Fiending for Scraps
- Publication: Alchemy
- Year: 2025
- Author or artist: Kamea Gray (Alchemy Editor)
- Type: Fiction
A sharp voice cut through the wind. “Come closer. We can’t hear what you’re saying.”
The boy moved slowly, feet dragging through the sand, hands kept deep in his pockets. He raised his voice as he drew near, but the wind swallowed it before it could reach the three older kids kneeling in a trench beneath the boardwalk—faces half hidden in shadow.
“We can’t hear you!” one of them called out again, with growing impatience.
The boy spoke again, but the sound hardly carried. By the time he reached them, the group had already stubbed out their cigarettes in the sand. They moved cautiously, like they thought he might bring trouble with him.
“What is it?”
The boy’s body was as taut as a wound spring. His eyes darted around the beach and over the boardwalk, as if someone or something might be watching.
“I need a light,” he said, louder this time, his voice trembling slightly.
The group exchanged glances—a joke, surely? But the boy didn’t flinch.
“What for?”
The boy said nothing, then dipped a hand into the pocket of his dark, worn jeans and drew something out. Holding it low, he cradled it like contraband. The older kids craned their necks to see, but the boy hid it too well.
Again, the boy looked over each shoulder and scanned his surroundings. Then he flipped his palm over to reveal a dirty, half-smoked cigarette, shielding it as though it were something harder.
“Where’d you get that?”
The boy didn’t answer.
It wasn’t unusual, younger kids coming up to them when they smoked, but something wasn’t quite right. Something they had only noticed in his silence.
The boy was young, somewhere between five or six years of age. His skin was rough and cracked from the salty air, and dirt had settled in the crevices of his face. His eyes had a hardness to them—something unrelenting. They were wide and intense, carrying a weight none of them could hold for long. His body was marked with bruises, dried blood, and the telltale grime of neglect. He looked like a baby deer, hit by a car—wide-eyed and bleeding out on a desolate highway. Dying, and not understanding why.
The boy’s lips tightened, and his piercing gaze drilled into them. “I won’t tell anyone.”
One of them shifted, glancing around. “It’s not about that.”
“Then why not?” He asked. His voice broke, the tiniest crack in his steel armor.
“Please…I won’t tell,” he repeated, aware that no one on the boardwalk could see this exchange.
“We can’t.”
The boy nodded once, his expression unreadable. “I understand,” he said. He turned and walked back into the wind, his body hunched in disappointment.
The older kids watched him trudge away through the sand. They glanced at the cigarette carton in front of them but had lost their appetite for it.
They looked back for the boy, but his figure had vanished into the twilight. None of them said a word. The waves filled the silence, steady and hollow.