beggar.txt

A lone streetlamp flickers amongst its companions who hold steady; cold wind swept across the gaps between buildings, creating a refrain of sorrows drowned and pasts forgotten for its inhabitants that echoes all too familiar.

Its down this street that a lone blueblood wanders, nestled into his scarf, eyes wary and body tense as if he expects attackers at any moment. He knows this neighborhood and its 'guests' all too well, more than enough just cause for him to hurriedly walk towards the more well-lit and well-kept part of the city.

Turning the corner, he trips over the legs of a body on the ground, letting out a small grunt of pain as he lets his hands hit the ground, sharp flecks of gravel digging into the palms of each hand. "Hey, waaaaatch where you fucking sit, lowblooded aaaaaasshole." The greenblood on the ground doesn't respond, instead crawling towards the other troll, the one visible eye behind an empty lens frame dilated and clouded with inebriation. "H-hey. Hey wait, m-mister, please can you s-spare some caegars please I-I need some real b-bad. Please. Hey." The troll is so unkempt and filthy that for a moment the blueblood doesn't even know how to respond other than scrunching up his face in disgust.

"Get aaaaaawaaaaay from me you filthy scaaaaaavenger. I most certaaaaainly will not give you aaaaa single sliver of money, now fuck off!" He scrabbles to his feet, tenderly examining his hands to get as much of the gravel and dirt off as he can, only to feel a sharp yank on his coat lapels; its the beggar again, voice pleading and raspy. "M-mister, p-please gods I-I'm begging you, j-just a caegar, just o-one caegar please please I-I need it r-real bad!" His begging is cut off by a sharp back of the hand to the face, knocked back to the pavement by the furious blueblood. He's futher humiliated when a shiny gold caegar is thrown viciously at his head. "There, taaaaake your fucking money you degeneraaaaate piece of shit!" With that, the higherblood storms off into the night.

The filthy troll didn't care. Almost weeping with joy, his shaking fingers close tight around the cold metal coin, and he scrambles to his feet, half-sprinting half-hobbling off into a nearby alleyway. Walking to the dingy, ill-lit door at the end, he knocks a few times until a small metal peephole slides open. "Whut du yuu want, yuu usuluss puucu uf gurbugu?" "I-I have money. P-please l-let me in. I have m-money, I-I swear." To prove his point, he holds up the golden coin to the light, the dim bulb reflecting off the surface.

With a sigh, the door clicks and unbolts, the greenblood shuffling into the dingy, smoky basement shop, a rather ill-tempered orangeblood sitting behind a desk in front of him. As the door slams shut behind the beggar, it reveals a burly redblood, eyepatch and mechanical eye following the pitiful troll as he shuffles forwards to the desk. Plunking down the caegar, he looks up at the dealer, shivering and hunched over. "G-give me anything you g-got. P-please, gods, I-I need it b-bad. I-I don't c-care what it is, a-any quality," he pleads, shaking and trying his best to be small.

The orange-symboloed troll bites into the caegar, testing to see if it was real. Satisfied, he reaches under his desk, producing a syringe filled with a silvery fluid and sliding it to the greenblood. "Here. Now get the fuck out. Before I make. You get the fuck out. With the help of. My friend here."

Cradling the small syringe in his hand, the beggar leaves, steel door slamming shut behind him as he drops to his knees after moving a few steps away from the entrance. Quickly, he pulls a long strip of cloth from his jacket pocket, using his teeth to tie it tight around his upper arm. Pulling up his sleeve, he can already see the advanced stages of necrosis settling in; a part of him says he should know better than this, he should keep looking, keep searching for the dreams he knows are real but can't bring himself to believe.

He just shakes it off, tightening the cloth strip as he plunges the needle into the one remaining viable vein on the arm, hissing softly as he pushes the plunger down with his thumb until the silver liquid vanishes into his bloodstream. Removing the needle and discarding it, he unties the cloth and lies down on the cold, damp pavement, the hemochrome setting in and beginning to brighten his world up, cold becoming warmth, the ground like a giant pillow.

Soon he's wandering the streets, staring at everything and nothing in particular, dreams consuming his mind and the hemochrome beginning to reach its high in his blood. The whole world is like fire to him, bright and blazing but not scalding, no; its warm like an embrace he's forgotten, and it's that feeling he's been waiting for since he pushed the silver into his green. Oh, that wonderful warm embrace like someone wrapping their arms around him, sinking warmth into his shivering, thin frame.

Returning to the hovel he's created for himself inside an old, half-demolished building, he sets an ancient PDA on the floor, the machine only kept for one purpose and one purpose only; to play music. With the melodies flowing forth from the beaten grey handheld, he sings to himself and pretends that the warmth is there with him, still holding him close and singing along with the music like he does.

Hours pass, and even long after the music has stopped and the hemochrome starts to belligerently want out of his system, the beggar pretends. While he violently throws up in the street after dashing out of the building, he pretends the warmth is there at his side, lovingly holding him and keeping him safe as he gives up what little food he'd had that day. Even when he goes back inside and opens a handle of booze, downing a quarter of it in one long drought, he pretends the warmth isn't the alcohol sliding down into his empty belly, but the same warmth that pervades his thoughts and dreams, incessantly calling out to him to find it, find it and make himself whole again.

And, even as he cries in a corner of the room, voices and thoughts and memories flashing and skipping through his head in a maelstrom of emotional violence, he desperately tries to pretend and tell himself the warmth is there sitting by him, holding him as he sobs and screams at nothing, sinking to the floor and hiccuping, softly crying out for someone he knows but cannot remember the name of. Asking for help, pleading for the pain to stop, begging to be taken home; this he asks of the one that keeps coming to him in his thoughts and restless nights, but he's asking nobody for he cannot remember who he's calling for.

Eventually the handle of alcohol is discarded, empty, tears drying on his cheeks as he stumbles up from the floor and manages to crawl to the pile of packing foam he calls a bed. He lays his head down as the sun cracks over the horizon and falls into a restless sleep; that same person, the one he cries for every night, coming to him and holding him and telling him he needs to keep on living and not give up and just keep looking, he'll know when he finds who he's looking for.

And all the time he weeps, sniffling into his dream, telling them he can't, he's tired, he wants to go to sleep. But the warmth of the dream won't let him. And so he doesn't.