Drip, drip, drip. The last few drops pour out of the coffee machine, into an old U.S Army mug. The wicker chair creaks as Ted groans. His joints click when he manages to get up from his chair. He picks up his mug and nearly destroys the coffee machine in the process of turning it off. The hot coffee raises Ted’s awareness and he tends to his morning routines.

A sharp looking man casually strolls down Oak Street. He is wearing a dark suit and sunday shoes. His hair is closely cropped and his thin mustache has been impeccably trimmed. A full cigarette burns between his lips as he approaches the home of Ted, in hopes to catch him unawares early in the morning. The man rapped his knuckles on the thick wooden door and waits for the door to be answered.
Inside the home, Ted is scrambling to answer the door. The house is a mess and Ted quickly grabs a pair of shorts and yanks them over his legs, hopping on one foot while he pulls them up. Ted pulls the door open just as the man was leaving.
“How can I help ya, sir?” Ted says, fetching the well dressed man’s attention.
The man turns around, and takes Ted in. He has thin gray hair on the top of his head, moving wildly in the morning’s wind. He is wearing khaki shorts, halfway pulled up, and a stained white t-shirt. A greasy beard disguises his wrinkled facial features.
“Um,” the man stuttered, astonished at Ted’s ghastly appearance. “I’m trying to organize a petition to limit access to guns in the count-” A frown had formed on Ted’s face and he abruptly swung the door shut in the man’s face.
Ted fumbled to his closet beneath the stairs and rummaged through piles of ancient treasures. A reach of the arm and a turn of the head revealed an old pump action shotgun.
“Yes!” exclaimed Ted, and he proceeded to clean the old gun. The man at his door had reminded him about the gun that Ted had not yet returned to an old buddy of his, Marcus Humphrey. However, it was not as if Ted needed to return the gun, for Marcus had not complained, and it had been nearly four years. Ted however, was an honorable man, so he decided to return the gun. Later, though. It was lunchtime.
After a hearty meal consisting of a freezer hamburger and some cookies he had intended to give to Frita, his spirited immigrant neighbor, Ted drove off to visit Marcus in his ancient pickup. Marcus lived in a cheap plastic double wide, that had somehow rusted, located on the outskirts of the town. Despite the poor quality housing, the setting was beautiful, the trailer was surrounded by surreal woods. This, along with the fact that Marcus might have shortbread scones, was the only real reason Ted would actually return the gun.
Ted got out of his pickup, and walked along the path to Marcus’ trailer.  Colorful spring flowers seemed to sing in the woods, and Ted actually hummed a tune as he blundered recklessly through the fragile wildlife that grew alongside the path to the house. Ted paid no attention to the grace of the wildlife but thought to himself, Why couldn’t they put the stupid parking spots closer to the house?! Ted knocked on the front door then lowered himself onto the laminate porch, grumbling about his joint pain.
After five minutes of waiting, Ted got up to leave, thinking Marcus wasn’t home, but then he spied his friend’s ugly Pontiac in the distant parking lot. Ted walked around to the back door, knowing that Marcus always left a spare key inside the mouth of a sourfaced garden gnome that sat by the back door. Ted bent down and looked the gnome right in the eyes, and said,”Cough up ya lil’ troll,” right before he accidentally snapped the head off of the little man. Ted removed the key from the dismembered body, and inserted it in the lock. He turned the key, snapping it and cutting his finger.
“Ouch!” Ted exclaimed, and he further examined the lock. “Locks changed. Hmmm.” He turned to leave, sucking on his finger and rubbing his aching joints. He walked slowly through the long wooded path to the parking lot, wondering why Marcus would have his locks changed. Ted approached the tan Grand Prix to check if his friend was there. Marcus was laid upon the tan leather of the reclined driver’s seat, a black fedora covering his face.
“Silly old coot,” Ted chuckled. “Old man always sleepin’. Sun’s up Marco!” This elicited no response. Ted tried the car door with no luck. As he loudly rapped upon the partially open window, a storm began to gather overhead. Ted briefly glanced upward and began yanking on the car door. “Marcus, Marcus!” A worried expression spread across Ted’s face, quickly changing from doubt, to fear, and then to panic. The sunlight faded from the sky and rain began to fall. Ted stretched his arm inside the open window and was reaching for the door lock when a single drop of blood from his cut finger spilled on Marcus’ arm. The lock clicked and Ted yanked the door open. Franticly, Ted checked the man for a pulse, and at the same time removed the fedora from his face. No pulse, and the face explained why. A trail of dried blood had lead from his arched nose to his pointed chin, and his open eyes were coated with a cold gray fog. An clear prescription bottle lay empty at Marcus’s side, presumably for his heart condition.
Ted sat in the backseat of the dead man’s grand prix, watching the pouring rain. Thunder rumbled as another tear rolled down his cheek. I should have been there, I could’ve saved him, Ted thought, choking back a sob. Ted, despondently thinking Marcus Humphrey had killed himself out of his debt issues, blamed himself. Proud Marcus, Ted thought. Too proud to ask for help. Why didn’t he come to me? I could have helped. I should have helped! Gut-wrenching sobs wracked his body, and outside, lightning harpooned down from the heavens, brilliant and deafening.
“Ted… Ted…” the wind seemed to whisper. Ted lifted his head, as if in a trance. “It was not you, Ted. You were but a soul to witness. Another man, caught in a dream, lost to the whispering wind…”
Ted awoke, with Marcus shaking his shoulder, saying, “Teddy old man, falling asleep again! Right in the middle of dinner!” Ted looked around, eyeing his surroundings. It was evening and the sun shone through the open window, a ripe orange, low in the sky. “Pass the beans, would you Ted?” Marcus politely inquired, but Ted wasn’t listening. He was in Marcus’s dingy trailer, the carpeted floors, the plastic walls… But where was the car? Wasn’t Marcus just dead? Ted pondered, wondering what was going on. Ted’s thoughts were interrupted when a gust of wind slammed the window shut.
“The beans, Ted. My, are you alright?” asked Marcus, looking concerned. Something washed over Ted, tingling and thrilling.
“Huh? Oh, I’m great. Here are those beans. Mmm, delish.”