Dusk. Overhead, the sun bled like it'd been shot and left to die. Streetlamps radiated a dull glow that bugs flocked to like addicts, but the darkest corners of the slums stayed dark. That was where the other addicts slumped. The quiet was, as always, fleeting - disturbed regularly by everything from scandalous remarks to a radio blaring through open windows. A beer can whirled past Sasha's ear and narrowly missed his head, slamming into the concrete a couple of feet ahead with a dull clang!. Some kids on some roof. One of them yelled "left-behind", and the rest laughed. They had spotted his blue uniform, congrats to them.
Everything had a repulsive tinge of nostalgia. Back-track a couple of months and he would have considered this place homely. Familiar. He would have been one of the kids on one of the roofs, safe for the fact that he wouldn't have been, and would never be, a monster. "Freaks!" he yelled back, stopping in his tracks. Another can missed him entirely - they were drunk, they had shitty aim. And now they were fighting among themselves, for a reason Sasha couldn't decipher from so far away. At least they were distracted, giving him a window of time to get going. Even with all the nostalgia, the mismatched memories the slums evoked, he wouldn't want to be in this place after dark.
He'd seen the Wall. He understood he was likely stuck in this place for good. It made his skin crawl, being one of the sparks of humanity in a bustling mass of monsters. Being painted as the one who was wrong, having to play by their rules.
He lit a cigarette to drive away the gut-churning thoughts.
