Charlie reached up and touched his face, a beard was there that wasn’t present before. He couldn’t see anything of his own body until the lightning flashed again and he caught a look at himself in the mirror. “Wow… I was sure I’d shaved…” He flopped back onto the mattress and stared up into the darkness and lay there while the storm outside continued to rage on and on.

His limbs were like lead, just laying there, heavy and unmoving. The temperature was nominally comfortable at least. Though the cold sweat of his nightmares remained. “Medicating with alcohol…” He muttered and turned his head to face the wall. His soft, fluffy pillow gave beneath the weight of his head, creating a valley of white cotton beneath and a hill above that obscured his view of the wall he faced.

“Alright, it killed him, and I don’t like the idea anyway but… medication. Take something…” He muttered on. That made him think of the ‘new’ homeless guy. ‘Is he out there…?’ The crack of thunder and white of lightning filled the night outside again as the rain beat down on his building and his window to the outside world like the world was besieging his home.

“I can’t do much but… I can at least do this. In the morning… medication… and call Josef...yeah… service? What about a service?” Charlie asked himself and closed his eyes against the flashes of light outside.

The devouring of the birds came back to him. The little tweeting screams as the family was eaten.

‘No. No. No.’ He thought, recalling a hymn, “His eye is on the sparrow…” He mumbled and slurred the line, and almost spat into his pillow, “look what good it did for them.”

Charlie’s body was numb to anything and everything, even rolling himself toward the edge was difficult, the energy that snapped him in terror to a seated position was gone.

His legs rolled out of the bed first, albeit with difficulty and his feet stomped on the floor. “Fuck!” He shouted and a surge of stabbing pain hit him. He sucked air in through his teeth, hissing as the stabbing pain began to throb. “How did…” he stopped when the lightning flashed and he saw the little blue piece of glass sticking out of his foot. “Right… a few more pieces around… how did it get over here…?”

He looked around the room at the scattered garbage… “Right, it must have been in the pizza box my shoe got stuck in… I must have flicked that over… serves me right. But what doesn’t for the world’s destroyer?”

Whether it served him right or not, Charlie reached down, gripped the glass with two fingers, and yanked the glass out and threw it into the kitchen, he heard it tink off the wall and land on the counter.

“Hurts… hurts… hurts…” Charlie gasped and hissed as he hobbled to the bathroom, his hand reached out and fumbled in the dark until he found and flicked the light on, the pain giving him the energy to move to sit on the toilet.

He brought his injured foot up, lay it over his knee and then leaned over to snag the first aid kit out of the cabinet under the sink, the door closed without any effort on his part as soon as he yanked the little red box with the white cross out for use.

He took the white opaque isopropyl alcohol bottle out, unscrewed the cap, dabbed some on the wound. “Pain! All the pain… oh god! Oh god! That hurtsssss! Why did it have to be the other foot?!” Charlie asked himself as he tended the wound, wiping away the blood, then wrapping his foot with gauze a dozen times around until he was satisfied and brought the tail of the gauze around his ankle and secured the gauze to itself with a little metal clip at the end.

When he was done, he left the light on in the bathroom and slowly stood by pushing himself up by bracing himself off of both the wall and the sink before hobbling back toward the dark open room.

The light of the bathroom wasn’t perfect, but it revealed the utter garbage pile that was his residence all over again. ‘Clean it up.’ He told himself.

But the prospect was just… exhausting. The spirit was willing, but it was as weak as his body. “Later. Maybe.” Charlie promised himself and felt it was a lie even before the words had fully left his tongue.

He hobbled over to his bed, slipped on socks, pants, shoes, and shirt, then hobbled his way toward the door. The weight of one foot pressed down at the heel, Charlie snatched up an umbrella, then made his way out of his apartment again. As he was descending the steps the sound of the storm outside grew even louder from the empty and echo filled stairwell.

The rumbling was longer and louder, the light was brighter with more glass to see it through, and it was heavy enough that Charlie couldn’t really tell if there was even any traffic on the roads or if they were empty.

He opened the door and the driving wind that carried the heavy rains smacked him in the face, the door flew outward from the force until the heavy hinge and the metal closing spanners at the top snapped it taut and kept the door from being ripped away from the entrance.

Rain battered the side of Charlie’s face, soaking him immediately, for a moment he almost opened up the umbrella to protect himself, and then thought the better of it. ‘I won’t be long, and the water isn’t freezing, nothing that a hot shower can’t take care of.’ He told himself and held the short umbrella at his side.

