Thursday, August 4, 2022

That Fool on the Hill - short fiction



This man lives on the hill looking down upon the rest of the neighborhood. It is a fairly good neighborhood by any reasonable measure and most of the people simply want to go about their busy lives in peace with their family and friends. Sure, there are a few bad apples. The man on the hill held them all in suspect choosing not to mingle keeping to himself except to shake his fist at passersby for various and mostly incomprehensible reasons, so far as his neighbors could tell.

Even though crime was historically rare in this neighborhood, this man spent a great deal of money to encircle his home on the hill with a sturdy, 12 ft high metal fence. His neighbors wondered why but dismissed him as a curmudgeon and mostly ignored it as an eccentricity. Soon enough, the man added barb wire to the top of the fence. The people of the neighborhood really thought that was a bit much but when he later added to this electrification, they said, Ok, this man is clearly deranged. Some began to refer to him with derision as, That Fool on the Hill.
From behind his sturdy metal, barb wired top and electrified security fence, the man still shook his fist at pedestrians passing anywhere near his home and acted as if all the world were his enemy. No one knew why he was this way and over time most everyone began to think of him as just that fool on the hill. But then, out of some inscrutable paranoia, the man began to accumulate weapons and ammunition as well. Instead of shaking his fist now, he brandished a weapon. He bought more exotic weapons as time when seeming to feel that if one is good, then ten is better to spite the fact that the neighborhood seldom knew any violent crime.
Complaints to the police went no where since they said that the man had broken no laws so there was nothing they could do about it. Over a period of a year or more, the man accumulated enough weapons and ammunition to equip a small army. No one knew this man´s business since he was a notorious loner but in all this time, he had failed to pay his mortgage on the home or to make regular payments upon the many credit cards used to buy all these weapons and the credit used to build the ridiculous fence. He seemed so focused upon his fear of assault that nothing else mattered and even the house began to noticeably suffer from its lack of upkeep and the man himself, his neighbors would note, looked more and more disheveled and distressed as the time passed.
One day, a noticed appeared on the gate of the fence since no one could possibly get to the door and those passing could see that it was an eviction notice. Good riddance, was the thought on the mind of most, we will be rid of this fool on the hill finally. And so it happened that in the early hours of the morning as the neighborhood slept that the sheriff's department served the man´s eviction notice using its swat team due to concerns that there may be violence. As soon as the main gate was breached klaxon alarms wailed and flood lights ignited the dark waking all those anywhere nearby. This was followed quickly by an assault upon the home and this man fought back with his weapons but succumbed quickly to an overwhelming force. By this time, most neighbors were looking out their windows at the fireworks, or even standing on their porch rubbernecking for they had not seen such a show as this before. They watched the fool on the hill be led away in handcuffs his security not so much having failed him as his priorities.
One of the neighbors asked an officer what is this man´s name, none of us even know? His name, the officer said, is The United States of America.

No comments:

Post a Comment