Charlie woke up in the morning, though he wasn’t sure quite what time, the buzzing of his alarm wasn’t there, and as there was no schedule to be kept, he had no reason to care. He got out of the bed, went into the shower like a man on autopilot and turned the water on. The room he left behind was still a ruin, but when Josef comes back, ‘At least he’ll have a place to sit without being in garbage. At least he won’t smell me, at least I won’t look like a homeless bum.’

A dozen or more ‘at leasts’ ran through his mind as the hot water beat down and the steam clouded up around him. Sleeping on that mattress left Charlie feeling frankly as dirty as he’d felt before his most recent shower. ‘I should get a new one of those too. God, just the thought of what might grow in the grime crushed into that… if I could fit it out the window…’ It was a shudder of dread at the thought of being on it again.

The sound of the falling water bouncing off of him and echoing over the floor, the roar of it from his high pressure shower head, it was all a profoundly pleasant experience…

And it left Charlie with a despairing kind of desperation. ‘I’ve got to do something… I can’t think of anything else to do… but I can’t make things worse than I already have!’

His aching fear was like ice in his veins that wouldn’t melt despite the heat that surrounded him in the little four by six space.

But at least he could take his time, the sheer weight of it all began to press him down, and so Charlie sat, naked beneath the pounding water, and brought his knees up close to his chest, he wrapped his arms around his legs and grasped one hand to the other, and hung his head.

“God… I don’t know what the hell I’m even thinking…” He muttered and then looked up, the blast of water hit him full in the face, water ran through his still scruffy, if clean, light brown beard. The water hit so hard that Charlie couldn’t even see the shower head itself, it was as if he were standing an inch away from a wall through which he couldn’t see.

He didn’t turn his face away, even though the sensitive facial skin stung with every drop, ‘This is the least of the pain I deserve for what I’ve done…’ He told himself, but almost like he wanted to defy that thought, he unwrapped the now soaked gauze bandage and rubbed soap over the injured space.

Josef had left enough materials behind to change it a few times, so Charlie felt no worries there.

But his heart was pounding with a different kind of anxiety when he finished cleaning his injury. Charlie could only sit in dull silence, ‘I don’t… I don’t know what I’m doing… I guess this is the second time in my life for that…’ He turned his mind back to his former work, one wrong act… just one more piece of knowledge grasped for.

‘Why? Why did I have to know one more damn thing?’ He asked himself, hating the curiosity that drove his life to its current state.

‘There’s nothing worse than being right, sometimes.’ He thought while his despair washed over him like the water overhead, ‘God damn… I’m whining, aren’t I? What the hell good is that going to do me?! Or anyone?! At least anger kind of feels good…’

Charlie’s train of thought was thrown off the track when there was a pounding at his door.

The heavy thud of a meaty fist. ‘Are they early? How long have I been in here?’ Charlie asked himself, but had no answer… his frustratingly normal state of affairs lately, and turning off the water, leaving only a few small drops to fall steady and slow to the shower floor, he got out.

Droplets cast off behind him as he emerged, “I’m just getting out of the shower! Just leave my stuff at the door! I’ll be there in a minute!” Charlie shouted.

“You got it!” Someone just beyond the door shouted back. “Have a nice day!”

“Yeah. Yeah… right.” Charlie murmured and stepped with care around the carpet of waste to ensure his clean body touched none of it, and he reached the door.

Charlie put his hand out to the knob and almost grasped it, but then stopped. ‘Still nude, better… Yeah, don’t want the embarrassment.’ It was an absurd thought on its face. ‘Everybody who would care is going to die anyway. What does it matter if they see one naked fat guy before the end?’

It was a derisive thought, but it wasn’t enough to make him fling open the door, he put his ear to it instead, listened, there was the distant sound of feet slapping against the steps and echoing off the walls that led down to the exit.

When the sound faded, Charlie unlocked the door and turned the knob. There were a series of boxes stacked on top of one another at his feet. The familiar white packaging was a welcome relief, and Charlie snatched them off the ground all at once, holding a stack six boxes high that almost obscured his vision, and carefully brought them inside. He gave the door a solid kick with the back of his foot causing a loud slam to ring out over the apartment a moment later.

When he dropped the boxes on his bed it let out a crude squeak in response and the packages bounced up and down several times. ‘Six bounces.’ He thought and didn’t bother to count the reflexive prediction’s results.

He took the box off the top and peeled away the perforated portion, wedging his finger under one part to gain some leverage and it slowly tore open.

When it opened, he found a few sets of underwear in plastic bags.

He tore it open and pulled up the boxer-briefs. The elastic fabric felt smooth and cozy against his skin, the little ‘snap’ when he let go was something of a relief. ‘I’d forgotten how good it feels to wear something ‘clean’.’ Charlie realized in the same instant of the snap.

Like the moment in childhood between when a child sees the presents beneath a Christmas tree, and the moment he runs to tear them open, Charlie went to work, rushing through the tearing open and throwing things on, pants, clean socks, a shirt that didn’t stink and had all its buttons in place. His fingers flew up the center length of the shirt, slipping button into button hole faster than a rabbit dove into its home to escape a hungry fox.

Then it was done, Charlie was dressed. Simple blue jeans, a button down red collared shirt, and some clean white socks. He slipped on his shoes and went back to the door.

This time he didn’t hesitate to take a step, Charlie barely noticed that he’d even left the disaster at his back, with more packages to go, but none of them were needed at the moment, so he went down the hall and practically jogged down the stairs and out of the building.

