Hobos and Aleins

This is a little intro I wrote purely for practice' sake. I'm brand new to writing but I felt this would give people a feel for my style. Feel free to Criticize.

The night, like every other night was cold and unforgiving to those who had no place to go in Boston. Greg was wrapped up in a puke stained blanket that had been practically rotting for the past six days since he’d found it abandoned in the street as refuse. Aside from his own untrimmed hair, this was all he had to shield himself from the relentless attacks of the dispassionate creature he’d long ago as a civilized man called the wind. Every day was a fight for survival. Greg couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to crawl into a soft bed in a room heated and seemingly protected from the world’s cruelty which now invaded his every waking moment. In fact it had been so long that Greg had only a vague idea of what he’d once been. Something to do with… Time had eaten away at his memory, he’d become sentimental to the simplest things. This is why a putrefied excuse for a blanket was like a hot shower after coming in from the cold.

Aside from the blanket, the day had been particularly bad. A group of thugs had in their words “taught the old man an important lesson”. Greg had been scavenging for lunch in a public garbage dump that apparently sat too close to their territory. He’d survived the beating but only had enough strength to crawl back to his little corner behind an old shoe store which he called home. He missed lunch and dinner.

Consciousness was now in question, his vision fazing from a view of the stars to darkness. Both seemed so similar that he no longer knew whether the specks were real or phosphine he was hallucinating. It was one of those nights where he didn’t mind the idea of not waking up in the morning. He began to notice one of the illuminated splotches begin to grow bigger. It had to be his closed eyes for sure… and yet it grew bigger. Suddenly the light was blinding and there was a loud crash. His eyes slowly readjusted, then everything was clear. Greg could not believe what he was seeing. There was a chunk of the building directly behind the shoe store missing. In the adjacent alleyway he could make out an inhuman shadow creeping away from what appeared to be the sight of some sort of wreck.

Greg felt sure he was dreaming and yet that horrible icy pain he was always able to escape in his dreams was still penetrating his worn undershirt. Despite his serious dehydration, sweat was forming on his temples. He stood up with an energy he hadn’t felt in years and without delay he fled from the scene of the impossible anomaly. When he reached the nearest police station no one believed him. They threw him back out on the street. Greg laughed at his own gullibility. He didn’t even bother to try to convince anyone else. Of course no one was going to believe a homeless man.

Greg walked back to his spot behind the shoe store. The energy that had seemingly cured him of his injuries was now gone. As he approached his haven of newspapers and cardboard he wasn’t surprised to find that the building behind the shoe store was perfectly intact and there were no signs of any crash whatsoever in the adjacent alleyway. Even though Greg knew he wasn’t asleep the events of the night were no more than a dream to him. He crawled back into his makeshift bed and fell asleep with surprising ease. The cold that before had stabbed at him constantly was now gone. Driven away as if fearful of a presence even crueler than its own.