The Writer's Cafe discussion

this is a work in progress rough draft, I do realize there are many errors but I just thought I should share what I have so far for Vol 2, please share thoughts. also, strong language follows.

Eric Swenson walked under the downpour of rain with shoulders of slouched surrender. The weather had managed to waste away to complete and utter shit. If the weather-talking-evangelists on the window shopping T.Vs spoke a lick of truth, it was going to remain shit for the rest of the season. A wonderful time to be a bum; damn it all to hell.
His hands dug for warmth in the pockets of his outer most coat, and fingered the mountain of loose change. There here was his collected treasure of the day. All the sweat of a day’s begging and loitering. The entirety of loose change mounted to a glorious dollar sixty-five –the only silver pieces of the bunch being two measly nickels. You’ve got to love the public and their penchant for those in need. Such noticeable charity –or lack thereof- brought a swarm of grumbled swears from the already irritated Swenson.
It was not time to move onto step two of this daily puzzle of life he was still attempting to learn. Eric was now off to find a store that wouldn’t run his type out on sight. Once that was established, if it was established, he’d have to find someone willing enough to wait out the slow counting of pennies.
It was days like these, short of change, drenched past the three layers of clothing, pissed beyond all means and reason, that he loathed this newfound way of life. A homeless wreck tossed onto the streets against any will of their own. And yet, that wasn’t truly his case. For the once great Eric Swenson it had been a choice; albeit plan Z out of the whole alphabet, a choice is a choice. Such is the consequence of selling your soul, the thought with grim humor. That wasn’t exactly true either, at least not in any proper occult sense.
Part of the truth was he’d been a man of high importance. A scholar, an educated man with degrees that meant jack shit when you were the shit stain on a list of social order, a side thought even to the lowest of the low. He’d once been a man of expensive suits and priorities, not that it was believable anymore. A distant dream; a dream of eating the extravagant food of rich men, even if he didn’t like the taste of it.
Eric’s thoughts of a past life brought him to the corner of South Blvd, met by the roaring of late night traffic on one side, and dark silence of an alley on the other. He stared down that silence hallway of claustrophobic walls made of brick and floored with cracked cement that had seen better, cleaner days. This was the true low. A labyrinth of alleys that marched across through each crack and crevice of the cityscape, this was his home. On the plus side, it appeared to be dry. The buildings on either side looked to catch most of the rain by some miracle or magic of physics that he didn’t quite understand. Far as being homeless went, this was a good enough place to keep the nicer bums settled in for a few weeks, at least until the uniformed pigs decided to clean house. In which case they’d migrate to the next few blocks. It was a way of life for them.
His foot hovered off the floor in mid-step, debating whether to turn in for the night or to try his gone to hell luck at the string of convenience stores a block ahead. What to do, what to fucking do, he mused with a tired amusement for the variety of passing vehicles. He missed driving them around, though the gift to maneuver one had more than likely gone stale from lack of operating. The answer came quick and easily as soon as his thought had passed through his mind.
A car swerved purposefully across a nearby pothole, throwing a flood of bile filled water out and over the already drenched bum. Eric’s voice echoed with his greatest curses joined by a lone hand gesture pointing towards the sky, just begging to be struck down by lightning. “Keep driving you asshole! I got your fucking license plate number fucker!” He yelled just as the car swerved across the sidewalk on two of the four wheels. Within the next instant a pig’s red and blue lights flashed into chase. “That’s karma on my side. Ha!”
He turned into the alley, greeted with warmth and the smell of stuffed socks. The smell of home sweet home. Not only was the area dry and warm, but it entertained a peaceful homely quality that even a real home lacked. All he wished for now was a king-sized bed in which to play Rip Van Winkle. Perhaps things would be more easy, then again maybe not. But the thought was too pleasant to discard, and so played with it a moment longer.
The section of cement that was his room was further down towards the dead end –while most alleys connected to another hallway, this one only contained a small slit too small for most to fit- the nearest clump of neatly stacked cardboard and newspaper marking it like an X on a map. As he neared he saw a friendly face. His neighbor/moving buddy had finally turned in after several days of supposed disappearance. Seeing him there set him at ease, for a long while Eric feared something may have happened. Two things which were a new experience for him, feeling at ease at the sight of someone –a man no less- and fearing for the sake of another human being.
