A Vagrant Story Read online

  A Vagrant Story

  Paul Croasdell

  Acknowledgements

  With thanks to my father Paul C for spell checking and my brother Arron for designing the cover.

  For updates on my current projects please follow me on Twitter:

  paul croasdell

  DuCrozz

  https://twitter.com/DuCroZZ

  and Facebook:

  http://www.facebook.com/paul.croasdell.3

  Chapter 1

  One of the last trains of the night tore past. Its heavy rumble diminished to an unsettling vibration throughout the subway station. The train’s final echoes fading away, the sound of footsteps tapped down a stairwell to the lowest level.

  Sierra was making her way back to her friends, having snuck away from them earlier. She’d grown fed up waiting around the subway station so the four of them could scavenge from bins, or not even. Subway security tended to frown on those found rummaging about in tips, which forced them to wait around for the less-than watchful night watch. Of course, with subway bins on such high demand for their kind, that meant sticking close to guard them like dogs to their fire hydrants.

  Between the Winter cold and general misery of it all, Sierra snapped, once again leaving her friends for good. And once again she decided to return.

  Sierra stopped before descending the final corner of the stairwell to where the others waited. As if to preserve some stain of dignity she wrapped up all the notches of her oversized, brown overcoat, stuffing away the many layers of clothing she wore beneath. Sighing, she set about brushing back her long blonde hair so as to fasten strings of her green ear flap hat. She was coming back to them, that meant she’d lost whatever argument caused her to run away. That meant she’d be due certain gloating from a certain old drunk. Last thing she needed was to look a mess when taking it. Last thing she needed was for the old man to think she couldn’t get by without him.

  With no more notches to tie she stood perfectly still and listened, if only to further delay the inevitable. It was silent. The platform cleared of people, the station empty, the picking seemed now there’s for the taking.

  “Sierra?” spoke a male voice she recognised.

  Sierra opened her eyes to find one of her friends standing in the stairwell in front of her, a short thin featured man who day in day out wore the same torn blue tracksuit top and sweat pants, clothing which stood in complete contrast to his lifestyle. His name was Henry, and right now he was in the way.

  “Henry,” Sierra said. “Where are you sneaking off?”

  Henry affixed his glasses as though shaken simply by bumping into her like this.

  “I take it old Rum’s been picking on you again?” she said.

  “N-No … well yes, but that’s not the problem. I thought I heard someone coming down … I was right. It was you … turns out.”

  “Was it? That’s nice.” Sierra listened a moment.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I just realised I can hear myself speak. Either Rum and Alex finally stopped arguing or we’ve got a funeral to go to. Well, at least the silence is one good reason to come back.”

  “W-well actually…” Henry indicated a yellow dumpster beside the track. By it’s side stood the tall man, Alex, firmly watching over the tip like a guard at a palace gate. On closer inspection he’d actually just fallen into an upright snooze, resting against the wall to keep himself standing.

  As most of their kind tended, he was another one rarely seen wearing anything but the same clothes. Unlike most of their kind he tended to vouch for less clothes over the average, slightly more sanity abiding, more clothes. Even in winter he continued wearing those same loose fitting white cargo pants, and the most bizarre of all things, a blue T-shirt at least one size too small. The man would rarely shiver, not often from fear and never from cold. He tended to have little to fear from the average thug, mostly because he often stood at least a foot taller than the average thug. Though dwarfing the lot of them in height, in weight even the puny Henry might match him. The stick like proportions of his arms and constant paleness would have some believe he might crack at the slightest breeze. They’d be wrong.

  Sierra, now confident in the serenity of the station floor, sauntered gracefully toward Alex. “I see Alex is as lively as ever. Speaking of noise, where’s Rum?”

  Henry sent a suggestive nod to the dumpster. Rummaging from within answered her question. This notification brought the girl to an immediate halt.

  “Still busy at work, I see,” she said. “Is he still drunk?”

  “A little.”

