Lone Soul

         As an infant he cried, not when his mother left his side, but when she picked him up.  People believed there had been a mix up at the hospital.  A child never fears its mother, and yet this one seemed repulsed by her touch.
         Blood was drawn; a test was run.  The child belonged to the women.
         As a young boy he shied from all the other children.  He had no interest in the roughhousing and shenanigans the others partook in.  He preferred to sit quietly and watch the birds.  People insisted he must be deaf and dumb, or mentally challenged.
         He learned to speak, read and write.  He was always ahead of peers academically.
         In high school, he avoided parties, girls, and all other activities.  Solitary hikes, reading, and building models were all the entertainment he needed.
         His classmates called him a freak, a faggot.  He was often seen entering and leaving the local brothel. 
         In college he locked himself in his dorm most hours of the day, studying and learning to win at cards.  By special request he had been permitted to live alone at double the rate.  His dorm-mates only saw him as he walked to and from class.  They called him a loner outcast, destined for failure.  You had to learn to work with others, even the professors agreed.
         He graduated with a masters in biology, top of his class.
         As a professional he managed to stay in research, often locked away in his office working alone.  People said he would be fired with a lack of people skills.
         He soon was the boss of them all.
         He never married, never dated, never came out on the town.  He seemed to have no family, no phone, and no TV.  Neighbors whispered about him.  No one new his name or occupation, the neighborhood children were told to stay away.  It was feared he was a psychopath, a killer.
         He developed a plan to greatly reduce world hunger and won a Nobel Prize.
         They all said he would die alone, bitter and angry.  They said he would rot in Hell.  It makes no difference what you do in this life, they said, if you can not love a single one of your kind, you will be condemned to a fiery damnation.
         When people did see him, he always had a smile.
         No one knew he had died until his bills went unpaid.  As they lowered his already decaying body into the ground the only person present was the state appointed reverend.
         Upon his passing he indeed was sent to Hell, drug to the most secluded corner of the abyss.  He was given a tower of rock that stood above the fires, so far away the screaming of souls went unheard and the red flames were little more than a scant glow.  As a punishment for his sins he was condemned to an eternity of solitude.  He would never again be visited by an entity.  Not even a watchful eye was allowed.  The feeling of being observed would lessen the punishment.
         And so he stood, still he stands, forever alone, Hell’s one un-tortured soul.