The person of interest was by no means a boy, but those that knew him well enough called him just that when his given name was at a loss. Those that were less kind to his faults called him the worst of insults, but those that knew him in a better and closer light were given the small honor of calling him Mickey. He however referred to his self as McVonHelson, a fantasy name for a man that lived in his own realm of the fantastique that seemed all too right for a child to create. For that is what Mickey truly was at heart, a child in the body of an aged and aging man.
Eric had made note of the grandfatherly man’s features, a habit hard to break after working with his fair share of questionable men in suits who adored using their poker faces. Unlike the likes of them, Mickey didn’t poker about. All that needed to deciphered was there plainly on his face; a secret door left wide open for all that cared to look.
He was well aged into the estimated seventies with looks that could close to that of a ninety year old man, attached to the mentality of a quiet five year old boy. Beard full grown to the curve of the navel –Eric had the unfortunate timing of catching him bathe in a canal in the outskirts of town. Mickey was a man in need of grooming, always followed by a dirty brown, despite the albino white of his natural flesh. He wore the same excessive amount of coats as Eric, each a certain color of tattered grey, topped off by a black beanie that was rumored to have been yellow.
The much younger and less grizzled Eric sat beside Mickey with a grunt of popping bones down along the side of the double walled apartment. “Enjoying the weather?” Despite the thick sarcasm, it was his chosen conversation starter that helped to bring a peaceful start to the business he ran within his University and one that he had a hard time retiring to that portion of his life.
“Guess so,” The voice was of higher pitch than one might expect from such a ravaged street veteran.
“What you eating there?” Eric’s gaze squinted to hard gaze towards the mouth of a very suspicious Mickey. He wasn’t a talker, but even then he wasn’t a mute. Two words were a dead giveaway to the man who studied people and their reactions.
“Burger,” simple as that. As though everyone of them ate something as grand as a burger each night in the comfort of their own alley. Eric felt-
“And where’d the bloody hell did you manage to get a God damned burger?” He wasn’t angry, not necessarily. Were he angry he would have let his voice be raised so the others could here, but he kept it at a whisper though sharp and slick with something more attuned to jealousy and hungry. Mostly hungry.
Mickey shrugged. “Found it.”
“Found it? Would you have happened to have found a spare? No, ‘course not. You’re a fucking kid with a fucking kid mentality. You’re more than likely to eat the damn thing before thinking to show it to you beyond starving neighbor. Damn as hell ridiculous, you know that? The whole thing is ridiculous.” The last part wasn’t directed at Mickey, but at the whole of the streets and the turn of his life, but the words still hurt.
Eric’s stomach grumbled in agreement as he kicked the floor in frustration. His back smacked the wall, unable to bring himself to look at the burger he faced away from the treacherous man-child.
So busy swearing his swears aimed at his miserable luck –he could never really bring his hate directly onto Mickey, it was a unique effect he had on Eric. And he hated it- he failed to notice Mickey reaching past the second layer of coating while whispering several lines of unintelligible gibberish. Out he pulled a neatly wrapped, still warm and quite fresh, burger.
“Friend.” He whispered loud enough so that words only reached Eric out of the other sleeping bums.
“What the hell you babbling on about now?” Eric turned to Mickey, and stared in disbelief, shattered by an overwhelming guilt that shot his throat with accusations. I’m a dick, he thought.
“Friend.” Mickey repeated, as to pin the hammer on the nail of Eric’s ever-so wrong ways. “Friends eat to-get-her.” With that said he placed the burger in the hands of his friend the way a dealer would slip drugs through a handshake. He smiled his childish smile, a wide show of missing teeth, rotted teeth, yellow teeth; despite the bad hygiene it failed to ruin any of the effect. He was a child, and one with a heart that was rarely –if ever- found on the streets. The smile was welcoming.
“Oh” All sense of complaint ceased; at a lost for any words that he may have said to any other person he merely say, “Oh.”
“Thank you.” It was a simple and short choice of words from Eric, but far more heartfelt than anything he’s said in such a long time. It was one that would settle him better than any burger could; although he still eagerly undid the wrap of his meal with the anxiety of a child on Christmas. “Friend.” He added with a now much more lubricated tongue, and smiled a cleaner smile of his own.
The two companions-now-friends ate in silence; their eyes keeping watch over the others as to make sure their meal went unnoticed. Eric took his bites in soft fingernail portions, savoring the glorious taste of professionally made, one hundred percent certified grease. The type of A-grade shit that would kill a lion of a heartache before its second serving. It managed a slight moan of Eric’s infatuated thoughts.
