Confessions of the Damaged

2 Enter Protagonist

Another shadow in another alleyway, he dug through the dumpster, searching for food. He prodded the bag on top and quickly tossed it aside to see what the one below it was hiding. The first was full of loose garbage from what he could tell but the second intrigued him. It was soft and heavy and a lumpy round shape that felt like bread.

It was bread.

The bakery in front was his reason for choosing this particular dumpster to search in the first place.

He'd always check first to see if a dumpster looked worth the effort. Was it full enough that he didn't have to climb inside? Was it used by a supermarket, bakery, or convenience store? All dumpsters smelled but some worse than others and those were to be avoided. He didn't want to find any new problems to deal with while searching for solutions to his existing problems.

He drew the bag closer to his face and silently thanked the baker who he had never met, as the smell of his next few meals filled his soul. He peeked inside and found a pleasing variety of newly baked bread. Everything looked and felt as fresh as a paying customer could hope for, a blessing for someone in his position. It would be more than he could finish on his own.

He was considerably hungry, not having eaten since morning, so he took one piece out to eat as he walked, tied the bag back up and tucked it under his arm as he smiled to no one and went on his way.

"Anyone who starves out here isn't trying."

He spoke, to himself, as he stepped out of the ally and onto the sidewalk. His words were less of a judgment and more of an attempt at self-encouragement.

"Such decadence...might as well make use of the scraps"

He was right, there was more than enough fresh waste to go around in the city but finding the best of it was a skill. Even if so much of it was still safe to eat and savory, not all of it was. Some stores would go out of their way to pour bleach in the food to prevent his kind from getting their hands on it; he wasn't a paying customer after all, god forbid he stole their expired food.

Some trash was cleaner than other trash too, and there was some predictability to it, but when a shop was big enough to have their own dumpster and had a regular schedule of disposing trash, it attracted many others who were hungry. Some street dwellers were pleasant enough, but others were unpredictable, and he could never be sure which he'd run into so he tried to avoid others if he could.

He often found himself in the right place at the right time though, without thinking too much about it. He used common sense, of course, but a deeper kind of intuition seemed to play a big role in his so-called "luck". It protected him from dirty needles, sharp edges and those darker shadows of the street, those so starved of comfort and pleasure that they were capable of unimaginable cruelty.

This intuition was his best friend. Others might call it a sixth sense. In moments of peaceful silence and in moments of his deepest despair a voice called out to him. He suspected it was always there but it was often lost in a sea of static. It was that voice that had kept him alive, not just living, but alive and present, in spite of everything.

As he passed through the park, he saw two familiar faces dressed in rags, which would be shed by the end of the month as winter ended. One body was sprawled out sideways on a blanket, chatting to another body sitting against a tree. Most of their conversation seemed to consist of 3 word sentences, they were much more concerned with puffing their cigarettes. These two were decent enough; rather gloomy, but that was to be expected. They nodded at him.

"Bread." He said to the rags, as he walked up to them.

He kneeled down and handed two pieces to each of them and watched as smiles struggled to come to their faces. They said no words of gratitude, but he could see shards of appreciation shining through their ruggedness, just beneath the surface.