Pinging.
The little pebbles of ice tagged the vehicles in the square with a hideous metallic sound. Under the Ambassador Bridge it was even louder, as though tiny pellets were being hurled down as punishment. He shivered. As the rotting teeth in his mouth clacked together he looked out from underneath the bridge, letting his eyes wander across the water and into the depths of shadowy streets. Memories were fading into the passing continuum of the universe.
Fuzzy.
His life was disappearing just as he had three decades ago.
Left.
Exactly what he had done. Left behind his rock, his life, his line.
And never looked back.
Under the bridge, his eyes wandered into the water, into time itself, repudiating. He was home again, for a moment. Then nothing. The wind gusted down into the depression he was sitting in and then through the man. He shivered again and settled in for the night.

The cars began at 4am. Red morning shown into the city, its rays finding the eyes of the man under the bridge, penetrating through his sleep and waking him to misery.
Blackness.
He didn’t see it at first didn’t understand the pain. He lifted it, lifted himself, feeling as though the frost had seeped into his bones. They cracked and heaved with age. Often the bridge and he felt the same pain. Sagging under the pressure and swaying in the direction of the breeze.
Drifting.
Not today. He settled in again after seeing it, realizing what was happening. No one would notice his departure as they had not the first time. He was as invisible as the time with which he had become so familiar. Being the one thing he understood, it made sense that they shared this similarity. Confusing then that the time was not on his side. Not anymore at least. One time he would have been able to cultivate all the time in the world. But then, like a mirror, it had cracked, distorting his life and distilling his reality.
He looked down. It was still black, but now he could feel the pain creeping in. Past the remaining nerves it raced and up his spine, sending out pricking needles to his body, and finally to his brain, registering as a command.
Fix me.
And then; Money. 
He didn’t want to. Knowing that he was invisible may have been depressing, saddening, or maddening, but it was also a comfortable bubble of life, one comforted him and assured him in times of need. Not now.
Standing. He was doing so now. From there he stepped into the world of sight, away from the quiet. His soul ignited again. There was a goal and a clear path.
Too bad that he was no longer in control of the feelings which spread throughout him, driving him in a way that he had known only once before.
Cracked.
He couldn’t help it, the mirror was again facing the hammer, facing the bearded guy who had once had everything. Nobody had ever fixed the mirror. It had been left out to the elements like him. Neglected. This time it would break and there would be no second chances.

She looked up and down the multi colored light and into the greenery that had been set before her. She and four kids. Boy, girl, boy, girl.
Lucky.
Christmas was their favorite time. One where all of the worries, the fears, and the stresses fell away, giving wings to dreams and loves that might never be. But for now they swam in the beauty and hope, thinking that the only thing impossible was impossibility.
She feared for them. Nothing disturbed her more than this time of year. Loving Christmas wasn’t enough anymore, not to fill the hole, the void left behind after it happened. Kids made it better, bearable, happy even, but not the way it had been. They knew not of the father. She did. Often before Christmas Eve Day she had nightmares, ones in which loud voices, clicking wheels, dice, and cards haunted her until the chased her into dawn.
During the day, children’s voices gave light and life to her years. But nothing could save her from the nights when the backs of her lids filled not with blackness, but with aces.
The trance snapped. One of her sons was climbing the banister like a monkey, totally engrossed in his work, attempting not to fall. The smile was there, but something else was underneath.
She knew that look.
She hated that look.

The house looked the same and different this night. Perhaps it was being outside that made the difference. This angle, gazing into something owned, something loved, something not for him. Tick tock.
No more silence.
Time was racing forth, into the opportune, and leaving behind its twin. The one nobody loved. The one surviving in eternity. Surviving in dying life.
He knocked. She answered.
The door and the opportunity began to close and he stepped inside.
Grimace.
The look on her face was one in which he saw anger, saw hurt, saw pity.
He knew that look.
He hated that look.
“Johnny … I don’t want you here.”
“I know Meredith … I know.”
She knew he was here for one thing. It was the same as had driven her away, and driven him to the bridge, to the edge. Not again. Never again had she promised herself. It was unforgivable what he had done. Maybe she hated him.
He didn’t know what she thought of him. When he saw her face though he knew it was vain. The pant leg rose and stopped.
Tick tock.
The wall was there. Something he never had. Not when he walked the streets begging, not when he slept in the hole under the bridge, not when he dug through trash cans. Only once before had it been there. She had always given it to him. The one thing he had missed in his silence.
He couldn’t pull up the pants, tattered as they were, because she was here, and he couldn’t bear her pity.
“I need it really bad this time,” he said. Not begging like normal, but asking.
“I can’t go through that again, Johnny. Especially not with you.” She wept.
“Please …” Now he was begging.
“You know I can’t, not to a homeless man who roams free of life and family.”
He paused in shock.
Freedom.
“You think I’m free?! Because I answer to know one person?! I answer to so much more! I can’t go one day without getting spit on! You think thats free? You think digging in trash to survive is free? Inmates are more free than me! Even when I was with you, I wasn’t free. I was a slave! You have no idea what it’s like to be a man wishing for either prison or death.” He touched her purse behind him and pulled it into his coat.
Slam.
The opportunity gone, like him, back into the silence.

She knew he had taken it. She also knew there was nothing of much use to him within it. The phone beeped as she dialed. Three french hens. Beep … beep … beep …
The lights. Blue and red. They interrupted the silence he had receded to.
Into the car, then the building.
She was here of course.
“Is this him ma’am.”
“Yep, that’s him. I want him here for a long time.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am. What’s your name, miss?”
“Meredith Laginworth, well that’s my married name.”
“Sir?”
“Johnny.”
“Got a last name?”
…
“Doe.”
Her eyes thanked him. They walked down the hall, the three of them and looked at the bars. The officer opened them. Time again stood still. Backing him into the wall and then up and over it allowing him to accept it. He looked at her, the woman he loved.
“Merry Christmas,” he whispered.
Slam.
The doors closed.
“I forgive you.”
He returned then, finally.
Silence.