Good Fruit from Bad Seeds

Something I threw together hoping to get some feedback. It's shorter than most of the stuff I like and I'm not sure if that's had a negative effect or not. Hope you enjoy.

‘Are they still chasing us?’ Goren panted as we transcended from sprinting to jogging and finally coming to a halt in the public square outside Liverpool Street Station.
‘Nah. S’all good mate we’re in the clear.’ I told him, my voice was just as ragged as his.
‘What you get?’
‘Little.’ Was my ashamed answer I fiddled around in my messenger bag and listed what I saw; ‘Brown bread, biscuits, some apples, this week’s Nuts, fruit pastels.’
‘Not bad. But I get something better.’ He smiled before unzipping his tattered leather jacket and revealing one of those short vintage bottles of brownish-orange vodka.
‘The good stuff.’ He informed me, ‘I have friend Julian squatting in Camden. We go there before it get light but first we go around the City check bins for good food. We’ll have to round Soho; too dangerous on Saturday night.’
‘You’re limping.’ I said not long after as he led the way deeper into the City.
‘It’s nothing. Blisters, bad blisters but I’ll survive. Now come it’s late.’

The blisters were a baptism to the down and out of London; like the trial by fire of a soldier. Like how you’re not a boy scout until your first merit badge you’re not one of us until a scab on your heel bursts and weeps.
‘Were you from Nathan?’ Goren asked. His accent and poor grasp of English didn’t do him any justice. It made him sound slow and lost somehow, the exact opposite to what he was.
‘Essex.’ I answered before listing my recent movement ‘Then Norfolk, then Staffordshire and now London. What about you?’
‘Bosnia.’ He said without a hint of pride ‘Then Croatia and Macedonia, then Calais and now London.’
‘Sounds like you’ve travelled more than me.’ I said simply because there was nothing else to say.
‘Yes. It looks that way.’ He said coldly.
We’d minutes past pulled off one of the oldest shoplifting techniques in the books; one distract the cashier whilst the other pilfers the shelves until Goren who was supposed to be playing it cool snatched that vintage bottle right under the shopkeeper’s nose.
‘You’ve not become homeless long have you?’ He accurately guessed.
‘Two days.’
‘I’m sorry. I should’ve guessed from your clothes. It was wrong to put you under pressure in shop.’
‘It’s okay.’ I shrugged

Broadgate circle; was a beautiful and expertly designed ring of cosmopolitan shops and bars not to far from Liverpool Street Station that catered to everyone from city workers to day trippers, but not people like us.
‘You see this!’ Goren spat as we approached a metal bench that had been segregated into three parts so you could sit on it but not sleep.
‘They’ll drive us into Underground for the trams to run us over.’ He scoffed but wasn’t so disgusted he’d let his pride cost him a chance to rest our blistered feet.
‘I should never have left Vukovar.’ He sighed as he unscrewed the tall cap from the vodka bottle and filled it before offering it to me whilst he held on to the bottle itself. He raised the bottle for a toast and I carefully tapped the cap on the bottle’s neck.
‘To our continuing good health.’ He said solemnly before downing a mouthful almost violently. I too necked the alcohol I had before wheezing and retching afterwards as my throat burnt.
‘Good ****.’ He laughed which did nothing to comfort me. His teeth were tinted a greenish-yellow and the colour of his gums ranged from a dreary pink-grey to coal black. We’d only know each other for a few hours but with every passing minute I was seeing more to the shocking deterioration he didn’t seem to either notice or care about.
‘Where are you from?’ He asked, to my confusion.
‘I’ve already told you.’
‘No. Not where in sense of towns but where in sense of home and family.’
‘I’m from a group home up in the West Midlands.’
‘Group home? You mean an orphanage yes?’
‘Yes. My dad died in May.’
‘I’m sorry. Shall we toast to him?’ Goren offered eager for another excuse to drink.
‘No. And don’t be sorry. He was a bastard.’ I lamented but to my surprise this was met by hysterical laughter.
‘Everyone thinks father is bastard until they hear of mine.’ He cackled before downing another gulp of triple distilled.
‘Well do tell.’
‘No… not here, another time perhaps.’ He said going from hysterical to mournful in the blink of an eye. To feel the night breeze he pulled off his torn wool knit cap, he must’ve been wearing it for days on end. His black hair shined with grease and was flattened by the cap giving it an almost two-dimensional appearance.

