The man in the red car [Complete]

1.

Kong pulled the lapels of his jacket a little higher, snuggled in a little more into himself as the cool breeze hit him suddenly. The weather was getting colder by the day. Especially in those early hours before the rays of the sun began warming the ground around him. The thin sheet of plastic doing very little to prevent the chill seeping into his body.

Kong slowly opened his eyes into the pitch darkness. His body not ready to wake up just yet, but the shivering not allowing him the comfort of sleep anymore. He pressed his back further against the solid brick wall as he let out a sigh and rubbed the last remnants of drowsiness from his eyes as he tried to guess the time.

Around 3 perhaps? The sky seemed a little too dark for dawn to be just around the corner, but with the thick layer of clouds that has been hanging menacingly overhead for a few days now it was really hard to say.

Another sigh was snatched out of Kong as he pondered at the sky some more. If the clouds didn't clear up soon a little bit of cold was going to be the least of his problems. In the three years since he had been living on the streets he had definitely learnt the hard way that the biggest challenge of his life would be to fight for shelter when the freezing rain came pouring down on them. A fight that he seldom won.

Kong pushed his lean body up from the ragged ground and neatly wrapped up the plastic he has used as his makeshift bed for close to a year now. Walking over to the large dumpster and stuffing it safely behind it. Concealing it perfectly along with some his other most prized possessions. Actually, his only possessions. A match box, a bottle of alcohol that still had a couple of sips left for those insanely cold nights, a frying pan in hopes of someday eating a hot meal, an extra shirt he had randomly found drifting around in the wind, a left shoe, and above all a knife for...well that doesn't really need to be explained. And he would really prefer it to not have them stolen from him any time soon.

Thankfully, in the seven months he has found this particular alley to come hangout at night he had encountered surprisingly few troubles. Maybe once in a while a bunch of druggies would take over his haven and Kong would have to find somewhere else to spend the night but all in all even the homeless avoided the tiny alcove between the abandoned buildings which was drowning in hundreds of trashcans. Which suited Kong perfectly. What was a little bad smell when it came to being safe right? Especially with the genius move of sort of adopting a few stray cats, he hadn't worried about rats gnawing at him in his sleep for ages.

The added bonus of the alley being only a short walk away from the tiny stream which surely had to be stuffed with all sort of chemicals cause why else was it always warm even on a freezing night. But obviously Kong couldn't give a damn cause water is after all water. And there is nothing better in this whole wide world than washing away the grime from your stinking body. Which was especially important when it was yet another day of going job hunting.

And to be completely fair that was definitely a close second on the difficulty scale to rainy nights. Cause no one really wants to employ a homeless man. Or boy rather. What does a 19 year old qualify as anyway? Too old to be in any juvie centers, too young to be taken seriously for any actual jobs. And apparently too clean to be considered a beggar.

Not that Kong particularly liked begging anyway. It was just not something he was very good at. He was too shy, too embarrassed, and a little too self-conscious to spread his hands in front of anyone. Which basically left him either hoping to snap some sort of a day labor gig or if all else failed scavenge around among the hundreds of dumpsters for anything edible. Some days he got lucky, others not so much. Hunger, along with the chill of the night, had become a companion Kong was only too familiar with.

But then every once in a while, fate would smile down on him. Like today, when he had not only found a job first thing in the morning to help a lovely family move furniture, they had also fed him multiple times along with paying him much more than he had ever anticipated. And to top it all, the father had given him his old jacket he was about to throw out.