43rd Street

A Story by thepoetinside

this is entirely fiction. i hope.

When I was young, I lived in the city. The city was a peculiar place where the poor starved yet the rich were obese. Very little physically separated the rich from the poor and it really only boiled down to one street; 43rd Street. It was the metaphorical tracks that divide every town into a good side and a wrong side. It was the street I called home.

43rd Street was otherwise insignificant. Down the street was a hotdog stand which stood next to a boarded up salon, which stood next to perhaps the most popular bar in town. It was as if someone took sections of the towns center and spliced it with the towns slums. I remember very little about my home or friends from that time, just the feelings they enticed and the scents that accompanied them. Despite all this, there is one day on 43rd Street that I will never forget; the day a man died in front of me.

I was behind my house one evening playing marbles, or perhaps chasing fireflies, I really can't remember, when I heard an inhuman sound come from a distant alleyway. My childhood wonder seized hold of me and I walked over to the source of the noise. As I drew closer I heard scratches and growling. I imagined it was a dragon, but I knew that it had to be one of the countless stray dogs that had probably found a nice bone or something to chew on.

Sure enough, when I peered around the corner, I saw an enormous dog devouring a long, skinny femur from some animal, perhaps a deer. It had already chewed the bone in half and was practically inhaling the smaller section of the two. I watched it for almost two minutes when finally a garbage truck turned down the street and the dog was spooked and ran off. After I decided that the dog wouldn't be back for a while, I decided to investigate what was left of the bones. They were unlike any I had ever seen. There was still flesh attached to it in some places but was otherwise bare. Tattered cloth lay strewn across the ground. Then as I approached the remains, I found him.

Barely alive, barely clothed, but there sat what could only be described as a skeleton of a man, propped against the wall with his eyes all but closed, somewhat concealed behind a trash can. This man was so skinny you could have counted every bone in his body. This lead me to my next observation. He was missing a leg. It was to my horror when I realized that a trail of blood tracked from his open wound to the remains of what was once human on the other side of the alley. The dog had been eating him alive.

This man had gone so long without eating that the only sign of life coming from his corner of the alley, was his heart, clearly beating through his chest. And it was beating excruciatingly slow. Blood no longer poured from his wounds and I do not know if it was because he had been there so long or if he had no more blood to bleed; nothing more to give this world. I also don't know if he knew I was there watching him in this broken and fragile state. There is one thing I do know, however, and it's that I watched perhaps the last ten seconds of his life. Ten seconds that stretched into an eternity. His chest hadn't moved once since the moment I first saw him, so I know I didn't see his last breath or hear his last words, but I watched as his heart beat it's final three thumps.

One. Two. Three. And it stopped. Both of ours did. The whole world did.

I do not know what his name was or where he came from, nor do I know if the dog ever returned for him. I do not know if he was ever found, or if he ever received a decent burial. I don't know if anyone went looking for him. There is so much I don't know. This is because after I saw the man die, I ran. I ran and ran and I never looked back. I never revisited that day in my mind, never intentionally. I never ventured down that alley way ever again. I never told my mom what my nightmares were about. I never touched a stray animal again. I never told the authorities what I saw. And most importantly, I still have never stopped seeing him when I close my eyes.

One part of the story I left out though, because it pains me more than the death of the starving man itself. It was on my way home that night, after I stopped running. As I passed the hotdog stand, I watched a man buy a hotdog, and drop half of it into the first trash can without a second thought. If only I could share with him the irony.