2019-07-28 - An Alley Can Be Beautiful

The clatter of debris being strewn across the alley would surely attract attention.

Luckily for Carver, it's 3am, most of the businesses that own the group of dumpsters he collides with are closed, and the one person around to hear it just assumes that fat-ass raccoon that keeps fighting people for donuts got itself trapped on a garbage raid. His clothing is fucked. Shirt, pants, and coat are all grass stained, blood stained, dirt stained, and one of his grey sleeves shows signs of what appear to be burn marks.

His face isn't doing much better. The haircut still stands, but there's four or five days worth of stubble along his jaw and the new adornment of a snapped branch through his hair that only gives up the hitchhiking attempt when his hand rapidly runs back and forth through it. Dust and dirt falls as a result, lining the bridge of his nose with even more black particles that are basically invisible against the smattering of earthy stains that already cover most of his visible skin.

His back bumps up against the wall adjacent to the dumpster he just staggered into, unsteady footfalls carrying him backwards until he's certain he's made contact. It actually takes him a couple of seconds to be sure the sensation of something physical against his spine is real before his legs start to fold underneath him, coat fabric letting out a soft scraping noise as he slumps down into a seat on the floor. His hand starts to reach for his abdomen, but the movement is interrupted by a sight on the wall opposite. There, on the whitewashed wall, sits plenty of graffiti.

In black spraypaint, surrounded by surprisingly untouched prime-wall-real-estate, is a door.

"Well..." Carver coughs back a laugh, his head leaning back against the wall with a harder bump than he intended. "That's fuckin' convenient." It's a little devoid of any humorous tone, but he smiles well enough at the luck. Teeth on show. A few black stains showing up starkly against the slight off-white of his enamel, the source entirely unknow-

His hand plants onto the floor before him, and his torso twists suddenly, awkwardly, face scrunching up in a combination of surprise and pain as his other hand flies down to his abdomen, palm instinctively going over a ragged, red-stained hole in his shirt and pressing against the flesh. The wound there is roughly the size of his palm; an almost perfectly circular hole that's somewhere in that mid-point between scab and scar. It would be like any other wound if not for the dark and blackened tinge around the border of it, small tendrils of ink following along and away with capillaries and veins.

He retches.

Once.

Twice.

The third time, he vomits fully. The substance is almost like oil or tar. A thick, stringy globule of black ichor that slaps onto the concrete beneath him with a slightly echoing plap that would almost go unheard underneath the noise of his follow-up coughing.

It's another twenty minutes before he moves. Twenty minutes before he even wipes the remaining leftovers from the edge of his lips with the back of his hand.

"Yeah. I'm fine."