The End

     I am sure the reader would like to assume that my story is one bent towards obscenely morose and morbid proportions, and this would no doubt prove endlessly entertaining to fans of the gothic, to which, I am certain, my readership is primarily comprised. I take great delight, however, in stating that this is not the case, and that my story is not only devoid of pathos in its entirety, but also is completely plotless. This latter quality of my story will prove dismaying to my readers, no doubt, but they can be pardoned this romantic naivette, as they are ignorant of the fact that the Modern School of Academic Literature and Fiction has declared plot to be an artless cliché, beyond hope of revival. It is therefore with great satisfaction that I commence my plotless, thrilless story, as it is undeniably certain that everything beyond this introductory paragraph will be a bland bore, no more worthy of my readers' sympathy than is an ogre's eyeball considered a refined, culinary delicacy.

      To begin would be politically incorrect, so I shall end instead, and progress in antithesis of tradition by culminating with the beginning, therefore utterly annihilating the necessity for climax.

      My life ended when I stepped off of a bridge accidentally. This I did because I had just read the contents of a letter which informed me that my wife had just conceived our first child, and that he was a boy. I suppose that there could be some sort of Freudian rationalization for the accident, perhaps hinging on an unconscious aversion to the idea of bearing a child which would, according to the famed psychoanalyst, be attempting to overthrow me and usurp my wife. This, I am sure, did not bode well with my unconscious, and so my id convinced my ego to kill me, and so the cowardly compromiser apparently complied. I often wonder where my superego had been at the time, but in all likelihood I had silenced him long ago with repeated excursions of Byronic bent.

After having died, I rose the next morning with the intent to catalogue the extraordinary sense of well-being I felt, yet I soon perceived an opportunity that could scarcely be passed upon, and I promptly entered a shoppe in which candles and other inflammable items were being sold, and within moments the entire establishment was a blazing inferno. I thereafter discreetly plucked a large Wendy's hamburger from a passing pedestrian, quickly ducked into a nearbye wine shop and emerged with a bottle of fine Merlot and a corresponding glass. I then sat down upon a bench across the street from the burning candle-shoppe and watched the chaos with much amusement and satisfaction.

      My evening entertainment over after the shoppe had burned to the ground, I remembered that I had as of yet not yet completed my latest commission, and the paper was going to require it sooner rather than later, as it could not be too long before my body was found. You see, elegies are better received before wide knowledge of the death, as this gives the papers ample time to contact the proper businesses in order to ensure that the event is taken advantage of as efficiently as possible; for aside from the usual funeral expenses, there are any number of ways to bleed the bereaved, and it is well for the economy that the intolerant affairs of business ethics only apply to dealings within the business itself, and not to those deals in which the business is involved.

     I soon, however, grew tired of such mundane deviance, and decided on a whim to attempt for the sake of futility a random work of good.  It was as I walked calmly downtown along the median that I perceived a nun just an instant away from being flattened by an eighteen-wheeler, and so I walked to her side and pulled her out of harm's way (although that is a matter of opinion, as some might say that nun's deserve to die and that saving one is actually doing more harm than good, and as each individual's opinion is equally valid on an existential ethical level, it might very well have benefited me more had I simply left the entire situation alone).  Afterwards she, being in a most confused state, crossed herself repeatedly and made for the nearest pub, and I followed her, intent on redeeming my momentary cowardice in the face of the impersonal universe by performing an equal act of malevolence.

     The nun was talking animatedly to the bar tender when I approached her and sat to her left.  I turned to her, and instantly began once more to doubt the stability of my existence, as opposite the paragon of piety sat my exact reflection, who appeared to be grinning at me in a knowing way, as if to say "I know the answer and you don't."  When one is faced with the gloating image of your double, a very reasonable reaction is to purge oneself, which I then proceeded to do with much fervor.  Thereafter, thoroughly sick, I faced my leering mirror-self and demanded him remove myself from the premises, which he thankfully did without further ado, and I was afterwards quite thankful for my thoughtfulness.

     Here it is that I must clarify something about the state of my existence: I was not, and I was, seemingly at once.  This fact lent itself as a particularly annoying truth when I began after much research and personal reflection to believe in the existence of absolutes.  That journey would not in the least interest anyone who happens to be reading this blather I'm writing, and so I'll not bother whoever they may be with such tiresome details.  Instead, I shall proceed to end with what I in my ultimate wisdom and understanding deem an appropriate 'start' to the onset of a journey which, I must admit, may in fact provide some entertainment.

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