‘Tomorrow I take you to pimps. They get you work.’ Goren said and waited for my stunned response before cracking up again. ‘Relax’ He said as he slapped his knee with giddiness, ‘I don’t mean whoring. They give us jobs like shopping for the girls; toothpaste, shampoo and toys for their kids. Friend you sure do think the worst of people, don’t be such a pacifist.’
‘Pessimist.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind and thank you for the help.’
‘People should look after their own kind.’ He told me before grimly stating; ‘But not shun those different from them in turn. Such thinking brought my home to ruin.’
After that there was a brief silence until Goren twitched his wrist uncomfortably before pulling up his sleeve and holding his pasty flesh up to the light emitting from a nearby lamp post. A small black dot the size of a bloated ant scurried across his skinny wrist.
‘Well well you’re a big one.’ He said before pressing down on it with his pinkie, it exploded in a crimson red welter leaving a bloody fingerprint on his skin.
‘Body louse.’ He said with such a casual tone I would’ve thrown up if I actually had anything in my stomach. ‘Don’t worry you’ll get them too soon enough. Swapping clothes and sharing blankets.’
‘I’d rather keep… un-infested.’ I stated
‘No. T’is blessing yes. When constable try and move you on just say “Sorry officer I have body lice” and they won’t dare touch you.’
‘Goren?’
‘Yes Nathan what is it?’
‘Why are you helping me?’
He took another sharp sip and said; ‘Because I’m a good person. Why did you tackle the man in the shop? You could’ve left me and saved yourself instead of dropping all good food.’
I told Goren that I helped because like him I too was a good person. This stirred another laugh from Goren who rose to his feet and proclaimed; ‘Well that proves it no? Karma does not exist for here in the early morning hours two good men stand poor and starving and freezing whilst this city of heartless-bastard-mother****er-****-*****es sleep under Egyptian cotton beddings. Drink?’
‘Please.’ I said and he poured.
‘To our continuing good health.’
‘… our continuing good health.’

We remained drinking for half an hour as Goren ran me through what he’d be doing the next day; ‘You’ll like Julian and Chelsea, nice people, kind and good people like us. Then to Madame Helga, she’ll give us chores from the whores. They not slaves though no.’ He stressed ‘They’re on student visas because of European Union yes. I wouldn’t work for pimp who keep girls like slaves. I couldn’t. Such men deserve the worse circles of hell.’
‘Yes, of course.’ I said uneasily, he’d become strangely worked up over the subject. He turned around and stretched under the glow of the lamppost his skin lit up orange and the rings of dirt around his neck became much more noticeable.
‘Come Nathan we can’t sit here and drink until sunrises. We should make our way to Camden Town we’ve dragging our feet too long here. Come I’ll show you landmarks.’

