P.H. Madore
- The Man Who Was Perfectly Insane -
Every day, for five hours at a time, he sat on a bench in the middle of a park named after a dead politician with a notebook open on his lap, which he mostly stared at. Sometimes other patrons of the park, mothers of small children, and frisbee-tossing teenagers would notice him staring off at the sky, watching the birds.
Once a child violated the sanctity of his notebook; took it and nearly made off with it. Quicker than anyone would have expected - due to his old age - he apprehended the kid and laid a spanking on him like he'd never had before. This was why he was put on trial -for beating a child. Not for the defense of his precious notebook.
The cop called to the dispute agreed immediately that the boy was wrong to take the notebook, and the look in his eye told the man he agreed with the beating somewhere deep down because it spoke to something the officer felt strongly about the world, what it needed. Yet the man stood silent, as did the cop, while the kid told his alibi. The thief had found the notebook, he claimed, right on the ground. The man's was a random act of violence, so said the youngest party involved.
The park was full of people, however, and they changed everything. They told of how the little bastard had run off with the poor homeless man's notebook and how, had they found themselves in the same situation, they might have done the same. One said he would have done much more. The officer disregarded a large part of the scene the witnesses related, but heard an important part: the kid had taken the notebook. The boy was lying.
The cop grilled him, hard, and soon he admitted he had grabbed the notebook and taken off with it for a laugh.
Reportedly, the only man was the only person ever to call an old Cockatiel and a young, renegade raccoon to the witness stand in his defense. Unfortunately the bird had overdosed on poppy seeds not long before, and the raccoon had been caught, so he claimed when they did not appear.
The man, being clearly insane in his self-defense at court (claiming a Cheshire cat, long dead, had been his one true friend), was dismissed from the proceedings and warned not to harm other people's children.
Not long later, the same kid who had once stolen his notebook for fun found him on his bench sitting upright, dead. Now he opened the cover out of curiosity.
This is what he found:
Hello.
Hello.
How are you?
Fine, yourself?
Fine.
Hello...
***
P. H. Madore writes fiction, smokes Marlboros, and doesn't honestly give a fuck. He also has two collections of short stories forthcoming from One-Legged Cow Press.