Traffic was relatively light. The sun was out, the rain had passed away, the gray above from the day before was receding into the distance and it was a cloudless and calm day, warm to the point of almost being hot. As Charlie walked, he glanced up at the tree where the robin nest sat. It was empty as near as Charlie could tell. The brown twigs and other debris used to make the nest were starting to collapse, but above that branch he saw something else.

A sparrow coming back and forth building a nest of its own. It tweeted and chirped periodically, ‘New tenant.’ Charlie thought with a little amusement and pity at the bird, and cast a thought to the robins that were there before. ‘I hope their nestlings made it.’

No sooner than the thought came to mind than he cursed it. ‘Of course they’re not going to make it! We’re all dead!’

Charlie did the best he could to walk like a ‘normal’ person, his eyes forward and conscious of the world around him. Cars drove past, people sold goods, not far away he saw a homeless man wearing a hat made out of tinfoil. The sun glinted off the bright silver color with such focus that passers by turned their heads away or held their hands up beside their eyes to block it out.

Nobody listened to him, of course. ‘The poor guy, he’s delusional, but he’s also right, and he just doesn’t know how right he is or why, and if he did, would he really waste his time like this trying to tell everyone?’

Rough voiced, unshaven, holding a sign that promised doom, anyone who came too close was treated to having it shoved into their faces.

“The end of the world is coming!” The wild man shouted and gesticulated around, whenever nobody was close enough to force his sign too close to read even if they wanted to.

‘I’ve always avoided that guy before… crossed the street… but…’ Charlie thought, the crosswalk that led to his destination was to his right. At his left, a few feet ahead shouting from the way into the alley where the crazed man also slept at night. Looking ahead to his left and over to his right where the crosswalk stood, Charlie made a choice.

He walked to the homeless man, and waited. It took only seconds before the cardboard sign made from the torn up piece of a cast off package was shoved to within an inch of Charlie’s face.

“The end is near! Do you understand! Do you?! The world is ending!” Even being unable to see the bedraggled rags of dirty clothing or the wild bleary, red cracked eyes of a man who rarely slept or had to sleep with one eye open at night, Charlie felt the raw intensity of his conviction.

Unlike the rest who passed them by, Charlie didn’t step back on his heel or rush past.

“So what?” He asked, and the homeless man went silent.

“What?” It was a voice hoarse from yelling for hours, but it was the first break in his prophetic words of doom in... nobody could have said how long.

The sign slowly came down to chest level, giving Charlie his first true close up look at the homeless man. His cheeks were smeared with sewer grease and filth, his clothing had the same stuff caked on it, his eyes were bright blue which stood out all the more, centered amidst dark bags under his eyes and red cracks in the whites.

“I said, ‘So what?’” Charlie replied, “The world is going to end, we’re all going to die, you’ve been saying that over here for years. A lot of people died before it ever happened, three people died just up the street,” Charlie jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the intersection where the accident happened, “what should they have done differently if they believed you?”

Dirty, pinkish lips closed, “So you’re right, so what? Why are you telling everybody, is that how you want to waste your remaining days, like the end is already here?” Charlie asked, his hands clenched into fists, he shoved them into the pockets of his jeans to hide his impotent anger.

“They have to know so they can save themselves! I’m trying to help people to the truth! The world is doomed! I’ll spend my last days leading people to the truth!” The spittle flew into Charlie’s face and beard, the wet stickiness of it bothered him less than he expected.

“So this is how you want to spend your days, this is how you want to help?” Charlie asked, noticing the streaks of whitish gray in the once black hair of the homeless occupant of the alley.

“Yes!” The homeless man cried out with happiness as if Charlie had stumbled on the truth.

It was enough that Charlie had to sigh, he grabbed his wallet and drew it out. He opened it up and flipped through various receipts until he spied the bit of green.

As luck would have it, there was still an unused fifty inside. Charlie held it out to him. “Well, at least don’t die thirsty or hungry. Go get yourself something from the ‘Get-n-Go’. It’s on me.”

The homeless man immediately snatched the green out of Charlie’s palm, and briefly looked at Charlie as if ‘he’ were the crazy one.

“It’s fine, I don’t need it.” Charlie said with a shrug.

“Th-Thank you.” The aging man muttered, he set aside his sign, propping it up just inside the alley, and headed off down the street.

Charlie watched him go for a full minute, standing at the crosswalk as pedestrians and cars went on their way with the same indifference that life there always had about it.

Nobody really paid any mind to Charlie, they walked around him, some brushed against him, others straight past, but Charlie only had eyes for the filthy retreating back of the man carrying the fifty.

Only when that one was out of sight did Charlie cross the street, and walk across the paved stone path that led to a set of stone steps. They were six in number and carved out of a solid piece of granite that was in turn inserted into the little grassy hill, from them there was another small brick walkway that led to another set of wide steps. Those wide steps ended in a set of double doors, which in turn led into a large church.

He reached the double doors, there were two brass bars that jutted out, each one as long as his arm, and the doors were of dark wood, with crosses finely cut and towering in the center of both.

‘Okay… god, I don’t know if you’re listening, I don’t know if you’re real, I don’t know if this is what you want even if you are… but… here goes… I don’t know? Something? Nothing? I guess we’ll see.’ Charlie thought toward the heavens, pulled the door open, and stepped inside.