Back Alley Puddle

BACK ALLEY PUDDLE


I can’t see the sky from where I lay, but because a soft drizzle is falling and the sides of the buildings are stained with soak, I imagine it to be a cloudy, rainy gray day.  There is no roar of thunder with this rain, save for the dump trucks and busses that rumble up and down the streets just out of sight.

I have just woken up, and I have no idea what time it is. Without looking, the watch on my wrist reads 2:13a.m., as it has for the better part of a year. There is a gray glow in the alley, and not the usual nighttime, pale orange. I figure it must be nearing the end of the day, for traffic sounds heavy with the honking of impatient horns.

The makeshift tarp I created this morning didn’t hold up, and it lays crumpled in a heap, my mattress is soaked. As I prop myself up onto my elbows, the depressions in the mattress form small ponds of dirty water. This simple act, nearly defeats me. I am so weak these days. I doubt I’ll be able to get up and take a piss. With great effort, I manage to bundle up some of my clothing, and form a pillow to rest my swimming head. I reach into my crotch, to make sure my precious commodity has remained dry. Thank God, both have, my only friends, my cigarettes and dry matches.

I light a cigarette, and inhale deeply. I am overwhelmed by a fit of violent coughing. When the spasm has relaxed, I spit out a ball of stringy phlegm. This exercise nearly exhausts me, and it is a long time before I take another drag.

This is the time I reflect. Every morning, afternoon, or night, when just after awaking, I reflect. I reflect upon my surroundings, I reflect upon my condition, I reflect upon my strange circumstance, I reflect on my life, and how it has come to this, and always in that order.

I lay exposed, without sheet or blanket, on a soaked and soiled mattress. The alley is no wider than fifteen feet. The backs of these building are all made out of old brick, worn and crumbling with age. The alley itself is pock marked with holes and broken cement. Large rusting dumpsters, filled to the top, stare back at me. A couple of rats hunch over a small pool of water, drinking. A door on the far wall opens up, and a short squat man with a bushy mustache empties a bucket of water into the alley. Our eyes meet, but only for a moment. He quickly averts his gaze, and disappears back into the building. I can smell food, warm, nice tasting food. It must have been coming from the door that gentleman opened. The smell is quickly fading now. The thought of food interests me, because I am hungry. I have been hungry for seven years now, but the thought of getting up and scavenging makes me weary, light headed, nauseous. The thought of how my body would process this food, and the consequences of it, extinguishes this idea. I would not survive the process.
I lay my head back down, and my eyes walk up the iron fire escape that zig-zags it’s way up the far building. I notice that someone on the second floor left the window open, and that the rain must be falling inside. I imagine how disappointed the owner will feel when they realize this. Maybe a carpet is ruined, maybe the hardwood floor might get warped. 

A sharp pain in my back sends me rolling over to my side. It is an intense pain, coursing through my hips and into my legs. I squeeze my eyes shut, and grit my teeth. My stomach pitches, and I begin to dry heave. Six, seven, and eight heaves before the spasm stops. Again, I spit out thick phlegm, and it lands on my makeshift pillow, strands of green and yellow mucus still connected to my chapped and bleeding lips. I close my eyes and breathe, as best I can, the sound of my lungs like a baseball card in the spoke of some child’s bicycle. I use my tongue to wipe my lips clean, but it is distracted, intent to explore all the pits where teeth used to grow.
The view from this perspective changes. Broken glass and empty sixteen ounce beer cans. A shopping cart with the back wheels missing. A pile of wooden rat traps. I had stolen a bunch of these devices yesterday or the day before from a hardware store. When I was ‘tribal’, meaning when I banded together with fellow’s like me, we would set these traps up and catch all sorts of protein; usually rats (hence the devices name), sometimes cats or kittens. It used to be a source of excitement among us. We would set our traps, go get high or drunk (if we were lucky, both high and drunk), and in the morning, afternoon, or evening (whenever we awoke), excitedly go and check our traps. If we were lucky, we’d have ourselves a couple of rats to grill. We would have a regular Thanksgiving feast; someone would be delegated to go and beg for money, and use that money for booze. Someone else would go dumpster diving by the hotels for salad and bread. As I had experience in grilling, I was always the grill master, like I was, in the time before now. Everyone would have to be back by 9:00p.m., for that is when the feast would begin.
Thoughts of the time before now, are more painful than anything physical. I can deal with muscle pain; I cannot deal with emotional pain, for it’s sting is so overwhelming. The time before now. My eyes fill with sadness, and the sadness and regret drip down upon my cheeks. Both those days are long dead now; the Time Before Now, and the Tribal days.

