This is the second story in my weekly #500WordWednesday collection. Enjoy.

Ratty Cardboard stole my spot.

There’s a lot of folks out in the morning, ‘specially when the weather’s nice, so I keep track’a who goes where. You want somewhere with no competition and lotsa slow-movin’ traffic. But if you really wanna clean up, you gotta find the sweet spot. That place after the coffee’s kicked in but before the morning generous-feelin’ wears off.

I found that spot. It took me a few weeks — I move around the country a lot and just got in from Hoboken. But I found it. It’s about fifty feet back from the red light at the corner of Chestnut and Bellington. You don’t wanna be closer — the front’s pissed they missed the light. Most mornings you’ll have 15, 20 cars backed up here, so 50 feet is a good distance. They’ve got their windows rolled up, but if you have a good sign and look disease-free, you can do alright.

Not that many of us have diseases, I mean. Well, I don’t know, actually, I barely know any of these people since I just got in, like I said. But I’ve never met an AIDS victim or anything. Least I don’t think so.

Dammit. Rambling again. These fuckin’ Percocets leave me on top of a warm pink cloud mountain for a solid four hours, but they get me ramblin’. Like I said, Ratty Cardboard got my spot. Haven’t gotten his name yet, he’s usually eight or ten blocks back towards the highway, workin’ the news stations out that way. But today he’s doing his usual hitch-strut right on the median there where I make my livin’.

Here’s hopin’ they see right through it. It’s like those girls in the shop windows with the jeans that some kid in China had to sew together then rip apart. That sign’s not his umbrella/pillow like mine. He’s probably got a nice little couch in the back’a some crackhouse down by the waterfront: free blow (and blowjobs).

Meanwhile I’ve been sleeping in a tipped-over dumpster behind the middle school for the past month. It’s actually not bad, but I think the janitor knows I use it.

But back to the issue at hand. Mister scruff-beard, winter jacket in June, scarf around the neck, fake army sob story, Ratty-ass Cardboard took my fuckin’ spot.

He reads the news at least. Know how I know? Cuz that sign he’s got, the one with the carefully torn edges and the on-purpose coffee stain? Says he lost his squad and gained some chest shrapnel from an Afghan ambush on December 5th, 2011.

And that happened. He just wasn’t there.

Know how I know? Same reason I make more money in the summer when I can wear shorts. I lost my squad and my left leg that day.

Ratty Cardboard was nowhere in sight.