The Humanity of Man: Book One, Part One - The Smith Memoirs

Chapter One

He took note of the sun peaking through the clouds warmly as if they beckoned to the ground and quite rudely shouted at the ground to warm up, and out of respect for the suns donjon complied without a word. But as if a seven year old who realized he didn't want to, but was going to anyways, did it as slow as possible, waiting until the afternoon hours to reach a respectable heat.

He decided against the generally imprudent winter jacket that garrisoned his closet with a passion previously unheard of by cots, and instead opted for the more jocular leather jacket that was pressed against the coat hook as assiduously as possible. Checking the ancient clock that sat upon his wardrobe for very specific reasons that he couldn't quite voice properly... veritably it came to him as he was staring at it, it was there because someone had put it there, and not moved it. The way his mind fought against him he often felt he should abjure it and just become like the other mindless drones that went about their rather mediocre business in his hometown.

Although the buildings and scenery were rather pulchritudinous and welcoming, the people seemed to fight it off with their personality making the once highly sought after honeymoon town, empty and void of importance of any kind except transcendent indifference to anything unrelated to the individual. After realizing his own untimely arrival at this conclusion of thought, he also realized he was untimely in a different sense, that is to say, he was quite late. This happened often times to him, when he zoned out with amazing alacrity, this often gave him the appearance of being quite the opposite of amiable and just generally rude to people.

He walked down the slippery cobblestone, slick and green from the frost of fall and the moss that never seemed to let up, it graciously took upon itself the sole job of with great avarice, breaking bones of anyone who happened to walk by in a jolly mood, a shuffling sadness, and any other manner of pleasant or

unpleasant emotions. It was solely unbiased in whom it tripped and seemed to only teach people that even things that seem like nothing can turn around like a feral dog trapped within a corner and cajole you to an inconvenience of it's own sole choice. He abhorred walking, and quite frankly thought it the worst breakthrough they had come up with in history, of course he could have taken another means of transportation but thought better of it as he had the most hideous of headaches and didn't fancy bouncing on the ground at a faster speed than was naturally become of you taking a stroll.

He had enlisted physicians, medicine men, anyone with any hope of brazenly coming in and taking away these horribly inconvenient means of stopping his progress, so far no treatment had even come close to working. This didn't help as the aches usually lasted for days on end, and when they let up it was often only for a few minutes at a time. During these times he was exquisitely jubilant at the thought of finally getting something done, until it receded back to the seemingly unending pain that crippled him. It could be worse he thought to himself, I could have come from some lousy peasants family who had to scrape by already, without providing for a morose son who couldn't provide anything but the littlest of maxims. No, he had become a rather pessimistic maverick as his parents had passed away, quietly in the night, he woke up late for his lessons and wondered what had happened. He had made his way to his parents grand room and found the two of them along with two empty vials beside them, holding hands with a note addressed to him that he had never bothered to open.

This was because of the simple fact that he simply did not see need to open the letter for many years after as he didn't need anything more from them than they had already given, his lessons were set up to last the remainder of his teenage life with options to continue on. They had built his entire life for him from the minute he was born, as if they had planned all their time and devoted themselves to having a child for the sole purpose of dying on him when he was at the tender age of seven. It was all unbearably meticulous, and quite frankly found it lurid in general, any time a problem arose, it was solved the next day due to the careful planning. Thousands of favors, friends, acquaintances were all brought together by his life givers to make his life comfortable. He often pondered if they had meant well when they thought this through, or realized the after effects of what they had done would simply make his life miserable and the opposite of what any child would want. He snapped out of thought as his name was called out down the road, where he saw one of his old friends with whom he was due to meet with last week but had to cancel on the account of he didn't quite feel up to the hassle of the intricate speaking patterns of his colleagues.

“Good morrow Gragarous, it's been a while, not one week ago I recall we were supposed to meet. Isn't that right? Of course with your condition don't fear I mean ill of you not arriving, my schedule is ever lithe to spend time with a dear friend with such interesting thoughts to say of course. How have you been these last few months? I hear the headaches have not yet subsided, perhaps with nothing but time and luck they will whisk away into the shadows and you'll have forgotten you ever had them.” He bantered on and on with himself.

Flashing a smile he tipped his hat to his friend.

“Perhaps next week I'll be feeling up to the task, why not send one of your new servants to my house to pick me up, you just hired a novice haven't you?” He said, in the back of the head the entire while thinking of how nominal this entire conversation was.

“I really must get going, another time” He said gesturing down the road.

