The trip to Josef’s shop was a short one even though he noted when he looked down, that the old woman could not take very long steps. ‘Chalk it up to the company I’m keeping.’ It was hard not to like her, she chatted incessantly and told old jokes as if they were fresh. This carried on all the way into the building, the bell overhead rang out and a young hispanic boy in his teenage years with the dark wisps of hair which promised to one day become a grand mustache gave out a friendly wave.

“Dr. Manning! Long time no see!” The boy said with a broad smile, he was a spindly lad, long limbed, gangly and lean. At sixteen though, he still wasn’t filled out, though it appeared to Charlie that he’d become quite tall if given time.

‘He won’t grow up.’ The voice in Charlie’s head promised him, ‘You killed this one too.’ Charlie squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then covered his distress with a brief coughing fit before waving off the looks of concern from those around him.

When Charlie was sure he’d successfully won the fight for self control again, he straightened up and waved his hand in a dismissive fashion. “I’m fine, just fine. It was just a…”

‘...a fly flew down my throat.’

‘...I swallowed wrong.’

‘...I was engulfed in sorrow and self pity for a moment and didn’t want you to see it.’

Each thought ran through his head and none of them were good reasons or ones he intended to use.

Instead Charlie finished with an awkward, “...nothing, it was just nothing, I’ll take your sandwich of the day, Eduardo, and fifty bucks on a gift card.”

“Sure thing!” Eduardo said from behind the counter. It was lined with things to sell, all of them inexpensive, all of them at least ‘slightly’ desirable.

‘Impulse buys are dangerous things to the wallet. Josef may be a good man, but he’s also one helluva ‘businessman’.’

The triple layers of shelves were full of bright colors and even small, somewhat more expensive toys. A few feet away, a young woman with a toddler in hand began howling about a stuffed animal. A little stuffed rabbit with the same color of russet red as herself. Her tiny arm flailed and her legs kicked, though no more than knee height, her mother, an older clone of her freckle faced daughter, was clearly worn out. Bags under her green eyes, face drawn, “No I’m not getting you a rabbit,” she said as soon as she saw the nine dollar and ninety nine cent price tag, “but if you’ll be quiet you can pick out two pieces of candy.”

“Free!” The little girl said, holding up three fingers.

Her mother gave out a long sigh, and Charlie could read her mind. ‘Don’t bribe the kid, don’t bribe the kid… but also don’t ‘strangle’ the kid… and I’m going to have to do one of the two if I want to make it through the day.’

“Fine, three, but you don’t get the third until we’re home and you have to be quiet the whole way there!” Her mother said, and the girl picked out four dollars worth of candy.

‘Rabbit trick works again.’ Charlie couldn’t help but praise his friend as the woman got into line and Charlie swiped his credit card, paying for the sandwich and the gift card.

He stepped aside while Josef wrangled a few more dollars from the woman’s pocket. Charlie then handed the little blue plastic card over to his companion, along with the sandwich. When she had them both in hand, she looked down at them, then looked up at him, then back down at the card and sandwich again. She seemed to turn that over in her head when he said, “Have a nice day. I hope your prayers were answered.”

She blinked away glassy eyes, “They were… thank you.” She said, and embraced him, “I hope you get what you asked for too.”

‘So would everybody else if they knew what it was.’ Charlie cursed the thought, her frail arms were like dried twigs, so when his hands went behind her, he touched her as gently as he would have the gossamer like wings of a butterfly on a flower petal, before they let go.

“Good luck to you.” Charlie said, then waved to Eduardo, “Have a good one, and stay in school, then one day you can take over this place when Josef retires!”

Eduardo laughed, “Sure thing Dr. Manning, and then I charge you twice what he does.”

Charlie couldn’t help but return the fresh faced enthusiasm of the young man behind the counter, and then pulled on the door and walked out, leaving the old woman behind.

When he left the store, his first thought was to go back to his flat but... the need to go home wasn’t really on him yet. The area of town in which he lived was… unique in a word. A city within a city, a town within a town. The university where he went to school, the church, Josef’s store, his set of apartments… really everything someone might want to go to was within walking distance of everything else. As long as you had thirty minutes at a leisurely pace, you could be anywhere you needed to be and on your way home again in short order.

Now, at this moment, clad in clean clothing, and no less desperate than before, Charlie turned an eye in the direction of the university. Not intending to visit it, there was something else he wanted. ‘A park. Just… a place to relax. I guess I could do that at home but… I don’t really want to.’

The light breeze wafted over his skin, caressing the fine hairs as if the world itself wanted to reassure him. But as good as that felt, when he left the company of both friend and stranger alike, his own sense of despair and urgent desperation slowly began to reassert itself.

