(An excerpt from) THE MAN

            The sun was hot, very hot. The man squinted against that hell son, sweated and staggered wide legged under the oppressive heat. He had something in his hand, his voice a low growl, talking to whatever it was. He  was babbling to himself an indecipherable language of sorts, stumbling willynilly ,slobbering, squinting and gibbering all the while  turning the objects over and over in his filthy hands.           The man’s hair hung like wet, dirty strings in front of his face. He was going to die and he knew that, so he breathed something through ragged rotten teeth, maybe a prayer, maybe a curse what he mumbled in that gravely drone. Some remnants he heard once in a church in an almost forgotten town somewhere in his damned and hellish life. Nevertheless he mumbled on feverishly.