Mr. Happy and The Sad, Sad World

He touches the desk as he tries to feel me; his image in darkness. All that he feels is his desk. This was the only time the curious young boy ever tried testing my presence. I skip, I run, I fall, I play, I do everything he does, and feel it just as well. I might not have control of my actions but I am very much alive.

The world is new to him, willing to learn young Avery looks to the world with wide open eyes that is fascinating to him in every way possible. Yesterday he asked “Why haven’t we gone to grand-mama’s house?” Avery sees his mother cries as he asks. The parents have no idea on how to tell Avery about death, tragedy, and sadness (not the type of sadness he knows when he falls off his bike and scrapes his knee. A pain that is much worse than physical.) Soon he will learn about all this but now he runs off and plays.

Avery spins and spins and spins and spins. Stopping he feels the dizziness, the world without control. It’s hard to walk or even think. Avery enjoys it. He lays on the ground while everything slowly goes back to normal. Looking up at the clouds he sees shapes that are unfamiliar to him. Luckily in his imagination he is a shape shifter of clouds. Turning a huge cloud into a tortoise slowly walking across the sky, smaller clouds were turned into paper airplanes. The kind of paper airplanes his uncle used to make for him. Avery was always amazed in what his uncle could make with a piece of paper. This was the beauty of being with Avery, mocking his every movement, hearing his every thought.

Avery walked to random places, no reason to be there and no reason not to be. Place to be at the time for a child to discover, wonder, or to end curiosity. One of those random places being a creek bed.
A stream used to pass through here but it was a time before Avery. He saw no difference in what others saw. I never understood what Avery loved about the creek bed; he always seemed to return here. Maybe he enjoyed the solitude this place seemed to have.

This particular day Avery found something he should have not. There lying in some high grass was a man. This was weird because grass wasn’t growing anywhere else near the creek bed; in this certain area nature was full of life. A place where flowers were blossoming, ants skewering about, a tree giving off shade for any of those wishing to keep out of the heat and now a place where Avery played. The grass covered the view of the man but Avery found him. He walked over to the man lying in the grass. He spoke to the man; “Hello, my name is Avery, I live in that house over there.” Avery said as he pointed south of him, it was about one fourth a mile away to where Avery lived.

The man had his back facing Avery as he spoke “Hello there Avery, nice to meet you.” The voice was heard but it felt so unnatural how the voice was spoken to Avery, the voice sounded as if spoken inside Avery’s head not a sound he was hearing through his ears. Avery did not notice anything weird about how the man spoke to him.
“What is your name?” Avery asked the man.
“My name is Mr. Happy. I have always looked to the world with a smile and a laugh, so people call me Mr. Happy.” He never moved once while talking even as flies began to land on his body. Avery thought it was weird how Mr. Happy did not shoo away the flies. Mr. Happy’s only reply to what Avery was thinking was “Oh hmm, pesky pesky flies bothering Mr. Happy.”
“I’ll get them away from you Mr. Happy.” Avery said as he knew how much he hated when flies were flying around his face in a bothersome manner, but his act of kindness was thrown down as Mr. Happy replied “Oh, do not bother child. I am fine. They will leave; I am in no hurry for them to leave.” Changing the topic Mr. Happy continued “What are you doing out here playing by yourself? Where are your friends?”
“I don’t have any.” Mr. Happy sensed sadness in Avery’s response to his question.
Avery explained to Mr. Happy “My mom will not let me have friends unless they are Christian.”
“Oh, well I am Christian, Avery.”
“Well praise the lord, Mr. Happy.”
Mr. Happy heckled “Praise the lord indeed, Avery.”
Avery was glad that he had someone to call his friend. Mr. Happy had his back turned to Avery still. He was real curious what his new friend looked like but he did not want to bother his friend in any way.

