Homeless in Sunset Valley

Chapter One – “Out on the Streets”

Everyone romanticizes homelessness until it happens to them. Sure, everyone says, “Oh, homelessness is a problem that the person who is homeless has created for themselves. If they would just get a job, they wouldn’t be homeless, would they?” Well, it’s not that simple.

How River and I became homeless was one where I would say was not a problem that I created. What horrific kind of parents did I have that I would choose homelessness over having a roof over my head?

Imagine living with a parent that didn’t give two tinker’s damns about your welfare, whose main goal in life was to beat you down to the point where you didn’t even have an identity. In my household, I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion; was called stupid every opportunity. My ambitions were mocked and belittled, my goals sabotaged in every way possible just so that my mother could exert control over me for the rest of my life. There were no marks on me, so I couldn’t run to the police for help. I would have been laughed out of the station. Man up, if they aren’t beating you, you’re OK. Didn’t matter that one’s soul was being killed. So in that atmosphere of despair and utter futility, I stayed...until River came along.

Society says that you need to honor your mother and father. Even if your mother is an abusive tyrant and your father is an enabler to the n’th degree.

I chose to rebel from those abuses...and willingly paid the price. My life was not worth abasing myself to my abusers.

If you have parents who love you and care for you, don’t take them for granted. There are some of us who haven’t had that opportunity to have that kind of caring set of parents.

Unfortunately, Mrs. McIrish was too full up in her household to take me in...and thus River decided that she was going to stick with me, over the objections of her mother. River wanted nothing more than to see me healed and she was prepared to go through hardship to do it. She said that she didn’t care. That she would go through hell if she had to in order to make sure that I got away from my parents.

River and I had only just begun to see each other in a romantic light – we were testing the waters, then this whole “Get out” business with my mother happened along. I was sick and tired of my mother using that from the time I was in elementary school and 9 years old so I finally called her bluff, packed my clothes and walked out of the house. I think my mother was gaping at the fact that her long spine-less kick-toy finally grew a spine and told her off. She wasn’t expecting that.

So we were out on the street and broke; absolutely nothing in our pockets and no food to eat. It was either swipe food off the trees or starve. Because we sure as hell were not going to steal from the vendors.

Only, I didn’t know just how hard of a road that would be.

Day One:

Well, our first day out on the street started out with a rather smoggy morning. It was at least 8:04AM by my watch. My gal-pal and I decided to synchro our watches to make sure that we knew what time it was and that we were on matched times.

I had decided to get my hair cut real short so as to save money...on haircuts for at least six months. And wore old ratty clothes so that I wouldn’t get the clothes I treasured dirty and wet.

We knew the weather was going to get hot, once the smog burned off by midday, so we needed to get an early start. If we didn’t we would pay for it by heat-exhaustion. I decided to jog over to Grady’s Junkyard to see if I could dumpster-dive in there and come up with some valuables that I could hock at the Aleister’s Elixir/Consignment Shoppe. Yeah, have to be pretentious and put the double-the-consonant-and-add-an-e Middle Englishe-style spin on the word shop. The etymological history escapes me. Anyways, my objective was to dive and try to see if I could come up with something useful that I could pawn and hopefully get some decent return on.

This also would mean that I would need a shower at the end of it all. Yeah, good luck trying to find that while homeless. Also add to that, that evidently Bylaw Officer MacCready was already on our hind-ends thanks to my mother who shot her a note saying that I was a vagrant...and thus now I was §1,500.00 in fines behind the eight-ball. Welcome to hell, it gets even better from here-on-in. Read that as sarcasm.

We did get a lot done that day, surprisingly, even with our financial setback. With consigning what I found in the dumpsters, I managed to get a grand total of §2,725.00 which more than cleared our §1,500.00 in fines. But we have taxes tomorrow. I’m going to hate to see how much we’re going to have to pay.

And of course, with just our luck, the sky opened up and started dumping on us. So my River decided that she was going to head to Central Park to the only roasting fire pit there was. And frankly, so was I if after snorkeling I didn’t get stuck in my snorkeling gear and when the Watcher reset me, I ended up halfway across town. Bloody heck. I didn’t want to have to run clear across Sunset Valley, just to have dinner which for me would be a roast apple.

Can anyone tell me why if I eat an apple, I only get a half-stomach worth’s of hunger satisfaction? Whereas if I turn around, roast the ever-lovin’ bejesus out of it and leach all the nutrients out of it, I end up with a full stomach? Is that nuts or what?

