CHAPTER ONE
I Meet a Peculiar Individual
My name is Murphy T. Allard, and April 17th, 1899 was the day I decided I was going to kill myself.
You may be wondering why I would choose to do something so irrational. Well, there is no shortage of reasons I can provide to justify such an action. The well I can pull from to answer such a question is truly bottomless. For the sake of brevity, I will simply say that this world has never shown me any reason why my persistence in it would be in any way fruitful or something worth desiring. No optimistic outlook has ever swayed me from my feelings on life, love, death, God, and humanity as a whole.
Well, until I met a certain someone. But allow me to set the stage before we arrive there.
I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I was brought into this pathetic, dolorous world on April 17th, 1869. You see, I figured there would be some kind of narrative symmetry to me taking my own life on the day of my birth. It felt like poetry to me. It felt right.
My father was a banker by the name of Albert Allard, and my mother was a dancer by the name of Susan, but she only ever went as ‘Sue.’ I will spare you the long and rather prosaic story that led to me losing touch with my parents. There are others with similar familial relations as my own who have a much more dramatic reason for their parents no longer wishing to see them or be a part of their life. Usually, there is some great and scandalous drama required for a family to suddenly fall apart at the seams. This was not so for the Allard family.
My mother and father always seemed to have an entirely passionless relationship. They struck me more as business associates than lovers. There were never any playful touches, nor secret smiles, or even kisses on the cheek shared between them. They simply tended to me as if raising me was a job forced upon them; one that brought them little joy. I have no fond memories of playing catch with my father like all the other boys at school in Toronto did. I have no fond memories of my mother dawdling on me as if I were a prince, doing her best to keep me from staying out late because I could hurt myself, and she would never be able to live with the knowledge that her negligence brought me harm. No. Neither of my parents seemed to care if I came home from school at all, let alone if I were causing enough mischief to be late.
The great irony of that last fact was that, since it was so transparent how little they cared if I acted out, I never did. It quite effectively takes the wind out of a rebellious boy’s sails if he truly has no one to rebel against. The desire to break away from one’s parents, to fly in the face of their authoritarian rubrics, only manifests itself when they hold onto one too tightly; when they suffocate one with their love and apprehension of the outside world. I was never suffocated by anything other than loneliness. Sometimes I wondered if I were the only soul on planet Earth. I wondered if I were the only one who felt this pain. There were days when I was sure the rest of the world was occupied by automatons, and I was the only authentic entity walking.
I moved out of my parent’s small house on the outskirts of the city when I was seventeen. I got a job working at a steel mill in the center of town called ‘Mcmorray Cliffs.’ It was, to be truthful, the worst job imaginable. I was not built for hard labour. I was a very small fellow then—and remained a very small fellow thereafter, mind you. I was weak, scrawny, and prone to lung sickness. And yet, miraculously, I never got fired. To this day, I have no idea why that is. Part of me has come to the unconfirmed, yet highly probable, conclusion that I was merely kept around to be the company punching bag. I mean that in the most literal way possible. I was periodically abused by the other workers at Mcmorray Cliffs. They belittled me and poured liquor over my head on a good day and beat me senseless on a bad day. I was routinely laughed at and used as a communal relief system for overworked and stressed men who could’ve snapped me in half with relative ease.
That time I spent in the mill was when I first came to the conclusion that I was going to hang myself. I remember the thought came to me in perfect clarity as I was thrown into the garbage heap behind the main building by two men whom I had never even seen before. They were new on the job that very day and were clearly instructed to embarrass me, just as everyone else did. I festered there, quite at home among the other junk that nobody wanted, realizing that I would one day work up the courage to end my life.
Since I wanted there to be some kind of time limit on this act—mostly because I wanted to give myself some time to try as hard as I possibly could to turn things around and see if I could salvage some kind of happiness from the life that I was given—I decided my thirtieth birthday would be the day. I decided I was going to give myself that many years to make something out of my life.
I failed. I left the steel mill at twenty-three, hoping to pursue my dream of becoming a painter. I believed, foolishly, that I had a natural gift for the arts. I believed my paintings would be revered around the world. I believed I would become a Canadian icon someday. I was nothing more than a joke. No one ever liked my paintings. I sold a few here and there, but never for very much. I ended up working a side job as a cobbler to make up for the money I wasn’t making from my passion.
