Ham and Eggs

   Anywhere will do if one wishes to escape the rain. When old Jack Frost comes stirring down the warm streets wrapped in a plastic gasp; all trench coat and trilby, any old place will most probably do.

   The dulcet tones of the blue hour became ripened by the weary moon, who still hung cold upon the crisp morning air; slowly evaporating like a ghost. Stars, their infinite possibilities, extinguished and wearing the smoggy mask of the incoming storm. No Moth at this hour was to be driven demented by their twinkling temptation.

   Daniel Robbins stumbled along the pavement, drenched in a feeling of stale intoxication lingering as a silhouette of the previous night's arrangement. His eyes milk white and heavy, the sharp tinge of liquor still haunting his breath. Spitting involuntarily, he instinctively attempted to rid himself of the sour film that had stretched itself like plasm around his dry tongue.

   In the haze of fathomlessness, there is nothing that outstrips the feverish junkie hunger for animal fat and grease.

   Chapel Street was quiet, the shutdown forcing those most vulnerable to barricade themselves behind front doors, the post flaps nailed down. This however, did not deter Daniel as he prowled the streets like a beggarly fox to quench his craving stomach, empty but for the alcohol as it was. He imagined it fermenting within the inside of himself, causing him to lower himself down to the drain to vomit. His wrenching clawed at the walls of his throat, the stale beers burning like acid all the way back up.

   Wiping his chin with his bare hand, then wiping down the side of his jacket, he caught sight of a woman staring from the window opposite. She mirrored the commercial image of the all doing, all knowing house wife. Her face was gentle and bearing a warmth he had not experienced since the beginning of the quarantine. Her motherly frump was pressed against the window sill as she swept a duster in and between the pretty porcelain ladies who stood with proud heads and draped in lavish dresses along the sill. She reminded him of his own mother.

   Until he met the cold, disapproving stare as blank as a stone. Tugging the drapes across swiftly, she cast him out into the cold.

   He took the opportunity to cross to the other side of the road, when a car right on out of the blue exploded passed, nearly knocking him from his feet. He yelled and clenched his fist, but the car had gone.

   The darkness had barely lifted, and what with the state of the world he couldn't blame her hasty way of dispelling him from her day. He stared up at the gathering blotches of purple that thickened, became deeper with the gathering wind. So dark and alien the sky, it seemed as though no light would ever pierce its melancholic shawl, not even under the rigid influence of time.

   Rows upon rows of modest business establishments were sealed shut, their fruitless wares putrefying upon the shelves, abandoned sales pitches were dotted between the entrances, gruesome, stinking birds stripped naked, lying pallid upon the roughly cut cardboard sheets, abandoned and free to those who could stomach it.

   Ravenous as he was, he considered diving right in, right there upon the pavement. Some flicker of humanity still left within him however, discouraged it. The dark street, absent of all animation but for Daniel, formed the perfect encapsulate for dark deeds to be performed but this most certainly wasn't the intention that drove him out of his confinement. His was to rid himself of the weakness he felt in his watery joints, to soak up the splitting migraine that was now beginning to reach behind the eyes. His was propelled with the gut wrenching primal instinct of filling one's stomach.

   As he approached the end of the road, it harshly snaked right forming a horse shoe back in upon itself, and on the sharp end of this corner a despondent yellow glow poured from the Café windows like wine.