A Walk in the Park

When Ralph awoke, the warm world blanketing his body sensation faded away and he awoke to pain in his head at the crown of his skull and an uncomfortable hard pain in his ear. The light ebbed in and out until he was able to make out the city skyline and the sound of the trickling stream down by the Japanese Tea Garden. He had been down there late at night a few times meeting less reputable men about jobs that would either help him pay the rent or give him a new place to live with irons bars. The rent would have been better but jail was a true studio unit. Even the bathroom was in the main area. Today, Ralph started praying that it was early enough he would hit the police patrol that rushes the homeless from the park each morning.

He pulled his head up from the round rock he had used as a pillow for the night and peered out from behind the bench. The only thing he saw was a jogger stopping to clean up after his golden retriever. In a strange coincidence, the jogger turned looking Ralph in the eye without seeing him and began running on with his dog. Ralph rubbed his eyes trying to clear what had to be a sleepy film distorting the images to his brain. Try as he might, he could still see the jogger running with his dog, but his eyes still said the dog was leading the man with the leash end in the dog's mouth. As if knowing he was being watched, the jogger turned back to look in Ralph's direction and, once again, Ralph saw the distorted face of the man with a set of yellow eyes. The glow seemed to be cutting the distance between them before the man's neck snapped forward by the dog pulling on the leash to keep moving on their run.

Five minutes later, Ralph still lay in the same position staring towards the empty jogging path. Now alone, he felt the pressing urge to find out where he was, but first he needed to find a restroom. Luckily, the restrooms in the park are the easiest place for shady deals and Ralph was only too familiar with their locations. His urgency to get to a restroom was so great that he did not notice he was barefoot still. As his feet hit the cold, damp floor of a public bathroom, he was frozen by the cold shock going up his legs from his feet. Turning to the mirror, he saw he was wearing the same clothes he was wearing the night before he blacked out, but now he was wearing some form of pajama pants covered in blood. Hearing a voice from outside and still frightened of other wolf faced men with yellow eyes, he ran to the nearest stall closing the door to hide. The voices outside sounded like arguing and the faces seen in the cracks kept Ralph paralyzed on the toilet seat for the next ten minutes while the room faded in and out in different hues.

The voices seemed to be wavering and Ralph swore he heard his name several times after one man shoved the other through the door of the next bathroom stall and left. Ralph focused on the silence as all noises faded before he began focusing on his heartbeat until he passed out to the soothing sounds of the man in the stall next to him vomiting.