I found Rufus

A fan, if someone that has made very little off his writing can actually be said to have fans, asked me whatever happened to Rufus. Any of you that are writers, and some of you who are not, know that a writer really doesn’t make anything up. He looks beyond the veil between the worlds of reality and imagination and reports what he sees.

I gave up following Rufus’s story because of something silly really. When I first found Rufus I had recently become single, I wasn’t handling it well, and I was reaching out for anything to fill the void. My writing filled some of that void but I was very much in need of human contact; and to be honest, female companionship.

I loved Rufus at first and I have often wondered just what happened to that little guy. I turned my back on him, for the most part, because a woman that I was talking to told me how weird she thought the story of Rufus’s life was. To be quite honest she made it clear that I was kind of weird for writing about him.

After that happened a good friend of mine, named Heather, had a thing for Rufus, I had a crush on Heather but she turned to Rufus instead of me. I was very angry with him and I was so desperate for someone to share my life with that I gave up on the little guy. I have been weird all of my life, an outcast really, but in trying to be more accepted I gave up a small part of who I was. It didn’t help the situation; the woman that thought the storry was weird didn’t really like me anyway. There were other things involved. Rufus was just a small part of it. I think the bipolar disorder and the occasional bouts of severe depression, one in particular, made her think that I would be more of a liability than an asset in her life. For the most part, at that time in my life I believe that she was right.

This story isn’t about me. It is about Rufus, and what has happened to him since I last looked in on his life.

I looked for a couple days and last night I found him. A tear came to my eye when I realized that it was him lying there. I wasn’t sure which city it was in because I hadn’t looked from very high in the air. Something pulled me to an alley. Not being a real entity in that world I had no connection to the physical restraints of a corporal form, so I floated about forty feet in the air through various alleys and down dirty wet streets.

The buildings were like any buildings in a major city, they were old and they were run down. The buildings were made out of that red brick that you see some old chimneys made out of. Some of the buildings had been burnt out, those that weren’t either had bars on the windows or they had been boarded up.

The streets were wet last night as I looked for him. I floated down an alley, about fifty feet down, I felt him. I looked behind a dumpster and curled up in a wet collapsed cardboard box under soggy newspapers, there he was. He smelled bad, covered in his own vomit and urine, he lay passed out and shivering in the cruel city night air.

I concentrated very hard and I brought my hands to a more solid form in his world and I uncovered him. His Mohawk had grown out and it was no longer red. He didn’t have any chains, body jewelry or sunglasses, I’m guessing he sold them for drugs. He was wearing some sort of stretchy, shiny boy toy shorts of some kind. There was an almost empty bottle of cheap rum of some sort clutched tightly in his right hand.

I knew right away, looking at his outfit, what he must have done to get that rum and I was sad. I had left him to this. I had abandoned my friend. Sure, he was on this road before I left him and deep down I told myself that it was why I stopped hanging around him. I had abandoned my friend when he needed me most and now he had turned into some sort of male whore, selling himself for cheap booze and drugs. He spends his nights covered with dirty newspapers in the back alleys and cruel streets of an unfriendly city.

God only knows what he’s been through. I reached down, pulled him from the mess that was his bed. I thought harder and focused until my arms were solid in his world. I held his little platypus body in my hands and cradled him in my arms. I carried him for the better part of the night, through time and space, bringing him back close enough to my own home to keep an eye on him.

Tonight Rufus is in Little Rock, he has been admitted to a rehabilitation center. I will not abandon my little friend again. I will stay by his side when I can, and visit often when life’s responsibilities keep me from his side. I am going to try and help him get back on his feet, maybe he will even get his GED and someday attend our little Ozarka college in the happy little town of Melbourne Arkansas. All that will be determined later. Maybe he won’t even want my help. Maybe he will be angry with me for abandoning him. We will have to see, only time will tell.