On the Flip of a Coin

Day breaks, numerous pastel colours seeping through pale clouds and washed out rays of sunlight. A cool, winter chill sweeps through a still town, few commuters allow their footsteps to echo through the lifeless high street. Slowly, as business men and women start to escape the claustrophobic travelling pods of the trains and buses, crowds start to gather, noise pollution increasing dramatically as ‘important’ figures of society chat away on their mobile phones to useless clients, fighting to be heard over the ascending volume. Not a care for others as they grasped their mink coats to their skin, safe in their wealth.

Light continues to creep through the miniscule alleyways between shops and quaint cafés, creating shadows in which a single figure hides. A red, sleep-deprived pair of eyes examines the passers-by, watching closely for any morsels of food they may drop, any amount of money they might deem useless. Watching and waiting hopelessly, for a miracle. Pushed against a wall with a cardboard sign stating his pleas for help, Nigel Reford was just another forgotten life, staring forth into the Starbucks populated, commercialised world that he was once part of. Now, he sat, all day and all night, waiting for his miracle. His short and unkempt hair, coupled with fine stubble hid a once attractive young man with now dishevelled clothes and a dishevelled life.