Old Man Alone
The old man, he sits and remembers his days as a young boy and the warm sunny days he spent with his brother and parents on their farm in the hills. He has become forgetful and delusional over the years. He would hardly see a doctor and now he is all that is left of his family and friends.
He fathered 2 children. The old man cannot remember his sons name but his daughters name was Julie. He always told her she was his little jewel. When his only son was 20 years of age he fell ill and shortly after died and his daughter had been killed in a vehicle accident when she was 27. His wife had just passed away a few years ago. The man must be near 80 now!
His wife's name was Jenny but he called her Jen for short. Jen often asked him to see a doctor for his fleeting memory and his slipping sanity. He can't remember the last time he went to a doctor. Now that it's just him no one is around to take care of him. He doesn't take care of himself anymore. Going weeks without a shower and his clothes are nasty from walking down an old path outside behind his house. Walking through mud and rain, he walks if its not cold enough to snow.
When he eats its just a few crackers or a candy bar at a time. Most of the time he eats once a day but occasionally he eats twice or not at all. No one visits since he doesn't go out anywhere like church or a local center for any hobbies or friends. He isn't part of any groups or any town events. He doesn't even know the people that live down the road from him. There are 3 shopping centers within a few miles of his house. He walks to a random store each time and buys his candy bars for a few weeks.
His psychological being has become corrupt from mental illness. He knows he is always alone and has become loneliness's whore.
He sits at his kitchen table and reads the same newspaper everyday from Sunday May 11th 1980. He found it in Jen's old papers she kept over the years. He doesn't remember the stories he reads day after day even though they are the same thing over and over. He uses the same silverware when he actually cooks something like soup or beans. They stay on the kitchen table next to his paper and old tobacco pipe that he doesn't smoke anymore.
He notices a knife on the table and picks it up to look at it. After he sets it down he feels weird inside. He feels very lonely and thinks about using the knife to commit suicide. He knows he should never kill himself so he sets the knife down. In his mental instability he sees the dull cutting utensil fly off the table and he watches as it pierces his gut about 5 inches deep. He is stunned and wonders if it's just in his head. He never would really kill himself he thought. He sees the knife sticking out of his belly and wants to pull it out. Grasping it with the both hands he gets blood on his fingers. Pulling the knife ends up being very painful. He becomes weak and light headed. Feeling blood run down his body he starts to panic. He doesn't know why he is bleeding, he didn't do this and he laid the knife down! He feels sick when the warm red liquid runs down and onto his lap and on the floor. His life slips away in the seconds to follow.
When he was found the police seen he had some medicine that had been his wife's but he would take on occasion. They seen the knife still grasped in his left hand and rule it suicide!