All the while, Mickey ate in two large bites.
While Eric ate he noticed a sweetness to his eyes, a soft glimmer from the city lights that just glistened along Mickey’s neck. Nothing too remarkable, but the shine still held his gaze. The chain was colored to look like gold, an obviously flawed fake; with a blood red gem generic in nature that was plain and quite truthfully ugly. Still his piercing blue eyes followed the swishing of the anchoring gem, the way an volunteered audience member would follow the watch of a hypnotist.
At last the only thing that remained in Eric’s hands was the wrapper of his meal, fingering the rough foil as to imagine the feel of the stone to his sense of touch.
Curiosity built within him and with it an urge to talk to the only soul to ever offer him something that was not a drug of some kind.
“So, Mickey,” he finally picked a topic from the bookshelf of his mind. The most clear one that just urged to be picked up. “Where’d you come by that?” He pointed his sharp nose towards the specimen of interest.
“Found it,” The man-child shrugged his uninterested shrug. He never was one of many words.
“Yeah? Same place you found our friendship?” Eric smiled at his jest, Mickey did not.

Yes,” It was like he was playing stupid –er- with such simple answers. Eric wouldn’t give however, he wanted to know. He needed to know.
“Where was that then?”
“Tumolt. Tumolt Bridge,”
A heartbeat’s silence
“New?”
“Old,”
There it was. The heart of the matter that Mickey avoided, the missing piece of the puzzle that had driven Eric’s gut-felt questioning. It was the sudden simplicity of truth that held him stunned, though. He wasn’t really too sure of what to make of it. Did Mickey understand the dangers of Tumolt? Or was he really stupid enough to not know the place by reputation? As well as why he even bothered to ask whether New or Old; both were as bad as the other no matter what people may say. Did Mickey realize that? It was Hell’s territory, the brick road of drugs, whores, and gangbangers, that led to the financial district –separated by a moat, a branch of the Rio Grande River that cut through the city. It was the rich men’s insurance to keep the low-life scum from invading the glory of their silver skyscraper metropolis.
But it was Old Tumolt that Mickey went through. Old, the worst of the worst. What the hell was Mickey thinking? It was death-fucking-wish valley. It was the sole reasoning for constructing New Tumolt Bridge a mile down from the original.
Eric turned his full frame towards Mickey; a changed in composure and tone were apparent the way a father would approach his troubled son, he spoke.
“Really? What were you doing there?”
In the tradition of childish misleading, “It’s fake.”
It wasn’t a distraction he’d take so easily but to ignore it would not do any good either. “I can tell. Cheap fake too. Now tell me what exactly you were doing at Tumolt Bridge.” Silence. “Did you get lost? It’s a big city, I’d understand if you got lost.”
“It’s mine,” Mickey’s lower lip quivered before being sucked in, creating an awkward look of constipation mixed with anger. His eyes burned a hole into the wall opposite him, avoiding Eric’s. “Mine.”
“Wha-“ His stomach knotted in a seething shame. “I’m no thief.” He whispered low, biting his tongue to keep back the scathing insults that were building up. “I am many thing, a lot of nasty things. But I am no thief.” And yet, while the interrogation had gone, he never looked away from the chain. Reaching for it, he took hold before Mickey could pull away.
The wrongs of his past were brought back to the tips of his red-stained fingertips, swelling animosity of the Scholar’s nature, but none were of thieving. Yet here he sat, chain in his grasp, and he wanted it. He wanted to take it. An abrupt impulse returned to the tips of his fingers, an all too familiar sensation that drove a sickly chill down his spine. Murder. It spelt.
It was there in his hands. Begging to be taken, snatched and run, find a new alley to call home. It was a simple plan, simpler impulse. “Don’t let anyone see it.” Eric’s hands worked around the chain, hiding it within the confines of Mickey’s inner collar until it was secure without the risk of being seen. “They’ll steal it. They’re thieves.” It wasn’t much of a mystery as to who they were, the inhabitants of the alley weren’t fine men with sour luck. Each had their own sin, and their own lows.
At last Eric released the chain and wiped his hands on Mickey’s grime, much preferring that than the ill feeling of the trinket.
