The Burning Agreement

The Agreement

         Otis sat by the fire roaring in his fireplace, a stunned look frozen on his face. His hands held two large sheets of paper, the writing on it all too familiar. He had just arrived home and found a large envelope on his door mat. It had been a long day at work, his first thought was to relax. He did this by sitting in his favorite chair before starting the fire in the fireplace. Dinner was next before he finally opened the envelope. Inside were two sheets. These two sheets, sheets that couldn’t exist. Sheets now blazing in his hands. Sheets that burned but did not char and flake once consumed by the flames.

         The handwriting was obviously his. It was a document he had written but never signed after realizing it would not have benefited him. At the last minute he had a change of heart and threw the letter into the fire. A fire in the very same fireplace that now had flames roaring in it behind him. In the contract, he and his best friend Ezra would start a small business together. He would be the one to finance the start of their goal, Ezra was the more practical one, and would deal with the day-to-day problems of starting the business.

         Despite having written it, it was only after reading it through that he realized that his friend would benefit far more than he would if the contract was signed. He made no copies of it, he had watched it burn in his fireplace. He could not understand how he was now holding a copy of it in his hands. As he stared at it, he saw the writing change, new words replacing the contract, the handwriting now that of his friend, or ex-friend. They had parted ways the next day. Their friendship severed after Otis confessed what he had done the night before.

         “Hey old pal,” it began. “I see you’re doing quite well nowadays. I guess burning our agreement was the right thing to do. For you.”

         Otis found he was reading aloud as he read the words that were replacing the contract words. “What do you mean, right thing for me? Who is this?” His words surprised even himself.

         “You know me, or you knew me. Do you even know, or care what happened in my life after that agreement was burned?" Again, the words on the page changed as Otis watched. It was as if a lost soul was controlling the contents of the page.

         “Ezra? My best friend Ezra? You’re the one who left, you’re the one who never contacted me again. You’re the one who decided that our friendship was based on that contract!”

         Otis could not believe he was talking to a burning sheet of paper, sometimes silently, sometimes speaking aloud. As he looked at the sheet again, he saw that the flames had not consumed the paper at all. It was as if the sheets were impervious to the flames.

         “Contract? Agreement Otis. Nothing more. You would do what the agreement stipulated, and so would I. Nothing more. You would have supplied the necessary funding for that business we had long dreamed of. I would have taken care of managing the day-to-day affairs while you remained in the background watching over everything. That day-to-day stuff wasn’t your strong point."

         “I know, but the way it was written, you would have been sole owner of everything once we signed it.”

         “Well, you did write it. Who twisted your arm to write it that way?”

         Otis was getting more agitated as each minute passed. He tried ignoring the burning pages in front of him by closing his eyes. Yet he still saw the contract/agreement, he saw the words as they appeared on the page, despite his eyes being closed. “You know no one forced me to write it as I did. You would have been the sole owner though, you would be the one who would reap the profits of our business. You would have paid me back of course, that’s how it was written. But you would have received all the profits, nothing for me. I couldn’t sign that, I couldn’t agree to something like that.”

         “It’s okay old friend, as they say in today’s world, ‘It is, what it is’”.

         “Uh, Ezra, you probably know, or have a sense of what’s going through my mind right now. Is this some sort of gag? How’s this being done? Where are you? What’s going on?” The questions seemed to fly from Otis’s mouth as fast as he thought of them.

         “No man, this is not a gag, this is what I would call normal. But you probably wouldn’t call it that.”

         “Let’s start this whole conversation over, can we? Do you have time for that?”

         “Sure, I have all the time in the world.”

         “Okay, good enough. How are you writing on a page that doesn’t exist?”

         “To be honest, I’m not sure. I saw you in my mind, I remembered what we had planned so long ago. The next thing I knew, the pages were in that envelope on your doorstep.”

         “But how did you know the wording of the contract? Okay, agreement. After all, I was the only one who ever read it, or even knew it existed.”

         “I don’t know how to explain that either. I know that when I saw you, I saw the agreement, and knew I had to contact you.”

         The unreal conversation continued. To an outside observer, Otis was talking to himself while holding two burning sheets of paper in his hands. It was as if he would say a few words, only to respond while looking at the sheets.

         “You haven’t answered my questions at all. Where are you?”

         “What’s going on? Nothing, other than two old friends catching up with each other. After all, we haven’t seen each other for over thirty years, right?”

         “It’s closer to forty my friend.”

         “Okay, forty years if you insist. Time doesn’t matter to me.”

         “If this isn’t a gag, what is it?”

         “To be honest, I don’t know. I’m not sure why I’m here either. I only know I had to speak to you, and let you know that I don’t blame you for what happened. I think you’ve lived with guilt all your life. Don’t feel guilty about what happened. I was fine all along.”

         “Well, where are you now?”

         “Where everyone ends up eventually. But old friend, it’s time for me to go. I can’t stay here any longer.”

         “You’re a spirit?”

         “I’m sorry, I really can’t stay. Goodbye Otis.”

         As he said this, the flames on the page slowly stopped their fierce flickering. Eventually Otis found he was looking at two blank sheets of paper. Paper untouched by flames.

         “Ezra, when will we meet again?”

         Otis didn’t hear the response. He didn’t hear his best friend whisper, “Soon old friend, very soon.”

Jim Dorrell
5/17/24