  A gravelly, aged voice began blaring out from within the dumpster. “Blondie! Blondie is that you? Where is that thick dyke?”

  Alex, yet to open his eyes, replied to the old man, “She left ages ago. Right after you started your second bottle of whiskey.”

  “When was that?”

  “Right after you threw the first one at her.”

  “Then where the hell did she go?”

  “Said something about going to find other friends, better friends.”

  At once old Rum exploded from the dumpster, his green trench coat covered in the stains of everything he rolled around in. A banana peel sat on his shoulder like the cherry on a cake. Instinctively wiping the grit from his brown matted beard the old man turned to Alex, damningly reaching out the tip to grab him by the collar.

  “She did what!?”

  “She wanted to hang around with someone else,” Alex replied calmly, blandly, or emotionlessly, as his general tone often sounded.

  “That little bitch! After everything I do for her she goes stabbing me in the back like that. If I ever see her again I’ll-”

  “You’ll what!?” Sierra snapped, stepping up to him with all intention to brawl.

  “Blondie … I didn’t mean … I mean … wait … what’s that in your hand?”

  “You’ve some cheek talking about me like that, like you’re the god damn saviour of my life. I get along fine without you!”

  “I said what’s in your hand?”

  “And another thing, you quit calling me Blondie right now. It wasn’t even cute when I was a kid and it’s less so now.”

  The nickname was something Rum thought up when he first found her at age ten, eleven years ago. No one other than those two really knew what it meant. People assumed it was simply because Sierra had blonde hair, a simple enough basis for most, they viewed it as an intellectual stretch for old Rum. He’d use it so much it became mutual even beyond this merry band of four she sometimes called her friends.

  Ignoring her complaint, old Rum’s words changed to another tune. “Okay … so you decided to come back, good for you. Can’t blame me for thinking you ran away, you’ve got the rep for it. Now … onto the far more pressing matter.” Led by a sniffing twitch of his nose, Rum waded his way toward her, body hanging out the tip like a plant in a flower pot. “What’s that in your hand? Looks like a burger box … smells like a burger.”

  “Burgers tend to. Don’t know what you’re drooling about. You think you’re getting some after everything you said? Maybe I’ll have it all to myself, may even eat it right now.” She articulated further by opening the container and dangling the burger above her mouth. “But maybe I’m not hungry … I’ve eaten loads already. An apology might fix the problem.”

  “Aw c’mon Blondie … I mean, Sierra. Give us a bite.” Rum watched cautiously as the burger went closer and closer to her lips.

  She bit through, swallowing a quarter in one mouthful. “Still some left if you want it. Beg harder.”

  “Little … bitch. You know damn well I don’t beg.”

  “Had me fooled a second ago.”

  Rum began climbing awkwardly fr
om the tip, his long sickly green trench coat wrapping around his own legs. Fumbling about in his own disgrace, he suddenly lunged for Sierra with all the grace of a polemic monkey. With a sneaky smack, he managed to clip her hat off before she ducked away.

  “You little trollop! Stand still and take what you deserve!”

  Rum clenched his fist with apparent intention to strike. For which he found himself crumbling on the spike of Sierra’s knee. He crumbled down and in on himself, in the long groaning, bowing in prayer, won’t be getting up for a while kind of way.

  He found himself staring to the ground, and more importantly, at the burger which fell there. “The burger! You ruined my burger!” he declared, which proved enough to resurge that lost adrenaline. He tackled her from his downed state, taking her to the ground.

  “So…” Alex said to Henry, the pair of them watching from above. “They’re fighting over a cold dirty burger … it’s finally come to this.”

  “Alex,” Henry replied, looking up to him mournfully. “Can’t you … stop them? You know?”

  “Just a little longer,” Alex said bearing a pleasured, yet somehow callous little half smile. Rum and Sierra’s bickering often amused him, a rare trait for a man whose permanent tight lipped expression could frighten a small child.

