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[Luv4TheDuece 0]

A man in a brown suit rolled up to his house at his regular time of 7:30 only to be startled by something offsetting. Aside from the gardeners not mowing his lawn and his floodlights not turning on to greet him as was standard, there was a homeless man digging through his garbage very matter of factly. For a few days now someone had been rummaging through his garbage and leaving a mess for him to clean up. At first he thought it had been a raccoon or skunk. But when he noticed that old turkey bags and tuna sandwich cartons had been opened rather than clawed through, he realized his culprit required opposable thumbs for this job. Now he had caught the offender red handed. He sat in his car for a minute and pondered how he should proceed. Life was ho-hum for the man in the brown suit and he had never dealt with a situation like this before. He pulled out a saw buck, got out of the car, and cautiously approached the man. “Excuse me, can I help you?” he said, startling the bum out of his protocol. “Huh? Oh, I’m sorry sir. I was just helping myself to some of your leftovers. You don’t…mind, do you?” “Well look, um…”The man took a step back as the stale aroma of the hobo was introduced to his nostrils. The bum was a small, old, unthreatening man. He looked like his neighbor back in the summer of ’72, when the man in the brown suit was just a boy with a white shirt. His face was pockmarked with gray patches of stubble and his thick and smudgy glasses turned his eyes into small beady marbles. Very comical. “Look, you can’t just go around and pick through people’s garbage like this. You leave a ****ing mess every time you do this and I have to deal with cleaning it up. I don’t mind helping you out…”, handing the old guy a ten, “…but you gotta stay out of my garbage and respect my property. I got a kid in there, and if she came out and saw this, it would scare her half to death. Are we cool on that?” “Oh yeah, of course man. The last thing I would ever want to do is bother anyone. Truly I am sorry sir. I’ll be on my way now and outta your hair for good.”The homeless man stumbled down the suburban street, ten dollar bill still in hand. He had an awkward limp about him. The man in the brown suit thought “Must’ve been a wino.” He turned his attention to his house and proceeded triumphantly up the walkway, up the stairs on the porch, and through his shiny white front door. He locked it behind him. Down at the homeless camp, better known to officials as “Tent City“, the make-shift fires were multiplying. Christmas time always saw a surge in homeless camp activity, mostly due to the sense of community the camps provided for one another. This camp in particular used to be a trailer storage lot, but the disappearance of the owner gradually mutated the site into a city with elaborate networks of tents and houses made out of cardboard. One could expect to see all kinds of oddities walking down one of the many alleyways filled with crushed dreams and burnt out ambition. In the very northwestern patch of the lot, two men, one old and one young, sit by a make-shift oven made of various springs and bed metal, cooking Top Ramen noodles and talking amongst themselves. “…next thing I know, the guy is right behind me.” “Heh, caught in the act, huh Sabin?” “Yep, guess so, and it sucks big time because that place was a virtual diamond mine” “What’chu mean by that?” “I mean they had gourmet pizzas that were half eaten, velour and cashmere sweaters without any residual odor, bars of soap that weren’t even half way used for crying out loud!” “So?” The young man took a healthy swig from a flask. “Who says you can’t go back? “The guy told me he had a daughter in there. The last thing I would ever want to do…” “Oh, **** all that man. That’s your problem Sabin. Your too nice for this lifestyle, this world man. You think that man give a **** about you starving? About your pain?”The young man began stirring the contents of the Folgers can they were using as a pot. The fire began to crackle more aggressively. “Well, he did give me some cash.” “Oh, That don’t mean shit! He only kick you that cash because he want you gone, outta there man. Trust me brotha, banks and shit do that to me all the time.” “And you don’t feel guilty for taking it?” “Hell naw! Mo’ ****as gotta survive somehow.” “And they call you ‘The Preacher‘?”The young man began throwing handfuls of dirt on the fire, calming the blaze until it had reached the desired flame. “It’s just difficult, that’s all.” the old man dejectedly mumbled. “Getting used to this lifestyle is not something that you can just pick up in a day. Sometimes something must be experienced for them to be fully understood.” “It’s ready.” The young man took approximately half of the Folgers cans contents and poured them on top of the old mans paper plate, which was really just a piece of cardboard cut out in a circular fashion. The food was green and looked very parasitic, like it was alive and had a breath of it’s own. “Dig in.” “Man, how do you ever get used to this crap.” the old man asked as he was toying with his food, interrupting the young mans progress as he was shoveling scoops of the Ramen noodle concoction down his gullet. “What, this! This is the best cooking in all of the camp man! Wha’chu crazy ‘er somethin’? You think this is bad, this ain’t nada. When I was locked up back in juvy in the mid 90‘s, my cell mates would take everything we were gonna eat and mix it in the toilet bowl, then we would…”The old man, unable to escape the rancid appearance of his dinner, the thoughts of his buddy eating out of a toilet, and the apparent circumstances surrounding his situation, began to vomit violently into a pool of mud alongside him. After the internal expulsion, the old man opened his eyes and saw something miraculous. It was diamonds. Diamonds in his puddle of vomit. The combination of magnificence and putridity overwhelmed the man into a hard sense of euphoria for a second. But upon closer examination, he realized that there were no diamonds, just the spotty stars you see after you lose a lot of brain cells. Still, the sudden sense of happiness that had eluded him as of late was permeating and it had ensnared his brain to a degree where he knew he had to recapture the feeling. He snapped out of it. “Hey man, What the **** you do that for! God-damnit Sabin, this is where I gotta ****ing sleep at night. Who the **** gonna clean this shit up!” “You know, my pops always said 'if cockroaches came from peaches, they’d be a lot more tolerable'.” “What?! What’s that supposed to mean?”The old man hazily gathered his items and possessions that were strewn against the camp and began to organize them while the young man was still frantically bantering to the old man about the mess he had created. However, the old man was oblivious to the ranting. He gathered his stuff and limped towards the front of the lot. Along the way he asked a lady for directions to the nearest bus stop, even though he already knew where it was.

[savagerebel 0]

I read it and I don't know why.I voted and I don't know why.I am going to post a serious comment and I don't know why.The characters were underdeveloped. What is the point of all this? I am too confused to even ask anymore relevant questions.

[Plus one 0]

1

[HollywoodAFD 0]

[ ] very cool[x] should stop postingI stopped reading at "For a few days now someone had been rummaging through his garbage and leaving...."

[speedz99 145]

I read it, but I'm not voting because I don't like any of the options.The dialogue seemed forced and there's no point to the story whatsoever, but it certainly could have been worse.

[YonYonson 156]

Not good.You're trying to hard.