Charles - substory to Petro...

This is only par... very rough... needs retouching and continuation... the only part I like is the last paragraph :) lol

Charles was homeless. He could call himself "vagrant" or "without home" or some shit like that, but that wasn't Charles. Charles knew where he sat and it was nowhere near where he started. People on the street didn't meet his stare, didn't shake his hand... didn't solicit; even friendliness. They stared... oh how their stares burned through him but they never saw him. They saw every homeless person they had ever seen and they reveled in it.

There was something special about Charles "Chuck". He was homeless in Chicago. What this meant was one of three things. One. He didn't take the free ride to somewhere warm to be the same, or worse. Two. He didn't seek home or "shelter" somewhere warm like a shelter or public walkway... even the subways or buses, bars or strip joints. He seriously had no home. Nothing. Not a drop of warmth all winter long provided by a furnace or fire.

Life was simple. Summer was a time for making money, raising funds for food and starving. Winter (the second of a two-season year) was for staying warm, eating hot food and feeding his dog. Had he thought of eating the dog? Endlessly. If he kills the dog, he gets one full night of sleep next to it's warm innards and then frozen meat to cook for weeks. Months if he had the stomach.

He named his dog "Winter" for the same reason he got the dog. A huge fur impenetrable coat for him and the dog to share meant warmth every night till he shuffled off the mortal canine coil. A huge furball laying with him meant automatic protection from other vagabonds, canine and yuppies.

Winter was a Rhodesian Ridgeback with a touch of Huskie. This dog was big. About the size of a standard German Shepard and the coat of a lab. A deep orange-red and a willingness to bear its teeth at a shrub. Chuck had trained the bastard to eat anything. This dog was survival. And survive it did.

A child laughed at Chuck and he had to hold the dog back. A dog barked at Chuck and Winter slaughtered him. "Shame we can't eat him" Chuck had thought after the kill, not "how will I payback the owner" because it wasn't his fault. The other owner's dog was aggressive and not Winter.

blah blah... then.

Chuck could see in everyone's houses as he and Winter roamed the streets at night. It was just him, his dog and a few cars sharing the road. Everyone else sat inside their warm houses, huddled around the televisions and keeping the lights on in the house. All he could see was waste. Now and then he would see someone was doing laundry and the heat from the dryer was just blowing out the side of the house! He ran to the heat and cuddled in it's warmth only to freeze shortly after when the cold froze the moisture that had gathered on his chest.