“What is Heaven?” Alex asked, half-not caring and half-interested in the reply he might hear. He wanted to give an expression on his face that would say he wanted a real, provocative answer, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull such one. Instead, he continued to sit in the now drawn out silence, playing absent-mindedly with his pen, moving it between his index and middle finger. 
 
The woman he was facing gave him an encouraging smile, pushing him to go on. He did: “It used to be that God existed in the clouds. Back when the Bible was first written, or whatever. I don’t know, I haven’t read it. Don’t plan to. But my point is, people believed He had some sort of… kingdom made of clouds up there, right? But then we figured out that what’s beyond the clouds is really space. And space is… space. So where’s Heaven supposed to be? I thought it was in the clouds. You’d think a pilot would have found it by now.”
 
The woman, sitting cross-legged with a pen of her own and a pad of paper on her lap, gave an odd noise signaling slight amusement. As she did this, she jotted on her pad at a speed Alex could never catch up to with his own hand. He was fast at typing, not writing.
 
“Many people believe Heaven exists,” she said. “They may not know where, but then, they might not want to know where. Or they might not believe it’s a place you can find unless you’re meant to be there. My question was simply ‘do you believe in Heaven?’ I’m judging by your answer that no, you don’t. Is that right?”
 
“I don’t know,” Alex said, his voice a little softer with the sudden lack of conviction. He looked at his lap and clicked his pen periodically. “I used to. When I was smaller. I even used to pray sometimes. But I… don’t know anymore. It’s kind of a… tall tale to believe, you know?”
 
She did not nod but only said “Mm” reassuringly and wrote more on her paper. After she finished, she looked up at Alex again through her rectangular, flimsy glasses and smiled. “How are things at home? Anything new?”
 
“Uh…” Alex thought. “We got a cat,” he finally said with a shrug. “It’s okay. It doesn’t meow everywhere it goes like some cats.”
 
“That’s good to hear,” said Alex’s psychiatrist. For once, her hands were rested, one on top of the other, on her pad of paper. “What’s its name?”
 
“Shagner,” said Alex. “I think it’s a re…” He stopped, holding his tongue from uttering anything offensive in front of his doctor. “I think it’s a dumb name,” he recovered.
 
“Why’s that? Who named him? It is a him, right?”
 
“Yeah. And my sister named him. Thought that would have been obvious.” He glanced at the clock and, reading that it was three minutes to 4PM, tucked his pen into his pocket.
 
“Shagner doesn’t seem like such a bad name. It sounds creative.”
 
“Are you kidding me? It sounds stupid. It sounds like something Austin Powers would name his cat. Or… or what William Shatner would have changed his name to had he gone into the porn industry.”
 
Alex picked his jacket off from the back of his chair and put it on. At this movement, his doctor looked up behind her chair at the clock on the wall, then faced Alex again. 
 
“I guess that’s all for today then,” she said, uncrossing her legs and placing her paper and pen on the desk beside her.
 
Alex nodded and stood up, stretching a little. “Okay then, Ms. Stenson.”
 
“Oh! Alex,” Ms. Stenson said as she stood up as well, “I want you to do something for me over the weekend.” 
 
Alex grimaced.
 
“It won’t be so bad,” she assured him. “I want you to try to do at least ten nice things for your sister. It doesn’t matter what they are or when you do them, so long as you do ten of them by the end of Sunday. You can go out of your way to do them if no more perfect opportunities come up, and—”
 
“Are you serious?” Alex roared. “That brat? D’you remember what I said she did? Yesterday when she made a huge mess at breakfast… and then when I was cleaning, she dumped my bowl of cereal on me! I had to shower again! And I got yelled at for being late for school!”
 
“I remember, Alex, but she’s only nine,” Ms. Stenson reasoned.
 
“I wasn’t that much of a brat when I was nine!”
 
“I’d bet your parents can tell stories,” she said with a smirk. “And remember why you have to come to my office every day after school for an hour.”
 
“That’s different…” Alex started, but his thoughts only went that far.
 
“Just do what I ask, Alex,” Ms. Stenson said calmly. “It may turn out that once you’re nicer to your sister, she might not turn out to be such a brat to you. You’re approaching your relationship with your sister with too much hostility. You can’t let one bad day make you hate her.”
 
“She’s been like this since before I can remember—”
 
“Well, I think it’s time you changed things. Just do what I ask for this weekend.”
 
“Fine,” he sighed.
 
“Great! I’ll see you Monday.”
 
Alex opened the heavy door and left Ms. Stenson’s cramped office.
 
As soon as he stepped out of the school’s front doors, he was bombarded with heavy rain. The parking lot in front of him had puddles everywhere that the pavement was uneven and raindrops splattered off the few cars left. He walked steadily to the sidewalk leading off the school grounds, fearing if he cut through the grassy patch he would soak his socks through his shoes.
 
The walk home was not a far one but he cursed the weather anyway as he left the school’s boundaries. There wasn’t a patch of sky above his head; everything was gray as far as the eye could see. This weather made him gloomy, if he wasn’t gloomy already. He tried to take his mind away from feeling dismal by trying to think of ways to be nice to Rosie. She would be at home already, like always, probably watching her kids’ shows on TV. He could not steal the TV away from her once he got home like he often did. That would be something nice. Besides, some of the TV she watched wasn’t that bad for Alex. He enjoyed Spongebob from time to time.
 
