As the early autumn crickets sang across the overgrown ghetto, Tom Jones looked accusingly into the dark, dank sky above, a sky marred by the wicked grin of the slivered moon as it slid from behind a bank of dirty, scudding cloud, clouds that should not—this according to his lifetime of ignoring weather reports, audio, video and otherwise—spit rain.

And another drop splashed moistly on his forehead, convincing him that he was, indeed, cursed. He looked down to his wrist for the weather report, and as he reflexively turned it as his right hand came to flip up the viewer, was reminded of its repossession, two years ago, when his early retirement cut his income and he had to settle for this damned pair of cell phones for the both of them, updated monthly by the junk dealer to match the forever changing access stream.

It occurred to him then, as he limped along Wysteria Lane, beneath the shadow of the ugly hulking, slums—mansions of some bygone era—that these very leering structures had once made the night a time of gentle repose, a time of rest for weary bones such as his, now creaking along as awkwardly as some of the overbuilt houses, with their gaudy scaffold approaches to the many rentals that pocked them like honeycombs in a hive.

Yes, it occurred to him, but then slipped his mind as the knife of pain shot from heel to hip, submerging his purposeful thought with a wave of anger.

A few deep breaths, a few painful steps, and his mind was his again, the rhythm of his lonely shuffle beginning to soothe—to render his pain-clouded stream of thought, into focus, sure and smooth.

He thought then, that Slippy had probably not updated his phone, afraid as he probably was of being sought by his brother’s killers who certainly prowled the cheap feeds.

A plastic bottle crunched behind him and he turned with a start to see a yo-punk, snarling in frustration at himself for stepping into the gutter before pouncing on his limping prey. Tom stooped painfully and grabbed hold of a head-sized chunk of curb by the broken end and glared about from his menacing crouch. He then heard a whisper from behind the cricket-haunted bushes on his other side, where the fronts of the houses faced the backs of the houses from which the yo-punk must have issued. The yo-punk immediately backed off up the curb, across the stony sidewalk and into the weed-choked yard from which he had stalked.

Momentarily afraid to straighten up for fear of being popped, Tom looked up at the police box and saw that the drone light was blue. No one would be popping off a gun within range of the drone box that didn’t want the flying electrocution bot to shock them out of their shoes and slap the zip-ties on. There were not enough police to recover a tazed and zipped gunmen for at least 12 hours and the police never recovered felons at night and no one wanted to be zipped and left for looters—and once stripped naked, the rats—all night on a Harm City street.

Tome Jones stood and winked at the police box, grinned into the bushes and was pleased to hear a low curse and the shuffle of two sneakered feet. Thanking his lucky stars, he looked up to find which one was twinkling most brightly and saw only the crooked face of the emaciated moon, sliding brightly behind the nocturnal clouds.

Hefting his chunk of concrete with a grunt of satisfaction as he walked on down the moonlit street, he snarled, low, under his breath, not wanting to boast to anyone other than his own reviving spirit, “Bring it on punks, old Jonesy has got the brick-hand.”

His crooked steps, under the light of the crooked-faced moon, felt right somehow, giving Tom Jones the feeling that he belonged to the night.