About this story
A stranger in rags breaks a window to buy you both an arrest and a roof; you choose the open road instead, until exhaustion leaves you leaning on a stranger's fence. A voice from inside a dark, seemingly empty house invites you through a raised window, then tells you to be still and wait. A match flares behind you as it says the room has been expecting you.
How it opens
The casual ward door closed against you before midnight rain reached Hammersmith.
Workhouse PorterFull. Find another ward and stop ringing this bell.
All day, employers had refused labour; now even humiliation refused a bed.
Stranger in RagsThey say full because turning men away keeps their numbers tidy.
Choose
If there is space, the master should hear that I was refused.
I have no strength left for another quarrel.