Welcome to the jungle

Ring... ring... ring... no answer.

“Come on, pickup…”

Ring… ring… click! “The number you’ve dialed can…”

“Fuck!”

He slams the receiver back onto the payphone as it swallows his last quarter. The wet pavement absorbs the drops of sweat falling from his brow as he walks out. Filled with frustration he quickly turns and kicks the glass door. The loud crack drowns in the sounds of his scream.

“Karma…” he hears someone say with a hoarse voice.

“Excuse me?” A couple of newspapers under the bench next to him start to move as an old hag with a fur coat and baseball cap emerges from below. She smells of wine and something far worse.

“Whatever it was you did, karma now found a way to pay you back.” She says as she sits up covered in yesterday’s gossip.

“Really, if that’s the case I don’t want to know what you’ve been up to.”

She lets out a cackle, he sees almost five teeth.

“A comedian, that’s good, everybody needs a good laugh in the end.”

“Aint’ that the truth.” He walks away; he has no time to waste on lowlifes.

As his feet kicks up water and drenches his socks in the streets filth he notices that the streetlights come alive as the sun calls it a day and disappears behind the tall buildings. The streets doesn’t pulsate with life as the usually do this time of year, people stay at home, scared of the cold and the dark. The funny thing about fright of the dark is that some people never feel it, while some never stop feeling it. All he knows is that he doesn’t want to be alone when the darkness comes…

His pacing gets more intense; heavier steps, increased speed. His breathing loses control as he stares up at the sky, looking for the last rays of light, wishing that the sun won’t go down just yet. But then they dissipate…

He dreams. Walking in corridors all alone and naked he looks for something as well as flees from something else. He knows not the definition of either one. As he tries door after door, people behind them look at him and roars in laughter.

After a while the rage gets to him and he gives in to it.

“Stop it!” As he opens the next door he lunges hands first towards the one standing behind it and starts squeezing the persons neck with all his might. No struggle, only vacant eyes and a baseball cap.

He wakes. Lying beneath him is an old hag wearing what used to be a fur coat, but now ripped asunder and drenched in blood. In her wrinkly hands she holds some kind of medicine. Puzzled he thinks to himself: “Who is she? What happened to her?”

Then he observes his hands.

“No… no no noooo!”
In his panic only one thought comes to him.

“I need to get help.”

He runs, the dry concrete eventually beating his thighs into a bloody pulp. He finds what he was looking for as he runs past a phone booth. It looks old and damaged, with cracks in the glass door, but it can help him get what he needs.

“She’ll know what to do.”

Grasping down his pocket looking for loose change to feed the contraption he finds nothing. Frenetically he searches his jacket, but no luck. Then he feels something in the back pocket of his jeans and pulls it out. A baseball cap saying: “I love New York.” And on the inside, signed in red: “Karma.”

Someone behind him whispers: “It’s funny, because it’s true.”