They kept me in the truck for hours. At first, it was just nice to be somewhere where no one was trying to hurt me, but as time went on I started getting restless – banging my hand against the door and yelling at them to let me go.

Eventually, I heard a door close, then another. The engine hummed to life and I took a seat on the padded bench on the right side of the truck. We swung out hard and fast and then weaved for a while. I walked around the edge of the truck, trying to find a gap in the metal to peer out of, but there was nothing – I got this queasy feeling in my stomach – the same sort you get when you’re spinning in circles with your eyes closed.

Eventually, after what felt like days, the truck came to a screeching halt. There was a metallic clanging sound and then the door swung open. Two guards stood there, guns raised. Behind them were street lights and darkness.

‘Get out.’ The guard on the left said.

I stood, my legs wouldn’t walk straight and I had to hold onto one of the doors as I got out – my sneakers crunched on gravel.

‘Where...’ I started to say, but the guards ignored me, they swung the metallic doors shut with a bang, then jumped into the front of the truck.

‘Hey!’ I called, ‘Where am I?’

The wheels of the truck spun, coating me in dust and gravel. I coughed. Wiped at my nose.

Eventually, its light disappeared. And I was left there, alone.

I looked around – the space around me seemed too disused, too unexploited to be owned by Crusher. It looked like a roadside stop for truckers. In the distance, along what looked to be a backroad, was a ball of light.

Must be a city. I decided.

I took a moment to breathe in the air. It had a freshness to it – an unfiltered tang that I hadn’t experienced in years.

‘This is good.’ I told myself as I started walking towards the glowing sphere of light, ‘This is good.’

****

By the time I reached the outer edges of the city, I’d walked 35 kilometres. I had no food, hadn’t slept and had to drink water from a little roadside ditch with rubbish floating in it. The plus side was I also found a couple of coins that I stashed away in my pockets.

The city was ugly compared to The Village. A monstrosity of crumbling concrete and smelly cars. I stumbled through the streets. Not really sure what to do. I held out my fingers and mumbled to myself, ‘Okay. I’m out. Actually out of Crusher Prison. But, I’ve got almost no money and no way to earn any. Hmmm.’

Opposite me was a bakery, the smell of pastries wafted through the air towards me. Beside the bakery was a law firm.

‘Okay,’ I clutched the coins in my fist, ‘First I lawyer up, then I get myself a sausage roll.’

I marched into the law firm, leaving greasy marks on their plush white carpet. The receptionist looked me up and down before saying, ‘The bakery’s next door.’

I shook my head, ‘I’m not here for the bakery – I’m here for a lawyer.’

She raised an eyebrow, ‘Do you have an appointment sir?’

‘No. I’ve just got into town...’ I trailed off as behind her a woman in a tidy suit moved towards the front door.

‘Excuse me!’ I called to the woman in the suit, ‘Are you a lawyer?'

She paused, tilted her head to the side, ‘Yes.’

I tried to give my best charming smile, ‘I’m looking for a lawyer – I’m a writer – I’m owed a lot of money by a big company.' My hands shook slightly from fatigue, 'I just need a lawyer.'

She held a finger up, ‘Which company?’

‘Crusher Med-’

I didn’t even get the end of my sentence out. The woman walked out the door. I turned to the receptionist, started to ask if there was someone else - but she just shook her head, ‘Get out.’

I walked out of the law firm, into the bakery, and walked out with a single, steaming sausage roll.

‘At least I achieved something.’ I said to the pigeons beside a park bench.

I spent the next four hours getting thrown out of every law firm in the city. Some didn’t believe me, some did, but all of them wanted nothing to do with Crusher Media.

‘Crusher doesn’t just fight in court,’ one grey-haired lawyer told me, ‘they fight with every avenue they’ve got. If a lawyer tries to take them on Crusher get their business partners to stop spending at your law firm, they hire away your staff, they get private investigators to check out your entire firm’s history. If they find anything they’ll get the news sites under their control to publish a big exposé. I’m telling you kid. People have tried to do what you’re doing, no one survived.’

