Rhymes
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old man on the hill
by jeremy cannon
Crazy ways the world has come to live. It seems it has been ages since the old man named Gary has come down. He eats what? He drinks what? Maybe he sips salty water from the lake a mile down the other side of the hill. Maybe he hunts animals and chomps away at their bodies. Maybe.
The only thing to really know is that he is a cold, bitter man. He lives his life worrying who will see him and what they will think of him. Dr. Kirkwood wonders differently.
He believes the man is afraid of being accepted. He believes the man lives a life of loneliness and deceit. So on one cold November night, he hiked up the mountainside.
The bitter cold winds stung like bees on his face as he looked upward into the sky. The night was clear, the sky was speckled with lovely stars. After an hour and a half of constant movement, the good doctor decided to have a rest. He sat down on the cold grass and eventually laid. He stared up at the skies to be awakened by a loud explosion from behind.
"What 'tis this noise to awaken me?"
He jumped up and turned. Behind him, just a few hundred yards away, was the old man's cabin. It was set afire. The flames drenched the sky with smoke. Dr. Kirkwood sprinted through the cold air and stood as close as he could before his skin roasted.
"Whatever could have caused such a tragedy?"
Suddenly, Dr. Kirkwood heard a musical note aspiring from the sky. It was the sound of an acoustic guitar strumming, and as the fire flicked on, he heard the soulful gospel from the old man...
"I lit the timbers of the star tips,
to let you all in on the mystery.
A way to glimpse into my heart,
and check into my history.
You see, I have lived a life,
of many sorrows and sad days.
I have stayed sober through the week,
but almost died puking on Saturdays.
When I was a child I was tormented,
by a drunkard of the city streets.
And when he was done with my body,
it was my mother's body he would beat.
And when I first moved to this city,
a many moons ago.
Everyone shunned me away,
a dirty, lonesome hobo.
And yet you seem so intelligent,
a nice man if I ever met one.
You think I am afraid of being accepted,
only you are the one who is dumb.
I went to you for a check up,
because I had a nasty cough.
And you ran me off the property,
and tried pegging me with rocks.
So as you look into the sky,
and feel sorry for my burning home.
You better wake up out of slumber,
it's the holidays, and I am alone."
Dr. Kirkwood leaped up off of the ground. He looked around him and witnessed no signs of fire, and no signs of the old man's house. The wind was still blowing angrily onto him, and the good doctor wrapped himself in his own arms, to keep himself from freezing.
He began to walk. The mountaintop seemed to be a million miles away to him. He stepped up onto one of the boulders. He then felt it give away on him. The boulder crunched beneath his feet and the good doctor was suddenly falling backwards. He tumbled down the mountainside, and after a mile's worth of rolling, Dr. Kirkwood's head was stabbed by a sharp rock. His body crumbled up next to a bush and stayed.
At the top of the hill stood Gary. He shun his flashlight down the hill. The light glistened off the blood, and the smile glistened off the death.
"He who bares the sword, dies by his own ignorance. But to each his own..."
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