The Absurd Death of John Marteer In Our Strange World
It’s 1:30 PM. John walks out the back door of a restaurant to take a break from his shift. He looks around on the floor for a second, muttering something about his lost pocket knife, a treasured gift passed down from his father.
He always kept it with him, but it seemed like it had fallen through the hole in his right pocket. He looks around, desperately patting his pockets, feeling for the thick, metal handle that encased the knife, before heaving a big sigh — it’ll turn up sooner or later, he thinks, as he tries to relax for his quick break.
The alley was his favorite place to be alone with his thoughts after a busy afternoon shift. He could see people passing by on both sides, and they could see him. They’d see him looking back at them, and would quickly speed up to get out of view from this stranger in the alley.
“They always give me that cold, blank stare.” He thinks to himself. “They look at me like I’m some sort of criminal.”
It’s true — John wasn’t so pleasing to the eye. He was willing to admit that, at least. It had been a while since he groomed himself. He had run out of shaving cream and was using the same razor blade since he bought it a year ago. God knows how long it’s been since he’s paid his barber a visit.
His long, unkempt hair and beard gave him a menacing look, and so people made quick judgments about him before they even had a chance to talk to him. He just looked dangerous, so they believed he was dangerous. No one bothered him and he didn’t bother anyone — a mutual understanding and exchange. It’s better that way — to be safe than sorry.
He could also use a new pair of pants and shoes, but if his feet weren’t touching concrete and his hairy legs weren’t offending anyone, why bother? A few holes here and there never killed anyone. Maybe some deodorant or cologne could come in handy one day, but it certainly wasn’t going to be today.
He reaches into his pocket, pops open the red and white box, picks out the leftmost cigarette, as always, lights the cigarette and takes a long drag. He looks up at the sky for a second, enjoying the lightheaded rush from the nicotine and tobacco, watching two birds chase each other through the air as the clouds move slowly in the distance.
He blows out the smoke, watching it dissipate into the air gradually until it seems to blend in with the air around him. He hears a distant police siren, blaring through the streets, commanding the attention of all in its vicinity.
Usually, an alley like the one John was standing in would be a prime setting for some juicy criminal activity, but because of all the natural light that peeked into the alley, no one would dare be insane enough to try anything during the daytime. Someone could be walking by, see exactly what you were doing and call the police. It’s just not worth it — you might as well find a darker alley.
“Just another day.” He says to no one in particular. He’s always had the habit of talking to himself. It was his way of coping with his loneliness, his psychologist told him. He didn’t believe it for a second. He’d much rather keep his thoughts to himself, but he was ordered by the court to talk to this goddamn psycho-logist for a couple hours a week.
They deemed him “mentally unstable” after his outburst in the restaurant a few weeks ago. A customer had sent his burger back to the kitchen saying it sucked, which compelled him to storm out of the kitchen while being restrained by two other cooks, yelling that he’d give the customer his signature sandwich — a knuckle sandwich.
In order to keep his job, he had had to apologize, refrain from threatening future customers, never move from the kitchen and…see a psychologist.
“A goddamn psycho-logist… Jeez. And all because of me mouthing off to some little spoiled pansy? They don’t make ‘em like they used to. They sure don’t.” He mutters as he takes the final pull from his diminishing cigarette.
As he turns around to throw out his cigarette butt, he sees two men running toward him. The man in front is limping, clutching at his chest and making strange, gutteral noises as he runs desperately.
The man in pursuit easily catches up to him, grabs the back of his shirt to stop him from running, and proceeds to stab what seems to be a sharp object continuously into the back of the man in front.
John stands still, frozen with fear and shock, while the man wielding the weapon relentlessly plunges it again and again down into the fallen man, stabbing randomly wherever he could make contact with flesh. No one happens to be walking around at this time. He wants to start yelling, to start moving and to push the crazy man off and save the dying man, but his body refused to move, acting in its own interest and staying away from the danger in front of it.
It’s only John staring at the insane man stabbing the poor fellow on the floor. The man on the floor looks up weakly and reaches his hand out to John. John recognizes the man behind the bloody face — the man who complained about his burger.
There were no hard feelings here between the two men, in this suffering man’s desperate plea for life, and John feels a tug at his heart as he sees the pain in his eyes. The man tries to regain some strength to call out to John, but he drops face down onto the floor, his breathing heavy and scattered.
He is not moving at this point, and a pool of blood is starting to form around the body. The man with the knife continued his senseless stabbing with a vengeance. He seems to be in a trance-like state, and he had a wide grin on his face that sent chills down John’s spine.
The weapon gleamed from the sunlight, and that’s when John noticed it. How had it ended up in that man’s hands? Perhaps the man who had it now managed to pick it up after John had dropped it in the street nearby?
