The Coming

Chicken

Scully passes me the half empty bucket of chicken. I reach around and find a good sized piece to chew on. Need to make this last, who knows when we will eat again. ’It’s still warm’

She flashes me her jagged grin amused by my surprise ‘aye, some child gave it to me, his little belly must have been too full’

‘Lucky he didn’t just toss it like the rest of them’.

‘well he probably saw me staring at him, probably scared of what a witch like me might do if he did!’

I smile at the memory of how Scully scared me when we first met. I was sleeping behind a restaurant, trying to take heat from the warm draft of their doorway when I was awoken by her scraggly grey hair tickling my face. Opening my eyes to her hardened red face and squinting yellow eyes was quite an experience but one I am thankful for. She saved me that night, apparently the owners pour water over vagrants to stop them returning dangerous if you live on the streets and have no quick way of drying off your only set of clothes. Ever since we have stayed together, separating during the day to look for what merciful people there are left in the city and returning here to eat, talk and sleep. Now sitting across from her warming our frozen hands over the small fire I don’t see the face that scares other people instead I see the warm glow in her cheeks, the kindness in her stare and the humour in her toothless grin.

‘Right Nathan that’s me off to the land of nod, to the place where anything can happen’ She laughs at her own words and starts to cough. Her whole body heaving up and down as she struggles to clear her lungs. I help her lie down beside the bridge wall. Tucking her under the plastic bags and paper and what fabric we have stockpiled here for cold nights.

She stutters trying to talk. ‘Shh please rest, Scully you need to rest’.

She ignores me as always, ‘Im so glad I found you Peter’ she falls asleep exhausted and drained from her coughing fit. Peter was her son, while she didn’t have any photos to show me, her vivid description of him painted an image familiar to my own reflection. Ashen blonde hair, blue eyes – apparently not as defined bone structure as me but still so familiar for her to confuse me for him in her poor health. He was 17 when he was murdered the same age she found me at. Scully if that was her name back then nearly died as well, she has shown me the gun shot wounds. Random attack or perhaps a case of mistaken identity, the police never found out and never tried too hard. Scully, her husband and son lived a good life, never rich but not wanting. A bad element creeped into her neighbourhood and the area soon began to suffer gang violence, much like most of the city now except for the affluent. Even there lies as bad element although of a different nature, I should know coming from there and experiencing it first hand.

She was returning from church when she found them lying dead on a blood stained carpet face down executed. She remembers hearing the laughter of the men who responded to her screams and then nothing because they shot her and left her for dead. When she recovered enough from her physical wounds for the hospital to turf her out she was forced to return alone to that empty house and as the bills mounted she gave up on life, on everything, even her religion, not even the church would help her she was alone with her grief and her only way of moving from day to day was her reliance on alcohol and drugs. I don’t like to ask about what it was like or what she did, you can imagine it yourself when you see it often. She quit eventually not long before she found me but the damage has been done and neither of us knows how long she has left or can think of anyway of getting her the drugs she needs when we have nothing to trade for them. Still she never complains and perhaps it is her relief at not having long left in this miserable existence that allows her to be optimistic, the rarest quality in people like us. She thinks something good will happen for us, she says she dreams about it every night, that her husband and Peter tell her its coming and to look out. Sometimes selfishly in my own despair I tell her I don’t believe her dreams, but she isn’t swayed, she says before if ever she was lucky enough to dream of her family it was as there were when she found them murdered and that the years had made there faces, their memories hard to recall but something changed and now she sees them clearly again.

Who I am to judge anyway I spent most of my life foolishly believing things would get better before I finally had no choice but to give up and escape.

Ah well maybe we will find another warm bucket of chicken tomorrow, and holding on to this thought I close my eyes and let myself drift off into the unknown land of dreams or usually nightmares.