Mr. Harris lived on One-Hundred-Fifty-Six Butler Avenue. He woke up every morning at the same speed, at the same time, on the same empty side of the bed, washed in the same tears, and curled up in the same fetal position. Widowed after only two years of marriage and at the age of twenty-nine, he felt he had no hope to re-marry. Sure, it seemed easy. Just a few clicks away on some dating website and bam! He’d get himself a good wife. If only love were so simple.
It was hard even getting out of bed in the morning. Every-day tasks seemed both overly difficult and pointless. Why make breakfast that tasted like raw dough? Why smile if there was nobody to smile for?
He shook his legs lightly to revive them. He stepped onto the floor and felt the cool tiles soothe his burning feet. He had, after all, thrown out all his shoes. He told himself why bother protecting feet that will be ugly in a few decades anyway? Ugly, and wrinkly. Not only his feet, too. Mr. Harris had nothing to look forward to. His wife had inherited millions of dollars from her grandmother, which, by default, now belonged to him. He never realized how utterly useless life can be when he doesn’t have a motivation to work, or to go outside. Money used to drive him. Money would prove to Christina, his dead wife, that they didn’t need her grandmother’s money to live a happy life and that he could make her just as happy.
Sadly, this was not the case.
She wanted to be buried in a marble white coffin with red velvet interior, or so it said in her will. However, Mr. Harris couldn’t bare being away from her for more than a second, so he had her cremated instead, and said that that was a recent decision she had not yet added to her will. The cremator agreed, and so her ashes now sat in a pile in a vase beside his bed on a nightstand.
Every night before he slept, he gave the vase three kisses. One for his devotion to her; one for his love; and one for his undying gratitude that he had for her. He felt a bitter taste in his mouth after he kissed the vase three times each night before he slept. This bitterness was because he went against Christina’s wishes in having her cremated. Or, at least, one can only assume as much. Possibly there was something else that soured his love for her. A fight, perhaps? A wrongful act? Even I, who have known him for so long now, can be only the “guesser” in this story.
Mr. Harris did do everything as planned that day. He placed just the same amount of butter on a pan, and just the same amount of eggs, and chewed just the same amount of times on each bite, and walked just as many steps to get the mail, and spent just as long ripping the newspaper to shreds, and dusted the bookshelf in just as many sweeps, and changed into the same shirt from the same dryer in the same laundry room in the same home in the same goddamn city in the same state in the same country in the same-
Wait a second. You get the idea. Why am I explaining all this to you? Oh! Oh yes, that’s right. There was something that happened that very day that was not the same. In fact, it was the farthest thing from the same that could have possibly happened. Something was different. So different, that it just may have changed Mr. Harris’s life, for ever.
i wrote this as the beginning of my new book; do you think its interesting?
It was hard even getting out of bed in the morning. Every-day tasks seemed both overly difficult and pointless. Why make breakfast that tasted like raw dough? Why smile if there was nobody to smile for?
He shook his legs lightly to revive them. He stepped onto the floor and felt the cool tiles soothe his burning feet. He had, after all, thrown out all his shoes. He told himself why bother protecting feet that will be ugly in a few decades anyway? Ugly, and wrinkly. Not only his feet, too. Mr. Harris had nothing to look forward to. His wife had inherited millions of dollars from her grandmother, which, by default, now belonged to him. He never realized how utterly useless life can be when he doesn’t have a motivation to work, or to go outside. Money used to drive him. Money would prove to Christina, his dead wife, that they didn’t need her grandmother’s money to live a happy life and that he could make her just as happy.
Sadly, this was not the case.
She wanted to be buried in a marble white coffin with red velvet interior, or so it said in her will. However, Mr. Harris couldn’t bare being away from her for more than a second, so he had her cremated instead, and said that that was a recent decision she had not yet added to her will. The cremator agreed, and so her ashes now sat in a pile in a vase beside his bed on a nightstand.
Every night before he slept, he gave the vase three kisses. One for his devotion to her; one for his love; and one for his undying gratitude that he had for her. He felt a bitter taste in his mouth after he kissed the vase three times each night before he slept. This bitterness was because he went against Christina’s wishes in having her cremated. Or, at least, one can only assume as much. Possibly there was something else that soured his love for her. A fight, perhaps? A wrongful act? Even I, who have known him for so long now, can be only the “guesser” in this story.
Mr. Harris did do everything as planned that day. He placed just the same amount of butter on a pan, and just the same amount of eggs, and chewed just the same amount of times on each bite, and walked just as many steps to get the mail, and spent just as long ripping the newspaper to shreds, and dusted the bookshelf in just as many sweeps, and changed into the same shirt from the same dryer in the same laundry room in the same home in the same goddamn city in the same state in the same country in the same-
Wait a second. You get the idea. Why am I explaining all this to you? Oh! Oh yes, that’s right. There was something that happened that very day that was not the same. In fact, it was the farthest thing from the same that could have possibly happened. Something was different. So different, that it just may have changed Mr. Harris’s life, for ever.
i wrote this as the beginning of my new book; do you think its interesting?