Free The Street Philosopher by Matthew Plampin

tenement’s wide brick flank until he stood under his window. Back on Princess Street, the spinners strode noisily by; and then a gurgling moan came from somewhere up ahead, further down the alley. Kitson went towards it. Away from the neat grid of commercial streets around Piccadilly, of which Princess Street could just be considered a part, Manchester soon crumbled into a ramshackle maze of winding passages, interspersed with foul-smelling doorways and grubby, impassive casements. Where there were lights, the even yellows and oranges of gas were replaced by the glaring white-green of lime, lending a spectral pallor to the few who passed beneath them.
    It took Kitson some minutes to locate the source of the moan. A man wrapped in a cloak lay sprawled in the corner of a stinking, unlit yard. It was too dark to see any more than this. He approached the stricken man slowly, crouching down and stating that he was there to help. The man merely whimpered in response. Relying on touch, as he had been taught, Kitson took the man–who was narrow-shouldered and light, and easily moved–in his arms and began to examine him. It had been many months, years in fact, since Kitson had performed such ministrations, yet he found that he had forgotten nothing; the medical procedure was still deeply impressed upon his mind. Feeling the glimmer of a long-lost confidence, he quickly discovered a metal object jutting out of the man’s side, something like a long nail with a catch of some sort at its end. There could be no doubt–this man was in serious danger, and had to be taken to a hospital as soon as possible. Kitson rose slightly to lift him, hoping to get the man to an alley where help could be obtained more easily.
    This adjustment caused the uncomfortable pain that had been lingering in his chest all day to intensify abruptly. He gasped, his hand going instinctively to the deep scar on his ribcage. Beneath the scored skin, his lungs rattled as they tried haltingly to draw in sufficient air. The man, meanwhile, was reaching for the object in his side. Too late, Kitson went to stop him–just as he succeeded in wrenching it out.
    Blood spurted from the wound, splashing hotly on to Kitson’s thighs. Its sickening metallic tang filled his nostrils, smothering completely the sense of purpose that had brought him into the yard. As he reeled, gagging helplessly, a half-heard voice spoke his name. It was unnervingly close, almost at his shoulder; he turned, but saw only blackness. Another voice called out, high with fright, from somewhere past the fallen man. Several others joined it a second later. They were talking in Russian.
    Kitson tensed. The stones of the yard began to vibrate beneath him, faintly at first, but with a gathering, horrifying rhythm. A ripple ran through the fetid puddle at its centre. There was a dull rumbling, then a thud, and the sound of a shutter smashing; and then he was once more in the ruined suburbs of Sebastopol, a heavy artillery bombardment underway all around him. Others were nearby, his old colleagues–he could hear their boots, scrabbling frantically through the rubble. Several pistol shots were fired in quick succession. Brick dust, thrown up by a collapsing wall, made him cough hard. In the thick, soupy darkness, the body lying before him seemed to blur and shift, becoming someone else altogether. Kitson stared disbelievingly at this dreaded form, tears coursing across his cheeks and chin; and his guilt pressed down on him like a slab of icy granite, crushing him slowly beneath its weight.
    With a violent shudder, the stabbed man barked out a single flat syllable, an awful, involuntary sound dredged up from deep within him. Kitson squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, swallowed down the bile that was burning his throat and fought to recover his reason. Variations of this waking nightmare had visited him before, on countless previous occasions, but it had not manifested with such disorientating vividness