I completely lost touch with my parents for a span of years after I moved away. That span came to an end when my twenty-seventh birthday arrived, when I suddenly felt the urge to return to my childhood home on the outskirts of Toronto. What I found was my father living at the place alone. He was, as I expected when I made the journey, not overly excited to see me again. Surprised could be an accurate description, but surprised is not exactly synonymous with enthusiastic.
I spent one night at my old home with him. We drank brandy together and smoked out on the porch. It was the closest thing the two of us ever had to a bonding experience. Ever. It was still nearly emotionless, and entirely taciturn. But it was something.
He informed me that my mother, funnily enough—at least, funny to someone with a sense of humour akin to my own—hung herself two years after I moved out. She no longer wished to live a life tethered to my father and his heartless company. According to my father on that night, those were near enough to her final words before she used one of his work belts to hang herself from the high bannister in the living room.
My father did not seem to feel very regretful about the whole ordeal. He told the tale to me with little to no emotion readable on his face. Same old Dad. I said farewell to him the following morning. I have yet to speak with him again. He could be dead. He could be happy and thriving. I don’t much care either way.
I delved deeply into studying philosophy during the time period of my twenties. Reading had been a favoured pastime of mine since I was ten years old. I eventually grew bored of fiction and moved into studying history. Once I entered my twenties, I even grew bored of that. Philosophy came in and captured me in a way nothing else had. I was particularly enamoured with Arthur Schopenhauer. He taught me more than I ever learned in school.
He taught me about the truth of the world. About the true lack of value in every life. I owe that man everything. He opened my eyes in a world full of people who find peace in them being perpetually closed. He allowed me to walk the streets alone, knowing myself to be the only wolf in a city of sheep. I saw through the lies of religion, and I saw through the lies of government. There were nothing but lies everywhere I glanced. Realizing it was freeing somehow. Liberating.
Well, now that the groundwork has been laid, perhaps I should take you back to the early hours of the morning on my lonely thirtieth birthday. No friends. No wife. No children of my own. No purpose beyond sleeping and waking. I was almost excited as I began to gather up various paintings of mine from around my dusty, cold, grey apartment. I smirked in gloriously dark mirth as I placed all of my failed pieces in the center of the main room, stacked upon each other. Each painting was a different stage of my degradation; a different representation of my futility.
The living room of my apartment was lit only by a few dwindling candles and the soft light of the moon coming in through the main wide window behind my dinner table.
My unit was on the bottom floor of the building, and the large window that gave a clear view of the main street was clouded by a torrent of rain. Everyone would be sleeping at this ungodly hour. Even in the middle of the day my street was never very busy. A few people walking up and down the sidewalks, but it was far from bustling. I always found it narratively cohesive how dreary my own neighbourhood was. It was as if the state of my life, and the state of my mind, followed me around wherever I went in life and projected itself onto the environments I found myself in.
I wanted to be found. I wanted my hanging body to be seen by someone walking down that quiet street come morning. I wanted the police to be called and for my body to be cut down and recovered. I don’t quite know why I wanted to make sure my suicide was performed in front of the main window, but I knew I wanted the whole world to know that it had failed me. I wanted the world to know it never gave me any reason to stay. To persist. To try.
I thought all of this over as I made sure my stack of unwanted paintings was just tall enough for me to be able to stand upon them to hang myself on the wide wooden bar that led to a large ceiling joist. There was a web of wooden scaffolding above the main room of the house that made it quite easy for me to fix my noose.
I tied the noose myself, borrowing an old rope from a stable a few blocks south from my apartment. The walk to receive that strong piece of rope was somehow rather peaceful. I was not depressed to understand that it was my last walk outdoors. My last taste of fresh air. My last feeling of the rain on my skin. I was on my way to oblivion, and I was going merrily. I didn’t want to experience any of those things ever again, because those things were a product of a world that had always hurt me. They were a product of a life that had never brought me any shred of happiness.
I climbed upon my giant stack of paintings—roughly thirteen abominations in total—and tightly tied the rope around the wide wooden beam. It was surely thick enough to support the weight of my body. I placed the noose around my neck and tightened it. It was time to end everything. The time had come to cease existence itself.