The street was empty, the only traffic was raindrops, the honking of horns was gone and replaced by the clatter of signs clinging to chains and waving back and forth, their creaking drowned out intermittently by the sound of the sky, overhead, even that couldn’t stop the noise when the loose hanging signs pounded on the buildings to which they were attached.

The site of the accident where a life had ended was no longer evident, everything from the curb to the light pole had been either fixed or replaced. ‘You’d never know somebody had died there.’ Charlie thought as the rain battered at his back when he headed in the direction of Josef’s shop.

The wind howled onward and battered at his jacket. ‘Wait… did I put on a jacket?’ Charlie touched the raincoat he wore, standard bright yellow, and a hood over his head. Lightning split the space between earth and sky ahead and when it did Charlie realized he’d gone farther than he intended. ‘How the devil did I walk past the church without noticing on this bum foot?’

It was then that he noticed the lack of pain. He picked his foot up, and stepped gingerly down onto the sidewalk, the water splashed a little, but there was no pain. He raised it up, and stomped down again. Again there was no pain.

Charlie whirled around to head back toward his destination, the rain that had been battering his back was now battering his face, he leaned toward the wind that had been carrying him along, and began to walk against it. The roar around threatened to drown the whole world, or so it felt to him at the time.

He held the hood down while he walked on the water flowing over the sidewalk that seemed determined, like the wind, to push him back. But forward he went, leaning into the wind, holding the red hood of his raincoat down with one hand while he made his way to the alley where the old vet had made his home.

Charlie was unsure just how much farther he’d gone then he’d intended, but it took forever, or so it felt, just to come within sight of the church and then another forever to actually reach it.

When he did, he pressed himself against the red brick wall and quickly did the math. ‘A sudden sharp gust of wind if it increased at the proper angle could blow me into the wall, a head injury on top of everything else… no thanks.’ Charlie thought, utterly drained of all energy, he slid his way in, and was out of the high winds, free of injury. Rain still made its way into the alley, the double arm interval he had in the space between one building and the next was not perfect, but it was at least not as bad as it was out in the wider open street.

A little glow ahead caught his eyes through the sheet of falling water, even without his gift for mathematics he recognized from the size relative to himself it had to be close by, and lay in the wider opening area between the two buildings.

When he reached the area, he found more than the one he expected. There was a large old metal barrel emitting a bright orange flame, around it stood several figures holding their hands up, an improvised awning over their heads was made from a tattered blue tarp secured with military grade green five-fifty cord at each corner that then ran to some screws embedded into the concrete that held the bricks together at a the buildings themselves. Two of the three there wore raincoats. One yellow, one red, and two had umbrellas held out as additional protection.

When they saw him approach as a shadow in the dark, they grew immediately defensive, their haggard, bearded faces, worn out military coats and pants faded to almost white from their once concrete like gray. Their hands were grimy and their eyes haunted, when Charlie stepped close enough that he could smell the foul stench of burning rubber and gasoline coming out of the barrel where they warmed themselves their faces lit up.

“I thought you might be… you know… in trouble.” Charlie stammered out, half yelling and nervous, three were unexpected.

“See, told you.” The one in the green raincoat said with a mostly toothless smile.

“Here.” Charlie said and removed the red raincoat and handed it over to the one without one, the bedraggled middle aged man took it in a hand cleaned at all only by the downpour he couldn’t properly escape, and put it on with the eagerness of a girl putting on her dress before prom. He lit up like the sun and for a moment Charlie forgot the rain that hit him and the wind that howled down the street.

He then handed over the blue umbrella in his hand, and then stood there awkwardly. “Thanks man… ah… I don’t have much here but… lemme give you something… you came out here and…” the old soldier said and rifled through his pants pockets.

“No.” Charlie stepped a little closer so that he was almost leaning over the toxic smelling burning barrel, the blue tarp wafting in the wind rattled and ruffled, adding to the noise he had to speak over. “Tell you what… go.. Go to the Get-n-Go run by Josef, if the big guy is behind the counter… tell him Charlie said he could charge the black card for some meals… I can’t feed the city… but three people? I can do three.”

The homeless men’s eyes widened enough to catch the reflection of the orange flames licking the air between the four of them, “Are you serious?” The only familiar one replied with a question as if Charlie told them the sun was shining at the moment.

“Yeah… why not? What the hell, doesn’t matter. Go ahead when they open tomorrow.” Charlie said with a shrug.

“It… it matters a lot to us… thanks…” One of the trio said over the driving rain.

“I better, yeah, better get back now.” Charlie answered, lightning flashed again, the darkness hit again like lights had switched off and the flames crackled on, providing the only light in the darkness.

Then he shot up in bed, breathing hard and staring at a bright light of day outside his window, and the sound of a fist pounding on his door.