hardestofhearts (ex_hardestof528) wrote in bloodburn, @ 2011-05-20 14:31:00 |
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In times of desperation, Regulus was prone to doing things he would have otherwise never even thought of. Be it sleeping in a cardboard box to keep out of the rain, washing up in a public restroom because that was the only place he could access running water or, worse, enduring some speech about how he had mucked up his life and need to change the error of his ways just for a bit of a sandwich. Before this mess he would have never even been able to fathom such atrocities; but now they had become a part of his daily life. Of course, it would be fair to also state that things had gone for the worse for a lot of people. Not just him. Many who had lived pleasant and comfortable lives before were now subject to rubbing to halfpennies together and eating them when nothing else could be found.
Today his great horror turned usual was rooting through the dumpsters of local restaurants still in business (a rarity anymore) and see if he could find something suitably nourishing to appease the wretched trembling and aching of his stomach.
Making sure that no one had followed him (he really didn't want to share in the splendor of his finds), Regulus tucked down the alley leading down the side and behind a local Italian restaurant. They had been busy for the past few days, coming to an abrupt slow only just yesterday --which should have meant that they had to dispose of more food than usual. For the sake of health codes and whatnot. Regulus had only partially bothered to learn how these places worked; as to better judge when to go digging through their trash. It helped him keep from wasting his time for nothing. Not that he had any big plans for his days to tend to. If anything, it was merely a matter of principle. Using the extent of his strength, Regulus pushed the lids upwards and tilted them back against the wall as to grant himself a proper view and easy access to what lay inside the dumpster.
Jackpot.
It was brilliantly full of half-eaten meals, ingredients gone soft and blocks of cheese with too much mold to be deemed usable. He would certainly get his fill today. Maybe be able to run off with a few pocketfuls of leftovers to keep for later.
If only he could reach inside.
Stepping back, Regulus made a quick glance around for a crate, a box, or just something to use as a bit of leverage to help reach into the dumpster without directly falling in. He had done that once before, fallen in, and it had been more trouble than it was worth to get back out. He wasn't going to endure that again. Like a turtle knocked onto his back, he had wriggled to and fro and to and fro again, desperately searching for anything to grab on to and help him escape from sinking deeper into the overwhelming garbage.
Tucked beside another row of dumpsters, in front of a pile of useless debris (useless in the sense that it was not food), he had found a crate that looked well enough to hold his (quickly depleting) weight and had rushed straight to it. As he lifted it from the ground he had noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the softest of blankets hidden beneath trash bags and tattered boxes. He had always told himself that he would not become one of those homeless persons; the sort that pushed around useless junk in a cart. Possessions they had acquired through years of searching through garbage and had since grown attached to. But...that blanket. It would certainly do him some good to have something to wrap around himself on those colder nights, when his coat simply would not suffice.
After a very short moment of deliberation, Regulus tossed the crate aside and immediately went to prying the blanket out from under everything. When that did not work, he grumbled a few choice words to himself and then turned to picking up each bag, box and whatever and throwing them elsewhere. If he hadn't been so tunnel-vision on achieving his goal, he might have noticed the tuft of hair or the very tips of shoes poking out from either end. Instead, it had taken a triumphant pull of the blanket before he had noticed the horror that had been hidden beneath it.
Initially he had thought that he had just invaded on someone's slumber and they would now awake and threaten to strangle him for thievery. But they didn't move. They didn't even appear to be breathing.
Dropping the blanket, he felt his breath hitch in the back of his throat as his heart began to beat furiously, drumming deafeningly in his ears. He had tried calling out to them, nudging them with his toe and, finally, he had dropped down to his knees and reached out to touch them; but when his fingertips brushed against the cold skin he had recoiled and begun to shake. They, they certainly were not alive. And now his imagination began to go wild.
This person had just been tossed here, beneath garbage, and left. Dead. His head reeled, he felt dizzy. Had it been murder? Had it been--had they done something to infuriate Him? Suddenly Regulus saw in this lifeless form a future he had always assumed was inevitable for himself...but had hoped would not come to be. Now his own mortality seemed blindingly inescapable.
It was wishful thinking, he knew it, but Regulus still hoped that there was life in this forgotten stranger and, as thus, had reached out again. It had turned his stomach, imagining that he might have been touching a dead body, but he still pushed on the man's shoulder.
Nothing.
"Please don't be. Wake up! Come on, wake--" His frantic hysteria had been cut short when the back door to the little Italian restaurant had been pushed open. The weight of the heavy door creaking and whining.
Regulus had already gotten in trouble with them for rooting through their garbage, and he wasn't interested in being shouted at again, but he wasn't quite ready to leave the body either.
In a whirl of panic and quick thinking, he scrambled to find the blanket and trash bags and throw them back over the body, to hide it, and then scampered out of the alley before anyone could realize he had been there. Just the faint echo of hurried footsteps drifting off into the distance; but the employee had simply disregarded it, tossing slop into the dumpster, closing the lids and going back inside, the door slamming behind him.
Regulus had then spent the next few hours wandering aimlessly, drifting with a vacant emptiness on his face as his thoughts spun round and round in his head. He had long since lost the desire to eat, his stomach now a churning, flipping mess threatening the sensation of becoming sick every few minutes or so. Or any time he recalled the feeling of that cold, dead skin. There was no denying, he told himself, that that person was dead. Discarded and forgotten. Disrespected. It might have done him better to just move on and find some other restaurant to raid their dumpsters, but he couldn't bear the thought that that person would be left there...like garbage.
His head throbbed. This was far more reality than he was ready to cope with. True, fate had already turned on him and sent him out into the cold to face the truth already, but death was something he had not yet dealt with and it horrified him.
When night fall had finally arrived, thousands of faceless strangers coming and going and thousands of thoughts clouding his mind, Regulus pried himself up from the ground and slowly, cautiously began to inch his way back towards the alley. He had watched it all day; wandering down the street, and back again, around the corner, and back again. Just to make sure no one had gone back there and possibly discovered the body. He didn't like the idea of some stranger, not to be trusted, possibly making a joke out of the poor man's death. Never mind, that the man was a stranger to him as well. But being dead often helped in earning the sympathies of a child terrified of mortality; the man could have been a murderer and Regulus would have still been inclined to care.
Having pulled back the garbage and that blanket again, Regulus dropped down onto the ground and sat there in silence for the longest while simply staring at the man. He didn't even know what it was he had in mind to do. He just wanted to do something.
"I'm sorry." He ran his hands through his hair and gritted his teeth, struggling to come to a reasonable plan of action. Perhaps, a burial?