John sat huddled up in an abandoned cellar near some cornfield in the Midwest. He was a nervous man, a man with nothing to do but run. The government was after him, and the police, and the FBI, and the CIA, and NASA, and a mess of other important organizations of important people doing important things. As everybody else seemed to realize, however, none of this was actually happening. Sure, he was in a cellar in the Midwest. Sure he THOUGHT they were after him. Maybe they were. But to the average person on the street, nobody was chasing John. To the average person on the street, John’s entire existence was unknown and, truly, unneeded.
He had had a family before he ran off. They cried when he left. But he didn’t have time for that emotion, nor any. He was most concerned with the preservation of himself. Getting out of the city had been hard. He was not a particularly suspicious-looking man. But when he was walking, he would see a policeman. This was inevitable. He would become nervous. What if they recognized him? He must be all over their files right now. An aura of deathly fear would course through his body. Even if the police officer didn’t acknowledge his presence, he would feel as if the officer was watching him. Watching, waiting for the perfect time to attack. They couldn’t do it in public. No, what he had done was too grave, too serious, too perverse even, to reveal to the general public. They had ways of concealing it. They could always figure out a way, brand him as a madman, take him to an “asylum”, more like a torture chamber.
John shivered. He moved the logs in the little ring of stones that constituted the fire pit that he used to warm himself. He had no regrets for what he had done. It was totally and completely reasonable. So how had they found out? He thought, maybe it was one of my friends. They were always jealous of him, he knew he had had a better life, and they knew it too. A wife, two kids, a middle-sized paycheck, and an ample supply of polo shirts, and beer. Anything anybody with a sense of reason could ever want. A wife for fun, kids for something to do, paycheck to live on, shirts to look decent, and beer to drink. Yes, it was his friends that had turned him in. Those damn jealous assholes, what did they know about loyalty, honesty, trust, even. Friends. Bah. They didn't deserve that title. Just fry them until they’re at their end. Maybe then they’ll be nicer to him.
His train of thought soon ran to his current hiding place. The Midwest, something about it just didn’t appeal to him. Maybe he was just too much of a city slicker. Suddenly he heard a twig snap outside. He waited in deep fear. When nothing happened, he lifted up the trapdoor that led into the cellar and discovered a small bird hopping around in the pile of sticks he had collected to use as food. He looked up at the sky. So this is what he was missing. Didn't look like anything special. The sky was grey. It seemed to be getting worse. The wind picked up. He saw a funnel cloud forming. Then John did the impossible. He predicted the future. He saw his imminent doom at the hands of the tornado. It had obviously been created by NASA. He climbed up to the top of the house that covered the cellar. He sat down. As the tornado neared, until he could almost taste the destruction, he sat peacefully. He died thinking, what effect will this have on anybody? A fitting last thought.
5 days later, some farmers were in the process of eating breakfast when they heard a loud noise on their roof. They went to investigate. The found a skeleton. One said to another: “What should we do with it?” The other said: “We’ll have to bury it. I wonder who the poor bastard was.” They picked it up to move it off their roof. When they tried to pick up the skeleton, it crumbled into dust, as if it were allergic to humanity. The particles floated away calmly into the gray sky. The farmers gazed incredulously at the last bits of the skeleton as they slowly slipped into the cracked between their calloused fingers, then finished their breakfast and went to work.
And the wind blew on.
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