Body on the Streets

It is three in the afternoon and Jeremy is not a man anymore. Jeremy is now just a name that once was. Once, the name had been more than a body on the streets. It belonged to a child no bigger than arms could hold him.

Years ago, the lone boy grew up in an orphanage. He knew nothing beyond the name he had been given and the skin he had been born into. He nurtured the hunger in his hollow brain with all he could find to feed on, befriending trash television and unwanted magazines. There was not much else in a home that had little love left to spare.

In all of the years that he served in his prison, Jeremy had no friends. He could not find a reason to make one. Kids came and went. Besides, none of them was kind to him. In many of them, he discovered the cruelty of man. Scar tissue covered his new flesh before he got to know it. The quiet ones saw what happened to him, but they could not show that they did. So he never bothered to know any of their names. Each scar reminded him that the only name worth remembering was his own.

The things he grew to understand made him bitter. He breathed in envy for the power and dominance of the ones who fed and clothed him. His head was filled with wrath for the self he could not change but was told to better. His belly was distended with greed for the things he could not have but was taught to need.

Alone, he spent most of his teen years in the home. At 17, the streets welcomed him to a brand new world that he had to adapt fast to survive in. Out there, he was a boy that no one knew, not even himself. He had nothing on him but a knife he stole from the orphanage kitchen and a bag of secondhand clothes that he hadn’t the money to wash.

Weeks of hunger passed. He sat by the side of the roads and waited for pennies. Sometimes, an elderly gentleman would spare him just enough for a snack. Most days, all he received was the mean gaze of sharp eyes upon his filth. The pockets of his torn jeans remained empty, save for the knife he spent his free time sharpening.

On the day he turned 18 and a half, he robbed a grocery store and made a clean escape in a stolen car. It was a job that didn’t need certificates that he didn’t have. All he needed was courage.

At 19, he no longer trembled as he moved on to empty bank vaults. It wasn’t always easy. What he took, lives and money, sustained his stomach and drained his soul. What else was he to do? It was the only way he knew how to live. Then came today when the 20-year-old man decided that he has had enough.

It is three in the afternoon. Standing under the scorching sun in the middle of the road, Jeremy stands in front of the bank, next to the fresh corpse of a young officer, who had tried to stop his only means to subsist.

“Drop your weapon to the floor!” the dead man’s colleagues are shouting at him.

“I never meant for this to happen,” Jeremy mumbles, not in reply, to no one in particular. “All I wanted was to live.”

His left fist still grips onto his trusty, rusty knife, now dripping with red. He wipes his tears and eyes the bloody notes that litter the ground, now far away from his reach. They amount to no more than hundreds. It was so much for so little.

He looks back at the red and blue lights flashing at him. In the midst of the blinding rays, he can see a few guns raised against him. A smile crawls across his lips as he realises, that it is easy. It has always been easy.

He finally drops the knife and with his now empty hand, reaches into his jacket. In a flash, he no longer stands. He is not a man anymore. Jeremy has become but a name for the body that now lies still in a pool of blood. There is a hole in his head, a few more in his body, and nothing in his jacket pockets.

No one knows why he did what he did. Bones and skin never can tell his side of the story. Man will never be defined by the lives they led, only the parts of them that can be seen. If only the man had known that before he decided to do it. All of it. Then again, would he have cared at all?

Body on the Streets © Brimstone Tales. All rights reserved. Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels.