The sudden movement was a mistake. The world swayed in and out of focus. The stars fell from the sky and streaked into my vision. I doggedly shook my head to see him advancing toward my position. Blood pooled in my mouth from where my teeth had ground into my gum. I spat ferociously and wiped the remnants of the reddish muck across my now muddy pants.

“Now…that…was…a mistake.” I forced out. I had meant it to sound cavalier, daring even, as if I was nonplussed by his action. I didn’t want him to know that that one punch had almost laid me completely out. Instead the words wheezed out feebly at first, and only gained some coherence at the end. He grinned at me nastily, knowing that I was only bluffing. Behind me, someone tugged at my shirt. I didn’t turn around. I knew that another sucker punch would place me back on the ground, the last place I wanted to be. “Let go – I got this.” I hissed at the invisible party with more conviction than I felt, and felt the pressure subside.

At this point he was close enough to me. My right arm darted out and impacted his face, but my quick left merely bounced off his meaty arm. Nonplussed, I checked him one soundly in his stomach, only to feel his left fist carom off the back of my head. I slid to the right – as much as I could, only to find my movement blocked by the chain link fence. I sidled left, and upon finding my foot entangled in the aforementioned bushes, lashed out with another quick series of blows which seemed to have no visible effect. While I took an off-balance shot to the ribs, I realized that my unconscious plan was not going to work. It was an unconscious plan because, while I had realized that we were probably going to brawl at a moment or two before he hit me, I hadn’t really formulated any set strategy.

In the absence of such a rigid and well-thought out plan, my body was trying to adapt by using what natural advantages it had. Square-Jaw was much bulkier than me, but I was taller, so in theory, I should have been able to dart around him Mohammed Ali style and pepper him with blows from a distance, while avoiding too many more crushing blows. It was a really good idea. It was an even more impressive idea because I hadn’t consciously thought it over. However, if I had consciously thought it over, I probably would have noticed the flaw. We were in an area where such movement was virtually impossible. We were hemmed in by bushes on the left, and the fence on the right in a three foot wide zone. This short gap was a perfect place for someone to stand to urinate, or for Square-Jaw to molest his prey unnoticed, but awful for dodging and evading.

I briefly considered my options. Heading toward the fence was nothing short of stupid as it would completely eliminate my movement choices. Heading toward the bushes was dangerous, as I could slip and fall on an errant branch and be in a bad place in a moments notice. I considered taking him down with a classic leg whip; but realized that any sort of struggle on the ground would only amplify his attributes at my expense. I had no choices. The only real viable option was finishing the fight in brutal hand to hand boxing style. The only question was whether I would be able to stay conscious enough to follow through with my decision.

Viewed in this light, it was understandable that good ol’ Square-Jaw was merely trying to find a place to do what everyone else was trying to do. He had just happened to find a more private spot than everyone else locking lips and twisting tongues in public. And since I wasn’t a prude and hadn’t objected to any of the other random couples that I had passed, real hard logic demanded that I similarly ignore him as well and admit my mistake. But there was a problem.

In the few classics classes I had attended, we had been discussing Plato’s dialogues, which featured Socrates prominently. In the dialogues, Socrates mentioned his “daemon”; an object that caused him to know when he was doing something appropriate or inappropriate; and in some ways acted as his muse – or inner voice. Like Socrates, I had my own daemon. Usually my daemon was very unhelpful, providing reckless advice, rather than a steady ethical course. I also found that when I was sober, it was much more difficult to hear its proposals. In my half-drunk state, however, it was very easy to hear its strident voice. And this time, like Socrates’ daemon, it was concerned about whether it was right and or just to leave a defenseless person at the mercy of another.

Upon its urging, I considered the situation with a fresh perspective. It was a little strange that two people would choose to get busy directly next to a clump of bushes that were commonly used as a latrine. It was also a little off that the girl who was with Square-Jaw had been making sounds of terror; and it was more than passing strange that she hadn’t said anything reassuring since we had arrived. And, it was suspicious that Square-Jaw would chose to be confrontational towards us rather than sheepish, embarrassed or annoyed. All of these transparent clues made me realize why my muscles had tensed from the start of the conversation, why my senses had panicked, and why my internal daemon had actually provided helpful advice.

“I told you it’s none of your business.” Square-Jaw said, abandoning his earlier slouching form. He was big. He wasn’t tall. He was just massively built with gym honed muscles that bulged beneath his wrinkled khakis and mass produced T-shirt. “So bug off!”

I sighed. I had chosen to ignore his earlier meaningless phrases because I had still been getting my bearings. But now there was nothing to do but banter back a similarly pointless response to determine what was really going on.

“I’m making it my business.” I said, also pulling myself up to full height. After all, I might not have been in his weight class, but I was taller by at least three inches. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He growled back, stepping closer to me. “I told you, that you should just leave.”

“Perhaps.” I said, staring down at him, while ignoring the whispers of my friends behind me that were wondering if we should leave. “I’m more interested in how she’s doing. If she tells me to leave, I’ll be on my way.” At this point, everyone fell completely silent and stared. Only then, did we notice that the girl we had seen on arriving was shaking horribly, and that the noises we had heard were her crying. She refused to make eye contact with anyone and simply stared at the ground. “Alright, friend.” I said sarcastically. “You’re right. We’re leaving. Only she’s coming with us.”

I considered what he said for a second. It was the small hours of the morning. It was past two, but not quite three. Many hours before, the streetlights had all switched to flashing red. The sidewalk lamps were tiredly waiting for dawn with their dim, bug occluded casings. And it was after two. Somewhere, at some time and place, someone had told me that nothing good ever happened at two in the morning. If the statement I had heard was true, my staggering group of friends and I were in deep trouble. It was trouble because if there was an absence of good at two, there was probably negative good at every moment beyond that point.

Fortunately, I wasn’t sure if the statement was true, so I didn’t have to mentally figure out when exactly, good started to trickle back into the world. I really didn’t think that good ever left the world on a daily basis, but if I was to assume that it did disappear, I would further hypothesize that it probably returned around sunrise. Just as my brain was about to continue to chase the preceding reasoning down whatever rabbit hole it had come from, I stopped and took a slow, deep breath and steadied myself. Such incomplete, fuzzy logic was a direct result of consuming too many warm cans of basement beer from whatever fraternity house we had just left. I realized that hazy or not, I had to focus on the problem.

Overdrinking wasn’t the problem. Since we were walking home, the only threat to society that existed was potential public urination, which for tonight, was something that appeared highly unlikely. It seemed much more probable that someone would fall over as they staggered along, and begin to rant against the earth’s quick rotation, or that someone else would begin some sort of rambling diatribe that would surely end with something to do with something being “the greatest”. Walking might be a problem for some people, but that was what friends were for – to support other friends, because at times like these, four legs were better than two. I wondered why I was so unconcerned about people peeing, because more often then not, that was what happened, despite the walk only taking ten minutes at a slow stagger.

Abruptly, the pieces came together. We had been drinking and had decided to leave, because it was after two and the music had stopped. We had passed the bushes where SC almost always pulled his pants off when we had heard the noises. At first we had thought the noises were made by SC because he couldn’t get his pants off to pee, even though whimpering seemed a little odd, even for him. Once we had looked back at him, and saw that he wasn’t making the noises, we had converged in a huddle to whisper about what we thought had been going on. The huddle had nominated me to investigate. I had gone through the bushes, and found a young woman partially dressed making the noises next to the hulking gentleman who immediately stood up once he realized that they had an audience.

Whatever we had stumbled upon, that was the problem. That, the phrase I had just heard, and the whole situation. I also had a small problem. Square-jaw was looking at me like I was an idiot, because I hadn’t responded to his statement.

“Yeah? Says who?” I replied lamely, instead of just turning around and writing off the whole incident as a drunken mistake.

I considered leaping to my feet, placing all of my remaining energy into my legs, and running down the car at the next stoplight, pulling the driver out of the window, and pummeling him ruthlessly in retribution for nearly killing me. Becoming a vigilante of justice seemed like a good idea for a second. I thought the idea might not be totally crazy and have some merit. I knew that the next stoplight was less than a tenth of a mile away, just beyond my field of vision. I knew that it was always inevitably red. I also knew that the light always stubbornly stayed red for at least six minutes before reluctantly switching over to green. And, I knew that I could easily cross the distance, catch the car at the light, and give the driver a handsome beat-down because I was that angry.

My heart was still thumping in staccato rib-cracking “glad to be alive” beats. The air around me was crackling with the rage that was bleeding out of my soul. Absently, I waived my gritty left hand over my right arm and felt the blast furnace heat of my anger. It was unquestionable. Everything that was good and decent in my mind was being consumed by hatred. I was going to get up any second, and head up the street, and consummate all sorts of unspeakable deeds. And just as that thought crossed my mind, somewhere off to my left, a finger reached out and poked me in the arm.

“Hey….guy.” The voice that was attached to the finger said. “Are you ok? I – we saw the whole thing – and – do you need help? You’ve just kind of been sitting here for ten minutes after it all happened.”

I looked down. The scrapes had mildly clotted. There was a persistent pounding in my head. And the damndest thing was that while I was frustrated about everything, the dormant anger had disappeared light years away without doing any harm.

“Hello?” The voice said, prodding me again. “You there? You seemed to go all catatonic for a second. Someone went to call for help, so…”

“Stop poking me.” I said instantly. I stood up and looked around. There was a small gaggle of people surveying me from the relative safety of the sidewalk. The prodder was a prematurely balding guy. “No, don’t call the police. I’m just going to go home. I’m fine.” That, I thought, was all the conversation that was really needed.

“Wait!” He said, following me, unsure. “Should you even be walking? What about broken bones? What about brain trauma? What about a police report?”

“What about it?” I growled, now tired of his Good Samaritan vibe. “I was too busy to get a license plate number because I was a little preoccupied. I don’t have any broken bones. And my brain is as good as it gets, because I’m talking to you.”

“Oh.” He said, crestfallen. “I didn’t get the plate either. But you got hit by a car! And survived! That should count for something! I mean, that’s tough…”

At this point my concussion tuned him out. Somehow, we exchanged phone numbers. A week later, I received a call from him. I didn’t remember him, or his name, until he related almost all of the conversation. I then grudgingly acknowledged that I had some loose memory fragments about our meeting, and asked bluntly why he had called. At first, he gave me the run-around, but eventually, he admitted that he was the Captain of the school lacrosse team and that he needed “tough hombres” like me for his team. I thought about telling him where he and his team could go, but because of the lingering head trauma, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. A week later, I attended my first practice; and a week after that, I was buying used equipment out of a van, despite never having played lacrosse ever in my life. It was a decision that did what the accident could not do: destroy my routine.

Instantaneously, the memories flooded my body with the accompanying pain and rage. The mundane soporific haze disappeared in a flash of recollection. I had been one step into the intersection when the grimy bumper attached to the battered American car flew over the last broken speed bump, careened up the hill, and roared up at my legs. My eyes didn’t have time to traverse the distance to the driver’s or passengers stunned eyes. Instead, they were locked on the splattered metal grill with the ludicrous hood ornament that was targeting my abdomen. My life wasn’t flashing through my head. I was thinking about the last step I had taken before the rusted chrome-covered monstrosity had come to devour my life. Like everything else, it had been automatic. Like every day, I had checked the pitted and potholed driveway with my eyes before not-breaking stride. And, as always, my foot had fallen midway across its desolate space, exactly on the largest center crack, roughly three feet from the safe sidewalk.

It was three feet – maybe two and one half feet – maybe even less between my life and certain traumatic death. The exact distance was an immaterial, invisible expanse. There was a similar expanse in front, and a similar expanse behind. One half of my body was mid-air and mid-stride. The accelerating car perfectly bisected my body; everything was halfway and in limbo. Then the half-second ended. Hand hit hood and whipped past the pointless ornament, which tore skin hungrily, drawing first blood. Irresistible momentum passed through hand into arm, lifting my torso. My now airborne hip whacked off the top of the dirty grill, pushing my flying body even further from the earth’s surface. My back bounced across the dusty hood, dragging my protesting legs along. My head braced for the next skip which would surely propel hands, feet, and eyes into the jagged broken windshield teeth. Instead, my body was mid-air with no man-made objects around it. Then, instant impact, gravel burrowing and furrowing itself into every exposed area, air exhaled through brute force and complete mental confusion.

The overlarge street divider was the best section of the run. The divider was covered in grass, small shrubs, and even trees. It was less a divider than a long island of sanctuary. The streams of pavement that were split by it were covered by more old trees, and the houses that were set back from it were hulking stone expanses that were no less than small palaces. In the fall, the leaves were ankle deep and crackly. In the spring the whole area glowed with growth; in the summer the green provided cocoon of cool from the humidity, and in the winter, imaginary warmth seeped into cold legs from the soothing smell of smoke flowing from invisible chimneys. Like always, I was past the waiting speed-trap with a negligent flip of the hand, making a hard left onto the next busy surface street, packed with early afternoon rush hour traffic. It was an uneven straightaway, another quick left and a long uphill stretch full of horns, crunching gear-boxes, exhaust, and fast dashes across unsafe driveways, alleys, and streets before I made my second to last left. During this stretch, my speed shined. Granted, I had always been a quick starter. But along this ugly section of grime and whizzing chrome, my second wind flew into my lungs, and my feet positively flew my body away from any perceived dangers.

Then, it was across another street, and into the park where I was safe from the menacing teeth of motorized vehicles as my route darted downhill in the slightest of grades. On my left and right, fresh runners, and anxious bikers blew by at slow to astonishingly fast speeds. Occasionally, I fancied that someone passed me in a particularly arrogant manner, so I would spur my protesting legs into a quicker pace, and re-pass them, just because I could. Other times, the offending party would then re-re-pass me, and like a pair of oddly matched frogs we’d trade pole position until one us had to veer off and concede the challenge. I then made my last left like I always did. I went up the residential road, past the emptying pre-school, and toward the only right turn I really ever made, back to my dorm. This route was not simply in my mind, known like the back of my hand. It was engrained in every pore and muscle of my body after twenty-eight plus repetitions. I could have taken every step safely with my eyes shut. I could have slept-run the route and not faced real danger at any point. I knew where every car would be in the gridlocked sections, and I knew where surprises might suddenly shock my heart. Beyond that, the route knew me and where I would be at each minute of each day. Beyond that, it was ordained that my body would touch each and every point at a certain moment each day because it appeared that I had always been there, mid-stride, and would always be at that place from that point on.

The routine had hypnotized my brain. It was convinced that it no longer needed to monitor my body from approximately 2:41 p.m. to 3:46 p.m. It was convinced that nothing terrible would ever occur, and that it was free to think about larger problems, like last night’s hangover and assorted social situations. I knew that it would have kept this negligent assumption indefinitely, had it not been hit by a car at 3:41 p.m. today, a day now unlike every other day in every way.

My assumption seemed to be spot on when we met the girls at the exterior gate. It was obvious that Krista had only brought Jenny so she could talk to Inteligente without having to deal with me. I didn’t care that the girls weren’t interested in me because I was sleeping on a dorm floor that night and resided thousands of miles away on a permanent basis. But around the time we drove to dinner, things took a turn for the bizarre. It started innocently enough. Inteligente had seen me move my shoulder gingerly and had recounted my injuries from climbing in a mostly accurate fashion. That had been fine with me; because, after all, I had to have something to talk about.

After we had ordered but before our drinks had arrived, Inteligente launched into another inaccurate version of one my stories. I gently tried to correct his version but failed to steer the conversation away from myself. He kept telling my stories, altered to mythic proportions while I stared at him, completely flummoxed. I would have kicked him if my legs had been long enough. I wanted to pull him away and find out why he was talking about me when he could have easily been talking about himself – or anything else not relating to my life. Unfortunately, the opportunity to have a short one-on-one chat with him never arose, so I kept listening to bits of my life recounted while I stared at him blankly.

