Change

I was somewhere around Chapel Street when I awoke with a start. The cardboard beneath my body was damp and had allowed the grime of the city streets to soak into my tattered coat as I slept. My aching eyes peered around me cautiously, searching and evaluating my surroundings before daring to move. Taking in the rush of bodies in suits and shirts, blouses and polished shoes. Smartly dressed folk; men and women pursuing money night and day in a perpetual pointless race to add another 0 to their pay cheques. I wondered how many hours did they slave away for that shirt, those shoes, that life?

This swarm told me that it was sometime after five and they were all heading for after work drinks or dates or a million other ways to spend their dirty money. Not long until the drinkers and the drunks and addicts took over the streets for their typical Friday night antics. I smiled to myself, knowing that I would never be that man. One day I would have a family and a house, and a job that wouldn't rule my life. The streets wouldn't be my master, they would be a constant reminder to be grateful for everything I would have.

I finally lifted my head off the cold concrete pavement and pulled my hat back onto my head, covering my ears as I shivered. I rubbed my hands together; fruitlessly attempting to generate some warmth, whilst mourning the old cotton gloves that had recently been stolen as I slept in a shop doorway. One day I would have a different pair of gloves for every day of the week; gloves of the most fantastic colours and my fingers would stay warm and mobile.

I glanced at my small battered plastic cup nearby, half filled with copper and silver coins that had been generously donated by anonymous creatures as I slept. The cup would one day be a suave black leather wallet that I would open generously and often, paying for everything my future family could need. A charitable and loving Father and husband. Not a street cretin or sewer rat.

I got to my feet slowly, stretching and groaning at the aches this concrete bed had bestowed on me. Collecting my ragged sleeping bag and my cup of coins, I shuffled up the human highway, dodging the many people to whom I was invisible. Staring back defiantly at those few that frowned in my direction and steered clear of me, certain that my misfortune would surely spread their way if they got too close. Idiots and fools to think this could never happen to them, when in reality everyone was so damn close. The man who rushed past me barking into his mobile phone could be one or two missed payments away from losing his home. The woman who stood chatting in the shop window could be one trauma away from a nervous breakdown that would feed her to the streets.

I had the good fortune of having experienced the vast proportion of my due pains and troubles already, a lifetime of mishaps and misfortunes in only twenty-two years. And that was my golden ticket to the future I knew was owed to me. I could vaguely envision the woman I would meet that would spent the rest of my life with me. She would bring me the happiness that I had not yet met, but I had seen etched on the faces of others. We would have a modest home, and simple jobs, lovely children and probably a dog. I smiled at the thought of all that would come, until I caught my reflection in the shop window. My reflection looked twice the age of twenty-two; a dirty old street rat scowling back at me, daring me to do something about it. There is nothing in the world more helpless than a man that has lost his hope for change. Fortunately for me and my one day family, I was a confident character fully embroiled in my beautiful future. I wanted it now but I knew I had to take this process slowly, fixing all the wrongs that had been done to me until I was ready to be the man I was meant to be.

My eyes gazed at the holiday packages and all inclusive getaways plastered across the shop window. Obtrusively bright and showy, demanding the attention of the common people. Mexico, New York, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen! Pictures of white flashy kitchens and balcony views, swimming pools and outdoor seating for family meals and evening drinks; places to build memories. I swallowed hard, my heart starting to feel homesick for places I had never been. My previously assured optimism draining to just pain.

I shook my head hard, attracting stares and giggles from a nearby group of young women sharing a bottle of cheap wine outside a bar. I stared back at them, determined to not let these young savages ebb away at my self esteem. Their expressions turned to disgust, and I couldn't stand that kind of attack on my character. I ducked into the nearest alleyway, away from the humans swarming like flies around their capitalist dream. The street lights immediately making me a friend of the shadows once more.

I wandered the streets for several more hours, barely noticing the gaggles of people out celebrating and commiserating, drowning their broken hearts in extortionately priced liquor, pathetically clinging to false bravado and feeble friendships. Delusional to the reality that they were relentlessly hiding from. I walked until my heels were sore and my shabby shoes threatened to fall off my feet for good.

I was acutely aware of the heightened fragility of the intoxicated night world. A place surely not safe for street vermin like myself, ready to fall prey to the drunken angry men that would stumble out of the bars and clubs in the early hours of the morning. But I was tired, and needed to rest my head. We were several hours away from the drunks going home to bed. So I allowed myself to be convinced that I would take a rare risk and find a hiding place to sleep during these treacherous drinking hours. I stayed in the shadows that cloaked me in invisibility, as I scoured the streets, sweeping the alleyways for a place to sleep. Finally I came across an alley that led to nowhere, an almost safe seventeen minute walk from the nearest bar. Despite it's putrid stench and vast overpopulation of rats and abandoned bin bags, the alley was unlikely to be ventured down by any drunken fool trying to get home or find trouble on the streets. My home for the night welcomed me with semi-dry cardboard to make my own transitory bed. The facilities were not ideal; the drain dripped filthy polluted sewage somewhere near my head and the ground was strewn with rotten food and rat faeces. But for tonight I would accept that although my slovenly appearance was not quite as loathsome as my vulgar home, my safety was almost assured!

I lay on top of my cardboard layer, wrapping myself in my treasured sleeping bag, and allowed myself to close my eyes. Slowly drifting away to the monotone drip of the drain and thoughts of my future family; that blurry female face of the woman I would perpetually love. The warmth of our cosy home, with its carpeted floors and windows and doors; a home full of love. Drifting to sleep to the sounds of our future children laughing and playing with our family dog. Content and inspirited, I fell asleep with a smile on my lips.

I awoke suddenly for the second time that day. The sounds of shouting and gleeful laughter filled my sleeping ears. My eyes shot open, trying to find the source of the noise around me. My eyes had not yet adjusted to the blanket darkness, and I attempted to wriggle out of my rigid sleeping bag. I was forced back down by a heavy blow to my head, making the dark world around me spin like some kind of hellish underworld. More muffled merriments as I lay there, covering my aching head with my hands. Then a warm putrid liquid fell upon my neck, amongst the howling laughter of a gang of men. The overwhelmingly rancid smell of urine hit my nostrils like acid and I heaved as the liquid dripped down my face. My eyes were now adjusting to the darkness around as I looked up at the three menacing figures leering over me.

Bright white grins alight in the dark, cackling and shouting slurred obscenities. A heavy boot stamped down on me far faster than I could move to protect my head. The overwhelming succession of blows to my body, mixed with the metal taste of my own mortal blood seeping into my mouth, leaving me breathless and useless on the concrete floor left me infallibly dead. My last thoughts of a future rendered inconceivable passing through my dying eyes. A future that I didn't deserve and surely did not exist passed slowly past me as I left this earth, taken by drunken swine's.