from Guilt: stories by Ferdinand von Schirach
There seems to be nothing left in this story except the awful qualities of other people, and how they go from sad to worse.
Two young street kids allow get caught up in a seedy situation which at first sounds like something it isn’t. At least that’s what they claim. The dirt under their fingernails becomes the evidence, so to speak, that allows the law to slowly close in.
This story is wafer thin and like most of this writing, very close to being too real. When the man these kids have come to visit begins to masturbate, it starts to sound like this is a crime in progress. Time is compressed, and over the course of a half-dozen pages we visit their thoughts one by one, and they are toilet bowl deep.
Maybe these kids deserved to get what was coming to them and so did the man who brought them home. Never underestimate other people is what I always say.