Umbrellas
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The old man who was once Bartholomew Greene sat leaning on the umbrella, the umbrella which was the cause of the destruction about him. Palm trees broken & scattered, deep chasms rent in the earth, mountains leveled to seas, seas thrust toward the sky. The man felt small in the midst of all this. He sat staring blankly at nothing & everything. Trying to undo what he had done. Trying to make things right again; he could not & he knew this, but still he tried. Then he stood up, raised his eyes to the sky (now crimson), & yelled. He brought his head down & saw the umbrella laying where he had dropped it as he stood. Laying there as if it were an ordinary black umbrella with an ordinary wooden handle.
"You, you did all of this!" he shouted sweeping his hands wide to indicate the world about him. The umbrella gave no answer. It just lay there looking like an umbrella. He didn't know why he thought it should do anything else, it never had. It had always laid there looking innocent as all the world about it went mad.
The man walked over to a car (one that wasn't torn apart) & got in. He sat looking at the steering wheel & the levers sticking out of it & realized he didn't remember how to drive. He had known how to once. That was the only thing he had done until the umbrella came.
I'll walk, he thought, doesn't really matter, no where to go. He got out of the car & looked at the silver paint covering it.
"Yellow, the one I drove was yellow," & he turned away from the car & walked. He didn't know in what direction he was walking, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.