I ended up at a bridge on the eastern side of town, just staring out over the river below as the sun set. The street lights came on and cars rushed by. I just kept staring until my body started to shiver. The cold was good, it gave me something to think about other than my situation.

An orange flickering was coming from underneath the bridge. I stumbled down the bank and found four guys standing in front of a rusted bin with fire leaping from it.

The guys alternated between holding their hands over it and pushing logs of cardboard into the heat.

My feet crunched on old aluminium cans and broken glass as I made my way over to the fire.

The guys didn’t say a word as I stood in front of them, but two of them shifted around slightly, clearing a space for me to warm my hands over the flame.

Most of the homeless were just trying to keep warm, but beyond the flames was this guy wearing four jackets and pacing back and forth. He had this weird spiky-furred cat that wouldn’t leave his side. The guy was mumbling into a phone about how he wanted to go back into the dungeon. How he needed to go back into the dungeon and how the world was about to be destroyed.

I stayed away from that guy.

****

I wandered the city bored and directionless for four days. I ate half-eaten meals out of trash cans. I drank from restroom taps and water features, and mostly, I just walked. It helped me to calm the anxiety beating through my head.

Strangely there was one thing I craved from my previous life above all else. It wasn’t food, friends, or even a house. It was writing.

I missed that feeling of control that the rest of my life lacked, I missed that feeling of escape that writing offered, that feeling where you’re totally immersed in the world you’re building for your readers. The simplicity and difficulty of the craft.

So, on the fourth day, I walked into a lawyer’s office and slipped their branded pens and a notepad into my pocket.

I found myself a little space by the river. Sat down and started to write.

****

The days started to grow colder and my collection of tatty-stained notebooks grew larger. I wrote about myself, what I was feeling, how much I wanted to shit on the car bonnet of Richard Balls. But I also wrote fiction, my backlog of chapters for The One Who Walks Alone grew and grew as I used it as an escape from my life on the streets.

I wasn’t the only artist out there. I made friends with a woman who called herself Mona Lisa. She like to sketch people as they moved through the city streets. Then there were the graffiti artists painting giant murals of bold colour and even bolder statements in the middle of the night. Street poets, reading their masterpieces aloud for coins so they could afford bread and a bottle of cheap wine.

The days ran into each other, a cold wind started to blow. Snow fell. And that’s when I found myself in the bus stop.

****

Bus stops are a godsend if you’re homeless. They’re covered over, there’s usually a bench in the back you can sleep on, and in the early morning, they’re usually pretty quiet.

I was holed up in one on the southern side of town, with pieces of paper stuffed into my jacket to help protect against the cold. Earlier that day I’d stolen a pair of gloves and cut the fingertips out so I could still hold my pen. There was this little orange triangle of light coming from the sunrise that I was using to illuminate my crumpled notebook as I dashed out a new chapter on it.

Two months later and Sparrow was still a tree.

And even worse than that - he was still an angry tree.

Someone stepped into the bus shelter. I drew my knees towards me and reached for the stick I’d taken to carrying around. But, it was just a young guy in a suit. I eyed him, but he looked too wealthy to want anything to do with me, so I went back to my writing.

Firstly, there was the fact Sparrow hadn’t slept in two months. Trees never sleep - they do have rest periods, bits of time when growth is slower. But Sparrow just couldn't tune out the scuttle of the beetle, which had since laid eggs, and had kids who had also laid eggs and were about to have a third generation of biting, scratching beetles. A bird had also built a nest in a fork in his branches. Sparrow had named the stupid thing Demon because of the unearthly scream the bird made every morning when the sun rose. Beneath the soil, worms and other slithering creatures gnawed at his roots, and pooped on him.

‘Cold night huh?’

I looked up, it was the young guy. He was smiling a friendly smile.

‘Yeah,’ I rubbed my hands together, ‘Winter’s coming.’

