If there's one thing people can agree on, it’s that falling into a life that makes you bitter, numb and completely miserable is both a very easy and a very terrible thing to do. Whether it’s eating unhealthy food, drinking, taking drugs, gambling, sitting on your ass doing nothing or working a job you hate for years on end, lives like these can easily creep up on you.

Even more so for the lonely and broken. Like me.

For a few years after Elde died, I’d still remember him. I’d still recall our good times as I noticed the seasons pass. But memories are painful, good or bad, and time makes them fade just as much as we do ourselves. At least, that’s what I have come to believe.

And so it was. The seasons passed alongside the years and as they did I fell deeper into my malaise; or was it my madness, I could hardly tell. My hair and beard grew long and dirty, my skin became caked in dirt and grime that left it a greyish brown. My clothes were all worn and ragged and were only replaced when they fell off my body, to then be replaced with something almost equally ragged that I had taken from some other dead beggar's body. The scraps tossed into the corner of my shelter.

The days blended together until the years blended together. It didn’t matter the weather or the season, everyday I did the same as I always did, with maybe a few moments that drew my attention to mix up the cycle.

What they were, as I had seen through the years, were three plague outbreaks, four fires, two monster attacks and one tsunami and though each was hard and manic, I survived them all, barely noticing. Then when they passed I went back to the way I lived my life as I did everyday before, as did everyone else in the city.

Until today.

Until the impossible.

It was just an ordinary day. Winter had just passed and Spring was now making its arrival known through the sunny days and the clear nights, and I was on my way to the docks. Though I had never really taken note of it, the amount of beggars over the years had grown much larger from what it had been when I had been younger. As had the whole city in fact, the slums included alongside that are now bigger and more decrepit than they ever were before.

It was where I was coming out of, the slums, at the back of the progression. My shelter hadn’t changed much over time but it now found itself situated in the deepest parts of the city’s ghetto. Meaning I had to walk further than everyone else to get out of it which put me at the back of the line.

I had just made it out into the residential area on the way to the docks when I saw him. It jolted me, and for the first time in a long time, I was more awake than I had been in years.

Right on the side of the road, where the last of the beggars were now passing, an old man, covered in dirty rags with long matted grey hair coming off his head, was lying face down in the dirt with no movement at all.

Suddenly, I was thrown back to all those years ago when I had found Elde just the same. The comparison paralysed me, leaving me standing there for I don’t know how long, caught up in my memories and regrets.

A battle warred inside me between who I had been and what I had become as I decided what to do. The shame of how I had let Elde down was still dwelling within me, although now, it was less stinging. So somehow who I was before and what I would have done then, won out.

I took my feet over to the old man and went down on my knees beside him before I turned him over. Facing up to me I could see the wrinkles on his face underneath the grey and knotted beard that matched the back of his head. He was still breathing, with a bruise clearly forming on the top of his forehead, but he seemed okay. I shook him a bit before I started patting the side of his face to wake him up, when I saw it.

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The old man opened his eyes… and everything changed.

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Bilks was tired. He was an old man with nothing left to wait for except death, and today, as he fell out of the crowd of all the other hopeless bastards just like him and into a ditch, he was somewhat relieved and accepting of the end.

Until he felt the slapping on his face.

He was sore, he was weak, he was old, and now, he was annoyed. He was in the dark, ready to die and some bastard had just had to wake him up and bother him some more before he finally found some peace at the Source.

His eyes snapped open only to meet bright morning light that blinded and sparked at him before he covered his eyes to keep out the light until they adjusted.

When it finally wasn’t blinding him, he looked up to find out who had robbed him of his peaceful death only to find a clear blue sky. He took a moment to appreciate it, close to death as he was, before searching for his disruptor.

Only for him to be nowhere to be found.

Puzzled by this he looked around to find nothing. Confused, while still also finding the sky a little too bright, with his weak arms he started pushing himself up to have a better look around.

That was when he saw him.

A beggar. Just like him. Just like any of the others who lived in the slums and begged by the docks all day, no different.

But he was different. His would-be saviour was on the ground the same as him, in front of him, sitting on his bum with his legs in front and arms propping him up from behind, like he had just fallen backwards.

That wasn’t the difference though. Because while he was a sorry sod through and through, the expression on his face… was extraordinary. It was an outstanding combination of abject shock mixed with abject horror.

Though his face was filthy and bearded, it shone through clear as day. His expression, so overpowering and so aghast, instilled a shock in Bilks too. In his long life he had never seen anyone give him a look filled with such a unmitigated horror before that it startled him also.

Bilks, suspended by his surprise, was then further flabbergasted when the shock in the other man’s face abruptly transformed into a manicness, a terrifying desperation, that then exploded from the man as he jumped up and instantly launched himself at him.

With this crazed madman now reaching for him he tried to scramble back and push the man off him. But the man grabbed him by the collar and yanked him right up into his face, escape now impossible, before the man started talking.

“You…” he started. His voice was hoarse and wobbly, like he hadn’t used it in a long time.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Wha?”

“HOW.OLD.ARE.YOU?” he screamed

“W-W-W-ha? Bilks stammered back, not understanding.

“HOW FUCKING OLD ARE YOU? ANSWER ME GODDAMNIT!”

“S-Seventy eight I think. Maybe Eighty.” Bilks yammered out, before the man dropped him to the ground and stood over him.

He wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was just standing over him. Gazing off into space with an utmost struggle now coming through on his face. Bilks just huddled down and stared at the madman above him unsure of what to do, until the man looked back down at him.

He couldn’t understand the look in the man’s eye. It was shock, fear, and disbelief. All intensified to a degree he had never faced before and which the focus of rendered him helpless.

But only for a short while before the man started backing off of him, maintaining his staring, before he ran away.

In an instant, he was gone. Bilks was bewildered. At a complete loss as to what had just transpired, now watching over an empty alley with his pink and orange eyes, confounded by what had just happened.

After some time passed he made his way back to his feet all the while still keeping an eye on where the mad beggar had disappeared off to. Standing again it became clear to him that with what had just occurred he wasn’t going to die today. With no other options he turned around and started walking again. To keep on begging, until he eventually did.

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What the hell was going on?!

That was the question I kept repeating to myself as I bolted through the streets, paths and alleys, with no destination in mind.

When the man had opened his eyes, what I saw... it was impossible! But I saw it nonetheless. And it struck me like lightning, right down to my deepest core.

His eyes. HIS EYES! I had seen those eyes before and it took me no time at all to recognise the face they belonged to, greatly changed though it was from when I had last seen it a long time ago.

On the day I had been thrown out of the tower, on my first day in this city.

When a young boy, one eye bright pink, the other a dull orange, had handed him a toffee apple.

…

…

…

What the hell was going on?!