Review Summary: Just a taste of whats to come.
Some crack-addled homeless person came up to me in an alley and asked me for change. I could tell from the look in his eye he was not going to spend it on a hamburger down the road like he said he was. He was gonna spend it on crack. He was gonna collect it and run down to his homie Ford and buy a small ethereal crack rock and he was gonna smoke the *** out of it in his ramshackle crack pipe made from old industrial PVC and used foil. I told him I would not give him a single silver until he wanted help. He told me "Fine! Fine! Help me out man!, and got onto his cracked and blistered knees but he still had that deceitful look in his wreathed, dilated pupils. I was disappointed. He would say anything to get this change. A mere sliver of what he needed to gain his indulgence. "I'll do anything man. I'll do anything". He chanted again and again like a curse upon his world. As if I was a fleeting memory in a gossamer dream. He was depraved. I thought first of pity and then sadness. Not just for this young man in a dark spiral but his family as well. I started to walk away. I was held by a certain sound, it was cleansing and narrow. It marked me and caused me to turn back. He was crying, sobbing uncontrollable.
I stood here in this decrepit grimeway and saw the end of a man's being staring back at me. It seemed an eternity before he finally came to a point where he could speak again. "Please.. Please... Help me..." The words slowly drained from his cracked bloody mouth. I helped the man up and walked towards a overturned milk crates a few meters away by a dumpster. His legs were shaky and his feet seemed almost stuck at a angle. His cold blotched skin was ravaged by wounds, old and fresh and his hair was in thin layers and stuck together almost like a wafer. "I will help you" I said to him as his eyes darted around the alley trying to catch his surroundings. "But you will have to tell me. How did this begin?". His eyes narrowed as he focused at my face. Tears still slightly streaming against his carved cheeks. His scabs glistening in the wetness of his tears.
"My father.." He started to reel back. "My father was not a nice man...". He shifted and steadied himself on the crate. "About three years ago everything was going fine man." He paused for a moment as I pulled up another crate. "I had a decent part-time job at a local bakery. I was making enough to cover my room at my father's house and I could have fun with my friends." He slouched over and placed one hand on his scarred forehead, tears still dripping onto the grimy cobblestones of the alley. "Then I met her. Metilda was her name but she just went by meat for short. A old high-school nickname apparently." He shifted to his other arm. "We fell madly in love. We did everything together and we loved every moment of it." He reeled back again then slowly rested his hands on his lap. "She had her own issues though. She was into some bad stuff. She tried to hide it but I found out eventually. She couldn't hide the signs for long. It was almost over between us. I tried to get her help but she refused. Everything I did just seemed to push her farther down the hole. She was falling and she was doing it fast." He paused for a minute to catch a breath and seemed to recollect some thoughts. "I didn't want to lose her. I tried some of things and it didn't affect my life too much but there was a turning point.... At a party I found her in the back, hunched over and clearly incoherent but clearly having the time of her life. If wanted to be with her and I wanted to experience it with her. I asked our host what she had taken and I wanted some myself. He left for his room and came back about five minutes later. I was invited to partake in his closet where he had the whole thing set up." He seemed to relax after this, reliving his memories. It was a good ten minutes of silence before I spoke up. "Well what happened next?" I said softly. "What exactly happened and what was it?" He stopped and looked at me. His eyes welling up again. "It was the coolest thing I've ever done. It was Global Chernobyl."