For a long moment I stood upon my paintings, asking myself one final time whether there was any reason whatsoever for me not to kick the stack out from under me and let myself be free from this hell.
I closed my eyes and took in a long breath, knowing it was my last one. When I knew myself to be ready, I lifted my left foot and prepared to swing it at the stack of paintings, seeking to knock it out from under my right foot.
Before I performed the swift backward swing of my raised foot, however, I nearly fell off the stack in my shock as a series of rapid taps came at my wide window.
My eyes snapped open again and I gasped loudly. What the bloody hell was going on? What was that noise? And more importantly, why was I frightened by the sound? Was I not prepared to end my experience of consciousness itself? If the subject of preparedness for death could not be disputed, why would my body react using a fear instinct when startled by a loud noise? Was I simply a slave to my chemical programming?
I glanced over at the window and saw, to my great confusion, an old man in a long grey coat banging on my window with a frail hand. His eyes were wide with horror. He didn’t even have an umbrella with him. His long white hair was drenched from the downpour.
“Excuse me, sir!” said the old man, positively screaming in order for his trembling voice to be heard inside my apartment. “Whatever you’re doing, I suggest you do not! Don’t be hasty now, sir. Please take the noose off and step down. I can assure you that whatever reasons you have told yourself, thinking that this is a wise course of action, are wrong! Your own subconscious has lied to you, good sir! You are making a mistake!”
I was stunned. What was this old fool doing out in the rain by himself? It was just my luck that he would interrupt me just before I was ready to end my misery. Now I needed to prolong my existence just to shoo away this strange fellow. I feared he might break my window and climb into my home if I dared to hang myself in front of him.
“Go away, old man! Get out of here and mind your own business!”
My voice was quaking with emotion. I suddenly felt myself fighting against the urge to weep. I did not know why. Was I somehow ashamed to be found like this while still alive?
“Good sir, please do not do what you are about to do! Please!”
I was getting quite annoyed by this point. I said something next that I did not truly intend. It simply leapt from my mouth. “I have no reason whatsoever to not do it. I have no reason to stay. Now go away, damn you!”
The old fellow raised his other hand and shook a finger as if he had caught a clear fallacy in my words and sought to point it out to me. “Ah, but that is simply not true, sir! You have millions of reasons to stay alive. You have more reasons to not do what you are planning to do than there are reasons not to do anything else in life. And I can prove it to you, too! Do you hear me? I can prove it to you!”
“You’re crazy, old man. Now be off with you! I won’t tell you again.”
The old man frantically smacked on the window with both hands now. “Just give me a chance to convince you. One simple conversation is all I ask of you! If you hang yourself now, I swear on the name of my daughter I will throw a brick through this window and cut you down myself. You will not convince me to leave without letting me in! But I’ll make a deal with you, good sir. If you allow me to come inside your home and sit down with you for a bit, we can have a proper conversation. Just one conversation is all I ask. If, by the end of this conversation, you still intend to take your life, I give you my word I will walk away and leave you to your fate.”
I was overtaken by my shock while listening to this strange man. For whatever reason, I found myself intrigued by his offer. “You really think you can convince me to live?”
The man looked like he nearly broke his neck as he nodded like a creature possessed. “Yes, yes, indeed! I’d stake my very life on it. But I am only staking the concept of me turning a blind eye and walking away. Just let me come in out of this dreadful rain and we can have a proper, civilized chat on the matter!”
I stared at the old man for a handful of seconds without saying anything. I gazed into his determined and concerned eyes and saw no sign of trickery or lack of sanity. This individual truly believed, down to his marrow, that he could convince me not to do something I had been planning since I was seventeen years old.
Before I even knew what I was doing, I was removing the noose from my neck and stepping down from my stack of paintings. I felt like I was half drunk. I was in a peculiar sort of daze. I had just resigned myself to death, and now it felt like I needed to reteach myself the basics of communication. My words were even slightly slurred. “Very . . . very well. I will accept this deal.” I walked up to the window and leaned forward to be as close to the man’s face as possible. “But when you can’t convince me, I want you to l-leave me alone. I want to make sure I finish the job before morning comes around.”
The man only nodded again, just as passionately.