By the time dinner ended, the girls were staring at me, visualizing something that didn’t exist. I still had Krista’s e-mail address rattling around some pocket of my jeans. The rest of the trip had been forced. The next day, I hadn’t pulled Inteligente aside, because I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say what I thought – “Stop telling those exaggerated stories about my life, because it makes us both look like idiots”. As we had sat and watched Hamlet, I had felt myself the one confined within the walnut, but I didn’t feel like any sort of King.

E-mail. I sighed to myself. It had been the root of the problems over the break. I didn’t want to cut it off completely, because it was the last contact I had with my friends. I had known these people for all of my life. Each time I sat down to write a message, I felt like I was back at some imaginary location, having a conversation. It was like some long-lost epic. That was the problem. The “epic” part. As the plane’s wheels rumbled down onto the frozen ground, I resolved that I would keep my messages confined to the facts. That way, people would read them, and would remember that I was just a normal guy, because the facts would speak for themselves. After all, no one could distort facts. I also resolved that I would focus in on studying, because that was what school was about. I was going to go straight back and finish my history final. The only problem with that was that my ride told me about a party, and by the time I made it back to my room, I decided to go to the party. At the party, there was too much drinking, and somehow, I ended up in a mild brawl that left multiple parties unhappy. When I woke the next day, bruised, hung-over, and ready to procrastinate, I opened my e-mail. After reading several forwards, I barely paused before starting my next message.

Home had not felt like home. There was no question about it. There had been a large, dark emptiness in place of where I thought I would find comfort and solace. I shifted uneasily and wondered where things had gone wrong. Part of the problem was easy. I had spent so much time idealizing my hometown both internally and externally that there had been no real way for it to live up to my imagined standards. In retrospect, it had been silly to idle away so many hours building a construct that didn’t exist. I had set myself up for that simple disappointment. I absently kneaded my bruised shoulder. The other parts of the problem were worse. At some point, between shouted curses and threats, I had lost the ability to communicate with my parents. The best we could manage was a grudging formality. Even with that, I couldn’t escape the relentless pressure of their expectations, or their suspicions that my choices were ruining my life.

As I darkly considered the hostile status of our relationship, I wondered momentarily, if their contentions were right, and I was ruining my life and heading for destruction. My mind coiled and shifted angrily. It was easy to summarily dismiss their idea as they had no idea about my identity because we didn’t even communicate. Nevertheless, the idea was resilient, and clung to the back of my skull. The idea smoldered away in the flames of my anger; anger that was fueled by the conversations I had had during last week. I thrashed under the frayed airplane blanket and tried to mentally move forward. Again, like the obvious transparency of dreams, I should have known that returning to the place that I had anxiously left was likely to ignite long forgotten conflicts. No, the real problem was my friends.

There had been the incident at the bonfire. Then there had been climbing with Mysterious and its near fatal results. Afterward, bruised and battered, he had confessed in a moment of lucidity that one of the reasons he had wanted to go climbing with me was because he wanted to “outdo my exploits”. This had come out with a skull-like grin, and a bark of unhappy laughter. His revelation was like a live grenade. I wasn’t sure whether to fall on it, and possibly damage myself, or lob it back. I opted for the latter, and cavalierly quipped something about everyone “wanting to be me”, a phrase I deeply regretted later.

Dead. That was what I was going to be. I didn’t even remember letting go of the holds after the snake moved. It had been a really big snake. It was instinctual. Big snake in front of face, get away. I didn’t fully realize I was falling until my arm bashed into Mysterious. Dimly, I heard his surprised cry mixed with the receding rattling from above. Then, it was all completely slow-motion non-terminal velocity clear. I was falling from a height of sixteen feet, backwards. My whole body cringed in anticipation of the bone-breaking impact that was about to occur.

