Best Story Ending gets 10 points?!

Best Story Ending gets 10 points?

I wake up, blinking hard against the sky, and the first thing I remember is that my wife cannot forgive me. Never, ever.

Then I remind myself I don’t have a wife anymore.

Instead, I’m lying at the bottom of a stairwell, thirty concrete steps below street level in a city far from my home. My home is in the past, and I must live in the present.

I’m lying on a soft pile of rubbish bags, and I seem to have got myself covered in muck. It’s all over my shabby green raincoat and the frayed sleeves of my jumper, and there’s a bit on my trousers as well. I sniff it, trying to decide what it is, but I can’t be sure.

1 week ago
How strange I didn’t notice it when I was checking this place out last night. OK, it was already dark by then and I was desperate to find somewhere to doss down after being moved on twice already. But I remember crawling into the rubbish really carefully, prodding the bin bags with my hands and thinking this was the softest and driest bed I was likely to find, Maybe the muck seeped out later on, under pressure from my sleeping body.

I look around for something to wipe my clothes with. There’s nothing, really. If I were a cat, I’d lick the crap off with my tongue, and still be a proud, even fussy creature. But I’m not a cat. I’m a human being.

So, I pull a crumpled-up advertising brochure out of the trash, wet it with dregs from a beer bottle, and start to scrub my jacket vigorously with the damp wad of paper.

1 week ago
Maybe it’s the exercise, or maybe the rising sun, but pretty soon I feel I can probably get by without these dirty clothes – at least until tonight. And tonight is too far away to think about.

I stand up, leaving my raincoat and jumper lying in the garbage, where they look as if they belong anyway. I’m left with a big white T-shirt on, my wrinkled neck and skinny arms bare, which feels just right for the temperature. The T-shirt’s got writing on the front, but I’ve forgotten what the writing says. In fact, I can’t remember where I got this T-shirt, whether someone gave it to me or I stole it or even bought it, long long ago.

1 week ago
I climb the stone steps back up to the street, and start walking along the footpath in no particular direction, just trying to become part of the picture generally. The big picture. Sometimes in magazines you see a photograph of a street full of people, an aerial view. Everyone looks as thought they belong, even the blurry ones.

I figure it must be quite early, because although there’s lots of traffic on the road, there’s hardly any pedestrians. Some of the shops haven’t opened yet, unless it’s a Sunday and they aren’t supposed to. So there’s my first task: working out what day it is. It’s good to have something to get on with.

Pretty soon, thought, I lose my concentration on this little mission. There’s something wrong with the world today, something that puts me on edge.

1 week ago
It’s to do with the pedestrians. As they pass by me on the footpath, they look at me with extreme suspicion – as if they’re thinking of reporting me to the police, even thought I’ve taken my dirty clothes off to avoid offending the. Maybe my being in short sleeves is the problem. Everyone except me seems to be wrapped up in lots of clothes, as though it’s much colder than I think it is. I guess I’ve become a hard man.

I keep on walking deciding not to worry about what others think, cause after all I already have enough things to deal with. I pass by a few coffee and food shops and think about how wonderful it would be to be able to buy something. I know that I can't, since I have no money. All I can do is keep on till I find something. I reach a corner and decide to turn and see where that will take me. As I do I accidentally bump into an older woman. She gives me the sweetest smile that made me think of my own mom. It didn't take her long to notice what I had on. Her heart must have been made of gold. She told me to follow her, me not wanting to burden anyone with my problems I say I couldn't do that but she insisted. She leads me to her house which is just a few blocks where we met. She tells me she wants me to get clean and put on some of her husbands old clothes. She then prepares me a nice meal. I tell her I better get going and she finally decides to let me go. Before I do though she hands me a few dollars and wishes me luck.
I once again go on my way. As I continue walking I notice how much better I feel. I then remember I still have no place to go so I start looking for another place to sleep. I finally find an alley that isn't all that bad and find an old box to lay on. Before I drift off to sleep I sense that each day can only get better.