''Fifty dollars!"
"I hear fifty, do I hear fifty-five?"
"Sixty!"
"Seventy-five!"

The crowd was soon gathering around the young child on the steps of City Hall. The white noise making the bidding even harder to hear, but they just shouted louder. So loud, you could hear it several blocks away.

"One hundred dollars!" someone called out from the back. A couple members of the crowd turned to look at the bidder, while a middle aged woman shouted a higher number.

Never underestimate the lengths addicts will go on a nicotine fit. Never underestimate the length normal people will go to feel normal again.

The only thing that stopped the crowd from jumping the young boy and taking the pack of cigarettes was just that - the urge to feel normal again. And also the fact that in the rabble, no one would get them.

A a frail, 20-something man bid one hundred and fifty dollars, thinking it would stop the auction. It didn't. You should see how much a can of spent coffee grounds will go for. But money means nothing to people, if only to gain their humanity back. Money will be around forever, but humanity is dying.

I light a cigarette, and flip the collar of my coat up. I walk past the crowd, blow a puff of smoke, and stroll along.

Humanity.

And it only cost me three hundred dollars.