From the edge of failure.

I considered what I had in my pockets for a second, and then plunged my hands deep to thumb through my materials. Serviettes, badly bent paperclips, shavings. I digged deeper-- I had to know what my crimes have been. A poker chip-- I'd been down to the river. Rent would have to deal with itself that month, my gaming clears me out everytime the spirits take me. Even the cash I kept inbetween the tea-leaves or underneath my mattress had suddenly found itself preoccupied and unable to fulfill my sober request.

I always get knocked aside by my addictions. They take hold, strangling my resources to their lowest ebb. I lay there, drowning in the gutter as my bills wash away into the hands of reptilian mouth-breathers and banshee wailing whores. It's been this way ever since I could pick my tipple at the bar and it hasn't shown a hint of breaking. The day I hit the age of legal consumption my suitcase was packed and my ass was irreversibly kicked out of the family domicile.

I'm twenty three now. It's been a long five years and my fingernails collect slime and detritus just as they did when I was pawing through the dirt, building childhood dens out of mud, except now I'm clawing at backyard gravel in pubs and sweaty rented love.

My eyes streamed as I wept, unable to control my urges to purge myself of my sins. I slashed at myself with jagged nails ripping layer after layer of clothes off til I stood in slacks and tee shirt in the pale, winter night. I stood freezing and braying, a 5 'o'clock shadow two days old, showing my youth to the rear window binocular fetishists. I raised my arms aloft and my blood fled from them, as if it knew they were facing the firing squad and then I fell. The last thing my eyes saw was the snow glistening to me a bright white as a headlight danced along its surface.