Description

Steve Parry was a homeless man haunting the edges of Melbourne, a city that shimmered with indifferent, gleaming lights under the vast Australian sky. Homeless, he and his loyal bulldog, Vuddy, had been navigating the grey concrete labyrinth and shadowed, echoing alleyways for weeks. Steve, a man whose frame carried extra weight and whose hair, a clumsy brown mop, defied any sense of order, possessed little outwardly remarkable save for a stubborn flicker of defiance in his eyes – a fighter's spirit refusing to be extinguished by the city's cold shoulder and hurried footsteps.

He was once a man of spreadsheets and the hum of fluorescent lights in the sterile corridors of MANZA bank, until his job vanished, outsourced to a place unseen, unheard. This rupture was the crack through which his life drained away. His partner, Brasmi, seized the moment, her divorce petition landing like a final blow, the crisp white paper feeling ominous in his hands. Steve, reeling, lost the ensuing battle in the sterile, echoing halls of the court, where sunlight streamed through high windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the tense air. The gavel's sharp crack gifted his home – once filled with warm colors and laughter – his savings, his life's accumulation, to Brasmi as alimony. Cast adrift with dwindling cash – the coins clinking with depressing finality in his pocket – and facing a job market as barren as his prospects, Steve joined the ranks of the invisible. He'd always felt a pang of sympathy for the city's homeless, offering spare change – silver and copper glinting as they dropped into outstretched, grimy hands – and receiving nods of weary goodwill in return, their voices often raspy whispers. Now, he was one of them.