Touché (Complete)

Clumsy Carl

Carl looked out of place in the police station. For one thing, he was wearing a rather optimistic face, smiling at the grumpy cops.

He'd been here for almost an hour, doing nothing but to observe the dark aura around him. He wondered what the people here had done. He found it interesting. Angels didn't have the right to judge, and since they had a great sense of empathy and understanding, they didn't need to.

In front of him was a drunk man who looked like a mess. He had dried blood all around his arms. A woman earlier gave him bandages but he just removed them.

"The hell you looking at?" the man asked as he caught Carl.

Carl just smiled.

"Are you making fun of me?"

"Ah no, no!"

The man, however, was quick to stand up and was about to grab Carl by the collar when the officers held him.

"Hey! Hey! What are you doing?"

"This crazy guy here keeps looking at him!"

"No, sir!" Carl defended. "I didn't mean to offend."

"Okay, stop that you two. We don't have much space here so you have no choice but to stay like this."

After a while, the man had calmed down, and surprisingly, he apologized to Carl. He told him that he wasn't always like this. He said he was a nice person although he didn't look like it.

"What happened to you?" asked Carl.

"My wife and I had a petty argument. I had too much to drink and there was some bastard who tried to pickpocket me. Man, those bastards are everywhere."

"Then should be that person be here and not you?"

"Oh, I think that person's in the hospital. I ended up knocking him off. He thought he'd stand a chance against me."

"Ah." Carl didn't say anything more. The man was strange.

"But I'm not a bad person. I was just protecting myself, right? Though I would lie if I said I didn't enjoy him crying like a stupid baby."

The man laughed. Humans are complex beings, Carl thought.

Flor arrived late. She had work and she intended not to rush, hoping this incident would teach Carl a lesson.

When they met, Carl was relieved. But Flor was lecturing him on the way home. Carl explained that he didn't know helping someone would get him in trouble. A strange woman ran to him and asked for his help. She gave him a bag which turned out to be looted money. When the police came looking for her, they thought that he was an accomplice. Because he was so clueless, he couldn't properly explain himself.

"You're lucky they have a camera there," she told him.

"Eh, they didn't listen to me when I told them the truth."

"It's not their fault. You can't just trust people these days."

Carl nodded.

It was one of the reasons he didn't want to be in the human world anymore. He remembered his first few days here. Because he was supposed to have no identity, he became homeless. He thought that people would help him but they didn't.

"I'm really amazed by your guts," Flor said out of nowhere.

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't have a plan when you got here. What did you expect the real world was like? Heaven?"

Carl shrugged.

"Was it always this bad?"

"Of course, it is. The world sucks. I don't know why you ever dreamed of getting here, anyway. But I guess it's because you're like a child. Children usually see the world differently. Then they grow up to realize it's more of a war field than a playground."

As Flor spoke, she didn't look like she was talking to Carl anymore.