The insignificance of Carl Beaumont

It was a day of such insignificance it could have been any other when Carl Beaumont, a magazine editor of some repute, decided to take his own life.

He started with a healthy breakfast before dropping off his daughter at school, picking up his dry cleaning, a bottle of his favourite scotch and returning to his apartment in a sensibly affluent area of a city of such insignificance it could have been any other.

The revolver was clean but he meticulously wiped and oiled it down, perhaps to pass the time, while sipping a last glass of whisky. He checked and printed a copy of his Will and signed up to donate his organs on-line, pleasantly surprised to find the human body extensively recyclable.

Carl filled the bathtub with cold water and added a bag of ice to bring the temperature down, in this way he hoped to slow decomposition until his corpse was discovered. 

He slipped in wincing as the frost bit, “as cold as the grave,” he thought and laughed out loud.

The barrel of the gun tasted like fish oil between his teeth. When did he resign himself to such an existence? He’d wasted time on words no one would remember, a product of useless facts and pretty pictures that would have contributed more as the tree cut down to make the paper it was printed on.  

His legacy a footnote on a masthead no one ever read, dozens would line up to take his place, a significant number possibly named Carl. They would cut and paste him and no one would be the alarmed.

This was aggravating, the relentless toil of never ending labour always falling short of true satisfaction, and a sense of slow decent into bottomless lunacy in the few moments of free time he hoped to savour. Anger consumed his energies, gutted his passions and left him an empty husk. Anger is laborious.

And Carl was tired; tired of ex-wives and settlements, paying mortgages to thieving bankers, of breathing in exhaust fumes, watching the poles melt, of children caring more for their phones than parents, and waiting desperately for war to bring peace.

He was tired of the poor and hungry, of the rich and greedy, terrorist killings, drones and bombings, of moral and ethical ambiguity, not knowing who to believe in, what to believe in, and of questioning the very fabric of right thinking society.      

But most of all this man was tired of failing to change the hellish progression of humanity while watching his destiny driven by elements he could never begin to regulate.

Yes most of all he was tired of living a life of such insignificance it could have been any other.

All his life’s work, his achievements, ambitions and dreams were but a single twinkle in the eye of a horse beaten half to death for working too hard, caring too much and generally being a credit to its kind.

He envied the dead; at least they gave their atoms back to the universe to be reconfigured into something useful.  “Rather a short life than a pointless one,” thought Carl Beaumont and pulled the trigger.