I motioned for him to follow me over to the front door. As I turned from the window and made my way through the main room to the slim white door, I made sure to leave my stack of paintings precisely where it was. I was certain this fellow would not be able to convince me that life was worth living. I planned to still use it to take my life.
I made it to the door and slowly opened it. I suddenly wondered if I had strayed into a dream and none of this was really happening. I blinked several times and shook my head. The old man was shivering on the stone podium that acted as my doorstep.
He was a spindly fellow, but rather tall. I was shocked to notice he was slightly taller than me. It was rare for an elderly gentleman to be that tall. This man looked to be no younger than sixty-five.
The first thing he did was stick out his right hand. “Nice to meet you, sir. My name is William Lumley. But everyone just calls me Mr. Lumley.”
I looked down at Mr. Lumley’s hand for a moment, then gently shook it. “Nice to meet you as well, Mr. Lumley. My . . . uh . . . name is Murphy T. Allard. You have interrupted my last moments. I sure hope you have something good for me, because I . . . I would like to carry on with what I was doing . . . as soon as possible.” I stepped out of the way and gestured for Mr. Lumley to enter my home. I was still a little in shock.
He did so at a leisurely pace. He took off his pair of brown boots before walking into the wide living room. He kept his jacket on, however. “Wonderful home here, Murphy. Wonderful home.”
I closed the door and sighed. “It’s a depressing, soulless box of grey paint and dusty furniture, but thank you.”
Mr. Lumley walked over to stand over my paintings. He leaned forward to inspect the one that rested upon the top of the stack. It was a landscape piece of a quiet desert. I titled it ‘A Dream of Absence.’ It took me eight months to paint, and I attempted to sell it for forty dollars. I could find no one interested in paying that, or any, price.
“Where on earth did you get all of these paintings, Murphy? These are wonderful. You have fascinating taste.”
I slowly walked over to stand next to him. I idly gazed down at my latest failure. “I painted all of these. I’m a failed artist. I figured using my work to kill myself would be poetic somehow. Strange, I know.”
Mr. Lumley looked over at me, blinking several times. “You painted these? All of these. You’re being serious.”
I hummed. “I am. I painted all of these pieces of garbage.”
The man looked as if he had been slapped. “Pieces of garbage? My good sir, this painting on the top alone is among the best I have ever seen. You have a true talent, Murphy. This is an outstanding work of art. The desert landscape is brilliantly realized. I feel as if I can literally step into this painting and find myself in another world. The detail is beyond description. And there is a palpable melancholy to this piece. It’s magnificent.”
I felt a rush of warmth in my heart that I had not known for a long time. Even so, I tried to shrug off his genuine admiration for my work. “Oh, please. Don’t just tell me what I want to hear because I was near to hanging myself. I can assure you pity will not convince me to see another year. You’ll need to attempt a different tactic, Mr. Lumley.”
Mr. Lumley placed a hand upon his heart. “Murphy, I promise you my words are real. Seeing these paintings has convinced me more than ever that suicide is never the answer. And it is certainly not the answer for one with talent such as yours.” He smirked as he looked over the paintings once more, the admiration clear on his face.
I walked over to the small brown table where I ate dinner alone every night. I always had two chairs at this table, however. I often imagined the chair on the other side would one day be occupied by a beautiful woman who loved me. I came to the conclusion, after a while, that this mental image was a mere fairy tale.
I pulled out my chair and sat down. “All right, old man. Let’s not waste any more time. If you truly feel you can talk me into believing this world is worth my presence in it with only a single conversation, then let us get to it. I’m rather curious what you could possibly bring forth.”
Mr. Lumley tucked his wet white hair behind his ears. He walked over and pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the dinner table. “Sounds good, Murphy.” He cracked his old and fragile knuckles, causing an echoing pop in the cold, grey room. The rain still pattered on the wide window to his back. “Why don’t we start by you telling me one of your reasons why you think life isn’t worth living, and then I will counter with why it is. We can go through as many reasons as you like. In fact, I would like to address all of your reasons. I am beyond confident I can counter whatever mental reasoning you have built around any given subject.”
I shook my head. He was an arrogant old codger. I intended to test his confidence.
END OF SAMPLE CHAPTER