The Lonely Passenger It was a Saturday the day he cried. Early and bitter, the tears were hot and fell in streams down his face, his whiskers helping to form streams. Wearing an Afghan and surrendering to his solitude, he sat with his legs forming a crest, his hands loosely clasped in front. Rocking forward and slightly backward, he tried to shake off the burden of his inconsiderations. They had climbed and overcome and he felt bad. He looked sick, his affect manic as he shook from a look of indignation to worry to apathy. Before getting up from his chair, he felt warm, resolute, lucid. But that was before, and only briefly. He slammed his legs forward and toward the ground with the precision of a calm samurai. The unchoreographed movements that followed were spasmodic, his fists, arms and palms striking the sky with malice. Such a crisis had led to a broken hand 5 years earlier. Four months before, such an adjustment had come to a head with pieces of a practical side table marbling the carpet. This most recent event ended where it began and he got dressed, with little regard for hygiene or otherwise. On his way out, he grabbed a backpack and opened the door towards him, managing to put 6 feet of distance between himself and the house before it locked. precisely behind him. His house was in the residential neighborhood of a typical college town, about ten blocks from campus. Oak trees lined the block, wasting the rain they had collected from yesterday's shower; larger than average sized drops fell randomly on and around him. It's only been a year since he started enjoying the rain. Previously it was important only as an agent of drowsiness, but now the threatening gray skies and resulting showers were almost preferred. That Saturday, the sky was opaque. It matched his mood. Walking a half step behind what would have been determination, he crossed paths with seventeen night caterpillars and a stray cat before reaching a tunnel that ran under and around a stream that flowed perpendicularly to his mood. His eyes were at ground level, his hands dangling from his thumbs, his thumbs hooked into the straps of the backpack. Within sight was the opulent green of a park littered with picnic tables and grills, surrounded on three sides by looming oaks and maples.