‘They’re counting on you to make it right, you have to fix this.’ He told himself, and wondered if it was himself or whether he was hearing the very voice of God.

‘Fool.’ He told himself as he took the first steps onto the grass and began to walk across the broad open campus. The buildings were in a staggered horseshoe design with a wide open field in the center and paths between each one that allowed access to the rear areas, an easy path to the public parks.

He wasn’t the only one out there, the days of rain had come and gone, leaving only a growing heat in its place, students were outside sitting under various trees planted all over the place, and everyday residents were visible even from the edge of campus, moving into or out of the public parks. Cars were few there, it was an unwritten rule that if you could walk to the park, you did.

So Charlie crossed the few small streets in his path without incident, and made his way to the place he thought of as the entrance. The overall park area was well maintained, a few metal bins for rubbish, a small playground with rubber chips beneath slides, monkeybars, and a swingset for various ages.

A good stone’s throw from where he stood he could hear the babbling waters of a creek, a tributary to the river which cut through the city.

A wide stone bridge with a sidewalk large enough for three men to walk abreast led to the other side, but the crystal clear water and the haphazard layout of large ancient rocks that were scattered about created a natural ‘dare’.

‘Cross me! Cross me!’ The waters seemed to plead like sirens to the city residents, who ignored the bridge made by men, and instead went straight for the possibility of tumbling into the water over staying dry. Out of the corner of his right eye Charlie saw that a few adults chose the bridge, but they were the exception.

Of those who chose to risk the leap from stone to stone while water babbled endlessly around them, those who found themselves in wet shoes did not complain. Some laughed and stood there for a moment, the cool water running over their skin, some got back on the rock that failed them and tried to get across the rest of the way, and a few simply slogged their way through the water to the other side sending splashing waves of water out from their legs, sometimes soaking children who squealed with excitement and pretended to run away.

For Dr. Charlie Manning however, everything was somewhat more detached. His heartbeat raced and though he could smile at their antics, he found no way he could share in their pleasures.

He ignored both the man-made and the not-quite bridges and instead walked toward a different place in the path of water near a bend, this one was shallow enough that you could cross it in high boots and not get your skin wet, though as Charlie wore sneakers, his feet were good as drenched.

He didn’t mind, the water was at its lowest point where he crossed, and though he splashed a bit and quickly felt the water pierce the shoes, soak his socks… not to mention his feet, and the bottoms of his jeans of course, he was at the other side in seconds.

The cool water and the sound of the squish and squee of his feet in his shoes wasn’t unpleasant, and as such he waved to those he saw in the deeper area. A massive rock lay in water almost six feet deep, on top of it several shirtless boys were doing cannonballs into the water, splashing those who swam nearby.

Charlie looked up, the rock’s layers matched perfectly with a series of layers some thirty feet up, and the jagged outline of the stone matched the layers like pieces from the same jigsaw puzzle set. Millions of years was represented there, millions of years, and then ‘something’ brought the stone tumbling down where it continued to sit for perhaps millions of years more, where it now served as part of a place for children to play.

‘Will it survive the cataclysm I’ve brought down upon us all?’ Charlie had his doubts, the raw destructive power of the universe never ceased to amaze anyone who studied the stars in the infinite void, or the celestial bodies that lived around them.

The ache in his heart forced him to move on, what he truly wanted was a reflective place, a place he could sit in the world instead of alone in his quarters. Part of him said, ‘Silly sentiment.’ To himself, but it was what Charlie wanted, so he made his way past them until he could break from the path, climbing down a small embankment, crossing the water again, and up to the other side.

From there, a short walk into a wooded area, an old stone that fit nowhere around the place where it lay, sat where he’d left it many years before. Around it, a sea of green plants with a soft, rubbery feel to the touch, and amidst this vast carpet bloomed bright yellow flowers creating wild, vivid patterns amidst the trees of gray bark.

Having found what he wanted, Charlie sat where he’d sat for many nights over the passing years, crossing his legs when he put his back to the stone and sat down. He then took a deep breath, and began to beg the universe itself for help.

Charlie’s body was completely relaxed where he sat, here among all the places he knew, this was where he was happiest, the great boughs of trees that were saplings when his grandfather and grandmother first met as young children, despite all his despair and longing to find an answer, even for all that… he could not be unhappy where he was in that moment.

It was probably ‘because’ of his state of total relaxation, that the snake ignored him as if he were just part of the forest. Though when Charlie heard it hiss, and a desperate crying from a little bird, his eyes flew open to search for the sound.