Rain drizzled cold.
J.T. lay inside the sanctuary underpass of Interstate 5, where the landscape turned from the forgotten gentrification of Seattle's south-side industrial blocks to the gloomy neglected brambles climbing the hillsides above the Rainer Brewery.
Cars streamed by above, bellows of mist blowing, swirling around, over, and under, underneath to settle suspended, damping the air like a giant dirty humidifier. The arterial streets at the bottom of the hill, empty now on a late Sunday afternoon, stared back up at the homeless man, head cocked against the cold grey cement, weathered and cracked.
His eyes looked out duly from his own weathered face. There was an emptiness as deep and ancient as the glaciers which had ground the Puget Sound. And, being October, just as cold. As cold. Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold. Coldness. The cold. Cold. Those were J.T.'s thoughts. That and the memory of the school shooting. Years ago today. It was everyday, but especially today.
It was a cold anniversary. He turned over on his stained blanket, looked away from the motionless streets, and realized he had been shivering for some time. He didn't think much about it, he had shivered before. What he did think about was the massacre. Massacre. An indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people. He didn't notice the shivering as much when he thought of... massacre. Massacre; to deliberately and violently kill a large number of people. Fifteen wasn't a large number he told himself. Ten wasn't a large number. One. two. three. four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Ten began to seem like a very large number. Fifteen seemed like an impossibly large number. One seemed like an impossibly lonely number.
He recalled a time when people had given pitied glances in his direction, sometimes even a dollar intended to mend his threadbare jacket or give him a bite to eat. A small gesture of kindness. He hadn't wanted kindness then. Sometimes he had wanted food, but even more on his pyramid of needs was being drunk. Really, any drug would help but alcohol was the easiest, quickest, safest to attain. Maslow had forgotten that need on his hierarchy, even more basic, more necessary than safety, belonging, love... esteem. He looked at the empty pint... it was... he wasn't sure... he was satisfied that he wasn't shivering any longer.
There was a time his torment seemed unendurable. It was all the time. He reminded himself he had endured, he had survived, if only by the most technical of definitions of the word. He enjoyed knowing the definitions of words, but today he kept confusing them, forgetting them. He remembered survive. Survive; to continue to live or exist, especially in spite of danger or hardship. The example had read, "against all odds the child survived".
To continue to live or exist. To live is to remain alive; exist is to have life. Or, maybe it was the other way around. He remembered existing on the streets when human beings would at least recognize him as a fellow human. He remembered when they gave glances, when they cared. Looks of concern and sometimes, in the rare angel, recognition that existence should be something more that just remaining alive.
In J.T.'s eyes shone an emptiness, a place where a soul should have been, a mirror without reflection. At some point he had only become the shell of a human and people stopped looking, or looked with some combination of hostility and disgust, and if the occasional empath held his eyes... it was too difficult for them to hold that stare. He thought he might be being dramatic again. With difficulty he stood up slowly, weakly, and hobbled out into the dampness, feebly yelling up toward the guardrail of the northbound lanes in a slurred voice, toward the vibrating, muffled and splashy hum... he cleared his throat and croaked, "another... beautiful fucking day in paradise".
He gave himself one chuckle, not so much for appreciation of his private joke, but because it seemed necessary after breaking the silence of the highway. Breaking the silence of the highway he thought and found the phrase much funnier than it should be. He chuckled again, quietly and authentically. Then he sat down and began crying. He longed to have someone hold his stare again. To listen to him. He hated the pity but he hated the loneliness more. He hated the cold and he also hated the loneliness, but they helped him almost as much as the drugs. He could focus on the pain so directly, and it was a suffering he could at least rationalize deserving.
He continued crying. He was tired. He was cold. His cold was life, the loneliness was death. Death. Cold. Cold as Death. He couldn't remember if that was a simile or metaphor. He couldn't look it up because his phone had died that morning. He couldn't even call anyone to help. Do you want to call a life-line as they say on that show... who wants to be a billionaire. A lifeline. He didn't have anyone to call and he didn't want to call anyone anyway. Nine One One he heard a voice in his mind say. He laughed with real energy this time. Mucus ran from his nose into his mouth. He spit. At least he tried to spit. He cried more and slowly curled back into his soaked army surplus blanket. He fumbled at making his hands pull the blanket over.
J.T. lay inside the cement sanctuary underpass of Interstate 5. Every few minutes a series of large trucks would rumble overhead. He knew they didn't see him. He burrowed deeper under his blanket, not that it was possible but he tried. J.T. curled up and screamed, he felt again the bullet burn through his arm, heard the screams, lived that day once again. He wanted to know where the screams had come from. The screams were covered in blood. He wanted to know if he was covered in blood. The screams were just empty echoes against the underpass, and the blood was just dirt in the fading greyness of the light.
He stopped crying. The pint had only helped the hypothermia, but it wasn't either that killed him. The rain drizzled cold and lonely as J.T.'s heart stopped beating. J.T. lay inside the cemetery underpass of Interstate 5, forgotten beside the gloomy neglected brambles climbing the hillsides.
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