildings. His blood racing and urging him on, finally he stopped running and
hid in the stairwell of a apartment building. He imagined the families above in
their warm cosy boxes, watching TV or playing games together, food generously
shared and love freely given. The tears froze on his cheek.
Paul pressed his body deep in the
corner of the stairwell and pulled his knees to his chest. His face buried in
there crevice. Soon he felt the shivering return and then stop, a calm centred
on him as his body warmed up. He turned to stare out the opening and there stood
his mother. With an outstretched hand she called to her son, He stood and ran
to her, ran to the warmth and the light she offered. She held him in her arm
and he knew he was loved and wanted again, knew this time they would never be separated.
Officer Jenkins stared down the
stairs at the body of the boy he had tried to help last night. Called when the
alarm was raised by a tenant finding his body frozen and curled up. He watched
as the coroner laid his body out on the stretcher and wheel him to the awaiting
ambulance. He pulled the jacket the kid had left behind and covered him with
it. Dignity given to the child, some respect. The crowed onlookers broke into
silence upon looking at the tiny body. Jenkins walked with the body, when the
lifted him up the jacket jostled and a piece of newspaper fell out. An obituary
circled, Evelyn succumbing to her illness, survived by her son Paul. Wrapped in
the paper a photograph. The boy sitting on the beach, an ice cream in his hand.
A woman behind him, both arms wrapped around holding him as if she never wanted
to let go. And now she never will Jenkins thought to himself.
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