A Beggar Lost

When she felt the touch of cold blade against her skin, she decided that it was time to end it all. For many a year she had roamed the streets of her neighborhood, looking for some shelter from the rain and the sun, in search of a man who would pay her well if she performed her services for them. But she was not desired. She weighed a mere sixty two pounds, a walking skeleton, her very foundation about to crumble to the ground. The legs that carried her anywhere she wanted as a child were now unable to support her weight. And eventually she fell to the ground beside a bookstore, unable to get back on her own two feet. Three years passed but she survived only through sheer willpower, by the occasional acts of kindness and hunting for scraps of food in the garbage bin. She remembered a time where she used to be sought after by men and women alike, but now they walked by as if she were another edition to the hectic background of city life. Yet somehow she managed to survive and never get sick. Somewhere, someone must have been looking out for her. She had no name for it, but she was sure that it existed, that one being who cared about her life.

One day as she was licking the bottom of a glass jar, wondering how she had reached this state, a strange man approached her. Years ago she would have stopped what she was doing lest the man made a snap judgment about her character, but now she was too tired and hungry to feel pride. Thus she stared at the man while she kept on licking, and the man stared right back at her, with a compassionate smile decorating his face. Suddenly, he knelt down and took out a napkin from his pocket and handed it to the woman. For a long time her best friend had been a trash can, yet now it seemed as if that position was about to be usurped by a stranger on his way to work. She took the napkin and put it down by her side. The man then got up, smiled, and walked away.

For days the same ritual repeated itself. Until one time, the man came to her in dismay and said, "Look, I have decided to leave all my earthly possessions behind. I need to leave this town, this place. I need...I need to go away, and I have decided to give all I have to you." Without waiting for a response, he took her hand and they ran toward his car, together, across the parking lot like two wretched souls being chased down by the devil himself. But before the tempter caught up with them, they were both in the man's car and on their way to his home.

After driving through streets with names she did not recognize and neighborhoods in which she had never lived, they arrived to the top of a hill, where the man's house was built upon a patch of grass. To an ordinary passerby from the surrounding neighborhoods, the house would have looked small, but to her, it was the biggest building she had ever laid eyes on. Her vision of the house became obscure after a few seconds, for she was unable to hold back the stream of tears that formed in her eyes and traveled down to her chin. So when the man asked her if she liked it, she merely nodded her head without turning around, for she could feel her sense of pride coming back to her, and she refused to have it tainted by letting the man see her tears. All she heard after that was a chuckle from her savior and the sound of his sandals slapping against the asphalt and the soles of his feet. Before she knew it, the man was gone, leaving her with his car, his house, and all of his earthly possessions, as he so eloquently put it.

It only took a few days for her initial excitement to subside and give way to a feeling of resentment. She was alone in a house that reeked of alcohol and sweat, and the smell lingered, never quiet knowing whether it should leave or stay. Then there was the problem of food. She emptied out the fridge within the first few days, and was now resorting to alcohol to fill her stomach. She searched the entire house for a full trash can to rummage through, but the man had left everything for her as if they had never been touched. After a while, however, her main concern was not food or water, but the perpetual sense of boredom that never seemed to go away. In fact, as the days of quietude went by, boredom seeped deeper and deeper into her bones. A sip of Jameson would have made her care less about her boredom, except all the bottles were now empty. She decided, therefore, to leave the house and head to a liquor store, using the money the man had left her to buy some medicine for the mind.

Soon the money started to dwindle, and she began to run out of things she could spend it on. One evening she sauntered onto the terrace, drunk, her face wet with tears, and began to think what to do with her time. For some indescribable reason, this thought made her even more upset, and she ended up going for a walk to clear her head. She left with no destination in her mind, but after hours of walking, she found herself back at the bookstore where she used to sit and thrive -or barely survive-on kindness handed to her out of obligation, and suddenly all her senses were crushed beneath the tyranny of nostalgia, and she sat back down beside the door of the bookstore, leaning against the glass wall. When she looked around to see whether she could spot a change in scenery, she realized that nothing had moved, not even the trash can. She looked at it and smiled. It felt comforting to be reunited with an old friend.

And she had forgotten what the touch of cold steel felt like against her cheek.