• It was a cold and dreary month of December, the animals had long scuttled off to their warm and cosy hiding places for winter. Whilst i sat under a bridge with nothing but a raggedy blanket, that i had found scavenging the local dump for some treasures, and my most loyal companion, Crystal (my dog). This has always been a tough time of year for me due to the horrid weather and just plain and simply because i dreaded the Christmas holiday where families would gather together in joyful celebration of this "glorious" holiday full of gifts and gigantic meals big enough to feed an entire village, yet it is consumed by two fat parents and their greedy critically obese child. Everything about this time of year just makes me physically sick! I would vomit if it weren't for my empty stomach.
    Being homeless at the age of 17 isn't a very easy thing to cope with, but i get through with the unwanted food thrown out by families and restaurants, and i would have long ago given up on this life if it weren't for Crystal. I have been homeless since i was 8 years old and had decided on running away from the hell hole of an orphanage that i was imprisoned in since my parents perished in a fire when i was 5.
    I truly love my dog, she is a small dulled white furred Scottish terrier, i would be absolutely nothing without her, i found her the night i escaped from the orphanage, i found her outside a supermarket begging for food off the passersby. I gave her the ham out off the sandwich that i had discovered in a bin, the sandwich had a green mold developing along the side of it, but this made no difference to me or crystal, to me this sandwich looked like a feast fit for a king. This is what hunger tends to do to you, it can make you delusional. And since that day crystal and have been inseparable.
    A car zoomed past the old bridge not heeding the warning on the bridge, which woke me up in an instant. I look over to see that over night the small river that ran under the bridge and through a wood had frozen over with a thin sheet of glistening ice that had a thin blanket of freshly fallen snow. I look over at Crystal who was still lying there still and silent. This was very unusual behavior for her, usually she would be awake before me because of her keen sense of hearing, yet there she lay as if nothing could ever disturb her sleep. I wiped the frozen icicles that had formed on my long dusty brown hair as i slept and then i reached over to wake Crystal for our morning scavenge for breakfast or any morsel of food we could find. I touched Crystal gently on her side and jumped back in complete and utter horror! She was stone cold! After i got over the shock, I quickly ran to her and swept her up into my arms in an attempt to warm her. My attempt failed... i listened attentively for a single breath or a heartbeat, or just anything, anything that would show a sign of life in this still stone cold body that i held in my arms. I could now taste the salty tears that were uncontrollably seeping down my cheeks, she can't be gone, SHE CAN'T!! I am nothing without her...... So now, I AM nothing... I am nothing but a body without a spirit or a soul to guide me, i am nothing but bones covered in flesh and an old blanket........ I am nothing, and so i await my fate, under the bridge i had called my home for so many years, but now there is no hope, no point, and i have no will to carry on...