raised by wolves

That night, I go for a walk. It is not raining for once, and I find a park bench with a complimentary discarded newspaper and set myself up. In the breast pocket of my jacket I have a couple leftover kielbasa, which I will eat over the course of the night. Earlier in the day I also found an empty plastic bottle with the lid still on it, which I then filled with water from a public faucet. These things will be my dinner, which I will eat behind my newspaper while I sit and watch and wonder what all these other people could possibly be doing with their time.
The city has so many people in it. I wonder where they all could have come from. I know the technical side of it, sure, I’ve seen dirty movies the same as anyone else. I know how babies are made, but why would so many of them come here? They couldn’t all be born here. Could they? It confuses me. I’ve lived in the city my whole life. I don’t remember if that’s really true or not, but it seems like it. I’ve never had a chance to leave, and I’ve never much cared for it. There seems to be nothing but bad here. I’ve only ever wanted to do good, and it seems like all these other people, walking around and talking and the couples holding hands and the businessmen with their briefcases and the mothers with their kids and dogs, none of them seem to be doing any good at all. They all seem to be doing nothing. Perhaps it’s just a matter of seeing them in transit. They don’t come to the park to do their good, I guess. They’re simply going from point A to point B. Maybe they do good elsewhere.

Once the moon is high above my head, high enough that I can see it above the skyscrapers and highrises, I return to my spot in the alley. I look for dinner, but it hasn’t been thrown out yet. Someone handed me a five-dollar bill in the park. I don’t know if they were trying to do good or not. I always feel like the people who hand me money do it out of guilt more than genuine concern. No one cares about an old bum, not really. I wouldn’t be a bum if anyone did. It’s all right though. I forgive them. I spend the five on two big bottles of malt liquor. The man behind the glass is small and Chinese, and for a moment I think of the samurai dream again.
I drink the malt liquor for dinner and fall asleep. I have another dream about being a samurai.
In the dream, I’m wearing the same armor as before, but without the mask. My face is blurred in the way some details are in dreams, the ones that you can’t really see. Your mind can’t really let you view you in the third person. It becomes like watching a movie, but you know the actor is you, or some representation thereof.
In the dream, someone hands me a sword. It is huge, as tall as a man, with a gilded green hilt and a shining silver blade that looks sharp enough to cut through stone.
“With this sword,” an old cracking voice says in the dream, “You shall go forth and slay all those who would do wrong to the shogun. You shall bring much honor upon our house. It is the hour of our ascension.”
I take the sword from the stranger’s hands and feel an intense heat, but it is radiating from within me. The sword is giving me the power I need to do what must be done. I feel nervous and then suddenly at ease. All is right. All that is not shall be made so by my hand. I put the sword into my scabbard and then I wake up.