Welfare
"Trash fluttered around the empty, hollow streets of Svetnaya. A dark wind howled, sweeping the debris further and further away into the night. The frigid air had specks of snow in it, and huddled poor people could be seen stumbling about, wrapped in the season's warmest coats and blankets they could afford. Russia had been in decay. The economy had turned downward, and something had been taken out of their society. The trash swirled and tumbled in the breeze, caught in an empty reverie. The hunger. That's all there was left in this world. A man rubbed his hands together in the frigid breeze, a little light from a streetlight catching a strange look in his eye. He winced, and pulled away. There it was. The emptiness. The cold. The need for more. Two of the bundled up poor people, a man and a woman, entered a large department building with a sign over the door reading Social Department. They shook off the slight snow and stomped over to a roped line by several...