He reflected on Ms. Stenson and her request. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to try to be nice to his sister. Maybe it could really turn things around. It wouldn’t be that long until she matured a little more. But then, Alex didn’t see himself as very mature even at the ripe old age of sixteen.
 
Alex’s thoughts started to fade away as he noticed something odd on his often-ordinary route home: a man was standing at the highway intersection Alex was approaching. The light across the street blinked the white walking figure with the annoying beep-bop sound, but the man did not move. Alex figured him to be in his twenties. He looked too old (at least, from what Alex could tell staring at his backside) to go to school, yet was evidently young enough to pull off wearing a hooded sweatshirt underneath his very neat suit jacket. The hood was pulled up from beneath his jacket and protected his head from the rain. Horns from impatient drivers were starting to blare to snap the man to attention, but he did not move. Finally, the white walking figure and the noise that went with him were replaced with the orange STOP hand and the light turned green. 
 
Alex was nervous about approaching this oddity now. He considered walking across the street and crossing the highway on the other side, but he did not. He kept walking towards the man with the hooded sweatshirt under his suit. The man’s left’s forearm was raised as if he were holding his collarbone.
 
By the time Alex got to the intersection and stood next to the still man, his hair was soaked from the relentless rain. He tried to be casual, not even glancing at the man as he reached in front of him and pressed the button on the crosswalk pole to change the lights. Then he stole his peek as he withdrew his hand. His intent was to keep it quick, but that soon failed.
 
The man was indeed young. He was pale and had fine brown hair above his lip; not enough to look like a mustache but enough to suggest he hadn’t seen a razor in a while. What had initially captured Alex’s gaze were the man’s eyes. They were staring vacantly across the highway and seemed virtually colorless. Further staring on Alex’s part confirmed that there was a very unhealthy pale blue in his irises. What kept Alex’s gaze was the strangest thing about the man: he was drinking. In his raised hand he held a big, transparent mug and he was continuously bringing it to his mouth, taking fair gulps each time. Alex could see the mug was full of water when the man brought it down to his upper chest. It waved around a little as raindrops pattered into it.
 
The man’s resemblance to a zombie unsettled Alex immensely. All he needed now was to look wrinkly and have some part of his face missing, revealing the gore underneath. There was just something that made him feel uneasy as he stood next to this man, apart from his scary expression. It felt like he was just giving off bad vibes.
 
Then the man drank again, only this time it was a longer swig. He was intending to finish off his water. Alex wanted to look away, afraid he had been staring for too long now, but the man held his attention with what he did next.
 
As he finished off his water, the man held the mug up against his face, rolling his head back so the last of it would fall into his mouth. Then he extended his tongue out into the clear glass. It was long and curvy, but the man still had to really try to reach the bottom. He succeeded, and licked the last few drops. Alex was startled at how the man’s tongue looked very unclean. The top of it looked like it was covered in some white film.
 
The man finished and held the cup against his upper chest again. His eyes seemed to return to the world and he watched the cars driving back and forth on the highway.
 
Alex desperately wanted to look forward now and just wait for the lights to change, but he figured holding his gaze a moment longer couldn’t hurt. The man fascinated him like a horror movie fascinates people. Then the man who fascinated him so turned his head and looked at him, square in the eyes. Alex’s heart slammed itself against his chest so hard he was surprised he didn’t feel winded. His breathing rate was starting to rise rapidly. The man was still looking at him and he was still looking at the man. He tried to think of something normal to say like, “Nice weather, eh?” but he couldn’t force it out. Not while his heart was hammering and his skin was crawling.
 
Then the man smiled at Alex. He smiled wide, too wide for just a polite “Hi there”, and bared his ugly, rotten teeth. None of them had even a speck of anything white on them but none were missing either. They were black and yellow. Alex felt like screaming.
 
Beep-bop!
 
Alex jumped.
 
Beep-bop!
 
The sound that came with the white walking man signaling to cross gave Alex the strength to tear his gaze away from the creepy man and walk quickly, maybe too quickly, across the highway. He looked over his shoulder once he crossed the street. The man was still there, watching him. He suddenly felt unsafe. He looked ahead and decided to run, but tried to make it look like a casual jog. 
 
Once he rounded the corner onto street where he lived, Lichen Ave., he broke into a faster run, afraid the creepy man was chasing him. Or another one might pop out of a nearby property bush. He ran fast, his shoes splashing through puddles he didn’t care about anymore, cursing the creepy man in his head.
 
Fuck! Son of a bitch! Why the fuck did he have to smile at me? What the fuck…?
 
He stopped in front of his house and caught his breath. He didn’t want Rosie to know why he had been running. Then he’d have to explain the creepy man in full detail, giving him his own words and making him more terrifying.
 
Alex shook his head and drew in a deep breath. The rain was pleasantly cold. Looking over both of his shoulders one last time, he opened the door and stepped inside.