He turned around and tried to wrap the blankets around his body in his half-sleep. Many consider March to be warm, but it isn’t. Not when you’re sleeping outside, when you’ve eaten little, and when a completely different kind of cold is present every day: the cold in the hearts of those who walked past him, looked down on him, and showed him their disdain. Who made it clear to him day after day what he was to them. A dirty bum, someone who had failed in life. A parasite and superfluous. Someone nobody wanted.
Sometimes he still thought about why people reacted to him with hostility. He had envisioned his fate differently, but most of the time, he only responded with rejection. He had reached a point where self-pity no longer dominated his thoughts. People didn’t like him, and he had other concerns than dealing with the question of why. But this morning, he thought about it again. Why…
Yesterday, he had stayed in the city center; a shopping arcade with all the beautiful images advertising things he would never be able to afford in his life anyway. People like him weren’t welcome there. The stores’ security staff drove him away, as he might disturb customers with his presence or even steal some of the luxury that was otherwise sold at overpriced rates. And even if it wasn’t sold, most would rather throw it away than let someone benefit from it.
The police weren’t much better. Sure, there were friendly ones too, but most of the time, he preferred to avoid the helpers in green. For many, he was just a nuisance—or, albeit rarely, someone they could take their frustration out on. After all, who asks about a bum?
No. He didn’t like the city. He didn’t like the people. Sure, you could get something to eat quickly in the city, but cities? They’re friendly to you as long as you have money. If you don’t, you’re unwanted. The worst thing about the city, however, was the teenagers…
Of course, there were also others, those who—as he believed—wanted to prove something to themselves. How social they were. A few cents here, something warm to eat there, an attempt to have a conversation and figure out how he ended up in this situation… „must be good for grades when they hand in their school assignments,“ he thought to himself.
Then there were the others, just a few, but they were the worst. They beat up people like him, made a game out of destroying the little he owned, and took pleasure in his tears. They wanted him—the bum—to beg.
Not for money, but for mercy, which they wouldn’t grant him anyway. That, too, he had learned. You can’t touch beasts with tears…
Well, today he shouldn’t have to worry about that. The city administration had instructed the police once again to clear the “filth” from the city. For him and others like him, this meant an impending eviction. Probably some high-ranking guest was visiting and wasn’t supposed to be bothered by the sad truth. They were roughly rounded up, loaded into police buses, and dropped off a few kilometers away on a country road—there was no room on the bus for their „belongings.“ The city sanitation department “took care” of those.
He had painfully learned that lesson as well. When you’re a bum, nothing belongs to you. Anyone can take everything from you at any time, and there’s hardly anything you can do about it.
Many would walk back or head to another place. He stayed here for a while. His leg was troubling him—a wound and open sores that wouldn’t heal. He wasn’t in a hurry; he knew they’d drive him away again as long as the high-ranking guest was around. Besides, he had found an abandoned house. Moldy and with a collapsing roof, but he didn’t care. It was better than sleeping on the street. And so, he made himself as comfortable as possible in “his” dwelling and fell asleep.
He heard the loud, strange laughter and didn’t immediately realize in his half-sleep what was being laughed at. Based on the voices, he figured it was a group of teenagers likely skipping school, wanting to spend their conquered leisure time here smoking and joking. He became afraid!
What if they found him here?
How would they react if they discovered him?
In the city, he wasn’t welcome, but there were people. Not that anyone would intervene and help, but many were deterred by the presence of others to do things burning inside them. He wanted to reach for his knife and tuck it under his dirty jacket. Just in case. It was an old kitchen knife he’d once found in a heap of junk. He had never needed to use it; most of the time, waving it around was enough. God, he wouldn’t even have known where to stab. He wasn’t a stabber!
Then he remembered that this knife, along with his remaining possessions, was probably long gone, waiting to be incinerated or recycled along with the other trash.
He flinched in his corner as the shed door was slammed open with a loud crash. One of the boys had kicked it in, followed by four other figures silhouetted as dark shadows against the lit background of the door. He pressed deeper into his corner. Yes, these were the kinds of teenagers he feared. The kind of human beasts who vented their anger over supposed injustices by beating up people like him.
He knew he had no chance against these boys; there wasn’t even a stick nearby. Besides, they were a good forty years younger than him and, unlike himself, in very good physical condition. Athletic, well-fed, cleanly dressed, but their attire clearly marked them: bomber jackets, combat boots, and hairstyles that spoke volumes. He suspected they came from good families, and self-denial was foreign to them.
A lighter flickered on, and he heard the sound of beer bottles clinking together. They toasted, drank, and judging by the smell, smoked not just cigarettes. Their jokes were cruel, and their conversations revolved around how to best “score chicks,” beat up foreigners, or how their action heroes in movies staged massacres—and how cool they thought that was.
