Maybe I was a Secret Agent The clouds shifted and the air turned colder than before, and as I looked up at the giant column of clouds I realised just how small we really are. The buildings may dominate the skyline, but go above the buildings and you'll know that we'll never touch the sky, scrape it with tower blocks. Passively I watched the people go about their daily lives, hurrying past, looking at me. Without interest, I saw the kids and their stupid gangs. And the buses, old and dusty, pulling up to the stops and the feeling that everyone has somewhere to be. I shivered in the wind and asked the guy walking past for change. He ignored me. Apparently life has always been like this. Dirty clothes, sleeping rough. My patch is outside Marks & Spencer; I've been here for weeks. A tinge of pride; it's better than my rival Frank's patch, a littered walkway. Nothing is certain. For months I have felt that something was wrong, that once I was better than I am. Who I am, I don't know. They say that I was knocked down by a van, lucky to be alive - in hospital for weeks, in and out of consciousness, and waking up with amnesia, possibly permanent. I don't recall it happening, or anything before that. It's like waking up in a strange place and feeling like you've just been born at 29. Nothing is certain. "What sorry excuse for existence do you have?" I chance a glance down the street, to where Frank's palace resides; a frayed collection of bags and blankets which had once held shape and colour. He is calling to yet another business suit, another with empty pockets. "You can't even play a trumpet!" I smiled. From his standpoint, and for so many others in this life, there is no low but that which is lower. I was lower than Frank. His pedestal was an instrument; from this he peered down at me, glad that he wasn't one of life's losers. The sea of poverty surrounds us, I think; it rises towards us, or we sink towards it. �Our pedestal is an island...� I mutter softly, to no one, and promise myself that I'll write it down. I clasp my coffee tightly. Nothing is impossible to lose; we'll always have Nothing. Nothing is certain. Behind the clouds, there's a flash of stark blue; it contrasts with a glorious ignorance against the mundanity, the routine, the greyness of humanity below it, and begins slowly to spread. My life began again, at some point in this stinking city, at some wretched time, but there was nowhere to begin. The burden of another man's life presses on my shoulders, chaining me down to a past full of mistakes, empty of memories. It was all explained, a hundred times. A criminal record... a filing for bankrupcy. That is my hollow inheritance. A lifetime of gutters, a thousand paper cups, the faint smell of cigarettes and always that acid feeling, that anger in the pit of your stomach, a knot that squeezed and demanded something that it surely had a right to. Who are my parents? They told me they are both gone, divorcing while I was young, and I was an only child as far as they could tell. They showed me photos of a boy I do not know, in various locations, smiling at the camera. That was me, they said. They found them in my coat pocket along with a watch, inscripted "Forever yours, Wendy". The trumpet notes drift, flow gently along the Winter breeze, and each fades and is lost to time. No, I don't believe them. Maybe one day I'll find out what they were trying to cover up, who I am. Perhaps. Now here I am again. Half a year has passed and I'm getting used to life once more. A sunny day, blue skies, chilly wind. === Adrian Davies, Febuary 2002, Published Feb 2005 at Fictionpress.com