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An Odd Way To Die:


It was an odd way to die. In fact nothing killed him, exactly. Even the coroner couldn’t pinpoint a specific reason... because there wasn’t a specific reason. It was a cacophony of errors: a series of events that conspired in just such a way that his life was lost; taken by fate, or chance. Despite what you might assume, none of these events were particularly profound, nor was the cumulative effect of all of them. And for this reason Rathburn’s death would forever remain a mystery to the humans in this realm.

If flies could talk however, the mystery would be quickly solved. A small black fly sat horizontally on a wall in the way that only little bugs can and that would undeniably feel like magic if bugs didn’t seem so menial. This fly was not menial. It was a very important fly, although no human would ever know. It also knew how Rathburn died.

Rathburn was a fat man. He’d lost 20 pounds in the last three months, but it didn’t make any noticeable dent in his figure. The loss of weight was also not due to any active effort on his part to live a healthier life, but instead due to his own laziness. He couldn’t be bothered to cook for himself as much as he usually liked. Rathburn was portly in the way British middle-age men are; not American middle-aged men. The type who if he sat on you would make you uncomfortable but not kill you. Rathburn lived alone, didn’t live extraordinarily in any way, but was contented. The opposite of extraordinary, he was ordinary, and so was every event leading to his death.

Rathburn wasn’t a fan of football (soccer), but enjoyed the background noise a game provided as he completed his morning routine of cooking his bacon, sausages, and oatmeal. He never cooked eggs. He tried endlessly as a child to learn a technique to break eggs without getting shell in them but he never could. After 117 eggs he gave up forever.

On this morning Sunderland was playing against New Castle United. They had a rivalry, which meant nothing to Rathburn. As he clicked the remote to turn the tv on, two things happened. The remote made the fairly sizable clicking noise that it always did. This noise echoed back to him from the southwest corner of his living room which, because of an error in architecture, caused echoes of most any noise emanating from the direction of the kitchen. This echo briefly caught Rathburn by surprise, as that echo corner always did. The other thing that occurred when Rathburn pushed the “on” button was this: An electrical current ran through the device, which sent a wave through the air, and turned on  the TV just in time to show a player throwing the ball in from the sideline. Rathburn however, had already turned and started towards the kitchen before the tv had come to life. He would never see a throw-in again. Also, despite the long odds, not only had Rathburn never thought about the electrical current in his TV remote before, but he had never actually thought about electricity before. Electricity was a word that he had heard but that held no meaning to him whatsoever; just random sounds in a random order.

He had been out sick in forth grade when his teachers explained the basic concept of an electrical current, and with that foundation never planted in his mind he had never stopped to consider how a light switch worked, or a spark plug, or a tv, or how any electronic device functioned. He had always taken it for granted.

Exactly ten minutes and two seconds after turning that tv on however, for the first time in his life, Rathburn would think about electricity. And for the last.

In the kitchen, comforted by the meaningless gabber of the tv, Rathburn began throwing his bacon and sausages into canola oil on a large cast iron pan.

For what reason Rathburn thought he sensed a fly hovering near him and mindlessly swatted it away. There was no fly near him, but the little black fly on the wall noticed this.

Rathburn’s laziness manifested in all the expected ways: Few groceries in the fridge; Light bulbs burnt out in the upstairs hallway; Laundry not done. Today Rathburn was shirtless and his belly hung over his pants. It wobbled and would often stay in a place just a split second longer than Rathburn himself when he would walk away.

The fly, if we were to guess, didn’t much like Rathburn. For one, Rathburn had a penchant for swatting. For two, flies have an extra sensory ability to exist in multiple different moments of their life simultaneously. Time is not linear for flies. They are experiencing their birth and their death, and any other moments in between that they so desires at any given time. It so happened that this fly was seeing two deaths at once. Rathburn’s being one of them.

Days ago (by a human metric) the little black fly sat on a slat of wood in a barn. It watched its friend the pig be slaughtered. It had bonded with the pig. It would buzz around its head and land on the pig’s back, tickled by his little pig hairs, enveloped by this pig’s pungent smell. But now on the slat he watched the pig die at the hand of a farmer.

And also now (by a fly’s metric) the little black fly watched the same pig’s dismembered remains be thrown into boiling canola oil by the fat man.

The fly most likely did not like Rathburn.

Rathburn’s grip on the handle of the cast iron skillet was firm; A safe grip as he shuffled around its contents pointlessly. It was a lackluster attempt at flipping some bacon and sausages like the French cooks would do, or any cook worth his salt. Rathburn was not worth his salt. The bacon and sausages just wiggled. Rathburn did like his salt though, and so with his free hand he reached for the salt shaker. He knocked it over spilling salt on the counter top. He swept that salt onto the floor and with his bare foot kicked it under the fridge. He was able to avoid having to bend over to clean, but was not able to avoid the compulsive habits of his own superstitious mind. “Don’t spill the salt.” This echoed around his brain. Living by a variation of Occam’s Razor, Rathburn was temporarily torn between continuing to dig around the fridge, which he had just opened, or righting the superstitious injustice and throwing more salt over his left shoulder. Occam’s Razor suggests the simplest answer is right. For Rathburn the answer that requires the least effort is right. In the split second that decisions of this nature are made, Rathburn chose between ignoring or addressing the superstition. Would it be more effort to grab the salt now or deal with some semblance of bad luck later? He chose to go for the salt now.

He turned and reached for the salt shaker again, but as his arm extended, a splatter of canola oil from the pan spit into the air and landed on his bare belly.

“Oy!”

He knocked the shaker over and onto the ground. The “Oy!” echoed back from the echo corner which briefly shocked Rathburn, who spun around to face it. He then saw that the fridge was still open and went to close it, but before he could, he saw that he still had BBQ sauce on the inside of the fridge door which he could put on his sausages.

“Oh”, he said.

Again, not surprisingly to you, the “Oh” also echoed back from the echo corner. This was still somehow surprising to Rathburn, who seemed to forget who or where he was in his moment of absorption with the BBQ sauce. Startled, he stepped back, on the salt shaker, which caused him to slip and fall.

On the way down Rathburn stuck his hand out to try to find something to hold onto. His hand found nothing accept the switch to turn on his Waste-King Garburator. He had in fact never turned it on or even knew it existed until this moment.

In the split seconds as he was falling a few thoughts passed through his mind. As soon as his hand hit the switch but no light came on he though, “I’ll have to replace a light eventually.”

Then as his head passed the sink the Garburator turned on, prompting three more thoughts. “Oh that switch was just for the Garburator. I don’t need to replace a light.”

Then, “I didn’t know I had a Garburator.”

And then, seeing as his head had travelled a considerable distance towards the ground between the time that he had hit the switch and the Garburator had turned on, he was forced to consider electricity — how there was a delayed response and therefore some signal must have been traveling between the switch and the Garburator. He didn’t understand electricity, but he had now considered it, however briefly.

His head then smacked off the floor, knocking him out immediately. He died soon after of a brain hemorrhage as a result of the trauma.

When the police found him, responding to his neighbors call about a fire smell, the sausage and bacon was in fact ablaze, the tv was on playing sports highlights from the Sunderland-New Castle Game, Rathburn was shirtless with his eyes open on the ground lying on a salt shaker, and the Garburator was on. With no forced entry or exit, no one had any clue what transpired that caused the trauma and resulting death of Rathburn, except for the fly who was still on the wall, dying and being born all at once. And talking to the pig about what would become of him after his death. Only a fly knows.

-- Los Angeles, 2020

 
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