But Mycah and I had more to see.

We left Sid’s house and flew quickly to another, nicer house. It was immaculate inside and out. Dust-free and without blemish. It had two stories – and a basement from the looks of it, though we did not venture that low. The subject of our visit was on the ground floor, in the spacious living room. Wolo Mank - casted leg propped on an ottoman – was lost in his reveries.

His thoughts invaded my mind, and I smiled at what they told me. Until Time began to flow, and the scene changed.

“What are you watching,” The Reverent Jek L. Mank – Wolo’s father - asked, suddenly darkening the doorway, and casting a shadow across his son’s pleasant reveries. Wolo hadn't been watching anything, really.

He was barely aware that the TV was on.

He had been thinking about all the nice people he'd met that day. Such as the nice receptionist who had signed him into the emergency room. Then there was the nice Doctor who had - ever so gently - set his broken leg and applied the cast. There were the nice nurses who had lined up to sign that cast, and there was the nice administration lady who - after taking care of the insurance information his mother provided - had given him a lollipop for being such a good, little patient.

And he had been patient.

He had been exceedingly patient through the entire ordeal.

He had listened attentively as the Doctor listed all the do's and don'ts pertaining to casts. He had paid special attention to the front steps, as he navigated them using the crutches that came part and parcel with that cast. And he was attentive, now, to the tone of his father's voice as it sent all those nice memories scurrying like mice and launched Wolo on a wild-goose chase for the TV remote.

“What is this,” the elder Mank asked, waving the controller in a circular motion as if he were trying to clear fog from the screen so that he could see what was on it. Wolo's hands were still hurriedly ruffling the blankets, having not yet gotten the word that his father already held what they sought. His eyes went to the screen that held the senior Mank’s rapt attention, and immediately he saw the problem.

Wolo lamented that he had not been more attentive to what was playing on the TV. Imagery that would go unnoticed by the parental units of most other households, had solidly fixed the attention of Wolo Mank’s own guardian and sent him into overload. A tiny cartoon witch was chasing some cartoon children around her house in an obviously vain attempt to eat them - and the Reverent Jek L. Mank considered witches to be his own personal nemeses.

“Do you think witches are funny, son?” Wolo's eyes were locked on the TV as humor fled from him as quickly as his scurrying memories had.

“No sir.” He answered flatly, having lost all his emotion with the realization of his hopeless situation.

If his father had not been standing there, Wolo might have innocently chuckled at the buffoonery on the screen - but Jek was standing there.

“Do you think witchcraft is something to be taken lightly?” The elder Mank asked.

His son's voice did not waver when he replied, “No sir.”

This sort of questioning was not new to him. Neither was what usually followed it.

His father was not home when Jireh had rung the doorbell and fallen on his sword on the front porch, in front of Serratta Mank.

Jek's free hand moved to the buckle at his waist.

He had not been there when Mrs. Mank had driven her injured son to the Emergency Room and walked with him through each step of treating his broken leg.

“Haven't I told you how dangerous these kinds of images are?” It was a conversation Wolo and his father had had many times.

“Yes sir.” The younger Mank affirmed.

Metal tinkled as the buckle of the senior Mank’s belt came free. Jek had not been at the hospital with his wife and son to meet all the nice people on the hospital staff, or to see the way one brave little patient made his mother so proud with the way he handled the ordeal of encasing a broken bone in plaster.

The familiar thwop, thwop, thwop of leather clearing belt loops assaulted Wolo’s ears, making him twinge with expectation. The Reverent Doctor had not been there when Serratta Mank had tucked her son in under a cozy blanket on the couch and brought him a cold beverage.

“Do you understand that there are forces in the world who want this kind of filth to seem harmless, so they can spread it like a disease?”

Wolo had been warned of such things.

“Yes sir.” He nodded slightly.

His head ended the nod at a slightly lower angle from where it had begun. His eyes, seeing nothing of value on the TV screen, vainly tried to find solace in the carpet.

Stiff leather creaked softly as the elder Mank formed a loop in his right hand with the belt.

He had not been home when his wife had absentmindedly turned on the TV and set it to Wolo’s favorite cartoon channel, then sauntered off to the kitchen to get dinner started.

The loop slapped lightly against his father’s pant leg as he prepared himself for an act which, he told himself, would hurt him more than it hurt his son. That same son, given the chance, would disagree.

The belt’s message was loud and clear. The Doctor was here now, and the patient, younger Mank knew that his lack of attention was about to bring out a side of the Reverent Doctor Jek Llewelyn Mank that his congregation never saw.

“What happened to your leg, son?”

Wolo knew that it was pointless to try and explain everything that had happened over the course of the day.

“I fell down.” Was his cold, abridged response.

For him, the hardest part of all of this was enduring the questions his father asked, instead of just getting on with the part that both Mank males had now resolved themselves to.

Jek clicked the television off and set the controller down.

He was here now, but in a moment - Wolo knew - he would be dealing solely with Mr. Hide.

“That dude is a terrible parent!” I said a few moments later, as I tried to recover from what I had just witnessed.

“Again, you presume to judge people that you do not understand.” Mycah scolded.

“Oh I’m judging, alright! I’m judging all over this guy!” My anger had risen up through my chest with every fall of the belt across young Wolo’s hide, until it was bursting out of my mouth and threatening to blow the top of my head off.

“You hate him, now.” Mycah said, and I took it as a simple statement, not foreshadowing of a future where I might feel some other way about Jek Mank.

“I wanna cut him to ribbons!” I screamed. Epiphany – My Revelation blade - flashed in my hand, and I slashed at the Reverant Jek Llewelyn Mank with all my strength, but there was no visible sign of damage where the blade passed. The only reaction - and I’m not sure if it was a reaction to me or something else - was that the male stopped and looked momentarily down at the belt as if he were rethinking what he had just done.

“Go to your room, son.” He said flatly, and his child dutifully obeyed.

“Moments like these make Wolo Mank who he is supposed to be.” Mycah insisted.

“You’re OK with this!?!”

“There are five stages of grief, Ravenna. Acceptance being the last – the one where everyone wants to be. The one where everyone needs to be.”

“I can’t! No! I can not abide by this, Mycah! No way! What that guy did was utterly reprehensible!”

“You know nothing of the paths your fellow creats walk, or the shoes they must wear.”

“I’m not angry at his shoes! Or even that stupid belt!”

I fumed as the asshole hung Mr. Hide – as Wolo had nicknamed it - over a wooden valet in the corner of the room he shared with his wife. I could think of nothing but wrapping it around his scrawny neck. But there was no interfering with Time. Mycah wouldn’t let me forget that. This was all a memory in the mind of the power that ruled over this universe. I consoled myself with the knowledge that Jek L. Mank was nothing more than bones and dust in some hole in the ground. At least the physical part. His soul, I hoped beyond hope, was in some fiery afterlife getting what it deserved.