The Old Quarter

Dirty streets and torn buildings sit among rubble from an older age. Tiles fallen from roofs long ago, litter the ground. Vermin scurry out of sight.

A withered crowd slowly walks down the street, mixed with the homeless and the beggars. Silent and busy, they keep their minds to their own, quiet as the old cemetery around the corner.

Bars unkempt, signs dishevelled, windows cracked. Wares sit in shops collecting dust. Shopkeepers walk mindlessly about their stores, sweeping dust away and whispering to themselves.

Sly peddlers creep among the alleys, whispering to uncaring passer bys, while behind them, drunks lie in their own stench.
Beggars stumble across the road, stomach growling. A baby wails in an upstairs apartment, her cries clearly audible over the silent town.

Then something catches everyone’s eyes. In the first time in years, everyone was noticing the same thing. They stare and peer at a man that certainly did not belong. Colourful clothes, gold chains hanging from his large pockets, he walked with his head held high. A smirk smeared across his face, the man pushed his way through the muted crowd.
Eyes from above and below, around buildings and peeking through shattered windows above, they stalked the man’s every step, watching him like a hawk.

As the man shoved his way proudly pass the people, he bumped into a young orphan in tattered clothes. The man raised his brow and stopped to look at the boy.
The child looked up, his mouth wide on his dirty face. He screamed, “Tax collector!”

And before the orphan could finish his sentence, the crowd enveloped the man. Within a fraction of a second later, the crowd continued walking silently down the town street. All that remained of where the man once stood, was his torn and battered body lying on the ground, wheezing his last breath away. Tossed aside like an owl’s pellet, he looked helplessly around him at a street full of blank faces. He would stay there until the last of the blood in his body drips itself out hours later.

The people would go about their daily lives, ignoring another corpse of an unfortunate fellow who either drunk himself dead, or lost himself in the streets of the Old Quarter.
They would go about peacefully, without whispers in the shadows of the cold deed, for who but the orphans, the poor, the wretched, would dare set foot into this side of town, where the exiled called home and fugitives hid? No one.
It is because of that knowledge, the residents of the Old Quarter can go about without fear of retribution or justice. Although there are beggars in the other quarters in the city that would hovel at your feet, the men and women of the Old Quarter are survivors, who do not kneel or grovel. This is a town, where people choose to live, where thieves and murderers walk by day. And only a fool would walk so proudly into such a tainted community. The Old Quarter, last bastion where dark deeds linger, has taken another soul.

EDIT: Well we were doing observational writing in class and how web could use that to help us give ideas and inspiration of stories. We went for a walk down the main road and I noticed how everyone walks down the street minding their own business. People only pay attention to the same thing when someone acts out of the ordinary. That, or when the police show up, and they did as some one was parking in a no-standing zone. Anyway I came up with this an hour later. Feedback: Last paragraph dragged on after the story ended. I knew that already, I just kept going because of the inspiration. Another was how the narrator knew the boy was an orphan. Must weave that in somehow. Also, need to describe and show individuality of the crowd; ie. reaction of the crowd/individuals when the tax man shoved his way through.