(AN: Not much to say this time, actually, except the usual thanks for reviewing and here's the next chapter! I hope you like it.)

O.o.O

Over the next few days, Monkey had to dig through the big bag of dog food if he expected to get fed.

Animal neglect? Well, yes, in most cases, that would definitely have been what was going on. But the little Chihuahua knew that there was much more than that going on—that he had to not only take care of himself, but take care of his master, in the most bizarre of role reversals. Because if Monkey didn't tug on Cosmo's pant leg, Cosmo wouldn't have remembered to get up to feed himself. Day after day, Monkey tugged and whined, trying to get his happy master back from the depths of his depression.

Of course, that day came when Monkey had eaten the entire bag of dog food, and Cosmo still had barely moved. With a whine and whimper louder and more pitiful than he had ever attempted, Monkey jumped up on Cosmo's lap and nuzzled his hand.

"I think… I think I know why she left, Monkey."

Monkey nearly jumped at the sound of Cosmo's voice. After days of neglect, his voice cracked and sounded dry, hoarse. Or maybe it was just from his state of mind?

Cosmo absent-mindedly stroked Monkey behind the ears. "You see, Monkey, I've been thinking a lot these past few days—more than I've ever thought in my life, and—oh my gosh! Are you hungry, Monkey?"

Monkey nudged Cosmo, as if asking him to continue with his thoughts.

"I can't even take care of a dog," moaned Cosmo, hugging Monkey. "No wonder Wanda left. I should have known this would happen… it's so obvious, even to an idiot like me. You see, Monkey, that night… that night I finally showed her just how much I love her. I was never able to tell her, but that night I thought I finally showed her all of my love… well, most of it," admitted Cosmo. "I think I could never possibly show all of it, because… because it's such a part of me, if I let it all go, I might… die. I can't give it all up—aw, heck, Monkey, what am I talking about? I hardly showed her anything that night. And that's why she left. I didn't love her enough. She finally knew how much I did, but it wasn't enough." He sniffed back incoming tears. "And that makes sense. She deserves so much more than what I can give her… I only hope… she can find someone who can love her like she deserves."

Monkey whined sadly.

"Of course it hurts! It hurts so bad I can hardly move—well, I guess you know that," admitted Cosmo apologetically. "But I'm going to make it up to you, Monkey, I promise. Do you want to go to town and get something to eat?"

Monkey yapped his happy assent.

"Alright! Let's go!" Cosmo got up very unsteadily—"Wow, I just heard my bones crack!"—and went outside, Monkey running right behind him. "Ooh, Monkey! Let's take the unicycle to town!"

Monkey barked indignantly.

"Oh… right… you don't have a unicycle, do you?" Cosmo frowned. "Darn it, I wanted to try this thing out… wait, I have an idea! Wow, that's a first!" Cosmo ran off to the shed and pulled out a very old unicycle. Monkey cocked his head. "My daddy used to ride unicycles, I guess," explained Cosmo with an embarrassed smile. "And Mama said he was an inventor—a really smart one! Of course, that was before he went on his vacation that he never came back from. And he invented a basket for a unicycle, 'cuz Mama always had him go to town and get her things from the market, and he liked his unicycle better than walking or driving." Cosmo lifted the unicycle up and Monkey saw that there was an L shaped piece coming off from the unicycle, with a basket firmly attached to it. Cosmo picked up Monkey and put him in the basket; the basket was large and Monkey had plenty of room.

"There! You fit perfectly!" Cosmo grabbed a large screwdriver that quite conveniently happened to be lying around, removed the basket-thing from the old unicycle, and reattached it to his new one. "Perfect! Now that the author's done writing this hugely coincidental scene that quite conveniently lets you come along with me, Monkey, let's go and find something to eat!"

O.o.O

"So what happened then?" the woman on the park bench next to Cosmo asked.

"Funny you should ask," said Cosmo with a grin. "So we went and got some fast food, and then I said, 'Well, Monkey, what should we do now?' He couldn't answer, of course, so I thought to myself, 'Why don't we just ride around on the unicycle all day?' Well, we did, but I don't think either one of us wanted to go home, so we went across the state… then we got to an ocean, so I figured we might as well just turn around and go the other way! And when we got to another ocean… I figured we had nothing better to do, so we turned around and kept right on going!"

The woman laughed. "And so… you just… pedaled!"

Cosmo considered this for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah!"

O.o.O

"Isn't this the life, Monkey?" said Cosmo, sharing a bit of his turkey and cheese sub sandwich with his Chihuahua companion. "We've been gone for months, we have no worries, my hair's really long and I've got a beard… isn't this fun?"

Monkey was devouring his sandwich, but wagged his tail in response.

"I should have done this years ago," said Cosmo with a sigh, leaning back against the tree in the woods where they were spending the night.

"I thought about a lot of things while I was riding my unicycle, and while I was resting, too," recalled Cosmo. "I thought about Mama, and Timmy, and Lieutenant Crocker… but most of all, I thought about Wanda."

Cosmo gazed up at the mountains from his spot in the woods, wondering.

O.o.O

About a year later, Cosmo was still cycling… and people were beginning to take notice.

"Hey, look at that, Frank!" a woman in the café said to her husband, pointing at the TV located by the window. "There's that man I was telling you about—the guy who's been riding around on a unicycle for about two years now."

"That's nice. Excuse me, waitress? Could I have some more coffee?"

The waitress nodded and approached Frank with the coffee pot, while his wife scoffed. "Come on, Frank, it's a huge human interest story!"

On the TV, a rather short news reporter, standing on a bridge, announced, "Good morning! This is Chet Ubetcha, and I'm reporting live from the Mississippi River, where a man named Cosmo Uhsmith, who has been cycling across the nation for nearly two years now, will be crossing the river for the fourth time! And here he comes now!"

The waitress gave the oddest smile at the TV screen. "Oh my God! Cosmo!"

Another waitress who was working at another table raised an eyebrow. "You know that guy, Wanda?"

Wanda smiled as if in a daze. "Yeah… you might say that."

"Hey!"

"Oops! I'm sorry, sir!" Wanda grabbed a rag and cleaned up the coffee that had overflowed Frank's cup while Wanda had been distracted by the TV. Frank scowled.

The TV now showed a man with long green hair and a long green beard riding a unicycle over the bridge, a strange sort of basket holding a Chihuahua attached to the support rod. And Chet Ubetcha and about six other reporters were all crowded around him, running to keep up and shoving microphones in his face, asking a thousand questions.

"Are you doing this for the environment?"

"World peace?"

"Civil rights?"

"Women's rights?"

"How about the animals?"

"Why are you doing this?"

Cosmo, expertly balanced on his unicycle, just shrugged. "I just felt like riding my unicycle!"

All shocked by his answers, the news reporters all stopped dead in their tracks, giving Cosmo time to pedal on by, leaving them in the dust.

O.o.O

Cosmo, in his current clean-shaven self sitting on the park bench, looked as if he were at a loss of words. "I thought," he finally said, shrugging as if apologizing to the woman that he couldn't quite think of how to put his next thought into words, "that riding a unicycle around would be the kind of thing that only an idiot like me would do, but after I got on the news and all that, people… people thought that I was doing something right, that I gave them hope or something like that! That's when I started to get company… other than Monkey, of course…"

O.o.O

"It's you! Oh my God, it's really you!"

Cosmo, unicycling though a park in downtown St. Louis, turned around and saw a man on a bicycle following him.

"Yep, it's me!" said Cosmo cheerfully, slowing down a bit so the man could catch up. "I couldn't be anyone else!"

"I can't believe it!" the young man cried. "I mean, when I saw you on the news, I thought to myself, 'Now here's a man who's got it all figured out. Here's a man who's got his act together!'"

"Where?" asked Cosmo, turning his head around.

"I'd follow you anywhere, Mr. Uhsmith!" cried the man.

"Really? Even off a cliff?" asked Cosmo. He looked down at Monkey. "What do you think, Monkey? Do you mind if we have another companion?"

Monkey panted, barked, and wagged his tail, a sign that Cosmo understood to mean "yes".

"Okay, Monkey says you can come with me!" said Cosmo with a smile.

"First it was just him—his name was Mike, he's a really nice guy—but then there were more… and more… and more! Some had bikes, some ran, some had unicycles like me, and there were even some kids on tricycles! Some only stayed with us for awhile, but some stayed for the whole trip! And then there were those people who wanted help with their problems… There was this one guy in the bumper sticker business…"

"…and you don't know how competitive this business can be!" The bumper sticker man said, running alongside Cosmo's unicycle down a small city downtown street. "And I was thinking, Mr. Uhsmith, that you've been such an inspiration to so many people, that maybe you could help me—JESUS! You just went through a big pile of dog shit!"

Cosmo shrugged. "It happens."

The bumper sticker man blinked. "What, shit?"

"Sometimes. Actually, you should see how much Monkey here has to go when we stop! Poor guy. Anyway, it was nice talking to you!" Cosmo had to turn around and yell over his shoulder, for the man had stopped running, thinking.

"Later I heard that that guy actually did come up with a bumper sticker, and it sold very well, too! But anyway… after awhile, my unicycle started to get worn out, and I missed my house, and… I was ready to go. I had ridden my unicycle for three years, two months, sixteen hours, forty-three minutes, and eighteen seconds… give or take…"

Cosmo and his huge band of followers were in Utah… going through the stark beauty of Arches National Park, actually, when Cosmo abruptly stopped pedaling and climbed off his unicycle, turning around to face his followers.

"Shh, quiet, he's about to say something!" cried one of the group.

Cosmo was quiet for a moment, as he picked up Monkey out of the basket. Holding his dog in one hand and holding the unicycle upright with the other, he said, "Monkey and I are getting kinda tired now… and we miss our house… so I think we'll go home now."

With that, he picked up his unicycle and began walking back, through the crowd of followers, who all, with dumb shock, pulled back and left a path for him to go through.

"Now what are we supposed to do?" one shouted angrily.

O.o.O

"I've been at home since then, not doing much for these past few years, cutting the grass and all," said Cosmo, feeling strange with the knowledge that he was finally wrapping up his life story. "But a few days ago I got a letter from Wanda—she told me that she was living here and told me I could come up and see her when she got off work—and that's what I'm doing here," he finished with a small smile. "I left Monkey with a pet sitter and came down here as soon as possible! She told me to take the number five bus to Hartman Road and walk from there to her house on 1395 Henry Street—apartment four."

"Why, you don't need to take a bus!" laughed the woman.

"Excuse me?" asked Cosmo.

"Henry street is only about five or six blocks, down that way!" The woman pointed in the appropriate direction.

"Down that way?"

"Down that way."

There was a moment of silence.

"It was nice talking to you," said Cosmo hurriedly, scrambling to his feet, grabbing his box of cheese and his briefcase, and running down the street in the direction that the woman had pointed.

Running—to Wanda!

O.o.O

(AN: Well, that chapter was short and sweet. Uh… I mean… it was short. ;) It was hard to right—just like my other current story was hard to write—because right now I'm only thinking of another fanfic that I want to write. However, I know what happens when I try to work on three at once, so I'm trying to hold myself back until I finished one of these two, although that should be pretty soon. I think this story will only have two more chapters, and I can't see my US Acres story having too many more chapters either. So… a heads up for you, I'm just about done with this! Wow… I might just finish it in less than a year! That's a rarity. (laughs)

Chapter 11 will be up as soon as possible, but until then, take care of yourselves, and thanks for all the reviews! :) )