You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Accidental Death’ category.
As a child, he reconciled a mother with her daughter by asking a naive question. “Do you want to die angry at her?” he asked. And with that, he completed his life’s work but continued living for thousands of insignificant days with nothing to do but digest resources and blindly gaze on the loveliness of the earth. To pass the time, he taught himself to conjure complex flavors in his kitchen. While his garden thrived, he merely survived the seasons. He grappled with partners on whatever bed was nearest, once each. And while his landscaping matured, his attitudes grew thorns until his friends stopped calling. Without much interest or insight, he ran another man’s business, which prospered despite his guidance, rebounded with the economy, and was absorbed by an abstract conglomerate that immediately severenced him. Already superfluous, now also redundant, he nevertheless lived on, collecting dividends and stacking up honors like boardroom chairs. He told risky jokes in mixed company with mixed results, texted recklessly, and died in a Truth-or-Dare wildlife incident without redeeming a penny of his pension. His loves were many if shallow, and his passions were varied if a little oblique, but the good earth never took to him. He left behind a modest estate and a widow who was mostly annoyed. Once he had kept his appointment with the mother and her daughter, once he had asked his question, he could have misspent his life anywhere he chose, failed at any enterprise, followed any impulse. Nothing could have undone his achievement. As for the mother and daughter, they drowned together in a lifeboat, or just outside a lifeboat, but together, thus completing their life’s work, not by reconciling—that was his job—but by reminding him briefly, as alligators devoured him, of all that he had accomplished.
Original Copyright © 1999
Revised Copyright © March 25, 2026
A runaway trolley car is racing downhill, and I alone see the danger. If I hurry, I can switch the car to the parallel track, maybe, if the juncture is outfitted with such a switch, and if I understand switches. Sunlight brightens the shop windows along the steep avenue under a fresh spring sky as blue as painters tape, and I and my philosophical girl friend, with nothing on our agenda but coffee and petits fours and late-day lovemaking and teleological nothingness, had been strolling arm in arm to the cafe, but now this! As if I weren’t already pre-occupied with a personal ethical dilemma! If no one diverts it, the trolley will surely crash into a vanload of already blind and misguided gospel singers, but if diverted won’t it mow down the crew of work release inmates on the parallel track? Similarly, and more urgently, should I continue to deceive my girl friend about how I spend my Thursday nights, or would the consequences of coming clean dangerously disauthenticate her? In any event, I’m not sure I could reach the switch in time. The anguished pungency of deeply distressed coffee beans beckons us to the café, but what’s this I hear? The mournful strains of Motherless Child…from the felons on the parallel track! Something must be done. A fat man, startlingly fat (Is he fat enough to derail the trolley completely?) is tilting heavily forward from the curb toward the tracks. With a nudge he might save everyone. Except himself of course and whoever pushed him. For no one nudges the fat man and sleeps well afterwards. I will tell her, but probably not today. Maybe Friday. She deserves to be happy with her pastry. I bend down to loosen my too-tight laces and listen for the crash.
Original Copyright © March 15, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 17, 2026
Very Short Novels 