“Mickey nodded with a sulking glance. “I’m sorry.” Surrender at last, the thoughts of victory cleansed the inner turmoil from Eric’s emotions. His past long forgotten once more.
“It’s okay. Just stay safe, and way from Tumolt.” He spoke quietly and reassuringly, “It’s a hell of a dangerous place, if you have to go to the financial district go the long route, New. Dealers and bangers rule the area, but they’ve yet to migrate that far North. Not yet at least.” The lecture –flowing in one ear and out the other- was more for the benefit of Eric. It was reminder for him, Tumolt was no place for an scholar on the run.
The conversation ended in agreement, flowing to an exchange of grunts and nods.
Night had snuck swiftly from under the drained rainclouds, followed by the not so discreet act of Mickey cuddling up against his neighbor. The moment was a surprise, eyed by several who were still awake. There would be talk in the morning, suspicious glances, and hints at homosexuality. The act, however, was more child and father, and it further eased Eric.
Eric had never been a man of family dreams, too engrossed in his work, using the excuse that his work was far too dangerous to have a family take a blow. Truth was, he just never had an urge for family. Excess baggage in an already content life, but with Mickey the elderly little boy on his lap, the thought sparkled with a sort of glamour. It was now a quite pleasant thought. If things ever go back to normal, I may just adopt, he thought with a broad smile on his lips.
As the night went on, he began to think more on the thought of family. Beginning to long for the feel of being tied to someone. Perhaps a son, a miniature of Mickey of course, a fair enough wife –to dream of a model seemed to push the thought into the realms of fantasy- with a fake disgusting red jewel around her neck.
The sudden thought of such a disturbing trinket surprised him. He wasn’t a man to find bliss in jewels or money, especially not something of such fake and horrid presence. Yet here it was within his mind, rattling for attention.
Gone were the images of a cheap, normal house with a faded white picket fence –all the signs of a moderately surviving household- replaced by a greed. Mickey’s special fake necklace the he discovered at Tumolt Bridge. Were there more there? He wondered. He pondered and pondered on the existence of more.
Eric spied down onto his sleeping friend who curled at his lap, and saw a glimmer of its gold peeking its way from out his collar. It was nothing to catch the attention of any self-respecting jeweler, but to him it called. A voice, cool and crooked, coaxed his slipping conscious. Take it, it whispered. It’s yours to take, you deserve it.
It was a seductive voice with words of a male mistress –for the voice was of gruff male inheritance. Eric reached down with a slow hand of a smooth criminal, a smooth thief. The further down he reached, almost upon the neck of his friend, he felt a watchful shiver grip his chest. His hair stood on ends, blood froze in his veins, and his eyes widened.
A stranger’s eyes were about, none that he could see, but they were there. Somewhere in the darkness towards the large crack on the dead-end, away from the sleeping other, it watched him from the shadows. Eric searched the darkness as conspicuously as he could, but the shadows were far too thick to see through. After a moment of spying, he felt the eyes leave and a sense of relief followed. It took several more moments to convince himself that it was merely gift for feeling the way he did.
His hands drew up under the pits of his arms, turned his gaze towards the sky, and searched for sleep.

It smelt slumbering flesh, –the smell of foul sweat, pouring out the remainder of liquor and sin- reveled in Its simplicity, a thin strand of milky appetite locked away in each men. It began to salivate. Its body hung low to the ground of Its perch, hiding within the birth of shadows, a child in a womb. A very old child, It purred a chuckle. It hungered for its morsel, the half-retard. Days following him, days luring him into its arms, It wanted him now. But it held back, the fun was in the wait, in the game, and the longer it waited the more it fermented.
It too was close to sleep, Its link to the prey affecting Its sleeping schedule. The senses perked up as It felt a new set of eyes wash over the bait. A smile formed as best a smile could on such a creature. The scent was new. It was that of a liar, of corruption, greed, hate. So much raw unfiltered chaos sweated from this stranger’s pits. Two for the price of one, It thought. Him and the imbecile, two ends of a spectrum made for such a delectable meal.
A grin spread and felt for the mind of the fool; there was potential within such to make use of both meals to be. As it felt along his mind it saw the locked door in which all the emotions were stored. No good, It needed that door opened.
It felt for the retard, touching upon the tightly screwed mind, meant to keep back words despite the barrage that waited wanting to be spilled. It turned the dial of Mickey’s tongue, loosening it enough so that the words would flow much easier. Such fun in the hunt.