I stare at my dirty pink shoes as I sit on the soiled ground across the tattoo parlor, take a deep breath and set my hat down on the ground next to the stop sign. God, I feel sick. I lift my sign of the week up; it's already slightly torn at the side and damp from the wet ground. Dark green letters read: "Homeless orphan, anything helps," tears of shame steadily beading down my pale cheeks. The wind slowly starts to blow against my cold skin, sending goosebumps across my frail arms and shivers down my spine. I can see the clouds on the horizon coming in along with the wind, dark and ominous. Thunder booms from a distance, but it reverberates my bones and sends a chill through my hands. My fingertips soon grow numb and holding onto that goddamn sign becomes too much... After about two hours, I drop the sign and watch is it glide to the concrete. My skeletal fingers begin to sway in the wind. I look away as the first rain drop pelts my mangled hair. I need a brush. I need food, water, something. I push my weakened body up slowly and begin to hobble to my secret stash. "$127," I sigh, "my life savings." My thoughts drift the way they often do, not to scenes of grandeur and excess, but just an apartment where when I open the fridge, there's food, and maybe even someone to share it with. My fantasy ends as I see this cute guy step out of the parlor across the way with a unlit cigarette in hand. His dark hair is speckled with rain drops and his grey eyes look right through me, but he's all I see. As my thoughts take a darker turn, I'm struck by a hot sweat that pools down my lower back, my vision blurs and before I can react I hit the ground hard. "Fucking rain." Is my last coherent thought before I drift into unconsciousness.
