The Cardboard Hilton
By Blake Hayner
Chicago, 1980
The cold wind rattled the walls as I curled up in my makeshift blanket of plastic and newspaper; the Sunday Chicago Tribune pages strewn over my ruddy torn blue jeans. The plastic lay over the newsprint to keep the water out and my unwashed clothes dry. Monday morning came late for me because of the rain and sleet that fell the night before had covered the roof and sides of my self imposed cell of cardboard from a Maytag refrigerator carton I found in a nearby dumpster.
I arose stiff and always hungry, that constant pang of hunger that stayed with me day in and day out. I grabbed a milk carton unzipped my pants and let a long stream of urine filling the container to the brim. I couldn't take the chance getting caught ******* on a wall, the cops were always hassling me and I didn't need anymore stuff to happen. The last time the pigs busted my bhutt up and stole everything I owned; I wasn't getting robbed by those pigs again.
My head ached; my eyes felt like cockroaches were gnawing at my eyeballs all night. The voice in my head was screaming in my brain, "Don't let them cops get you!" "If you gott'a go don't let them see ya!" "If they do you gott'a fight'em, killem if you have to." I knew the voice would go away if I just ate something; I kept a coffee can filled with odd stuff I found in back of the McDonalds, french fry's from Mac's kept forever so I collected them and put them in my coffee can for safe keeping. The bugs couldn't get to them and I could eat them when I needed too.
The fry's tasted hard and bitter, each strand of potato gleamed with the shine of chemical preservatives that kept the food edible for weeks. I pulled a packet of salt out of the can and gingerly sprinkled each fry with a dose of sodium. My mouth would water with every bite I took, the smell of grease and three day old coffee grounds that I pulled the bag of fry's from still lingered on each morsel.
I had a bottle of water handy to wash down each fry; the consistency of each fry was like eating plastic rubber. The taste lingered on my tongue an hour after I consumed them. The water helped a little bit, of course a Coke would have been better, but finding a full cup of Coke in the garbage bin was almost impossible.
Finished with my breakfast, I look out the flap of my hotel room to check the weather conditions, cold, snowy, and wet, looks like another day in paradise.
The voice in my head is whispering now, I can barely hear the nagging and complaining of my alter ego. It's mumbling about the last shopping cart I had when two young men with baseball bats decided to play a game of bash the cart with me as the goalie. I hurt for a week after that little game, and that's when the cops, those nice police officers decided to help me by throwing my stuff in the back of a garbage truck and toss me on my *** for protesting. Chicago cops are worse SOB's alive they all deserve the same treatment a gun up their rears!
