"He's been at it for days now," He heard the voice behind the wooden door. "I think he should get out and at least touch the god damn sun, he looks like a ghost."

Of course, they were talking about him. Dion knew it, sitting at his desk, with his hunched back and with those dreadful eyes drying away at the thin pages of a bible.

It was Apollo and the nun, talking in that same worried and annoyed tone.

They came up, through the door, as if a breach and clear, and declared with haste and worry, in that once silent room, "Go get the groceries."

He was being kicked out. He knew it, he wasn’t that dumb after all. And it wasn’t forever either. Not even for a day. He was being kicked out for a few hours. To be gone from this miserable shack to the lively German town below.

Dion looked down at his Bible and then up to Apollo who stood, with the doorknob still on his hand and the little nun behind him. He was wearing a cotton green and red sweater, something loose and ugly and bright.

"Why can't you do it?" Dion asked. His voice was hoarse, he had to clear his throat just to get the words out.

"I’m busy," Dion said.

"Doing what?"

"Cutting wood." The nun interrupted.

"What's so hard about that? Why do we need any more wood?"

"For the fire."

"I saw the stack outside, you seem to have enough."

"It’s a big fire," The nun said. Dion looked back down at his Bible, at the red underlined text and the giant ribbon that hung down as the bookmark.

“Alright.” His voice was defeated. His body ached from the rigidity it endured before.

He shook his head and reached for his coat. It was the first time, he thought, that he had moved. His muscles seemed unprepared for it. He looked down at his undrunk cocoa, little blocks of ice formed at the surface of the drink. They looked like the broken puzzle pieces you'd find on the frozen tundra ends of the earth, floating and jagged, except dirty. Black.

Wearing a sweater was odd. The days of cold weather seemed to attack him all at once the minute he became aware of the cold. He saw his breath move in warm smoke. He looked outside, the glass was getting stained.

"What do you want me to get?" Dion asked.

The two looked at each other, the nun shifted eyes and went down with her finger out, "I'll make - get the list."

It'd be ten minutes before he left.

The nun at the door waved at him as he walked away, Apollo grimacing, still angry, lurking through the woods with his ax.

He left them, down the snow-covered hills and towards the chirping birds that flew, scared off, into the bright sun. He could see it, the glistening snow. It blinded him, caused him to veer away as he made his way down towards the city, where the chimney stacks blew white clouds and where the people congregated with their small, happy families. And where the green and red lights wrapped around the brick walls and where the pines were decorated with small ornaments.

It was a month before Christmas and they were already preparing. It was also a Saturday. He could tell from all the happy drunks sitting on plastic chairs, with bright colored noses and cheeks. And the wives, nodding left and right in humorous disapproval towards their old, drunk husbands. And the young couples, drifting in and out of his vision with their locked arms and gentle smiles. Obscene, he thought.

He felt like a stranger, not just of a different country or race or even physiology. He felt like a stranger to the very human condition, a stranger to humanity.

Dion went through the little streets, brushing the walls and alleys, turning away from the happy honks of cars. The flowers set on the window sills were frozen, the few overgrown plants hung over their ledges and brushed the top of his head with their frozen vines and pedals. They reminded him to put his hood on, to shadow his face against the midday sun. He came to the market, around him the people were eating all kinds of steaming things. Meat, mostly, fresh bread. Saurkraut. Beer. Beer. Beer everywhere. Some cheese, which smelled sour from a distance. A little nutty, too.

Some children played with red planes to his right. Two young women kissed opposite the children. A rather picturesque romance for all involved. And Dion hated them. Specifically, how happy they all were.

Happy and innocent. He shook his head.

"I'm starting to think like Apollo," He mumbled to himself. "I’m so fucked."

He went along the market taking quick glances at his ‘shopping list’ (which made little sense and seemed to just be a collection of random foods). He stared up the lines of garlic bulbs. A man came around the counter offering apples to taste, he couldn't tolerate his closeness and turned away. He felt the stares of people now.

Someone offered to help him stand straight. He turned. He pivoted. He saw a woman, now coming around, offering him with a smile to help him relax, for he was ‘scaring the children’.

He wished two things then and there, the first, he wished to understand German for they all sounded alien and angry. The second, he wished he was deaf, so he wouldn’t have to hear them anyways.

