PLP

Fireworks bloom red and blue in Kirkyards’s brain as he swings his legs over the side. This kind of pain can be only one thing.

Gout.

It’s inevitable he thinks, clamping eyes shut and envisioning the swollen big toe, throbbing with every pump of his withered heart. First was diabetes. But, regrettably, he’d given up sugar and carbs for protein, mostly pickled and cured meats in broken bottles and cans strewn about the floor of his hovel. Glass and tin strips ripping and tearing up the soles of his feet. Rips and tears endlessly infected with the fly-specked crud of his place.

He cries now. Pulls the sheet back and steels himself. Every movement paining tender unseen digits. Wincing and wishing. Wishing away the phantom pains, as he dares to open his eyes, and look down his scabbed legs towards the stumps where his inflamed feet where no longer there.