He started off with a quick pace before another useless sentence came up and entangled him even further in the conversation. Everyone he knew he more or less couldn't stand for long periods for the fact of the matter was they, for some reason, were all excessively obsequious to him and he had no idea why or how to stop it. The last time he had confided in someone about this they had gotten increasingly angry and had disappeared a few days later, as if out of existence. That wasn't unusual in this town, for some reason if someone got excessively emotional over everything they were gone within the week, no one knew why or how, but never longer than a week.

His penchant for knowledge kept him inside over the majority of the seasons, except on the rare occasion where he decided to meet the one person who he truly liked. He was on his way to her house right now. It was a rather hidden house with an excessive predilection for nature in a town that was otherwise cold and gray with stone. What must have been the crowning feature of the town was the massive wall that surrounded them, it was rarely brought up in conversation and was ignored almost promiscuously, as if doom would befall the person to mention it casually.

Lots of things in this town were thought but not said, it was an odd phenomenon and if he was forced to admit it, it scared him. He repudiated this place, it was all so solemn and rife with nothing but smiling faces, stone, everything he had seen before, over and over. Except Elizabeth, she was the sole difference in an otherwise desolate world to him, he often realizes he would've taken his own life long before if she hadn't been there.

Approaching her house, he couldn't help but smile, the illustrious green vines cascading down her small cottage, with smoke rising from the top. The garden was full of life and vegetables and all manners of flowers he had spent ages learning, just to impress her. The windows were rackety, the wood was rotting, and the foundation was sinking ever so slowly. It was beautiful to him, the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. He made his way down the worn stone pebble path to the doorway, and thought something amiss as the door was ajar the slightest bit. This vexed him, as she always held a certain umbrage to things uneven or left in a way that she deemed not it's natural state in the first place, a creeping feeling of utter dread passed through him as he slowly creaked the door open, revealing blood stains everywhere.

They streaked across the wall, completely vociferous in all it touched, seemingly like someone had simply cast a bucket of paint. He ran outside and started to retch horribly, he got himself up by hoisting on too a branch of a low hanging willow, and became staid. Becoming truculent as he ventured forward slowly with his vision fading in and out, his headache let up as he prepared himself for whatever may come to be of him looking inside, and worse yet, what had happened to Elizabeth.

Peeking through the cracks to his utter dismay he saw her, hanging from the roof with all manner of different blades and weapons stuck in her. Who would have done this he couldn't name, of all the people to take umbrage at Elizabeth seemed to be the least likely in this town for any manner of ill will to befall. The way the murder was down was superfluous, as if it was done simply to prove a point and not simply just to kill someone. It horrified him and yet he felt she wasn't yet gone, there was something wrong with the way this was done without warning.

He started to frantically look around the room for a clue that might help him understand what had happened. After scouring the room for what felt like hours with her body hanging limply in the air he decided to take a break and get her down from the roof and lay her flat across the table, carefully plucking the weapons from the mangled corpse as to not damage the precious body. It haunted him, the pierced body. Looking as if it had come out of an abattoir. It sent him into a dazed splendor of acedia, grossly profuse in it’s haunting of his mind, carefully picking it’s way across the wasteland of thoughts he dared not think of anymore.  

“Of what purpose does life exist, if it can be taken so easily? Is it a mockery to our suffering, and our untimely demises that define us, and if so, why? Oh, why does cruelty exist in a world so beautiful and full of life! And yet we endure, we endure and survive! We take your joke on us and we shove it down your throat! O, Elizabeth I mourn, and I vow! Your vanquisher shall have it done unto him what revenge calls.” He screamed, his rant leaving him breathless and kneeling on the floor, sobbing.

When he had caught his breath, he stood up, his headache nearly crippling him, but he stood and ran into town and screamed and yelled at the people to help. He called murder to the shocked faces of the crowd that stood around him and wailed that Elizabeth was dead by means of blade and only the hearty should dare look upon her, for it was an awful mess. Gasps and screams grasped the mass as the policemen gathered around struggling to maintain order.

“Everyone calm down, you are all safe here, for who would dare attack us all in public!” Yelled one of the guards, this continued on for several minutes of reassurances.

Eventually the crowd died down to the few who had been calmed completely, the corpse of Elizabeth was brought to the middle of town by the policemen covered in a black tarp of fabric. Solemn and fitting as the light listless fabric soaked through quickly causing the weighed down bits to sink into the unmentionable incisions caused by blades. The few left stared at the body, sadness and hate in their eyes. They burned with misery of a thousand lost souls; Elizabeth was loved by all, which was the most surprising point of this mystery, who would kill someone so kind and pure? The thought taxed him, through and through inspiring the idea that had seldom left his mind. He must leave the town to find the killer, for surely no one here would’ve committed the act but must have come from the outside.