Gutter Sprawl. Morning.
The sleep of the innocent, not a sleep granted I. No, my slumberous sighs depict a more sinister cut of the human condition. Groaning-moaning-stirring. Squinting up into bright sunlight increases the unpleasantness in my pounding head. Time to fade back. Yearning for the welcome night I sleep again, face wet from the puddle in this most fashionable of gutters. At least no rain falls. Small mercies. Sleep.
Waking of a sudden with fiends pressed upon me, and find pockets turned out and I am being searched most roughly by gruff and unfriendly hands. The gutter my kingdom, violated!
“Ruffians! Scum-shite!” I roar and cough, more cough than roar.
But they find nothing, oh sweet nothing my darlings, but my lumps and bruises from the brawl last night, which is only foggily recalled. Scurry they do like the starving dogs they are, to and fro, fro and to, away from boot-swings and claw grasps. Certainly and certainty: I penniless by the end last night. Therefore, no pennies for them, ha-ha, no.
“Bastards of bastards. Dogs!” says I.
But the kick in the ribs those retreating violators, rag dolls and reeking of rum, do instill as a parting gift pains something vicious. Hatred stirs behind the foggy haze of blurriness as I try and refocus my eyes. Hatred towards the pocket turner-outers, though no mortal wounds to my industry or economical scene did they achieve. That kick in the ribs does smart however, as earlier eloquated. The coughing fit resulting is terrible and for a time I cannot stop.
Wincing, rubbing tears away and opening my eyes I am greeted by pain once more in the form of sunshine. Crawl and fall back, retreat! And so closing eyes tightly to escape the enemy sunlight. But then ominously said sunlight is removed, stolen, gone, vanished. Shadow replaces it, too quick and dark to be caused by any cloud.
“Better for thy head brother. Better live than dead,” someone says, from above, close enough to likely be the cause of said stated shadow.
Wincing, blinking open blurry eyes. All is clouded, or more shaded. The sun exists yet, but blockethed by man-shade. Alarming shade where none was before and a voice attached. Man shaped shadiness now speaking to me directly once more.
“Let me stand here friend, that you may bathe in the sweet elixir of the shade my lean and tumble frame might provide.”
Squinting now into the black shadowy figure, emblazoned, surrounded by bright.
“Be it Hugo? Jones? Calibre? Or a murderer, catalyst, or filthy copper?” I sputter or spew.
“Aye, ‘tis Calibre, fit and back from the highways,” the shade casting man says. “You, my friend, are more the worse for wear then last out stares did meet.”
Calibre, home from the highways. Oh dark traveller Calibre, back from the wastelands. ‘Tis Calibre the tall and bony, multi-grinned and gold ear-ringed. Wiry, hard Calibre. One I might call friend. One whom helps me up with a wincing.
“Calibre, the gutter my kingdom, violated,” says I.
That kick inflicted does hurt. Might have caused a broken rib. Perhaps just cracked. I groan, he talks, we walk.
“Not far my pretty ancient,” he says. “We’ll sort you out yet. Don’t worry. All you need is the warming love of whiskey.”
A house of ill ends and happy repute we make to for the breaking of our fasts, regaling one another with different species of phlegm and cough as we labour to move there. Life has been as kind to Calibre the highwayman as it has to I. We are a pair for certain, blessed with bad fortune and unholy desires, but at least breathing yet. And the air and mechanics of movement seem to cure both my spleen and ribs alike, or at least a little bit. The more I walk the more able I feel at any rate.
“Whiskey you say, eh? I can if you’re buying,” I reply, to which he nods; to which I cheer, if somewhat raggedly.
“Better than your worst foe’s blood, better than a lover’s bite, sweet whiskey," says Calibre, wistfully.
“So, what brings you back to this sick old city then Calibre?” I inquire.
“Women,” he says.
“Women?” I enquire.
Roars Calibre: “Women!”
We share a laughter as it is more economical that way than to each spend our own.
And we have arrived at the most lovely and enchanting place of sustenance and abuse, the one indeed intended by Calibre as our destination. Whiskey, coffee and food. Calibre and I sit and brood, drinking the barely drinkable coffee and loving it as if it were our very mother’s milk. We discuss our future roles in one another’s lives, we divulge our recent mal-histories and howl like jackals in shared delight at the humorousness of our ill-fortune and ill-repute, resolute in our frankness and also our guile as we dip our bread in the egg and bacon grease, happy as a couple of pre-revolutionary Tsars.
There are hooded monks at the bar, sipping mead, looking more sinister than monks ought ever to look, one leering madly at the lass on his lap, her bare breast agleam with the grease from his meal. Other groups and individuals lounge about, the usual scoundrels mostly. Oldsters sip drinks and talk about the old times in one area while across from them a group of techno-punks smoke pipes and debate the existence of something called an Underzone. A hunchbacked dwarf snoozes in a corner, his head on his table, his hands clasped around a cup of tea. Three dice lay near his cheek in a pool of his own saliva. Others weep and others sing, each with emotion. Many, having abandoned emotion as too luxurious a commodity years or weeks ago, simply sit and stare. We pay them all no mind. This is a safe haven for all, at least at this time and date.
Our stomach’s full and Calibre seeking women, myself alms, we leave the place and we part our ways, but first firmly committing to future debate, debacle, distinction, distortion, delights of all kinds. He with a smile walks off into the shade, myself out and into the now less formidable bright. The sun is shining and glorious. And I only wince slightly as I move, less-limping now. With belly full instilled pride I make my way fearless out and in to the day.
Photo of the author, approx 2008.
Gutter Sprawl, by Daniel Smallegange, copyright 2025, all rights reserved. From the collection The City: Tales From the Post-Post Apocalypse by Daniel Smallegange, available on Amazon, etc.
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