Today, I know that I am going to die. I can feel it, I can taste it. It’s an awful feeling and a bitter taste, yet still, there is an odd touch of relief mixed in, much like swallowing terrible tasting medicine, with a thought (as it’s sliding down your throat) that indeed this is something good for me.
I am shivering now. I am so very cold. I am drenched, and I am drained. I would like another cigarette, but I am too tired. I would like to get up and open my pants to piss, but the thought of even rolling over, makes my head dizzy and my stomach restless. I decide to relieve my bladder where I lay, for I am already wet, and it brings with it a temporary warmth. I urinate as I watch the rats drink.

I once had a beautiful bathroom, complete with a whirlpool and sauna. It was in the master bedroom, on the second floor. I am lost now, somewhere in the watery realm of The Time Before Now. The rats I am watching aren’t really rats now, they are Smoke and Ash, my two dogs. They are drinking from the pool. The fast food wrappers that are skipping with the wind down the alley aren’t really fast food wrappers, they’re colorful water balloons thrown by my children, Edward and Sarah. And the guy dumping out buckets of dirty water isn’t some mustached man, but it’s my wife Tracy, with her long black hair pouring me another whiskey with a wink and a smile.
I begin to tremble and shake. My dogs are gone, my children are dead, my wife is missing, the pool has dried out and cracked, my whiskey has turned into an empty beer can, floating in a rain soaked pothole.

“Hey! Jimmy! What’s up, man?”
Startled, I roll over, hoping it is my neighbor, telling me to wake up, get out of the lawn chair else I get burned by the afternoon sun, and that everything is all right. I wake up, and it is not my neighbor.

“What’s shaking, man?”

“Fuck you, Karl,” is all I can muster.

“Fuck you Karl? That’s how you greet me, man? Say man, you don’t look so good.”

“I’m dying,” I explain.

“Shit buddy, by the looks of it, I can’t disagree. You got any smokes, motherfucker?”

I reach into my protected zone, and pull out my cigarette pack. “Here, leave me but one.”

“Serious, dude? Good deal, in my book. You got any weed?”

I roll back onto my side, trying very hard to get back to the pool.

“Alright, man. Thanks for the smokes. You ought get up and out of this shit weather, man. You look like death warmed over.”

I see that the rats that were drinking at the pothole are aware and nervous, and are standing on hind legs, at full attention. I watch as they scatter into the shadows.

“Hey man, you mind if I borrow a couple of these? Thanks, dude.” With his hands filled with rat traps and cigarettes, Karl scampers out of sight, down the alley, kicking at Smoke and Ash as he goes.

I think of death now, and know that it is coming. I try to think of all the spiritual hymns I used to know, and none come to mind. Instead, I say aloud the last thoughts of my life…

“Well, I’m busted up and feeling low,
My stomach’s empty, and I don’t know
‘bout what’s been happening to my mind,
no longer do I seek that which I could never find
The times have changed, the days are over,
Someone has stolen my four-leaf clover,
My luck has hitched and gone away,
Not sure I’ll live to see another day
I’m cold and feel as if I’ve been misplaced,
Thrown in the gutter, spit on, disgraced
So I’ll sit here in the alley, and wait for my turn
I was never taught the lesson, so I never learned
Gonna dream of blue sky, as I sleep one last time
Laying in a back alley puddle, my only crime
No one will weep, or shed a tear, I’m forever forgotten,
I fear….”

I begin to cough and hack. And then I am no more. I am but smoke and ash.