He stood in the rain and the dark, the clouds having brought nightfall hours ahead of schedule. Flashes of light said there was lightning, but thunder never arrived. Only the sound of rain on pavement rose to greet the light. Normally he liked the rain – the sound it made upon leaves and sand. But here, in this place, the sound made him think of a graveyard, dead and cold. Droplets pitter-pattered upon the forgotten headstones of the city.

He looked at his phone. Aside from beads of rain the screen was blank. He hated the phone and he hated his need for it. A drop of water trickled into the furrow between his eyebrows. He let it run the length of his nose before swatting it away. Another followed close behind.

The pavement was bright with reflected taillights. The ground glowed red as the sky flashed in angry silence.

It’s a sad state, he thought, when traffic swallows thunder and dead rain swallows traffic. It’s like the cry of heaven is drowned by the cries of earth. Not even cries – a cry suggests emotion. Rather drowned by noise and the comfort that people seem to find in masses.

He blew rainwater from his lips. It disappeared into the downpour. His shirt clung to his back and he wondered why he bothered with it? His skin was waterproof. Clothes just held the damp.

He checked his phone – still blank. A tiny earthworm crawled across the sidewalk. It stretched itself out, as long as its frame could reach, then contracted to a fraction of that – a hair, to a broken pencil lead, back to a hair. He watched the worm move millimeter by millimeter as rain pounded upon it.

A part of him wanted to scoop it up and carry it to bare earth. Another part of him, the larger part, was content to watch the creature struggle.

Lightning flashed, and he saw suddenly, drowning at his feet, a metaphor for his life – stretched thin, larger than possible, everything for everyone, reaching much but covering little… then small, blunt, shunted, and contracted from the world. His progress, like the worm’s, was slow; explore and retreat, again and again. The world rained down while he remained oblivious to all but his own struggle.

An urge to crush the worm beneath his heel rose in his chest. It was a strong urge. He hated the worm. He hated the message it conveyed. What did it matter if one more worm disappeared? One more invertebrate gone from the world? He wanted it, and its epiphany, banished from his mind and existence.

He lifted his foot, held it over the small pink hair. A foreign voice filled his mind. It spoke with the bored drawl of a high school science teacher and said simply, that earthworms were the smallest creature with a nervous system. They could feel pain.

Images from his childhood splashed across his mental canvas – worms from the sandbox, stretched until they snapped; worms in puddles, bloated and pink; worms in jars of formaldehyde, waiting for his scalpel. All of them screaming and pleading without sound.

His conscience was already overburdened. He didn’t need this small creature’s agony upon it. He put his foot next to the worm – sheltered it from the worst of the rain.

The phone in his hand trembled, a song followed as it rang. The worm stretched… contracted. One millimeter closer to some unknown goal, or one further from it.

“Hello,” he said in the rain and the dark. Stretch.

“She’s at the University Hospital, in ICU.”

“How bad?” he asked. Rain leaked into his mouth.

“They won’t say. Are you coming?”

The rain fell. Contract. Silence. Expand.

“Will they let me in?” Overexposed memories filled his mind. They smelled of alcohol and cotton and pain. They gleamed beneath dull florescent tubes and hummed in white tiled floors and rubber wheeled gurneys.

“Does it matter?” the voice asked.

“What do you mean?” Contract.

“Are you coming for her, for them, or for yourself?”

A taxi roared past, too close to the curb. A small wave crested and broke upon his shoes. The worm disappeared in a cascade of bubbles.

He looked for it; lifted his feet and scanned the gleaming sidewalk. He spun, full circle, searching for the smallest life that could feel pain.

“I said, why are you coming?” the voice asked – tired, not irritated, but close enough to make no difference.

“Because I want to,” he said. The words left him; his breath stuck in his throat.

Silence. The concrete roared its red emptiness. The worm was gone.

“You know where to find us,” the voice said.

Click. Silence.

He blew rainwater from his lips. It tasted like salt.