Deep down into the urban warren where I perch, a pair of alleyway shadows join hands, passing a small baggie between them. Money soon follows. I shake my head and step out from my resting spot. A plague of people scuttle past my side street, and I slip out, falling into step with the rabble as we scratch our way across the filthy pavement. None of us care about the others, unless they get in our way, and even then, it lasts only as long as an angry spark, before being snuffed out and forgotten—we are vermin, fighting for scraps.

Though I see no one person talking, the serrated edge of constant, cutting voices rips through the traffic and crowd, bleeding into my periphery. Ahead, a straw-haired teenage girl collides with a man and his suit. As the suit turns to face her, another girl, hood up, shadow falling across her face like a visor, rolls past his other side, dipping her hand into his pocket, and palming a wallet and phone, without being noticed.

Hoodie comes within reach. I grasp her wrist, squeezing it. Then, with a calculated twist, I wrench her arm free of her front pocket and jerk it upward. The pain forces her to drop the wallet and phone into my waiting hands. I shove her to the floor. She looks up, teeth bared, with fury burning in her glare. My empty black eyes and too-welcoming smile dare her to try something. She shrinks back. Without a word, she shuffles back into the pack.

I look at the phone; garbage. I chuck it to the floor and stamp down on it, relishing the destructive crunch beneath my boot. As I twist my heel, I root through the wallet and am surprised to find actual cash. In this day and age. Straw-hair, Hoodie, and Suit have evaporated into the throng and I am left alone with my spoils.

Further along, the stench of burning onions, warm bread, and dodgy meat drags me to a fat, grubby man at a free-standing cart.

“I’ll take a large.”

“Mustard? Onions?”

“Both. Lots.”

The vendor drops the meat into a bun, then wipes dripping tongs onto his grease-stained apron. He tosses on onions and douses it with grey-yellow sauce. As he wraps it up, I clock a guy further down the street. He is sitting in a torn sleeping bag, wearing a hardy coat with hood raised against the cold. He is a scraggly man with dirty cheeks.

“Better make it two.”

I slip a twenty back into the wallet and drop it, and a wrapped bun into his lap, disappearing before the wretch sees me. It’s not that I like him, or the homeless; I hate how people treat him more. Every day, the putrid nature of mankind solidifies my resolve. A pregnant woman takes a long drag, burning her cigarette to its end. My hand brushes hers, sending a hollow darkness through it into her heart. She drops dead.