He pulled out a long, slender tube and twisted the lid off of it – hot steam rose from the inside. Then, from his bag, he pulled out two paper cups.

‘Coffee?’ He said, filling one of the cups with the fragrant, dark liquid.

‘Hell yeah.’

I took off my gloves and cradled the cup between my hands. A few sips and I was in heaven.

‘Thanks.’

The guy shrugged, and looked down at my notepad, ‘What are you writing?’

I picked it up, ‘Fiction – it's just something to pass the time.’

He smiled, ‘Yeah? That’s my favourite thing in the world, kicking back with a decent webfiction to read. If only it was a bit cheaper.’

I laughed, ‘That’s how I ended up here.’

‘What? Reading?’ He chuckled, ‘I’d believe that with the prices Crusher is charging per chapter.’

I scratched my chin, where an unruly beard had started to grow, ‘You got any favourites?’

‘Well yeah... there’s this one author – Lazy Cultivator, he writes this wuxia about a chicken.’

‘Oh my god, so good.’ I said, ‘She’s the best.’

‘She?’

I nodded, ‘Yeah. I met her once.’

‘Really?’ He had this smile larger than his face, ‘I thought he-ah-she was in one of those ultra-exclusive writer’s villages.’

I nodded, ‘Yeah. I was there too. Once.’

His eyes widened, ‘No-way. Can I see what you’re writing?’

I tossed him the notebook, sipped the coffee, the warmth spread down my throat and into my chest.

His eyes flicked across the pages, there were smudged lines and spots from where water had dripped onto the paper.

‘Sorry about the smudges I-’

‘-Holy shit. You’re Eli the Hill?’

I shrugged, ‘Yeah. That’s me.’

‘Dude!’ His hands shook as he thumbed through the pages, ‘I’ve been following you since Astra recommended you.’

I swallowed, ‘Yeah.’

‘What happened? I mean like... you disappeared, and now you’re here, on the streets... and what happened with a Victim of Online Fiction? You never finished it.’

I gestured to the bus stop, ‘That story... that story is still under construction. I haven’t found my happily ever after just yet.’

His leg knocked over his cup of coffee as he turned, he didn’t even notice as it spilt on the concrete beneath us, ‘Are you saying that was all real?’

‘Yeah. I think that’s why so many people are enjoying it... or at least were enjoying it.’

His eyes swept up and down my body, taking me all in, ‘Why are you on the street? Why aren’t you in a penthouse somewhere?’

I sipped the last of my coffee, ‘I did some things Crusher didn’t like.’

‘And...’ his hands shook, ‘Eli, I work in property and intellectual property law. Sound boring... and it is... but man, you should see your book. It’s exploded – it passed 20 million reads two days ago – and you’ve been featuring on all the independent writer and reader forums – no one can believe that you’d stop writing after your story took off like that. Eli! You’re on your way to catching the chicken!’

I grinned a small grin, ‘Wow. 20 million reads. How about that?’

His fists shook and he started to shout, ‘But Eli! Why are you on the street? You should be earning ten times what I do.’

‘And how am I gonna get that money? Steal a gun? Hold Balls hostage? No one will take my case.’

The young guy stared at me, his eyes flickered across my face, ‘Eli – you are Eli right? You’re not making this up?’

‘Yeah, although sometimes I wish I was just making it up.’

‘Eli the Hill. I am going to...’ he ran a hand through his hair, ‘I’m going to get your book back.’

‘What?’ I frowned, and handed him back his coffee cup, ‘I’m some dude on the street. Why? Why would you help me?’

The man in the suit pointed at my scribble-filled notebook, ‘Because of your story. I don’t know why man, but that story touched something in me, and it touched something in a lot of other people. And also there’s a small amount of personal interest...’ he grinned, ‘I want to see your story finished.’

He held out his hand, ‘I’m Kauri. Catch the next bus with me. We’ll go over to my firm and I’ll get things sorted out for you.’