The sad tickets

Buster Scaler stood under a flickering light, in front of a grimy mirror. Left, and then right, his eyes noted cracks in white tiles. Below, the basin was the recipient of many unknown punishments. None of these eyesores, however, compared to his reflection.

An empty margarine container sat nearby on the toilet cistern. A rage of hunger then bellowed from his innards, and he stopped in thought.

“No wonder they avoid me. I look worse than a junkie.”

An image raced through his mind of how he had once appeared: short brown hair, excellent brown skin, not to mention a black suit. This ran in contrast to the ragged, long, greying hair, chiselled features and sunken eyes: the hallmark of malnutrition, starvation, and exposure to the elements. His observation may have been brutal, but it was accurate.

He wasn’t dead yet, no matter how battered he seemed. Luck could change. He had to get outside, in case he received enough money for a decent meal.

*

Buster had sat on the pavement with his margarine container open, for an hour. His legs were numb. His back ached.

His mind swirled from the one thing he had eaten in the past forty eight hours: a chocolate frog, left in the margarine tub minutes ago, by a girl. He would have been better off without it.

He had stared at it, ravenous, tormented by not knowing what to do until a voice inside whispered:

“Starvation will kill you faster than that thing.”

The voice had lied. The sugar raced through his fragile, empty body like poison.

He turned and struggled to his feet, his hand against a shop window. He pulled one leg up at a time. Then he winced, as his head spun again and bent over until his thoughts cleared enough to decide what to do next.

When he wasn’t in danger of falling over, he snatched the margarine tub from the ground.

He pulled it up and fingered the contents. There were small pieces of silver: five, ten and twenty cent pieces – not enough to buy anything. There were also cards: two for rehab centres, left by well meaning, but entirely wrong people. Buster had barely sipped alcohol, and never took drugs, but even if he was strung out, the crazy thing was that rehab centres cost thousands of dollars. As if anyone in his position could do that!

He now felt sick.

Beside the rehab cards were two scratch tickets from the Freedom lottery company, offering twenty thousand dollars in first prize.

“You were born to win,” the print gleamed below the Freedom trademark. “Start your dream today.”

“More like step into your nightmare,” he murmured to himself weakly. He could barely keep his eyes open. He stuffed the tickets into his back pocket. Any chance was better than none.

He began to shuffle towards his refuge in the park around the corner. The tickets were barely in his pocket and after dumping the rehab cards in the nearest bin, the scratch tickets hit the ground.

*

Freya Reynolds was racing back to work at the end of a fifteen minute break, when one of the local bums – a derelict she saw quite often – let two tickets fall from his pocket. Her fingers grabbed them automatically.

Part of her job was to constantly sweep, mop or pick up rubbish at the supermarket, and this had become second nature. Wherever she went, she found herself picking up rubbish.

“Not again,” she rebuffed herself for becoming robotic, but then saw the Freedom trademark, and within seconds, noticed they hadn’t been scratched.

A warm glow filtered through her body as she stuffed them into her breast pocket. This was the first time that her unthinking responses hadn’t made her curse herself.

An image of her manageress came to mind. This woman noted every lost second.

With a half finished coffee in one hand, Freya doubled her speed. She was due on the checkouts in two minutes.

*

An hour later, the whip was still being cracked. Freya had to race again – this time, for a toilet break. She remembered the tickets when she had sat down.

“Come on,” she pleaded silently, as her nails slashed the soft grey sections. She scratched the dollar sign first – the ticket was offering twenty thousand dollars – a good start! Then, she was spellbound; unable to breathe when she saw that three pictures were identical – three – definitely, exactly the same.

“Faaahk,” she gasped too loudly, even if still a whisper. She knew the manageress would be tapping her toes: you were supposed to piss in ten seconds, and wait with the other stuff until the shift ended.

The twenty thousand was hers, and her fingers scraped feverishly on the second ticket. There was no loss there. Not that it was a huge win, but the five bucks would pay for her next coffee.

Feeling the clock working demonically against her, she took a deep breath, and sighed.

The warm glow was beginning to fade.

Seven years. That was how long she had been stuck since the end of school. She had been waiting for a miracle, nearly that long, to get out of this cage. Now it had arrived, she felt confused.

The homeless guy flashed through her mind: always in red striped sneakers, torn on the sides with a drab blue shirt. He needed this more than her. At least she could eat and sleep safely – he had nothing, no one. The streets were a last resort.

He was desperate. Even if this money went into his veins, it wasn’t her place to decide.

She stood up with a tear forming, pulling her pants up; wishing she’d never seen him. Couldn’t she have just found the tickets? Then, she could get what she so deeply craved: a new life, but no.

Never.