They bragged to each other; everyone wanted to be the baddest, the most violent, the one with the most girls. And the emptier the bottles got, the more excited their voices became, and the more outlandish their boasting became.
He remained silent and watched, trying not to make a sound. He curled up into a tiny ball, hoping the blanket hiding him wouldn’t start trembling from his fear.
Fear is something strangely sadistic. It has the ability to make time feel endless so that every thought, every sensation on the skin, is immensely intense. And it tightens one’s throat! Time seemed like an eternity to him, but it was probably just an hour or so.
One of the teenagers stood up and walked in his direction.
He fumbled with the zipper of his pants, intending to relieve himself in the exact corner where the homeless man was hiding. Well, he had been through worse, and what was another humiliation, as long as he could get out of here without serious injuries?
The teenager, no longer sober, noticed him, and the shock in the boy’s eyes was clearly visible. For a moment, there seemed to be some telepathic connection between the homeless man and the boy. How would he react? A spark of hope flared within him. Perhaps he would act as if he hadn’t seen him. Just turn around and leave? For the boy, this was an opportunity to prove something to his gang. However, standing opposite that was his fear of doing something he truly didn’t want to do.
The homeless man’s eyes pleaded with him not to betray him, and for a moment, it looked as though the boy would turn away and leave him in peace.
For a moment…
But then the desire for recognition within his gang grew stronger, and he kicked the homeless man hard in the stomach, roughly dragging the crumpling man out of his hiding spot by his dirty jacket.
„Look what I’ve found!“ The others turned toward him and saw how he dragged the filthy bum behind him.
They laughed, kicked him, insulted him, and made it clear that no matter where he was, he would always remain the unwanted, the outcast. He gave them what they wanted, begged for mercy, and cried as their feet struck him again and again, cried as their punches landed and when they spat in his face. He cried and thought back to a time when it wasn’t apparent that his life would fail so drastically.
He thought back to his parents, the things they had wished for his life, how he grew up and followed his dreams, how he married and was happy until an accident had ended his happiness and changed his life so drastically…
In his life, he had lost more than just his home — he thought back, let himself be carried away by his memories, until they drowned out the blows and insults and his consciousness slowly receded into the background. A tear rolled down his face as his awareness faded, and he began to fall into a dark, spinning abyss…
When he woke up groaning, there was a young man sitting beside him.
Not one of the attackers—they were long gone, having left him laughing in the dirt the way one leaves trash lying around. The young man carefully dabbed at his face with a damp cloth and tried to reposition him so he could lie more comfortably. The homeless man tried to speak, but the young man only raised a finger to his lips. It took some time before he had recovered enough to stand. His leg seemed to be broken; he wasn’t sure since it had already been a source of trouble before this. The young man noticed and supported him.
He brought the homeless man to his car and promised to help him. To take him to a hospital where they would take care of him. He would drive him himself, as it would take too long for an ambulance to arrive in this godforsaken place. Carefully, he placed the injured man in the back seat, got in, and drove off.
His weakened body, the soft seat, and the warm air blowing from the car’s heater made him drowsier and drowsier, and so he fell asleep.
When he woke again, kind, smiling people were caring for him. They took him to a clean room, gave him fresh clothes, good food, and helped him wash. One of the doctors said, „We’ll get your leg fixed. Don’t worry.“ The hospital’s social services team would also help him get back on his feet, and they would definitely try to track down people who knew him. Even if, at that moment, he thought this was just a well-meaning lie. His loved ones were either gone or already deceased.
Still: For the first time in a long while, he felt like a person again, and something within him understood that this time, he didn’t have to be afraid anymore…
When the young man’s car screeched into the emergency room driveway, panic set in. The poor soul on the back seat had stopped breathing after a raspy gasp. Paramedics and a doctor rushed to him, trying to resuscitate him even as they carried him inside, but it was futile: multiple fractures, a punctured lung, a ruptured spleen, internal bleeding, and his already weakened physical condition made any attempt at revival hopeless. He was gone.
The phone disappeared into a pocket—Detective Peters turned and left the hospital, fists clenched in his coat pockets. He was sad. Sad and furious that it was always the poorest and most innocent who suffered. Sure, he would do everything in his power to find those responsible, but the pattern was always the same.
At some point, something important would happen to someone „important,“ maybe a theft or blackmail, and this case would no longer matter. After all, it was just a homeless man beaten to death. But who really cared about the homeless in this society? Peters didn’t know what to do with his anger in such moments, but what could he do about it? He was just a pawn in this cruel game. That evening, he would drink himself into oblivion again. As he so often did, along with many of his colleagues.
They buried the homeless man in an unmarked pauper’s grave. Forgotten under a stone with no name. Only a cold wind blowing through the gravestones knows who he was. And that wind will someday take those responsible as well…