A collection of short stories.

The Walk

The morning after Christmas night, I walked down the street filled with disposed paper waste. It was a treasure ground for children like me, as we would hunt down little pieces of treasures, if you imagined that as a street filled with diamonds and gold coins, you are probably right. A loaf of buttered bread was like a diamond for us, we could not trade it for paper money but we always exchanged it for another day, it was like finding a piece of diamond that kept our hunger away and gave us another live. I walked and walked, searched among the paper piles, nothing... Not even a single sparkle stick or a broken toy; maybe I am so poor that even lady luck found it fit to desert me or perhaps she just wanted me to grab the food and forget about the fun the boy with the black car had. My poverty was such that I couldn’t even spare a meagre dollar for a toy to play with, it was just a dream, and riding a skate or a scooter was something I could never even imagine.

A dog barked and I was sure it was laughing, laughing at my ineffable state of poverty. The December wind was chilly and I found a piece of plastic wrapping which served me well keeping away the wind touching my bare body. Everything was cold, white hopeless, a loneliness looming over my head, depression that cannot be expressed and a state of helplessness, I decided I would return to the railway station, beg for food or sleep the whole day.

Someone was walking behind me, a little girl in a white dress. I looked back; she had a fur coat, shopping bag and ankle boots. Another rich kid I wondered, but she was walking towards me, something was creepy, something seemed wrong. I walked faster but she shouted stop. I stood petrified; maybe she was going to hand me over to the police believing I was a thief. She stood near me, handed me a sweet and I snatched it from her hand, I was not sure if she was just showing it to me or wanted me to have it, but I was hungry, I was going to have it no matter what her intention was. She smiled; she had ugly wires on her teeth. Someone yelled ‘Sophie’, she looked back, she stared into my eyes, and she ran into the alleyway. I stood there, ate the sweet and walked back to the station. Maybe I should have thanked her, maybe... but it was lady luck again who deprived me of another chance to live, another chance to thank someone who helped me when hunger raped me.