Earning a frown when she returned, the manageress pointed at a vacant express checkout with five customers waiting.

The next two hours went in a blur. She faced the stern faces; never able to satisfy them, no matter how fast she moved or how hard she tried to smile through invisible tears. All the time, the twenty thousand dollar ticket tempted her to walk out and not return.

When the shift ended, she slunk lifelessly home to her bedsitter, four streets away; fell into bed and sobbed until morning.

Then, she was due back at work for another nine hours.

*

Several days later, Buster was on his back in a plantation of trees and shrubs in the park.

He was past hunger. On his last attempt to move, his legs had been so weak that he had barely made it back. When he wasn’t begging humanity for their small change, this was his sanctuary.

That time, of facing humanity, had passed forever. He glanced into the canopy of leaves with a sense of kinship.

“At least, you won’t turn me out,” he thought, inaccurately, for he was turned out when it rained. Admittedly, that wasn’t often, and then he slept at the bus stop.

Now thinking of this, flashes of the passengers came, with their disgusted faces, condemning him. Not a day passed without a derogatory comment:

“When are you going to clean yourself up?” or even better, “I’m not paying for your habit, mate.” There were variations on this theme, often with at least mildly caustic language. Maybe if his body was ravaged with chemicals, there could have been some sense, but no. Not even then.

How were they to know that hunger turned you into this?

“It’s their blessing,” he thought. They were lucky to not understand.

He didn’t wish this predicament on anybody, no matter how rude they were.

Anyhow, this no longer mattered. Nothing mattered. His angst dissipated and peace descended. Blue sky filtered through the leaves. A small kingfisher came low and glanced at him in contemplation, before cleaning a wing, and he smiled.

It was a perfect day. Not cold. Not hot: just a mild breeze to carry a soul away.

A feeling he had never known came from somewhere: above or below, it didn’t matter; and with a foreign sense of love he hadn’t breathed in years, he exhaled his final breath and closed his eyes.

*

Freya was returning home on her one day off, after meeting a friend at the movies. She hadn’t been there for years. It was meant to be a happy day.

An electric shock raged through her body when she peered through the bus window to see two ambulance workers, dragging a body onto a stretcher in the park. She saw red stripes on the sneaker, at the end of the stretcher.

She jumped up and ran to the doors before the bus stopped, and then raced towards them.

“Stop! Stop!” she cried.

Shaking his head, one of the paramedics raised an eyebrow, and then opened a small black notebook at the end of the stretcher.

“Did you know the deceased?”

“Not really,” she whimpered, “I’ve been searching for him. I have something...”

The man shook his head. The book had closed and he was already turning away.

“What happened?” she cried.

“Who knows?” he shrugged. “O.D. I guess. I was hoping you could tell us.”

Tears were racing down her face. All of the time she thought that if it weren’t for luck – anybody could be in this position. The world could be cruel.

She retreated to the nearest park bench, shaking.

The men pushed the stretcher, and within a minute they’d gone. It was as if nothing had happened. The area was sanitised. Death was invisible.

She sat in silence and stared. A homeless man, lingering in the periphery, did the same. Freya walked over to him.

The man made eye contact when she arrived, but then turned away, as if ashamed.

“Did you know him?” she whispered, with tears still running.

His head nodded. His face was wrinkled; leathery, but his hair was dark. He was younger than he looked.

“I thought I’d see him again,” she blurted, but then her eyes narrowed. “Do you know what killed him? Was it drugs?”

“Drugs! Ha!” the man laughed with sad irony. “Buster never touched drugs – like, never. Hunger: that’s all it was. Last time I spoke to him, he hadn’t eaten for a week.”

“A week? Oh, God! What about you?” she turned. “When did you last eat? Don’t tell me it’s a week, please!” But then she paused in shock.

“Oh, God!” she cried, out of breath. “Dying from starvation, here? What is that?”

The man paused, thinking.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “ I’m not too bad, but Buster wouldn’t touch bins ‘cause once it nearly killed him – bad food; pretty hard not to get sick, you know – but hey! I’ve got a great sense of smell. Haven’t been sick yet, but I could do with a meal all the same. In my position, I can’t say no.”

“Follow me,” she whimpered. “When we’ve eaten, I’ll tell you how I know Buster and we can work out what to do from there.”

They moved slowly towards her bedsitter. After two minutes she swung around and stopped, briefly alarming the man.

“Tell me,” she began. “Do you know many others like Buster and yourself around here?”

“For sure,” he spoke. “We don’t keep close together: police and council workers are a problem. Council workers are the pits for us.”

“Right,” she said, more brightly. “Well, I think I can help. I can’t do everything, but I can do something, and I swear, for as long as I can, I’m going to make damned certain that none of you starve again.”