Maybe a friendly invite to somewhere away from near this creek bed would interest him, so he asked his new friend “Would you like to come home with me and have dinner. Mother makes the best pork chops ever. That is what my dad says but I don’t really like pork chops I am fine having a plate full of macaroni.”
“That really sounds like the grandest time Avery, but I cannot join you for dinner.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because I am dead.”
“What’s dead?”
Mr. Happy had no idea how to explain to Avery about death without him shrieking in terror. Mr. Happy had no idea how to tell a child about a subject such as death. A man whose body now lays near a creek bed without anyone really looking for his whereabouts, it really did not matter much how to explain death to a child. If Avery only knew the words Mr. Happy had been mumbling. He would know he was a man filled with hatred for his wife. She wronged him and left him rotting here but for what reason was unknown to me. The words “That bitch will pay. That bitch will fucking pay.” repeated over again, words unknown to a young Christian mind like Avery’s.

“Dead is another way of saying gone, to never return, another way of saying “Adios, Elvis has left the building.” Imagine Avery if tomorrow you woke up tomorrow and you were not allowed to play, to run, to see your favorite cartoon, to laugh, to smile, imagine Avery that all these things are taken away from you. Imagine if you were Jesus, Avery, and you never came back to life. That is what a true death is Avery my boy. Like if you held your breath underwater and never came up for air.”
Avery was quiet but understood everything Mr. Happy was telling him.
“Why are you happy if you are dead?”
Mr. Happy smiled and told himself “I’m smiling cause I am going to get that bitch of a wife one day.” What he told Avery so he could understand was “Well, because even after death there is always something to look forward to.”
The day was slowly losing light as night was only an hour away. Avery was sad to leave his new friend but he knew he must. Mother would be worried about him and she would die from grief if Avery was not to show up when he was supposed to.
“I have to go now Mr. Happy.”
Even though Avery could not see Mr. Happy’s face he could sense a smile as he said “It’s quiet alright Avery. You just take care of yourself and don’t worry about me. I will be fine here on my own.”
He felt relief knowing that Mr. Happy was going to be alright being left on his own. What Avery did not understand was that dead is dead and that the dead don’t talk to the living like Mr. Happy has done with him. His whole concept on death was going to be as clear as “a blind man painting a self portrait”.
He could find out the true meaning later, Walking away as he said his final goodbyes. No one noticed anything wrong with Avery as he returned home. To his parents he was the same happy child he was earlier today. Not once would they have thought that their child saw a dead body. Even more disturbing if they had known he was talking to a dead body.

Mother, father, and child all enjoyed a nice dinner at home with one another.
It was until the next day when his parents explained death and that his grandmamma had died, they noticed something about Avery. He was taking the news quiet well. This was a surprise to his parents.
“Is there anything you would like to ask us about grandmamma dying?” they asked making sure that he understood.
“No.” he said sure of himself, and he was. Not one thought in his mind had questioned death in any way. In Avery’s meaning of death all questions were answered so nothing more was needed to say on the subject. He saw the puzzled look on his parents face, he misunderstood this look for the almost similar look they gave him once when he broke one of the windows on the house while trying to throw a rock over the house and he told them “I didn’t break the window.” They looked at him with a look that knew he was lying.
He wanted to convince them that he wasn’t lying and where exactly he got his facts from “Mr. Happy told me everything about death.”

“Mr. Happy? Who is Mr. Happy, Avery?” his parents asked him.
Avery felt like he might have said something he should have not said. That his parents might punish for some reason he is not yet to understand.
“He’s a friend; I talked to him today by the creek.”

Tonight his parents will teach him the meaning of death. Things both true and not true of what Mr. Happy told Avery. Tonight Avery would also learn how not to talk to strangers especially when they are dead. None of this will be remembered by Avery. All thoughts were new but shaped him in some way. When he finally saw his Grandmamma lying in her coffin it would hit him then that death is death and nothing happens after death. He would worry of others that he cared about dying. Thoughts that made children and adults separate.
In his thirties he will come home early from work. “Unexpected timing catches unexpected acts.” This is what he would think while seeing an all too Hollywood setting: A hard working man catching his wife in bed with another man.

Random thoughts go through his mind; most of them are things he will not make sense of later while disposing of his wife and her lover’s body. One other thing that went through his mind was “Mr. Happy smiles at the sad world.” This had no meaning to him; he thought it must have been just another random thought. I knew the reason he thought of it, it was the feeling of being in the same position as Mr. Happy. A person he had long forgotten. Avery’s smile was weak though, he gave in to that blood lust. Long time ago he tested my existence, but in a world where reality has no time for imagination. He runs toward the sun away from his shadow and all things.