Beau's Penury
Roland Johnston
Language Arts 8B
Ms. Reichardt
I rose from my bed, my feet one at a time touching the ground as I reached my arms above my head in a lengthy manner, easing the tensile force from my spine that came with sleeping. I started to walk and my thoughts were briskly becoming more and more distinguishable. With every stride my mind became less blurry.
I moved to my bathroom where I grabbed a toothbrush out of a stained cup. I washed the bristles with the orange-tinged tap water and applied a dollop of toothpaste before I thoroughly began to clean my teeth, every single one, gapped and rotten, a horrid sight I had to witness every morning. Every single day, I gandered into the wretched dirty mirror that displayed the crooked and debilitated teeth that belonged to my putred maw. I put the toothbrush down as I swished and gurgled the tawdry toothpaste with the swig of tap water that soon stirred to the sink. I steadily dressed myself, patched and sewn dark brown dirt-ridden jeans wrapped around my legs with a just as worn-down belt keeping them on. A holed T-Shirt with a foul miasma emitting from it due to my living conditions and passive impoverishment, exacerbated by the 3 years of my unemployment. I could not afford to go to the laundromat, nonetheless afford to own a washing machine.
When I finished putting on the most miserable clothes, I prepared myself food: A piece of steak that had been left in the fridge, but most likely left in the dumpster behind the restaurant I stole it from even longer, and a dry ladle scoop of instant potatoes. I forced the vulgar food down my throat with a sense of gratefulness that I got the chance to eat at all. The silverware set that I used to eat was bent, out of shape, and was also another scavenge from a heap of garbage. The keen contortion of a fork and a less than dull butter knife didn’t help me cut the steak at all. It was most likely the lack of nutrition and energy that made me too weak to cut the putrescent slab of meat as well. I had to rip it apart with my hands and gnaw like an inept savage pre-dating the stone age. My lunch ended abruptly to the sound of tumultuous knocking to my confined apartment room.
I wondered who would be knocking, I had no connection to any family members. My thoughts ended just like my lunch to the clamorous destruction on my door. I soon became more and more indignant to the irksome thumping. Finally, I wailed from ear-splitting great measures, “WHO IS IT!?”
Pieces of half-chewed food fell from my mouth, the knocking stopped. I was befuddled. I thought to myself that it’s probably just some juvenile making a ruckus of me. I angrily stomped to my door to which I looked around to unearth anything. At this point, I stopped over-analyzing and brushed it off.
A few days later, I repeated my dreadful and repulsive daily routine, but unexpectedly heard the knocking again. Just as loud, just as maddening. My mind had been clear for the past days, it had been simple again, but all of that is gone. I began to trudge to my door once again, rapidly this time in hopes I could catch the atrocious individual before they ran off. I flung the door open, eroding the already old hinges. I perched my head out of the doorway to unveil once again, nothing. This time I was simply said to be paranoid, I had no thoughts in my head except the wonder of who could be doing this to me, I was never a light-thinking person, it was hard to get something out of my head that kept me deluded.
A few months passed, and I had been kicked out of my flawed “home.” Now homeless, my already extended hoi polloi attributes had enlarged. I was living on the street. The only thing I liked about my new terrace environment was the newly brought in life-style of not owning a door. Nobody could knock to me anymore. The previously stated paranoid thinking stayed on my mind for a long while, but the loss of my apartment was more important at that point, so it was once again out of my head.
Passer-byers were also new to me, I had never truly been homeless, I sat on the street all day and the dirty looks that I received were less than maltreatment. A nasty look in all the pampered people that walked past me eyes notified me of nothing but guilt and disgust with my low life. I knew they all thought that I was an untended-to bum. I couldn’t opine anything except agreeing with them. It got later and later; many eyes passed onto me with judgement. It had become night, a pile of newspapers laid over my legs as I sat trying to rest. A stray dog had been in the dumpster a few feet away from me, gouging its canine trap with whatever came in its path. The mutt was loud, disruptive and repudiating to any amount of sleep I was trying to get. I eventually got fed up and called for it to come over. In a most bitter tone I said, “Over here, now!”
The dog whined in a questioning manner and I heard paws ambling loudly. It came closer, becoming more visible. Near face-to-face with the hound, I put my hand out, petting its wet and matted fur. It moved closer as it sat down by my feet, a new friend finally matching exactly what I was going through.
To the dog at my feet, I began to fall asleep much faster. But what seemed in almost an instant I woke up again, still dark, but the dog, gone. I looked around for it as I slowly raised my head. I saw a silhouette of a finely dressed man, a nougat, black, and red dress coat poured down from his shoulders to his legs, his hands in his pockets. He glared down on me as a king would glare down on a peasant. He then muttered out in a profound voice “What’s your name?”
To the question I answered quickly “Beau, why do you ask Sir?”
Before answering he stared me up and down, an innate judgmental look in his eyes progressed. “Beau, what are you doing out here on the streets, nothing to your name but newspapers and rags?”
Offended, I began to defend myself, “I just haven’t had the best money arrangements. Nothing to you really,” I exclaimed.
He looked at me with a sneer of malice. He stepped closer, slightly stooping down as he took one hand out of his pocket. The moonlight presented his two fingers with a fifty-dollar bill between them. He faintly waved it around in my face taunting me, he knew how necessitous I was. “Why don’t you get a job Beau?”
I remained silent looking at him with disbelief. He looked around as the dark shadows of the alley blackened parts of his face out. He put his hand out, this time the money in his palm, which he put to my grasp. A feeling of hope entered my consciousness. Every millisecond my hand gets closer to what would be a brief respite, to get real food, maybe real clothes, and ultimately an opportunity for an occupation. Being pulled out of poverty and my future life rushed through my head at what seemed light speed.
I crumpled the fifty-dollar bill into my stiff hand and watched as the light reflected from his other hand. A sharp object quickly laid into my gut; he had stabbed me. In utter confusion as to what was in my lower stomach, I began to choke on my own blood. It felt like my lungs were being squeezed and losing air. He stared at my lingering situation with a petrifying grin on his face. My hands covered my stomach, blood pouring through the slivers between my fingers onto the ground. He grinned further pushing the shiv deeper into my stomach, again and again in what felt like centuries of torment. He finally stopped as I fell on my back. He briskly walked away before I could even beg for help. There, I laid on the wet pavement and slowly was consumed by nothing but darkness.