Giz a light
“Giz a light”, the tramp drawled.
He held a crumpled roll-up in his swollen, shaking fingers. They were a nasty claret shade, pockmarked with puncture scars almost everywhere. Yellow fingernails were chewed almost all the way to scabby cuticles.
Collapsed in a corner of the bus shelter, he was wrapped in a broadsheet-padded collection of threadbare suits, all torn up, button-burst and unmentionably stained. He seemed harmless enough.
The lad in the hoodie shuffled closer and stretched out his arm, offering his fresh Marlboro as if fearing ignition of the stench billowing from his happenstance late-night companion.
The tramp looked up with a wobbly smile. That swollen, lumpy face had taken far too many beatings. His boxer’s nose was crusted with scars, as were the bags beneath rheumy eyes and his silver-stubbled, pus-erupting chin. The loose, flappy skin of his purple neck was festooned with suppurating craters in a cynical necklace. The flickering streetlight opposite gave him a morbidly yellow hue.
“Ta, mate,” he croaked. He lifted the Marlboro from the lad’s fingers with a gesture so bizarrely graceful despite the stiffness of his ruptured joints that hoodie-boy had to stare in wonder. The glowing tip of the cigarette met the scraggly end of the roll-up without any sign of the trembling that had first beckoned for attention.
The tip bloomed as the tramp drew in a rattling breath. One long draught consumed the entire cigarette. Its ashen memory bowed and then dropped away in a slow, dainty shower of grey.
The lad stared at his vanished fag, his face contorted half-way between outrage and shock. No sound escaped his lips, for he had become as pale and as flaky as the wreckage from a tab-end. Then, slowly and with the same floating grace, he crumbled inwards and folded upon himself to the ground, grey dust billowing out of puppet-like sleeves and from the ends of many-jointed trouser legs. The face was the last to dissipate before the skull rolled from the shapeless hoodie, cracking and crumbling as it lurched towards the tramp’s feet, until it was no more than a trail of sand already smeared across the pavement by a chill night breeze.
The tramp jumped to his feet, young once more. Fit, lithe and unspolit, he shucked off his stinking layers of clothing and quickly pulled on the lad’s designer togs, shaking a leg to cast out the last of the ash, before running off into the night with a peal of wild laughter.
He held a crumpled roll-up in his swollen, shaking fingers. They were a nasty claret shade, pockmarked with puncture scars almost everywhere. Yellow fingernails were chewed almost all the way to scabby cuticles.
Collapsed in a corner of the bus shelter, he was wrapped in a broadsheet-padded collection of threadbare suits, all torn up, button-burst and unmentionably stained. He seemed harmless enough.
The lad in the hoodie shuffled closer and stretched out his arm, offering his fresh Marlboro as if fearing ignition of the stench billowing from his happenstance late-night companion.
The tramp looked up with a wobbly smile. That swollen, lumpy face had taken far too many beatings. His boxer’s nose was crusted with scars, as were the bags beneath rheumy eyes and his silver-stubbled, pus-erupting chin. The loose, flappy skin of his purple neck was festooned with suppurating craters in a cynical necklace. The flickering streetlight opposite gave him a morbidly yellow hue.
“Ta, mate,” he croaked. He lifted the Marlboro from the lad’s fingers with a gesture so bizarrely graceful despite the stiffness of his ruptured joints that hoodie-boy had to stare in wonder. The glowing tip of the cigarette met the scraggly end of the roll-up without any sign of the trembling that had first beckoned for attention.
The tip bloomed as the tramp drew in a rattling breath. One long draught consumed the entire cigarette. Its ashen memory bowed and then dropped away in a slow, dainty shower of grey.
The lad stared at his vanished fag, his face contorted half-way between outrage and shock. No sound escaped his lips, for he had become as pale and as flaky as the wreckage from a tab-end. Then, slowly and with the same floating grace, he crumbled inwards and folded upon himself to the ground, grey dust billowing out of puppet-like sleeves and from the ends of many-jointed trouser legs. The face was the last to dissipate before the skull rolled from the shapeless hoodie, cracking and crumbling as it lurched towards the tramp’s feet, until it was no more than a trail of sand already smeared across the pavement by a chill night breeze.
The tramp jumped to his feet, young once more. Fit, lithe and unspolit, he shucked off his stinking layers of clothing and quickly pulled on the lad’s designer togs, shaking a leg to cast out the last of the ash, before running off into the night with a peal of wild laughter.
Originally published here: http://www.authonomy.com/forums/threads/85238/fff-october-7-2011/?pagenumber=3
