As I stepped through the lightly frosted cobbled paths, the dim streetlights barely illuminated my already tattered jacket, my last memento of home.
The chilly night wind stabbed me in the face, like a thousand arrows piercing the enemy.
The moon only showed a sliver of light, and I started to peer at alleyways and corridors for a place to spend the night.
There was a waft of roast chicken in the distant, but all it did was taunt me with the memories of home and good times. I had a full stomach, though, if I didn’t the smell would’ve of being even more torturous.
I saw a musty alleyway next to a sweetshop and there was vacant, except for the rats creeping out of the huge skip.
I lay the sleeping bag that I had brought from home and tried to make myself comfortable amongst the spilling pieces of cardboard and the scent of marijuana.
It was not the darkness, the cold or the overwhelming feeling of having no home that scared me, but the silence that persisted through my sleepless night, with an occasional scuttering of rats or the wind hitting on the brick wall beside me.
The distant sounds of the midnight chime interrupted my thoughts, and I shifted my position for the hundredth time.
Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong
Sometimes I would see a figure, or figures, passing the alleyway, but none of them were dossers like me. If it were, they would have approached me.
But as seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours, I started to hope for a companion to pass the time with.
Even on my first night, I began to feel pangs of loneliness and sometimes guilt, rushing through me like a tide on a shore, coming and going.
I also rode that tide out of reality, then in again, and every time was the most uncomfortable feeling.
Not the moving from reality like in dreams, but like getting knocked out, drunk. I could not believe that this was truly happening.
Me, a dosser, someone I would have blatantly ignored only last year, but now, one of them.
It was these thoughts that hurt me the most, not the icy wind, my empty stomach, or the floor that gave me bruises in the morning. Maybe it was these wandering thoughts that finally made me drift to sleep as the clock chimed four.
Dong, dong, dong, dong
I woke to the singular ray of sunshine flowing into the narrow alleyway and the first feeling I felt was pain.
In my past home I always had a bed to sleep in, but this first time sleeping on rock was not any good to my body.
My back was sore, and my shoulder was covered in deep blue bruises. It almost looked like I was mugged in the night.
I stood up, my legs shaking and my head aching. I could feel the weak warmth of the sunlight filtering through the clouds, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from feeling the frigid winter draught.
The city felt like it was starting to wake up with me as the clock chimed a sleepy seven times.
Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong
That was the feeling after each of my countless sleepless nights, and I felt like I would never be able to survive the next few months, or even years in this environment.
I started to smell the scent of freshly baked bread, and the churning of the candy makers in the candy shop next to me. The early goers were marching nearly in step across the roads in front of me, heading to their job.
I stepped out of my alleyway and sat in front of a closed shopfront, with the pitiful expression I thought would make me some money.
Once the clock had chimed eight, more and more people in their trench coats and umbrellas passed me without a second thought and a light drizzle started to form, pattering gently on the tin roofs. “Spare some change?” I asked to a gruff looking man passing me, but all he did was mutter something under his breath and continue to walk towards his destination.
Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong
Throughout the day I observed all different types of people. Schoolchildren, office workers, parents and their newborn babies, and the elderly.
All passing by except for the few who gave me a few pence worth of change.
Is this what my life had led up to?
My dreams and my future?