  “Alex…” Henry groaned, pleading.

  “Fine. Come on you two, that’s enough,” Alex declared.

  Grabbing Sierra by the scruff of the neck, he lifted her from the floor. Almost effortlessly he suspended her in mid-air. To look at, Alex was hardly a well-built man, but did have strong points where they mattered. His lanky height alone provided natural advantage over the common man. That’s not to say he didn’t have muscle, just that the muscle he had came tightly wrapped around lengthy stretches of bone.

  In hope of freeing herself Sierra pulled his shaggy brown hair. Despite all her wailing, despite all her squirming, she subsided to his might. She simply lowered her head and released a defeated little noise, warm breath turning to steam on the cold winter air.

  Rum picked himself up from the ground. Although indifferent to finishing the fight he grumbled at Alex for interfering, rubbing his jaw at the same time. He displayed a great deal of pain for a man with no marks on him. “I had her you know that.”

  Alex released Sierra. Landing prominently on her feet, she began brushing dirt from her tanned overcoat, the outer layer of her many tattered, heat insulated clothes.

  Rum did the same, pretending it bothered him. “I’m the only one who went through the bins … I deserve a fucking burger at least.”

  “Then go eat your bin food,” Sierra replied.

  “No joy there,” Alex said. “Looks like we were beaten to the punch, someone had this place cleared before we got here.”

  “I’ve searched all the bins and not a scrap,” Rum added. “It’s uncanny I say. Some other bums probably figured our routine and snatched it all first, either that or the staff cleared it. Now after all this she went and dropped the only food we have.”

  “You mean the only food I had!” Sierra replied.

  Rum simply turned away to pick the burger up from the un-kempt station floor. The old man held it up. “Well I’ve eaten worse than this before.”

  “We haven’t,” Alex said. “Bins are cleaner than the ground here.”

  “Rum, let it go. You’re such a dope,” Sierra added.

  More concerned with a roach clinging to the bun, Henry squelched his face in disgust. “Can you hold that down? It’s making me sick.”

  “Stay quiet you damn dud, if you didn’t have us here you’d probably be dead by now. Imagine having no one around to dust off the scary little bugs on your blankets before you go to bed at night,” Rum teased, finishing with a taunting laugh.

  “Ignore him, he misses the drink. Don’t ya Rummy?” Alex said.

  “What do you mean I miss the drink? Of course I miss it, but I’ll knock your head in for saying it all the same, ya stupid weirdo.”

  Alex gave a blank stare at the sobering drunk. “You wouldn’t do that. You couldn’t even if you wanted to.”

  A flush of cold wind swept through the station. A shivering Henry pinned his glasses steady.

  “Well … it’s getting fairly cold now. Maybe we should head back to the shack.”

  “Henry’s right,” Sierra said. “I mean, by now the shelters would have closed up. Pretty soon some no good bum’s gonna be looking for a little shut eye. We don’t want anyone else to nick our shack on us do we?”

  Detesting the thought of another foodless night, Rum argued, “Go home to bed? Not with my damn stomach. Don’t sweat it, nobody’s gonna rob it on us. Anyone who’s anyone knows I’d knock their heads in.”

  “Well we can’t stay out in this weather. Since you’re so hungry maybe we should look for an open restaurant to hang out in for a while,” Sierra suggested.

  “We haven’t the cash. Besides, there ain’t no restaurant open at this time kid.”

  “The bars are closing around now,” Alex mumbled in his distant sort of way. “Some places will still be open – with all the drunks out Rum might even blend in.” Turning round to exit by the stairs Sierra came down from, he said back to them, “But you never know till you try. And yeah, I might have a bit of change left on me.”

  “Then why didn’t you say so!” Sierra cried.

  “I wanted to see Rum do funny things in bins.”

  Henry chased after Alex. “I–I’m, going to go with Alex.”