He hit a table. Potatoes rolled off the side. He walked over them, shouldn't have. He feet slipped. His hands searched for something to land on. He was falling, knew it, though time was slow for him and though he knew he wouldn’t be hurt, it still bothered him. To be embarrassed, to feel so vulnerable. He turned to his shoulder and hit a table. He heard breaking, he heard the snap of the plastic table. He heard a suppressed rage.

Dion wiped himself off of whatever made the cracking noise. Clay? Glass? He looked at his arms and sweater, where a shard of something brittle and glassy bit into his clothes and flesh. He turned up to the voice he heard and instinctively, said “Sorry.”

He tried to clean up.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” The woman couldn’t speak. He looked to her gaped mouth, a bandana wrapped tightly around her head. Her face young and freckled, her fingers calloused and grey looking.

The stand was broken in half. He saw the faces of ruined gnomes below his body. He felt them digging and stabbing through his clothes. She was selling clay things, pots and pans and furniture pieces.

And gnomes.

For the holidays, gnomes. And they were all ruined. He put his hand on one of the only fixed objects.

The girl slapped him away. She hissed something in German (though the tone was universal, he translated it to mean 'Fuck off'). She looked at him, her mouth twisted and her eyes narrowed at him.

"You…” Her voice was eerily low. “You’re going to pay for all this.”

“I will. I promise!” He said.

Dion put his hand in his pocket and looked for a wallet. There was nothing. He looked up, smiled, and searched his back pocket. Nothing. He went at it with both hands, now searching and pressing down against his hooded sweater and grey sweatpants. He couldn't find anything. Not a bill, not a coin.

"I'm sorry."

She looked at him, her head crooked almost like a misaligned mannequin.

"Typical Americano," She said. Her accent thick, heavier than her small frame.

"I must have forgotten my wallet at home," Dion smiled nervously. "I don't know what to do."

"Stupid, too." She fixed her boxes and frames back on the table. Other customers turned away from them, away from the gravitational field of their negativity. The brooding sphere.

"I feel terrible,"

"You should, you ruined business today." She hissed. Though, seeing the wide stocks of trinkets, it seemed like she hadn't sold a thing all day. Every piece was old and bruised, and the paint on the gnomes and horses was wearing off.

"What can I do to repay you?"

"A thousand euros." She said.

“A thousand?” He almost laughed and searched her face for the punchline. There was none. He went still, constructing the word in his mouth without saying it: a thousand euros.

He put his hand up in protest or suggestion, leaned forward and bumped into the table again. A little porcelain rabbit hanging off the edge fell, from the plastic table with the cheap linen cloth wrapped around.

"Oh, no," she said.

“Oh, no,” Dion said. Each leg of the table falling, crippled, dropping onto the floor. And what few trinkets remained followed suit, rolling off the declined level of the table, onto the wet and snowed floor. Dion knelt. He worked immediately, fixing what he could, propping one of the legs back up, trying to fit everything in their little wooden boxes and crates. Others stopped to watch by now, their obvious glares burning into the young girl who watched, red and embarrassed, at the scene. She knelt over too, her psychedelic color stained bandana falling and her blonde hair freeing loose onto the floor. He looked at her rough hands, impressed almost, they were scarred and blistered and dirty, Dion noticed as he brushed against her. She locked eyes with him. He turned away in shame. Shame for looking. Shame for thinking, she was pretty.

“You just make everything worse,” The girl spat with a contrived and mean face. “American clown,” A strained voice. If there wasn't a crowd he was sure she skulls have murdered him. “you don’t have time to do any good, but you have time to meddle. Meddle is all you do,”

And Dion silently worked as his cheeks lost color, as he helped her things up onto that poor table, helped her carry the fractals of shoddy pottery and toys burning cold to the touch.

“I didn’t intend to do anything bad.” He said, almost to himself. “I just wanted to help.”

And her, working, with that tired and turbulent expression, with her limp grip and her bandana hanging defeated and flimsy from her fingertips, saying, “What am I supposed to a do now?”

And him, simple and desperate, lying. “I'll

Pay you back tomorrow.”

She did not protest. He did not recant. Their silence was a kind of closed deal.

And he ran, far, through the bustling streets, brushing against all the happy families and couples, sobering them with suspicion.