We walked slow-paced past St. Paul’s Cathedral and over the Millennium Bridge, past the Tate Modern and Shakespeare Globe Theatre.
‘Like zombie movie.’ He laughed at the emptiness of the streets that ten hours beforehand would have been teething with tourists and businessmen.
’28 Days Later?’
‘No shopping mall one.’
‘Oh Dawn of the Dead.’
‘Yes. Dawn of Dead. First American film I ever saw. Saw it in the camps, not suitable for nursery children.’ He laughed before patting me on the back and playfully jumping down some steps. Instead of bending his knees on impact and carrying on in his shenanigans Goren let out a yelp of pain and simply collapsed in a heap before rolling onto his back.
‘**** you alright?’
‘No, no, no it’s my feet. Bastard blister burst.’ He hissed through gritted and rotten teeth. He’d recovered from the initial pain and had sat up to nurse his left foot. I knelt down beside him, getting a good look at his shoes for the first time. His left shoe was missing the tongue and must of its upper half, it only reason it didn’t fling off was that he’d tied a discarded necktie around it to fasten it tightly to his foot.
‘Usually it doesn’t hurt so bad.’ He winced as he shooed me away and insisted; ‘I’m okay. Just a blister.’
Unfortunately this wasn’t just a blister; it was a blister bordering on a nail meaning that when it burst and significant amount of the ‘skin-seam’ of the nail had been ripped apart. Sadly I didn’t know this until I’d unwrapped his shoe and pulled his sock off, tearing the whole nail and a fair amount of skin from his big toe in the process. He wailed so loudly in pain I knew that people in the tall buildings all around us could hear, I even saw lights flick on and off and curtains twitch but nobody cared once they’d identified the injured as homeless tramps.

‘You’ll have to go soon.’ The nurse said from behind the reception desk at St. Thomas’ Hospital. I’d hooked Goren’s arm around my shoulder and walked him here, then sat with him for two and a half ours as we waited. It only took them five minutes to treat him by giving him weak painkillers, fresh socks and some plasters and cotton wool for his foot.
‘Go? The doctor said the nearest shelters in Lewisham. How’m I supposed to get him there?’ I protested
‘I’m sure you’ll be able to mug some pensioner for taxi money. Now if you don’t mind there are other people with real problems waiting to be seen.’
We tried sitting (and contemplated sleeping) in the toilet cubicle but were eventually found and told to leave or they’d phone the police.

Outside St. Thomas’ we found ourselves sitting on a bench between the hospital and Westminster Bridge. We were sitting opposite the Houses of Parliament just the other side of the Thames.
‘My father was a Serbian soldier.’ Goren said after twenty minutes of silence during which I’d thought he was asleep, the sun was now rising.
‘What?’
‘You said your father was a bastard and so was mind. What was it that made you hate your father so?’
‘He was a skinhead.’ I told him but Goren didn’t understand and so I said flatly; ‘A Nazi.’
‘A nationalist?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Mine also.’
‘At least your old man was a soldier. At least he was somebody respectable. My father was an alcoholic bigot who hated anybody who’d done better in life than him and blamed anybody who was doing worse.’
‘I’m a child of rape.’
‘What?’ I asked, my voice was strained in disbelief.
‘My father was in the Serbian militia and my mother was a Bosnian Muslim. She was forced into slavery; I was the result. So Nathan, dear Nathan, there was nothing respectable about my father.’
‘… I’m sorry.’ I said gobsmacked and silenced.
‘So is everyone else in world. He lives in London under fake name. That’s why I came.’
‘To kill him?’
‘Yes. Yes to kill him. To kill him and ask him why. He’s pimp; one of those slavery ones. Leopard never changes their spots.’
I couldn’t say anything of my own father’s sins. Nothing came close in comparison to Goren’s confession. Instead I opted to slide the flat vodka bottle out of his breast pocket and pour myself a capful before offering him the bottle and intimating his native toast.
‘To our continuing good health.’
‘No.’ Goren shook his head ‘To good fruits growing from bad seeds.’

After a moment of respite I helped Goren hobble through the thickening traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, to a boarded up chippie in Camden Town where he introduced me to some of his friends. I never saw him again after that, nobody did. Whether he ever fulfilled his vow of patricide or simply succumbed to the elements is anybody’s guess but his legend lived on, his deeds we spoken off when youths like us congregated around a fire pit or queued up for hand-outs. Goren who saved schoolgirls from prostitution, Goren who fought off four hooligans with just a toothbrush sharpened to a shiv and although his actions would never be commemorated at an award ceremony or spoken of in any branch of the media who was a greater hero than most referred to as such.