Antonin stared across the cobblestone path toward the fountain in the center of the public square. Illuminated by the evening sun, flecks of orange water sparkled like fireflies.

When his gaze shifted back inside the café, he stared blankly at his untouched cup of tea.  He had no interest in it other than as a prop to enable his vantage point. The owner of the establishment, a white-haired man with a perpetual scowl and general sense of contempt for the world, saw through this ritual over the course of days. He considered sitting with his customer some evening and showing him how to drink from a cup, or perhaps just bringing an empty cup in the first place.

Shortly after the monotone tolling of the cathedral bell, a flock of worshippers stampeded out of the edifice and into the open square. A few of them sat at the fountain and departed after the passage of some unremarkable moments. Gwendolyn was not among them.

The tiny sparkles were turning pink. Would she appear? What would he do if she didn’t carry out her evening custom of walking by the adjacent river? Would he really go through with it? Yes, he would jump into the river and forcefully breath in the water until his body reacted with violent involuntary impulses, gasping for a nonexistent supply of air and compounding the effect of the initial decision.

A moving dot in the distance, retrospectively the most beautiful of all the dots in the distance, soon became Gwendolyn. She walked from the river over to the fountain and sat with the kind of graceful, angelic, and somewhat melancholy expression Antonin always imagined as her standard countenance.

He put down some money next to the teacup, leaving thrice the usual amount in a sudden burst of sympathy for the increasingly frail old man.

Deepening his shallow breaths, he exited the café and began walking toward her. Before he could barely take ten steps, one of the remaining worshippers from the cathedral, a recently widowed middle-aged woman, approached him to express her concern for his well-being. She was sincere and quite often on the verge of tears in her daily life. Antonin listened patiently, believing that such gestures of spiritual rescue were part of her own attempt at creating purpose, but he did not absorb anything of substance from the encounter.

Gwendolyn was looking almost straight at him.

At his seventeenth step, he was intercepted by Gustav, a family friend who asked him enthusiastically to come to dinner later in the week. Antonin quickly agreed and moved on.

She was beautiful. The paleness of her skin, which was now a soft purple, made her seem more striking than ever, like a painting.

At his twenty-third step, a frustrated mother chasing her child nearly collided with Antonin, but it was not enough to divert him from his path. The echoes of useless threats soon faded into the distance.

The wind began to dance with Gwendolyn’s dark locks of hair.

At his twenty-seventh step, a quiet and dignified homeless man asked him for change.  Antonin gave him all he had and moved on.

Soon, all the people were gone, leaving Gwendolyn to her silent reverie in the empty square. The darkness had almost set in, and she momentarily smiled to herself.

At Antonin’s thirty-second step, a man whom he didn’t recognize made his way to the fountain and joined Gwendolyn. He was tall and angular, with a lean face resembling that of a jackal. They embraced and sat down together.

Antonin stopped.

The stranger began to take liberties with her. She did not protest.

Antonin could no longer tell if this was real or if he was dreaming. His body was burning in an invisible fire.

Soon, she and the stranger were inside the fountain, splashing and laughing until they were submerged almost fully and appeared to be nothing more than disembodied heads happily floating.

Antonin pulled out an old revolver, which his uncle had given to him as a symbol of manhood. He would not normally find any purpose for carrying the instrument, but he had prepared to end his own life through more than one method on this occasion, in case drowning proved too difficult.

He pointed the gun toward his chest, but did not fire. He kept watching the bobbing heads.

How hard would it be to hit one of those moving targets? He pointed the gun forward and began to concentrate on the precise rhythm of the rising and falling. He looked closely at Gwendolyn’s face. It no longer resembled that of his melancholic angel. There was only an expression of ecstatic pain.

Antonin shifted his focus back to his target, which now had the look of a ravenous beast. Deepening his shallow breaths, he prepared to fire.

“No,” a voice calmly said from behind.

Antonin spun around, nearly falling to the ground, as if jolted by lightning. “What?” he asked in disorientation.

“Don’t do it,” the oddly familiar voice repeated.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t shoot.”

Antonin suddenly looked at the gun in his own hand in astonishment. “What is this? What have I done?”

“Please, give that to me.”

Antonin reached out slowly and handed the weapon over. “What have I done?”

“Come with me.” The man put his arm around Antonin’s shoulder to comfort him. “Tell me. How did it get like this?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“So much has changed in fifteen years. Has it not?”

“What do you mean? Who are you?”

“Do you still not recognize your old friend?”

“Gustav?”

“Yes.”

“Gustav! Has it really been fifteen years?”

“No. We saw each other five years ago. You gave me money right here when I was homeless and hungry, but you didn’t recognize me. You didn’t notice anyone or anything around you.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why. I’ve become a stranger to myself.”

“Let’s go to the river.”

“I should have drowned myself in that river long ago. I could have ended my life as an honorable man, but now, I can’t even do that.”

The two continued forward in silence. By the time they reached the river, the moon was visible on the still surface of the water. Gustav hurled the gun at it, causing a momentary disintegration of the image, but it was soon back.

They stood and watched the ripples dissipate until the galaxy unveiled itself.