The Watch – Part 219:

(Tom’s perspective)

‘So,’ Tim said once we had left the site and were walking down the street. With it being nearing the end of the morning rush hour, there isn’t as many people walking about as there were yesterday evening when they were all leaving work, but the people who are out and about still haven’t noticed us at all. Tim doesn’t appear to be bothered by that fact at all. In fact, he’s acting opposite to what I thought he would be. Before Tim could continue with what he was about to say, I interrupted him and asked why.

‘I’ve been on the streets for two years now,’ he explained, ‘and at first it was a very daunting feeling, but it’s a feeling that I knew I ’ad to get used to very quickly as I knew things wouldn’t be changing for a very long time, if not at all.’

‘So what happened?’ I asked, ‘if you don’t mind my asking,’ I added as I accidentally sounded a bit pushy.

Tim chuckled, ‘you ‘aven’t told me what ‘appened to you yet,’ he said. I can’t argue with that. All I said was that it was complicated, and his response was that everyone’s story was complicated. We’ve all had things happen to us that we weren’t able to recover from.

‘But even if I did explain it to you, you wouldn’t believe me,’ I said. My biggest fear is that I’ll get labelled the weird one. Who else can say what I’ve been through? Who would believe me? I think it’s best if I keep this to myself. However, sooner or later, I will have to say something, and that will mean I’ll have to make something up. I doubt I will be able to do that convincingly.

We turned out of Long Road. I knew exactly where we’re going, because Tim mentioned it last night. We’re going to the shop where I took those chocolate bars from. That’s a new level of complication. Of course I was planning on returning their many more times to take more stuff, so from that perspective, there’s not really that much to be afraid of, but after knowing that the cameras were faulty, I got away with it by the skin on my teeth. A new set of nerves bubbled up through my stomach the closer I became to the shop. Tim is obviously going to talk with someone, and that means making us both known, and that means there is a slight possibility that someone in that shop will recognise me from yesterday.

‘Are you alright?’ Tim asked, noticing my nervous look. ‘You’ve gone white all of a sudden. You can’t be that nervous to tell me your story, surely?’ he asked. Now what do I say. Oh, I’m starting to feel as if I shouldn’t gone with him.

‘I’m fine,’ I lied, and I’m pretty sure Tim knows that I did, too. He didn’t say anything though.

‘It ‘appened faster than I could contemplate,’ Tim started to explain from out of nowhere. ‘Usually, when you are on the road to losing everything – your job, your house – it’s a steady progress designed to give you a chance to claw at least something, no matter how miniscule, back so you can try and work your way back up again. But that didn’t ‘appen to me. I never got that chance. I was the type of person that used to sit back and let things take their natural course, without actually doing much myself. I used to set things –  projects – up, release them into the world, and then do nothing to ‘elp them grow. Once they were out, that was it, I sat back and waited. That was the type of man I was. I waited.

‘And my projects did take off. They were growing steadily, healthily, more and more people became interested and soon it was a very profitable company. I had successfully built a company by just waiting for it to become one. Who’d a thought it?’ he shrugged, ‘many people were surprised that I ‘ad made a name for myself by doing it that way, but they were the ones that criticised it from the very beginning, told me that I had to get up off my backside and do something.

‘And before I knew it, and before I could control it, things started to go downhill. And very fast as well. Because I didn’t put as much effort into my many projects as I should have done, when they started to decline in popularity, I just sat back and waited for it to grow once more, and it was at that point that they started to collapse. Because I had too many projects going at once, I didn’t know how to control them; they got too big for me, because I wasn’t there to make sure I understood their growth. And I lost everything. I couldn’t pay my bills, so they cut my electricity, water, and then they threw me out. I was making a lot of money, so why was I suddenly thrown out, you may ask. Surely, I would be able to take that money, invest it wisely, and live off of the interest? Ah, but I spent a ‘eck of a lot of money trying to stabilise my projects. I threw every penny I ‘ad at them, even though I knew that they were no chance of saving them.

‘I was on the streets. The one place I didn’t want to be. The one place that I was always afraid of. But, I guess I got what I always wanted to do, I guess,’ he sighed. ‘All that I could do was wait. What else could I do? The effects of loneliness changed me, the effects of not being noticed changed me, and above all, the effects of seeing all those people that criticised me continue to grow and flourish. You hear of so many stories of people getting the last laugh on their critics, and I thought I was going to be one of them. But, I just didn’t put the effort into making it so. So I lost it all.

‘That’s my story,’ Tim finished with, just before we turned down the road where the shop sat.

‘So you decided to build a place to live,’ I said.

‘I did what I should ‘ave done when I had it all. The streets taught me that. It wasn’t easy, but that’s exactly what those lessons were designed to be. It took me the biggest part of the two years that I ‘ave been on the streets to build myself a community of some sorts. Gather up a few contacts. I learnt more when I had nothing than I did when I ‘ad something, because I forced myself to do so.’

‘But, you know, there are some positives with all of this,’ he said.

‘Like what?’ I asked, curiously.

‘I don’t have to pay any bills. I don’t have to worry about taxes.’

‘May I ask you whether there have been any days where you thought that this was for the best, if you know what I mean?’ I hoped that I hadn’t crossed a line, but Tim didn’t look bothered. Instead he shrugged and said.

‘Not yet there haven’t. But that’s what’s keeping me going. The day that I start saying that this was all for the best, will be the day… Well, it’ll be the day that… I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘I just ‘aven’t felt that yet.

‘Sorry that I pushed,’ I said.

‘No, you ‘ave nothing to be sorry about. Anyway, we had better get inside and collect our breakfasts. Remember, because you are the new guy, you get to have the first pick. And also, now that I’ve told you my story, I guess it’s only right that you tell me yours.’

I knew that was coming. But it was only fair.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)