The Lonesome Death of Edward Richards

(The title is make-shift; I can't think of a better one, so I'll just go with a Bob reference for now)

It began with a crack. A simple, unnoticeable crack in the ceiling. He came to the theatre every Sunday, and while others talked amiably about the upcoming performance or discussed the terrible nature of truly trivial instances, he stared at that crack. Just a little line in the plaster that served only as a barrier from the sky.

But this Sunday, the crack grew, stretching its arms across the white ceiling, its limbs multiplying innumerably like branches on an ancient oak tree. He closed his eyes as chunks of the fifth wall enclosing him from the outside world came crashing down around him. The patrons surrounding him were screaming and whimpering, running and tumbling into each other, trampling husbands and sisters and wives. But he remained seated.

That’s all he’s ever wanted in life: to be crushed in peace. All of his dreams had extended, reached out into the world only to be smacked down into dust. The world crumbled and sifted through his bony finger tips.

He sat waiting patiently for debris to descend onto him when someone collided into his knee, rousing him from his pleasant daydream.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” the man mumbled between his large, sociable lips.

****

Edward Richards was the kind of passive person who always let people cheat him, bump him, and bruise him. He wandered through life unnoticed; people pushed past him on the street, shoved against him on the bus, and took his hard earned money away from him in silence and gave back his meager sum of paper and metal without a word. The foundation on his tiny, insignificant, rotting house was crumbling and shattering beneath him. The floorboards whined with a sad, weary tone and a cool, wintry draft drifted around the bare, antique rooms, lifting the dust while rustling the faded curtains, and whistling an unremembered, abandoned song past his fatigued ears when he sat alone in his kitchen, eating his small, delicate meals. He lived a lonely, desolate existence, but never seemed to mind; not that anyone would notice if he did. People walked through him, saw past him, but he always forgot that he was invisible, that he was infinite, and especially forgot that he, too, was filled with blood and organs, the same as those tranquil oppressors who stepped through him with focused eyes and a steady, assertive pace.

As a child, his mind had floated to other worlds, morphing freely from a four year old child into a magnificent stallion, or maybe a horrible alien; whatever his imagination had let him be. But his imagination was murdered. All of the homicidal, lackluster impulses of school teachers and parents, the gaping holes from the bullets of age, and the glossy, fashionable pills of society had robbed him of his innocence and virgin, youthful playfulness. They choked his fantasies of outer space and visions of valiant kings and mighty knights. They made him give back his squandered pirate treasure, and sell his giant, bounteous ship along with it. They filled up his brain with complications of the would they too had inherited; an infinite universe of complex, unending equations, millenniums of ancient, memorized incidents, and atoms and bombs and documents. They taught him the unwanted ideals of injustice and racism and war.

The burdens of society and its values of monetary success and corrupt practices made him spin. He wanted nothing more than to live peacefully in a comfortable existence with a family to share his life. He did not want success or greed or hunger. He did not want the pains and weight associated with becoming an adult. He worked with the same company, holding the same position for what he knew must have been an eternity the same monotonous job, never receiving a promotion and never asking or pleading or wondering about a raise.

He was always toiling and moving and flexing his exhausted joints and worn, scuffed elbows. Bodies ache and creak and break, but they are our only existence. The soul is nothing without a body to hold it and enclose it, locked somewhere behind the ribcage next to the love organ, in front of the lungs. He understood this, but didn’t know how to rid himself of the heavy, connected puzzle of bones and muscles and skin in a way that would release his soul.

He anticipated nothing except the consistent, cool Sunday afternoons when he would make his weekly trip to see the matinee of whatever at the theatre. He loved the intricate, handmade sculptures adorning the walls and the bright, luxurious carpet that pillowed his exhausted feet as he made his way to the small, plush seat where he would look skyward, admiring the high, glittering white ceiling with its one imperfection. He closed his worn, gray eyes and parted their smooth, pale lids only when the chattering around him ended and the tinkering of the hidden orchestra rose from the stage into the stifled audience. The lush, silken curtain tore itself in two, revealing costumed actors and elaborate, painted trees and buildings. The overtones and sequence of connected, harmonized notes filled the room, and a soft rustling noise entered his overjoyed, weary ears.

The ceiling was collapsing.

The resounding overture ceased, replaced solely by the triumphant, terrified shrieks of the audience. People scattered and screamed around him, trampling and throbbing. Women ripped their sparkling, expensive dresses and men tossed the weaker to the side. The renovated carpet was torn to shreds by heels and furious, desperate, scampering feet clothed with false jewels and leather. The musicians had abandoned their instruments and the actors on stage could not see through the glaring lights to see what was happening. A young boy’s tears shed in an aisle way, leaving him stranded and separated and ripping his lungs out with one matriarchal word.

He could not see the anguish of a young couple as a husband was swept away with the crowd, pushing unrelentlessly and futilely against the frantic, insane current to try and rescue his pretty wife with huge, gleaming, terrified eyes as she tried to jump the seats across rows, and the clang of metal as she faltered and fell defeated, captured by row M. Followed solely by the heart-crushing, deafening, disbelieving groan that resonated out of the husband’s throat as he witnessed a slab of ceiling rain upon his future’s delicate frame, and the intense agony of regret, wishing solely that he, too, could die in this incident and meet her in an unseen and unknown paradise beyond the immense atmosphere that separated their souls. He would survive to live manacled to the earth, she shackled to the heavens.

And there he sat, in the middle of anarchy, completely unmoving. The support beams twisted and bent and the cement poured down steadily. His leg was taken under, but he was numb. Plaster fell down upon him, and he was alone. No one was there to antagonize him, to tell him to move on, to get out of the way of Death. He could finally be crushed in peace. He was buried under a mountain of rubble, of concrete and man-made paraphernalia; a man’s hands built it, and another man’s hands were crushed by it deterioration. The ceiling hit his chest, splintering his rib cage, collapsing his breaths, murdering his love organ, and liberating his burdened, enslaved soul.

END

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