  Rum swallowed the last piece of the tainted burger and followed too, grumbling and scowling at Alex. “Yeah, see Rum in bins. Funny. Y’lanky ugly cunt.”

  ***

  As they travelled the cold air turned each movement to an agonising gruelling ache. Ice gradually froze in place of water and frost inched its way up the dustbins. Snow seemed definite to follow.

  Through a series of indirect travelling they did come across one dilapidated wreck of a diner bearing a large open view window on the front wall. It was situated on a street corner beside a main road.

  Luckily the place was empty. With any luck they might be tolerated here. One man worked the counter, a chubby Asian man in a brown suit. Head deep in file papers he showed little regard for the tramps. Either he couldn’t tell what they were or simply didn’t care – either would suffice. A brief narrowed glare did suggest a thin level of patience.

  Upon receiving their orders they planted themselves on some conditionally cosy red leather seats centred round a fitting retro style table. All the while a television screen secured the snug atmosphere, flashing away on a high shelf in the corner. Its presence muted the in-hospitable chatter coming from the homeless bunch.

  “Still the police have received no leads on who is responsible for the recent fires throughout the city. From across all spectrums of life in the city blame is being placed squarely on roaming gangs from less tangible areas of the city that are believed to be expanding their territory by intimidating smaller businesses. Despite this, police have ruled out these claims as ‘crackpot theories,’ rather choosing to focus on their hunt for an arsonist acting alone.”

  “In other news, police have sent out yet another appeal for information which might aid in catching the serial killer who has evaded them for so long now. It has been three years since the death of his first victim, Annette Lucille, in the Northern suburbs. Since that time five more victims have suffered at the hands of this monster. All six women were found with their clothes ripped off. Autopsies showed signs of sexual abuse while under the influence of a heavy stimulant…”

  The report faded to an all but mute status on their inattentive ears. Unless it involved free money and food they didn’t have much to care for in ways of local media.

  The bums made sure to sit out of the way, at the rear of the room with their backs to the counter. It came like second nature to speak low and stay down when mingling with the upper echelons of society.

  By any standards this place was a
dive, a kip of no worth to the common man. And there in lay the beauty. Where the other diners sought to preserve a false image of nobility, places like these would turn a blind eye. In that atmosphere they ate and spoke low, in case the eye decided to see again. Getting some amount of money rarely proved a problem, finding a place to spend it was the tricky part.

  They ordered soup and bread, treating it like rations in war time. Rum managed to sponge a litre bottle of cider out of Alex. It showed no match for the man’s battle hardened gut, he drained it by half and the man gained not a swagger to his words. The drink came weak but free, he had no position to complain.

  Henry wasn’t big on bread. Often he would mention how when he was younger his mother fed it to him as though they had nothing else. In those days he’d turn it down in a snap. Those days were gone, and so too his options.

  Amidst devouring his own slice, Rum caught wind of Henry’s hesitance. “Bread too good for you? Better eat up. We’re outta here soon, might just leave you behind.”

  “But Alex isn’t finished either.”

  “Course he ain’t finished, stupid weirdo never eats his fill, just sits there playing with it.”

  “I eat my fill, I just don’t have your…” he eyed the soup stains on Rum’s coat, “appetite.”

  “You’re eating like a duck lately. Snap it up and let’s be through. You know the kind of filth that come out around this time.”

  “Us?” Alex replied.

  “Funny.”

  “I’ll eat what I can as fast as I can. Can’t help it … queasy stomach.”

  “Come on Alex, Rum’s got a point,” Sierra said, “the bars are about to close so you know what that means. Nine out of ten some little drunken brat’s gonna start something.”

  “Little brat? Look who’s talking.” Rum laughed, straight up guzzling down another swag of cider.

  “Of course, to you everyone under twenty is a kid. Whatever, at least I don’t act like those idiots.”

  “You got a point, you’re worse. And I don’t think we need worry, last time some little punks tried start something I knocked their little heads in. Word spreads so I think they’ll get the message.”