Uncle Arthur

In the days leading up to the suicide, Uncle Arthur was detached. He would lie about the house, doing nothing but watching the television or just sitting around, thinking. He hardly left the house, and he hardly ate. The pain in his stomach was sharp and demanding, but after a while it subsided, and grew content with the on and off style of digestion that was now custom to it.
Uncle Arthur had acquired a taste for liquor, and it was indeed his one reason for getting up out of the chair and driving in his old, rusty Chevrolet to the corner store to buy another bottle of whisky. Before he had found the corner store, he had bought his whisky at the supermarket, but after seeing the cheesy decorations for a month, he got tired of it and began traveling to the small, packed corner store instead.
His house had by no means stood any benefit of his lethargy, and sank deeper and deeper into a pit of mess and filth every day. His carpet was stained by the whisky he spilled on his worse nights, half of the lights were gone, and even his favorite armchair had holes in it. His bills were hardly paid, and his water supply was eventually turned off. At this, he had just grumbled at it, “I like the whisky more anyway,” and shuffled off to have a nap.
To him, the worst part of his month was when the relatives came knocking. It happened every month, on the same day, always around noon. They would come to his door and he would pretend to be happy to see them, and he would let them in and pretend to have a decent effort at conversation, and he loathed every minute of it. They would leave after and hour, but after a while the time they stayed began to decrease. First, it was forty-five minutes, then it was half an hour, and it finally settled on a short little visit of twenty minutes in which he would hardly do anything. Eventually, they stopped coming, but not after one last phone call.
It happened on the day the relatives usually came, at noon, waking him up from his nap. He let it ring three times, then decided that it was too bothersome to ignore and that he had better just get it over with. He pulled himself up out of the armchair, and shambled over to the phone. He picked it up, and gave a low grunt of acknowledgement.
“Hello, Arthur?” came the voice of his female relative (he had hardly paid attention to her name).
“Yes?”
“Well, I’m just calling to tell you that we won’t be around to visit today. We’re going out of town and we can’t make it.”
Arthur didn’t say anything in response, which resulted in a long moment of uneasy silence.
“Look, Arthur, let’s just cut to the chase. You’re…well, you’ve been terribly inactive lately.”
“And…?”
“Arthur, I’m worried about you. You don’t seem to do anything, at least not while I’m around, and…Why don’t you do something? Go out and get a job, meet somebody, you know?”
“Why should I? I’m comfortable.”
“But Arthur...you really need to do something. Anything. What you’re doing…it’s not healthy.”
Another awkward period of silence followed, which was broken by the relative.
“Well, anyway, I’ve got to go now. I hope you can…never mind. Goodbye.”
Those were the last words he ever heard her say. They didn’t visit after that, and Arthur hardly thought about it. He became less active than ever, and one day he tried to turn on the television only to find that his electricity had been turned off. He stopped making trips to the corner store, and as a result his daily activity lessened even further.
One day, he woke up to a thought. It was a strange thought, one that compelled him more than any other of the few thoughts that he had had in the past few weeks. He got up out of his chair, looked around, and realized how much of a dump his place was. He looked down at himself and realized how saggy he had become. He began to walk, and realized how little energy he had. He went out the door, and drove on his last bit of fuel to the pawn shop, where he bought an item on his last money. He drove to his house and parked sloppily in his driveway. He went inside his house with the item, and uncoiled it. He got a piece of paper and a pen, wrote on the paper, and then walked to his fan, where he took the rope he had bought and he hung himself.
Nobody found him for a year. His neighbors had paid little attention to the house, nobody ever came to his house, and nobody ever called his house. It was only when one of the neighbors moved away and another pair of neighbors moved in did they find him. It happened when they came over to establish themselves in the neighborhood, received no answer when they knocked on the door. They let it go for the time, but grew concerned when they noticed that his car had remained in the same place for a long time and that nobody ever came out of the house. Eventually, they came over again. They knocked on the door, and when they heard nothing from inside, they tried the door. It was unlocked. The first thing the noticed as they came inside was a horrible smell, and the second thing they noticed was what a mess the place was. The third thing they noticed was Uncle Arthur, hanging there, shriveled up with flies buzzing all around him. They called the police, who cut him down and handed him over to the morgue, who determined that the man had been dead for a year.
The story was printed in the paper. His old relative saw this, and pad for a little grave and a little burial service at the local cemetery. It happened on a perfectly sunny and happy day, and his relative shed but one tear for him. She and the burial team were the only ones there.
After she had stood there for several minutes, she turned around bid the burial team to begin burying him. She drew a little piece of paper out of her coat pocket, the suicide note her Uncle Arthur had left, and read it to herself.
It had but one sentence printed in very sloppy handwriting: Hello, there’s no use to life and I’m going to end it right here and now.
She stared at the piece of paper for a minute, letting it shake in her hands. She thought back to the last words she had spoken to him. They were meaningless, like her Uncle’s life. Slowly, she crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it onto the ground. She looked up, wiped the tear from her cheek, and walked away.

...Oh, the one who chooses the closer end! For when there is nothing, there is infinite room for construction...