It was a very chill morning out on Sundown street, as Grindor a stray lad had observed while he sauntered through the thick mist. He could be seen clothed in rags, with prominent sores and scars, with his skinny face likened to a skull mask worn but even in his wretched state, he put on the weirdest of countenance. The residents dared not to talk to him because he appeared weirdly unstable, like a rickety car that was miraculously jerked to life without its old parts taken out.
"I don't want to ever see you look at him!" a mother yelled at her children when she found them peeking through the window. Grindor had heard the chide of the woman scolding her kids as he watched her frantically display her animosity towards him by serving it hot to her children.
"What's with this people?" he wondered,
"What's wrong with all of them? Why are they so mean? Even to their own kids?" he pondered, deep in thoughts.
Perhaps it was their way of life but it was definitely the strangest one he had seen. The least a parent would do back where he came from, was tousle the child's hair with a flaccid warning, that could even have snakes become protective of humans and eventually have them surpass the companionship dogs provided mankind for years in just a day after receiving such a loving warning.
People here though probably in dejection he thought, always looked the part, in the way they dressed, talked and walked, they all acted the same way. It was so rare to see someone this beaten and battered as Grindor roaming the streets. How he arrived here, he had forgotten, though he had worked, shuffled and juggled his memory, he still couldn't bring himself to remember just how he wound up here, most of all, finding himself living off garbage cans placed in the streets; this was what surprised him the most. From the little he could recall, he was living quite well in a place called Mirthtown. There things were really working out for him, he ate to his fill; even had left overs from what he had eaten, he would also give things out, stroll in the evening. Surprising to him he remembered he owned a house, he wore good clothes and lived the most gay thrilling life anyone could have. What really happened to everything?
"Ha-ha-how-how did I get here?" a startled Grindor questioned himself when he realized he was lying in a municipal dump site located at the edge of Sadtown. Though his memories from the previous town hadn't come at this time, he cried almost to the point of loosing his eyes.

It had been quite a while and he had grown familiar to the town for the time he had stayed there. He knew each street by their names, every nook and every cranny. He had somewhat grown accustomed to the place, the rows of houses that stood on each side of each street, down to the people who resided in those houses.
Particular to his interest was an esplanade, segregated from the other part of town. Quite familiar big names lived down here and this was where he got his daily meal in a 1-1-1 batch. There was surplus here to eat and he was happy nobody cared about his presence, he could stroll in and out as he liked, and make the most out of the ones he termed, "expensive garbage cans". This cans never ran out of food and it seemed like the owners never even ate at all as these were neatly packaged and tossed into the thrash. All the better for him, he could always satisfy his hunger pangs.
"Thanks!" he'd mutter out with eyes closed with a gratuitous expression the moment he was done replenishing his reserves.
Life seemed sweet on this side though he had rarely seen any of the residents step out while he was there, it was like he repelled them but, "Man, who cares?" his satisfaction would proclaim.
Amongst the big names were some prominent personalites he had heard of before. Once when he had slept on the porch of a nearby house in an atempt to spend the night. He wasn't successful because the head of the house had noticed, beat him from his sleep with thick thumps and chased him out with a whip,
"I don't ever want to see you here, let alone near my thorns. If I do, I'd skin you for meat," yelled the man as Grindor intuitively made his way out with the man closely following behind. This was the closest he had come to death so far. The encounter was just like patting him, assuring Grindor that he–death–was surely going to come for him. For the while he was there, they had their television on and Grindor deemed it fit to join in their evening time, as he made home on the lounge chair they had on their porch. Grindor had quietly and aesthically moved the chair from its inital postion to face their window, so he could keep up, more or less entertain himself for the night before he slept off. He let off a deep sigh when he had fully settled in,
"And so, another night goes."
As the cornea's of his eyes faded away like the day gives into the night, he was awoken to the screams of a girl coming out from the house,
"Mum, come quickly!" the girl boomed,
"It's Señor Regrette's haunt of the past. It's on air!"
Though flustered from the sleep that had taken him in its arms, his ears picked the name from that moment and he was stunned to find out that, Señor Regrette, lived not too far from here. Regrette el dolor as his mailbox said, was famous for his renowned series, "The haunts of the past" a show that aired about about an day of the week day at no specific time. He once said fromm a soggy newspaper Grindor had read, that the show was organized in such a way that people stay glued to their TV, it was his own form of showbiz and it made headliners in the movie industry scene, "Soberwood".
"What's with these people and their weird names?" he grinned in his thoughts,
"They live funny lifestyles and yet they act tough."
Moreover, it was really thrilling that most people in this part of the world were addicted to it, it was like their brains were rewired to be on the look out for this series...

© Cogua