3:AM Magazine

By Nelson L. Eshleman. 

Benjamin Raymond Wheeler presumed it would all be quite painless. Mortician by day and failed poet by night, Benjamin had a morbid outlook on life and didn’t take rejection well. The roads were slick and visibility at four a.m. on the Crowsnest Pass left a lot to be desired, much less while a dogged summer thunder storm pounded heavily upon his windshield. Speeding hell-bent on a mountain highway, Benjamin felt little in the way of concern. It didn’t seem to matter whether he crashed now, or waited until he reached that sharp bend overlooking a sheer eight hundred foot drop where he intended to send his vehicle hurtling off the cliff.

He wasn’t sure now when the blackness first hit him. His father had suffered from depression. Taken pills for that. Benjamin wasn’t sure what depression was. And he didn’t really care. About anything anymore. Maybe that was the problem.

If one thing had kept him going, it was his poetry. This hobby he had negotiated all his life. Benjamin was pleased with his own recent work, but the thing about writing is that the most enjoyment comes through sharing. His mom liked what he wrote. Sandra, the manageress at the funeral parlour, thought it was okay too. It’s surprising how fast such support will form the basis of a man’s self-esteem.

But Benjamin sought a wider audience. His Mom was his mom, and Sandra, well… he suspected she just wanted to jump his bones. Benjamin made a few enquiries and was soon invited to bring his collected works around to an English lit professor who managed a small university printing press.

The professor was frank. Brutally so.

“You’re writing is unimaginative. It’s sterile, exploring tired old themes in ways that are often rehashed. It’s juvenile. Uninspiring. It rhymes.”

That’s not what Benjamin wanted to hear. Not what he expected. It was disappointing. Cognitive dissonance at its harshest.

The pompous old fart must have got a big thrill out of elevating himself at his students’ expense. The professor made Benjamin feel bad. And maybe what hurt the most was the creeping recognition there just might be a grain of truth in what that grandstanding asshole had said.

In the past, when Benjamin was feeling low, he would take a lap in the pool to relax and cool off. These days he didn’t seem to have the desire or the energy and when he did, it was in such brief bursts that it barely washed off the persistent stench of embalming fluid that haunted his countenance.

In Benjamin’s mind, there was only one remedy. Some would say it was a selfish act.

A certain giddiness comes with taking this decision. People so inclined often rush in with haste or impulsivity. But Benjamin didn’t want to make a mistake. Like all things in his life, it had to be done perfectly.

He made his goodbyes. Bade his farewells. This would be his swansong. And through it all he took almost perverse delight in the carefully chosen phrases he left with each of his acquaintances. Last words that would surely be treasured a lifetime. Poetry at its finest.

To his mother, “Did you know, you’re the best Mom a son could ever have. I love you so much. You know that, don’t you?”

To Sandra, his manageress, “Order an extra pine casket, I wouldn’t be surprised if we could fill it by Wednesday.”

And as for Jordan, Lonny and Ted, his erstwhile golfing companions, he pre-paid for alcoholic drinks to be served at the clubhouse with a note saying the “last round” had been taken care of, courtesy of Benjamin. Their tee time was Thursday, the day after he was set to disappear from the face of the earth. They’d go golfing anyway, touting “Ben would
have wanted it that way.”

Benjamin now firmly resolved to enter his adventure into another world. Dashing crazily up that mountain road, he fingered the insurance policy he bought three months earlier to the day. It became valid for suicide, ninety days after purchase. This was the least he could do for his dear mother.

When that fatal bend came into view, Benjamin stopped the car to prop a stick on the gas pedal so that there could be no turning back. Then dragging a corpse from the trunk, one he had taken from an empty casket buried earlier that week, Ben propped up the lifeless gent in the driver’s seat and soaked him in petrol.

As the flaming car smashed through the guardrail and over the edge, he was already pedaling his bicycle back down the way he had come, patting his hip pocket to double-check he’d not forgotten his passport. Call it a last ditch effort, Benjamin recalled that paintings become most valued after the artist is gone and he hoped the same could be said for dead poets.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nelson L. Eshleman eschews bad poetry in favour of marginal prose. That said, he did finish second in the 2007 limerick competition at the Ship & Anchor, a fine establishment from which he has since regrettably been banned.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Wednesday, April 16th, 2008.