Wednesday's Words on a Friday

Last week's sentence prompt was "in darkest night, on silent wings of ice"


Let's try this....

"In darkest night, on silent wings of ice", death blew in, disguised as flakes of snow.
In the still of the night, while people slept in their warm homes, under warm blankets or thick quilts, the homeless of the town, shivered and huddled in corners, doorways, under the bridge. A few shared the limited warmth of a thin piece of old blanket, some pulled a threadbare coat closer around their shoulders and turned up the collar for a little extra warmth.

Simon curled up as tight as he could, with a pad of old newspapers to protect him from the icy cold ground, an angled tree branch helping to keep off the worst of the snow, he dreamed of Christmases past. His childhood, when there was a fire in the living room, his college years when he had become addicted to drugs, later years when he had beaten the addiction, but was unable to find a job.
Employers didn't want to hire someone with a "suspicious past".  He'd begun drinking to forget it all, eventually losing his home when he drank his social security money instead of paying rent.
He'd been living on the streets for many years now, at 68 he was so very tired of it all. He had no body fat to add a little warmth, had been ill recently, unable to keep down even the small amounts of food handed out by the soup van.

Simon was skin and bone. As the temperature dropped and the snow deepened, his broken heart could take no more. In darkest night, on silent wings of ice, his soul took flight, and Simon passed away. There was no family to mourn his passing, no one knew he was there under the big old tree, he was just one of many unknowns who would be missed only by the few, also homeless, mates that usually met him at the soup van every evening. They would think he had moved on and wouldn't bother looking for him.