Then, my muscles relaxed. It seemed like the rock had been streaking by too long. I had missed the ledge. I was going to fall all the way back down to our starting point, and it wasn’t going to be back-breaking trauma, it was going to be certain death trauma and I’d better think about all of my life, because I only had a couple seconds left. Choking, dry dust rose all around my vision, which flickered fuzzily as the sky shook and collapsed into my brain. New vibrations spread across the ground and impacted dully into my body. The dust fell as dirt on my un-breathing lips. It filmed over my brown eyes and clouded the sunlight. I could feel my body being spun around the axis of the earth, just one more piece of matter on a lonely rock in space.

My lungs re-inflated. I hacked oxygen and carbon dioxide and all other gaseous elements in wheezing, painful heaves. My hearing rushed back. Blood pounded angrily at all of my extremities. Liquid poured from my eye sockets, streaking my faces with muddy red rivers of clay. Slowly, my neurons re-started. I shook my left foot. I wiggled each and every toe. I repeated the process up my leg, and then started again with my right foot. My fingers moved too. It was time for the real test. I gathered what strength I could, and sat up at a glacial pace. My head spun faster than Mercury’s orbit. I steadied myself. Aches and pains nagged every pore of my body. But I was alive. And, other than the pounding headache that was coming fast, I was unscathed. I looked right.

Lying there in a state of bemused shock was Mysterious. I didn’t know what to say. It was beyond comprehension that he too would be uninjured. For that matter, I wasn’t completely sure that I was uninjured. I could be bleeding out internally with a matter of minutes to live. As I struggled to find the words to tell him that I was sorry, and that I was going to go get help, he gingerly levered himself up on his side.

“This is why City Parks will never take off.” He said slowly. “Because there aren’t any cute Rangerettes in those short green shorts to pick us up off the ground.” Just as cautiously, he lowered himself back to the ground before asking the question I had been dreading. “What the hell happened, anyhow?”

I didn’t have a response. My body was one giant bruise, and my brain struggled just to get through the background aches and pains. I opened my mouth once; twice, and finally, on the third time, started to talk.

“Snake.” I said dumbly. “Big rattlesnake on the ledge. Big, angry, rattlesnake.”

“Ah.” He said tiredly. “I knew there had to be some good reason, because I knew that you didn’t really think that today was a good reason to die.”

There was a silent pause as the wind whirled the words around, and then we began to laugh. It was a slow, quiet, desperate laughter that nervously wrapped around the fact that we shouldn’t have survived the fall with nothing but bruises. But it was genuine, grateful laughter at the fact that we were still alive. Eventually, we calmly wiped our surreptitious tears, and dragged ourselves back to the car for the drive back to civilization to resume our lives.

I was close to the top. The wind was blowing suicidal saltating sand grains over the ledge onto my face. I had been moving up the face slowly compared to the helter-skelter pace of Mysterious who was quick-stepping his traverse toward my spot. I blinked, and relaxed my tunnel vision of my immediate surroundings toward the larger picture. We had free climbed up from the base of the formation up a series of ledges toward a rocky ledge close to the summit. Over the course of the climb, I had relied on the memories of past climbs that my muscles had retained and ignored the fatigue and trepidation that were rattling around in my head. Since I was five feet from the top, I grudgingly had to admit that those fears had most likely been totally irrational. The worst thing that had happened to me, despite not climbing for months, and now not using protection on an unknown route, was my chalk-streaked complexion. My face looked like it had been pooped on by a herd of falcons thanks to the stale and clumpy nature of my old chalk.

Things could be worse, I mused, as I picked at one offending piece by my ear, while simultaneously yelling at Mysterious to move off my rear. After all, as I told him, there was nothing wrong with being cautious. Just because we had been fortunate on the climb so far, something could go wrong. If I fell, I would definitely clip him and knock him off the wall too. His response was a sardonic look and a one fingered salute. I sighed. It was clear that the best way to eliminate any danger was to hop up on the ledge. I sucked in air and levered up to the last hold, about three inches below the lip.