We knew now that the authorities would do everything they could to drive the homeless (that was now us) out of town. I could see the worry on my sweetheart’s face. She now realized just how vindictive the haves could be. They thought of us as cockroaches, as vermin to be exterminated. Unlike some, we were just down on our luck, not addicted to any form of substance, nor abusing what we were on, which was sodas and chips which ultimately were the cheapest things that we could get. I wouldn’t say that she was naive; more like sheltered as to just how cruel humanity could be. Now our next ordeal would be since it was pouring rain and we had very little money to our names, that we would end up having to sleep outdoors. The only way to do that would be to buy sleeping bags and there were no outdoor stores open at 9:30PM.

Luckily for us, that meant napping in fits and starts on the benches...

…or trying to sneak into the gym in order to get out of the rain.

And guess what was in view? Yep, you name it, our friendly neighbourhood cop-shop. So we had a choice. Risk a trespassing fine going into the gym, a trespassing fine or a criminal charge of break and enter for going into the firehall. Or sleeping out in the open and risk another §1,500.00 fine for vagrancy.

Well, even better we got a notice that the city was coming by the lot to throw out our belongings. Well, unfortunately for them, we had nothing on the ground, so they would be wasting their entire time doing it. So somehow we had gotten away with it.

So, what we ended up doing was sneaking into the gym, freeloading off the showers and going upstairs and taking a floor in a room, we fell asleep exhausted since tomorrow would be yet another trying day of trying to survive.

End total Day One: §1,225.00
Total Fines: §1,500

Day 2

As it was, we were lucky that we had found shelter that last night, because it rained heavily throughout the night. When we woke up and started out for the day, we found that the ground was sopping wet. So it would have been nasty to have to be outside overnight. During the height of summer, it got down to around 10 or 11 degrees celcius overnight and it was chilly when it was early morning. Plus most who were indigent for some length of time ended up having their health eroded and were more prone to catching things that healthy people could avoid.

We were lucky that morning that a by-law officer who was making his daily rounds ignored us when we came out of the gym. Either he didn’t see us or he opted to give us a break. Because at four o’clock in the morning, it was probably too early to be actually in the gym for exercise. Well, we’ll try to use today to build up our finances and catching the lucky break in the morning would help us immensely.

Snorkeling had found us several gemstones so we were going up to Aleister’s in order to cut them and consign them. Hopefully that would give us a hefty chunk of money to live off of for the next little while.

Luckily we didn’t jay-walk and used the crosswalk in order to get across the street; River wisely making us cross at the corner. We didn’t need a §375.00 fine for cutting across the street. And it just so happened that the police were driving past at the time. Another lucky break. If we weren’t making a nuisance of ourselves, the cops tended to just tell us to move along and leave us alone. And since it appeared to them that we were moving along, they decided not to bother us.

I suggested that we cut the gemstones in random cuts and hope for the best. River argued that we should attempt to try to get the most possible money for them and cut them in spires. At least Aleister’s had an unlocked gem-cutter that was able to cut every possible gem-cut and we could manage to maximize what we were going to get. Eventually I agreed. We needed the money...badly.

After consigning the gemstones and well, considering the fact that we were already soaked, we decided to go get ourselves even more wet. After all, what’s a bit more water when one is completely drenched to begin with. It was absolutely pouring rain. So we decided to see about doing some more snorkeling in hopes that we could find any more gemstones that we could consign them tomorrow. We also had to see about making a trip up to our mailbox to be able to pay the tax bill. What a royal pain-in-the-rear end. Well, I said something far worse, but you can’t put that in print.

Since we were trying to save money, running was basically our way of getting from point A to point B. Of course, in the rain...it was thoroughly unpleasant. But what can you expect with a climate that was Pacific Coastal Rain Forest. Our attempt to find gemstones on my part was absolutely a waste of time. All I found were several shells. River had much better luck. I figured that it was time to do separate tasks. Maybe she was better at finding gemstones by snorkeling than I was. Me on the other hand, I wasn’t sure if I was more adept at finding dumpster items. But I hated smelling like a sewer after I was finished.

It finally stopped raining around five o’clock in the afternoon. We finished up and headed up to the park to see if we would be able to roast some more vegetables or fruits in the fire-pit. Even though we had a nearly §8,300.00 profit today, I was still down about not getting anything more than shells during my attempt at snorkeling.

While I went hunting for gemstones on dry ground, River harvested the park’s fruit trees and found us a dry place to bed down for the night. And she did find us a comfortable place to bed down after all, somewhere where we couldn’t be seen by those who would mean us ill. It was a place that was not immediately spotted from the street and a low fence concealed us from those who would be walking by.

I told her when I got back that she did a great job in finding us this place to bed down. And it would keep us safe, or as safe as one could be being out on the street homeless.

We were certainly lucky that we found the gemstones that we did and quite possibly we would have a decent amount of finances behind us after tomorrow. But once again, we would be making that long trek to Aleister’s to get our gemstones cut. But for now, we had to hope that it wouldn’t rain over night.

Day's Earnings: §8,357.00
Total Earnings and Current Balance: §9,582.00
No Fines: