Joey hunkered down in the corner of the heavily-graffitied bus shelter, trying to evade the spiny tentacles of the stiffening breeze blowing off the river Mersey and up the eponymous street that led from Otterspool Promenade onto the busy pavement-cracked main road.
Jealousy coiled its long yellow fingers around him, clutching at the frayed edges of his grungy army-surplus parka as he watched the rich folk in their fancy cars hurtling past him on their way back to the city, while a dull summer sun slipped slowly into the west, raising an ironic eyebrow and casting a rose-tinted light over the poverty-stricken suburbs and abandoned factories of the urban fringe.
Now fumbling his pockets for his last fag, Joey’s grubby nail-bitten fingers fell upon his latest treasure; a smile twitched about his lips, smoothing his habitual scowl and suggesting the possibility of a less desolate future for its twenty-something wearer. His latest jaunt down to the low-tide river, grubbing about among the detritus lodged in the sludgy mudflats, had yielded his best find yet.
He gripped the object tightly, a glimmer of hope kindling; he’d be popping around to visit Phil ‘The Fence’ tomorrow.
Perhaps, finally he’d hit the jackpot.
Written in response to two challenges:
Di of Pensitivity 101’s Wednesday’s Three Things Challenge: JACKPOT, JAUNT, JEALOUSY
Denise Farley of GirlieOnTheEdge’s Sunday’s Six Sentence Story Word Prompt: SHELTER
Photo credit: illustration from a book somewhere on my bookshelves which I cannot presently locate 😉
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