By Me:

Alpha

Concrete is no sort of pillow for a man. Waking up on concrete is indicative of a failure- a failure to adequately care for the self. When Edward Hooper awoke one morning with his face touching concrete, he wasn’t sensible enough to recognize this ominous sign.

He roused slowly, his brain stumbling into recognition of his situation. His body remained sprawled as it was: face down, face into the concrete, mouth open, agape, his arms swept behind him like sick fins in a strong current, legs apart, his left knee digging into the concrete, grazed through his chinos, his right leg straight out behind him, just nudging the door of his police cell. This is how he found himself.Mysterious events seemed to have occurred between the day before and this concrete morning. What does it take to divert a man from his normal course, his very average day, and lead him to this vagrant mess? Edward Hooper asked himself this question.

His clothes were torn and soiled with blood and other bodily fluids. Edward wondered if he had wet himself. His face was bruised and one eye struggled to see through a sugar-puff of swollen flesh. “I am a mess,” he said to himself, aloud, though his speech was muffled by the concrete. He still had not moved. His face was still pushed into the ground, precisely where he was shoved the night before.Edward pulled himself together. He sat up slowly, examining his cuts and the stains on his clothes. He wondered if he should pray, but as he wasn’t sure what to pray for or who to pray to, he decided not to.

Edward sat and looked about his cell. It was bare. He presumed to be in a drunk tank. His head was full of a mean headache. Nothing like this had ever happened to Edward before.He struggled to make sense of his recent past. He checked his pockets: nothing. His wallet, house keys and mobile phone were gone. He sat back against a wall of his cell and sighed. Then, apparently startled by a phantom memory, he reached into his back pocket and retrieved a folded leaflet. “Come and Explore the Meaning of Life”, it said.