Birdman
Note: Written as part of a writing exercise to write an absurdist/existentialist story, that is, a story in which the protagonist realises the pointlessness of the world and yet submits to it; or sees no way out and kills himself.
The old man stood in front of the sink, and looked at his frizzled white hair in the mirror. He picked up the comb for the first time in months, and placed it under the tap. The running water made a soothing sound. He ran the wet comb through his shocks of hair - the old routine was comforting. At least, it was delaying the inevitable.
Coming out of the bathroom, he looked at his sleeping wife, and then at the drab world visible from the windows of their hotel room. He could see a cloud of dusty smoke rising from the factory beside the hotel, clouding the dull scenery. That smoke, and that from a thousand other factories, would diffuse and soon fill the world. The light would be blotted out by dirty clouds, the rain would corrode people’s souls. Cars on the freeways, only being able to see a few feet in front, would pile up by the hundreds, trapping human bodies under tons of steel.
The smoke would change the currents that commute under the oceans, no longer allowing them to carry heat to the huddled poor in Canada or cold comfort to the sweaty masses in Africa. Millions would die, millions would rise in futile revolt. This factory outside would simply close and move to a new location, but nothing would end its passion for this poisonous smoke which was killing his people.
He looked at it helplessly for a while, before noticing that the smoke outside was slowly seeping into their hotel room through an incompletely closed windowpane. He ambled to the window and tried to close it with all the strength of his weak body. He couldn't do it. Of course he couldn't.
The last few months had given him hope and strength, and the last few weeks had taken it away. Last night he had slept restlessly, dreamlessly, away from Jane. Perhaps he had betrayed Jane, who’d always believed in him. Was he betraying her now, by pretending that everything was normal?
He woke her up.
"I see you've combed your hair," she said.
"It is time to concede, isn't it?" He asked her. "Should I say the words, or keep defiantly denying the end of hope?"
"Defiant denial is what I would go with,” she said. “You know that."
Yes, she would. But in torrid June he no longer felt the strength in his bones that he had felt in crisp January. He stood up, and started dressing himself in the new clothes he had bought specially for this day.
"This is not like you," Jane said.
He sighed. "We're getting late."
An hour later, Bernie Sanders walked out onto the podium and stood in front of a microphone, before a mellowed crowd. "I'm with her" he said.