Simon is lonely, but how could he have a companion living, as he does, on the street. He uses a metal dog’s bowl for donations because he likes the sound coins make when they fall. There have been no coin sounds, so far, today; the bowl is empty.
It’s a winter’s morning as he sits in his wheelchair in the shelter of the Stonebow arches holding a hand made sign – ‘For God’s sake’. The leafleting Jehovah Witnesses, who share the same space, ignore him – they know who God wants – and it isn’t him. They feel no need to share their vacuum-flasked tea with someone like him: in their terms a worldly failure, and, as such, deserving to be cold, hungry and a beggar.
He is known. He’s done no harm – just an eyesore. He’s been on the street for nearly two years, sleeping rough in an NHS wheelchair. He can’t walk because of his swollen ulcerated legs; the bandages could do with being changed and the ulcers dressed. He wears a woolly hat and all the clothes he owns to keep warm. At lunchtime, a friendly PSCO brings him a hot coffee and a cheese sandwich and tells him, apologetically, that he’ll have to move on. He counts the money in his bowl; not even enough for some chips and a small bottle of vodka to keep out the cold.
By ten o’clock he’s back under the shelter of the arches, parked out of sight in a dark doorway. The High Street is noisy with young men and women out on the town. At eleven a group of five drunks arrive under the arches and one of them starts to piss. Simon, from his wheelchair, protests.
Look what we got here, the pissing man shouts, a fucking cripple. Within seconds their laughter intensifies as the men dump Simon out of his chair and give him a good kicking. One of them gets into the chair and another pushes it as they race off into the night cheering. He crawls to the roadside – it takes him twenty-three minutes.
Two hours later he’s in A&E in another wheelchair; he’s grateful for the warmth of the welcome given to one of their regulars. It’s almost like the old days before he fell from grace, when he was respectable, had a job and a house. He’s always known that he, like everyone else, is but a hair’s breadth from the fall. But somehow he never imagined he could go this far down.
Simon sees blue flashing lights through the window and two police officers enter.
Excuse me, Simon says, as they walk past him. Are you looking for my chair? Some lads nicked it.
They laugh. Call 101.
I was attacked. They stole it. It’s an NHS chair.
They walk on. He hears them, their words going back and forth.
Serves him right.
Fucking asking for it.
Lazy bastard, should get a fucking job.
Who does he think he is? God?
I hope you enjoyed this story. Remember, I publish a new story every Sunday.
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© Phil Cosker 2020
Phil Cosker has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved; no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any mean, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.
Phil Cosker 
‘God ‘gave me goose bumps. The spare language to describe characters and events of inhumanity, and the almost ordinariness and acceptance as normal of what goes on for the victim. Makes it all the more horrifying.
The callous inhumanity of young men. I almost wrote ‘now,’ but it is down the ages and across the world. And today the police pontificate about their protocols etc. But elemental racism and sexism, flame strong in many officers and their organisations. I am white, but have witnessed it on occasions down the years.
Black Lives Do Matter but are not seen that way by authority. The old American saying in Vietnam, ‘MGR’ seems to apply to multi-ethnic people in the UK and United States still. ‘The ‘Mere Gooks Rule.’ The Vietnamese did not count. Do our poor, and black and Asian, not either? With fascists organised and on the streets, write on brother.
I re-read ‘Stretcher’quite regularly, still laugh out loud.
‘Exposure.’ Hauntingly telling of the price journalists always face – at home or abroad sadly – and as the norm now it seems, especially in the USA. Sensuous poetry with purpose. Having read most of your books, it is as fine as anything you have written, Phil Cosker.
Thank you so much! It’s encouraging and warming to be appreciated. Go well, Phil