A Lone Man—A Fable

Leaves fall, snow drifts, rain pours, stars shoot, rocks tumble, hearts collapse, life crumbles—and standing beneath all the descending refuse is a lone man, hair hanging over his eyes, a crooked grin creasing his face. Dead enough, or so he claims to be—he has touched upon the surface before, from whence the broken pieces littering the ground about him fell, but was unable to survive the experience of wreckage. His laugh is partly hideous, his eyes glinting with a resolve to remain as lifeless as manageable. If one were to scrounge around the refuse for long enough she would find shards of what used to be him as a person of emotion—remnants from his two attempts.

"It is easier to live dead than to slowly break and corrode and fall into oblivion," he would tell anyone who asked him about the decision he made.

Alone, he sits contemplating thoughts that may be pivotal and might be completely useless to mankind, which one it is will never be discovered—his ideas will die with him. A junkyard is a perfect place for him to be, wasting away in the refuse of humanity; he was such when on the surface: seeing as there is no time or credit given to philosophers and writers who lack motivation to push their words upon the world. Tears are useless for the feelings of worthlessness, they simply pour like the rain, and so would become part of the puddle idling just beyond the end of his toes.

"Thoughts and ideas are life in themselves—more genuine than the shards of living beings," he says with acid, replacing the pain that resided in that spot in his chest before.

Occasionally one from above will take the chance to glance down upon the resident of the refuse, the reaction is most commonly one of derision, but not all reactions are the same—a select few feel pity and a feigned pain for the man. These the lone figure scoffs at and attempts to humiliate, informing them that he is actually greater than they who look upon him: all in an effort to deny the fact that the reason he is wading through the trash of emotions of the above is because he has become so broken that he has shrunk to a size that allowed him to fall through the drain. At this size there is only space for spite, sarcasm, and denial—feelings easily fed by the sewage surrounding the lone man. Though moments come when the destructive feelings wash out and are replaced by some emotion he buries in his hands and quickly stores in his pocket when he feels any eyes turning on him.

"What are you hiding in your pocket?" a girl asked him after witnessing him slipping away the hidden emotion.

"I'm hiding something in my pocket?" the lone man guffawed, "Does it look like anything worth hiding could find someway through the cracks to this place?"

"It doesn't take much to make something into a thing you want to hide."

"Naïve little girl—people are always hiding their most prized possessions."

"Possessions are not worth very much, some people just think they are. Things that are truly of worth aren't possess-able, and they're awfully hard to hide too, though some try to."

Something moved through the lone man; it came slowly into him, but he pushed it out too fast for it to take effect.

"You say such things now, little girl, because you haven't lived this life, go back to your things of worth that aren't 'possess-able' and leave me to understanding what this life really is."

The little girl turned away reluctantly and the lone man quickly pulled his hidden emotion back out again. It is said that the lone man never lifted his head from his hands again, people still looked in upon him but he no longer spoke with them or looked back into the eyes of the living with a lifeless glint in his eyes. Some say he gagged himself with the emotion and that he had finally come to an entire end, but a little girl looked down once and said she saw tears running down the cold cheeks of the lone man. People laughed at this idea, but still the pool just beyond his toes rose to soaking the soles of his feet, and even to his ankles.

Many people and much time passed with the lone man in this state until one day he raised his head, dropped the hidden emotion in the pool (now reaching to his knees) and began to collect his broken pieces. Filth covered all of them so he knelt down beside the pool and began to rinse away the dirt and refuse that had accumulated, by the time he was finished cleaning his pieces the pool had returned to its original size. The lone man fitted the shards back together with careful precision, and once fully assembled took the step that was unattainable with his previous small size.

A leaf fell—a bud replaced it. Snow drifted down—it soon melted away. Rain poured—it slid right off. The stars were shooting—they remained in the sky above. He was not swallowed by the refuse; he was just part of the change that was occurring—this was truly of worth, there was no hiding it, no burying his face inside it, but he could live it.

Life crumbles and a lone man is beneath it, but a real man lives in it.