Charlie looked around briefly, setting his back against the stone felt good, the gray old rock was shaded by the boughs of an old tree. The shadows it cast down kept the warmth of the day from heating the rock very much, keeping it cool despite the warmth around them. The grass and other plants had a rubbery flexibility to them that gave in like a natural bed. His hands squeezed one of the little strands as the snake he saw, slithered on. Its forked tongue tasting the air over and over, it was a long, black creature whose scales reflected the light of the day.

In a way, it was bizarre to be so alone where he was. Even his looming sense of despair was able to fade a little. ‘Like I’m the only man in the world, like I’m all there is. Nobody else but me and the trees and… if it all comes to an end, I’m the only one who suffers. God, universe, someone, if you are out there… do something, I’m asking you. If there’s anything I can offer, anything I can do to correct my mistake… any bargain that will have you speak to me… tell me what it is and I’ll offer it!’

Pleading for help even if he didn’t believe in it, was as panic-inducing as it was cathartic in a strange way that Charlie couldn’t quite grasp. He felt the racing of his heart amidst the emptiness of the forest, the voices of others who stuck to the well worn trails of dirt, stone, and pavement were well out of range from here.

‘What would they think if they saw me where I am now? Would they think I’m meditating? Or wonder if I’m well?’ The questions came to mind out of the blue, and then fell away like an object secured to a surface with cheap glue. Charlie just… didn’t care. So little mattered in the moment that all he could do was continue to beg and plead for some nameless force to come to the rescue.

His eyes were squeezed tight as he sat alone there, he sat so long that his muscles ached, and he forgot the hissing snake from earlier, it had clearly found a spot to sun itself not far from him, a tiny spot with a rounded old rock that lay there in a break in the woods. The light of the sun poured its rays down onto the rock for the serpent to enjoy, which it did, for hours.

Hours and hours.

While Charlie begged and bargained with powers he was unsure were even there, let alone listening.

It was not until the sun took its light away from the rock that Charlie was snapped out of his reverie by the hissing again. He watched the snake with care. ‘What kind is it, what does it eat? Where is it going? I hope I’m not sitting on the hole going into its lair.’

That was a disturbing thought that sent Charlie’s brown eyes flying open and made him shoot to his feet and step away before looking down.

Nothing.

No hole.

No lair.

No little baby snakes to bite him in the ass.

Charlie touched a hand to his chest, his heart racing for a different reason for once as he took deep, gasping breaths and almost laughed at his panicked response.

But that still left the snake he could see, and now he couldn’t help but watch it.

The slow and steady undulations of its long slender body from side to side smoothly over the grass. Guided by its predatory senses, it began to wind its way around a tree, scaling it with ease toward an increasingly desperate tweeting noise from a high up bird’s nest.

Charlie watched, spellbound as it drew ever closer to the frantic noise of the desperate chicks who went on and on in terror. Immediately, without thinking, he crouched down and sifted his hands through the grass. ‘A rock, a stick… something’

The chirping of the nestlings however had not been for nothing, while Charlie’s hand swept through the sun warmed and shade cooled patches of grass for something to use to protect them, and suddenly he heard a louder set of bird calls. The parents of the nestlings heeded the cries of their hatchlings and descended on the snake. Amidst the wood, among the shade, the green, and trees a thousand times older than the birds who lived there or the snake that sought their lives, unseen by any eyes but Charlie Manning’s, a life and death struggle ensued in which he became a bystander.

The birds bobbed and weaved with the skill of an experienced boxer dodging a flurry of blows. He recalled a fight where Muhammed Ali, trapped in the corner of a ring, moved so fast that even from not a foot away, George Foreman couldn’t land any of a flurry of more than twenty punches. The birds dove in, pecked at the flesh of the serpent while their babies cried out in fear.

Down below, Charlie found nothing to help, and could only continue to stare as the fight went on. The birds drew blood, and a drop fell from high above and struck Charlie on the forehead. He wiped it off and watched as they sailed in circles around the snake, every attempt it made to draw close to the nest, they attacked another part of its body, forcing it to turn back or snap its jaws.

Even from where he stood, Charlie could see the great white fangs of the snake when it opened its maw and attempted to snap it down on one of the birds, only for them to dexterously avoid it all. ‘They’re going to win… they’re winning, they’re driving it back.’ Charlie realized as the wounds continued to increase on the body of the snake.

Of course, Dr. Manning’s scientific mind was never far away, ‘The snake isn’t evil, he’s only doing what he has to in order to stay alive. He eats birds, birds don’t want to be eaten… nature doing what nature does… survival of the fittest.’

Today, it seemed the snake was not the fittest, bit by bit it was nibbled at, poked to death by sharp little beaks, and despite his scientific understanding that what he was seeing was neither good nor evil, only amoral nature that cared nothing for either the snake, the parent birds, or the hatchlings, heartache tugged at him at the terrified little cries.

Then as misfortune would have it, the brighter colored bird avoided a blow by the snake, only for a nut to drop from a branch above and fall towards its head. The bird avoided the nut… only to find itself dodging into the path of the jaws of the snake. The mouth snapped shut, the shrieking in the nest redoubled, and as if it were driven by panic or a desperation to save its mate, the other of the pair attacked with reckless abandon, pecking like mad at the scales of the snake, it acted with wild courage, oblivious to danger, and the snake turned its jaws on the mate, and caught that one as well.

From where he stood, Charlie could not hear whether or not the bones crunched, but he could see the faint bulge in the snake’s body as it turned on the screeching baby birds, now with no one to save them. He couldn’t see the moment of their ends, though he caught momentary glimpses of their gray feathers as they shuffled about the nest, likely flapping useless wings.

The snake slithered over the nest, first one, then another perished, and then the last of them entered the belly of the serpent where they would be digested alive.

‘So that’s it then.’ Charlie thought, though he watched and waited while the snake relaxed, wounded but content with its meal for quite some time. ‘Move on, there’s no reason to watch any longer, there’s no point… it’s all over. I asked for a sign, so maybe this is it? Maybe this was God giving me a cosmic middle finger, giving me a sound ‘fuck you’ in my direction.’

His feet though, they remained rooted to the ground until the snake descended from the tree to slither, branches creaked and swayed in the breeze, the hairs stood up on Charlie’s arms as he saw the snake on the ground again and moved to a hole not far away. Given the time of year, even outside of his area of expertise he knew, ‘Baby snakes. A parent dining on a family and children, before returning to children of her own…’ He looked around, the beauty of nature that he had always loved without thinking of it, became a grim and shadowy battlefield. The trees continued to grow, the wind continued to blow, the grass continued to sway. The twisted horror of the battle above where mother and father died fighting to protect their babies was memorialized only by a few scattered blood stains that would be washed away in the rain.

The nest above would decay to nothing or be taken by another family of birds which may very well fall victim to the snake, or even the snake’s own children, next time.

‘And God said not a word…’ The silence of the beings to which he prayed in futility would lift his broken soul out of the depths of despair and desperation, that they did nothing, that what happened was just what one expected in nature a billion times per day from mountain tops to deep beneath the sea, from megafauna to microbial life, for billions of years. ‘Why did I think I could get help…?’ Charlie asked, and no longer wanting to speak to any gods or the uncaring Universe, left alone, Charlie began to trudge home.

‘If I had any sign at all, it was that neither gods nor the void care that we are here.’ He thought and while the sun set behind him, Charlie left the woods, went back onto the dirt path, then headed for the exit of the park to find his way home.