We are all strays searching for homes in each other (starving ones at that)

Dying for an opportunity

Empty beer cans and dirty cigarette butts were laying abandoned at their feet as they watched the world move past them. It was out of their reach and moving too fast for them to even hope for a place in a world that was obviously not meant for them.

They were High school dropouts without a future, stuck in the same place as they had grown up in. There, where the days passed in such a monotonous way that even Craig Tucker grew tired of it. With their childhood friends were long gone, either buried six feet under the ground or chasing their future in a place far away from South Park, there was nothing left to find for them in this small mountain town.

He was apathetic towards it at first. Life was nice and boring, just how he’d always liked it. But the nice disappeared together with Tweek, Token and Clyde, and he was left with the boring that quickly turned into loneliness. It didn’t bother him much in the beginning, but when he started noticing that he was staring at his ceiling more often than not, Craig decided to bury his past and look for the only kid aside of him that was stuck in the same place as him; Stan Marsh.  

Ever since he got back in touch with him, they’d started hanging out frequently. It wasn’t as if there was much else to do anyway, and they both had a need for some company every now and then. The only distraction they had aside of each other was a job that wasn’t much more than working at some shitty shop that never got customers anyway. It left you wondering why the owners still kept it running considering they lost more money than they’d ever make. It was just a South Park thing, Craig eventually decided. Going to school was a thought that hadn’t even crossed their minds after they dropped out all those years ago. They were like strays, bound to the streets where they spend most of their time because their parents grew tired of their constant presence and they had nowhere else to go.

“There’s nothing out here for us.” Craig mumbled as he blew the smoke from the cigarette in his hand out of his lungs. A habit to pass time, one of the many. Stan merely grunted in response – knowing that fact all too well. 

It was something Craig regularly reminded him of, in order to keep him sharp in case an opportunity would arrive that could take them away from this place. Or something like that. It didn't matter much either way, because they’d either move away for good, or they’d die in this place. The latter seemed a lot more realistic to Craig, who helplessly watched Stan spiral further and further into depression – it hadn't gotten any better since his tenth birthday, quite the opposite actually, and it made him regret turning down Kenny’s offer all those years ago to come travel the world in his old pick-up truck. Even despite the fact that Kenny’s grave wasn't much more than a wooden cross and some pebbles that he and Stan had gathered, and that the pick-up truck was lost somewhere on a cliff where nobody could reach it - dying in the outside world together with Stan seemed a whole lot better to him than just vanishing away in South Park, meaningless existences that wouldn't be remembered by anyone but close family and old friends.

And when the day came that their memory started to fade, the existence of the two boys who had once been in their lives would fade as well. 

Craig, unwilling to let that happen, kept reminding them,
he kept them aware of every possible chance.
They'd get out of this, no matter what it took. 
That's what he promised himself, staring down the empty road,
silently dying for the opportunity to never see South Park again.