He leans against a cold brick wall and watches the snow fall, wrapped in a tattered jacket and hating everything. The alley he skulks in is clogged with trash, steeped in shadows and littered with dead rats and industrial traps (Veneno No Tocar Dontcha Know). He supposes he could spend the proverbial eternity of his miserable life in that frosty sump of despair, snarling as Escalades roll down 4th and happy people radiating warmth stroll down the sidewalks after high times at upper class resteraunts.

The fox is puzzling over a little problem, a short circuit of logic if you will. He had just returned home from a war, you see, a war that's still raging in his very fucked up head, and he can't comprehend how the gears of life can remain so greased, how society can still grind on so smooth and quiet. It's as if what he's been through doesn't really exist. It's a figment, as mythical and unreal as Hercules or Jason and the goddam Argonauts, as ethereal as the ghostly memories of all his dead friends.

What bothered him most of all was the realization that no one really cared. If he were in a coffin instead of this crooked crevice between a brownstone tenement and a branch of Wells Fargo no one would have been any the wiser, wouldn't have cared.

In truth that was life, though. It was, wasn't it? Individuality and it's primordial oceans, everyone an island, me and mine, your's and your own. Altruism was the idiot's creed and nice guys finished last. Where's your Prada, your Gucci, your brand new wagon as you hit the grocery shop looking lavish hmm?

He put a paw to his cheek. It was twitching again, under that ugly scar that bled sometimes. His mouth was dry and the wind howled, found its way under his jacket. He shivered.

"I need a drink," he whispered, staring down at a crushed soda can, his ears flat against his skull.