Whatever the case was, John was ready to move, determined to stop the man and get his knife back. He chucked his cigarette on the ground behind him. Since the man was not paying attention to John, he approached him slowly before he made a lunge for the man’s wrist.
The man, now stopped mid-swing, breaks out of his trance and struggles with John for the knife. John manages to push the man off of the lifeless body and wrestles with the man on the floor. He manages to overpower the man and perches himself on top of him. The man struggles to break free and attempts to reach out toward the knife, but John holds it above his own head, almost triumphantly, out of the man’s reach. John notices that the man has bloody gloves on.
He can now catch his breath, but before he could get a clean look at the man, he hears a woman’s scream. He twists his head to the right as a crowd starts to form around the terrified woman.
“FIRE! SOMEONE HELP! THERE’S A FIRE!!”
John realizes he didn’t feel a warm breeze on his backside until then. He turned his head behind him and saw a roaring fire engulfing the alley. How did it happen? Could it have been the cigarette he had tossed earlier? Where had he thrown it? How could he not have noticed it?
John, in his shock and adrenaline, tries to put on a smile to seem less threatening, in spite of the situation he was in. How the hell was he going to explain this whole situation?
“Please, everyone just calm down. I… I can explain. It wasn’t me, I swear it wasn’t me. I actually stopped this guy from doing it.”
She points at him with his knife held above his head and continues to scream. The crowd gasps and looks on in terror, backing up a bit but making sure to watch the spectacle unfold. The raging fire behind John cast a threatening shadow over John as he knelt, pinning the man on the floor with a bloody knife held above his head, not to mention a bloody corpse lying nearby.
The crowd had made up its mind. They were persecuting him with a collective and oppressive glare. John continues to stammer out, trying to say something, anything, to defend himself. But he could not gather his thoughts and felt his will to explain and free himself of guilt diminishing.
While John is distracted, the man is able to topple John over and throw himself into the fire. The man dances in the fire, jumping around and yelling incoherently until his body fails him. Everyone watches as he slowly falls to his knees, then to the floor, still engulfed in the uncontrollable fire.
John hears the police sirens in the distance. Is there hope after this? The evidence to protect him is gone — the actual killer had jumped into the fire. Even if the police had no real proof against him, people would want justice to be served. No one would be willing to stand up for him. The crowd had seen this all unfold — who was to go against their collective narrative?
As long as someone could be blamed and people could point to a specific person as the “bad guy”, they wouldn’t care how complicated or convoluted the situation was. He would never be able to clear his name again. Since they also can’t convict the actual killer for the murder of the burger guy since he’s dead, they’ll conveniently place it on him. They’d use the altercation they had about the burger as a reason for his murderous intent. It is so convenient, yet so lazy. It would work perfectly. No one would ask for details. No one would care that much about him.
He’ll have to plead guilty and spend the rest of his life in jail, without being able to cook, without being able to take his lunch break, look up at the sky, watch the birds and the clouds while smoking a nice little cigarette.
It’s so comical how it could all work out like this. John, overcome by emotions, starts to laugh. He starts to laugh so hard that he starts tearing up. He bends over, clutching his stomach, hitting the floor with his fist and shaking his legs in the air. The crowd watches in silence, murmuring about the whereabouts of the police and the psychotic breakdown they were witnessing.
The police sirens grow louder. It’ll be minutes before they get here. This is my only chance.
He gets up, faces the fire, slowly walks through to the center of the flames, allowing it to swallow him in all its ferocity. He turns back to the crowd and reaches into his pocket. He takes out his cigarette box which has already burst into flames and proceeds to take out the leftmost cigarette. He never imagined his last cigarette would be in self-immolation, but then again, he never imagined to have gone through any of what just happened either.
“Life sure is strange.” He thinks to himself.
He slowly drops to the floor and lays down next to the killer who started it all. He takes a look at the charred man, smiles and looks up at the sky. He takes a long drag of his burning cigarette. He saw the birds, birched on top of a window, watching the fire, watching him, before flying toward the sky. John reached out with his hand — he wanted to follow them, to fly and join them in their carefree world, away from people, away from consciousness, away from life as he knew it.
The pain isn’t as bad as he imagined. It was almost calming. He’s surely gone through worse throughout his life. Like when his dad died, or when his mom abandoned him, or when his wife and child were killed in a car accident. Compared to those moments, this one right here isn’t so bad — he almost feels like he was at peace.
The crowd watches tensely, some women and children screaming and crying, but stands where they are. They wouldn’t miss this part — it’s the finale.
As he is engulfed in flames, a sound rings through the air that enters the collective unconscious of the crowd. The consensus is that they had heard his laughter until his dying moment, but some have sworn that they heard him crying — the heartbreaking pitiful sob of an innocent suffering man who tried his best to find his place in this absurd world.
At least John didn’t have to meet his damn psycho-logist again.
