So, i had a strange surge of inspiration after watching The Man Who Would Be King and i felt like it would be an interesting challenge, writing wise, to try and get it down. I don't know if it came across but i feel i got something out of it.
Harold had always been a quiet boy. Sometimes his parents called him Harry and he would answer to that too. He didn't have friends to give him nicknames and this didn't bother him as much as people thought it might. He actually preferred being alone.
As he grew older more people would comment on his reluctance, his stubborn effort not to socialise like normal people would but really Harold found his own thoughts much easier company. At least they always made sense to him. It was still a few years before doctors would start to diagnose children like Harold with autism.
Harold loved activities he could concentrate on without the distraction of other people. He rode his bike around the local streets and his parents let him. As an adult he was told he needed a job to earn money. He found his perfect knowledge of every street made him well qualified to take the job as postman. It made a new, interesting challenge to add the names of everyone in the houses to the map of streets accurately captured in his memory.
His job got him up and about very early, before sunrise almost all year. Almost no one else was awake then and he had the entire town to himself as he walked up and down driveways. This job also left him with lots of time in the afternoon to do whatever he liked. Harold enjoyed reading and listening to music on his grandfather's old record player.
Once a week, every Tuesday, Harold made sure to go to the park, just like he used to do with his father who only had one afternoon off a week. He took his red kite and would fly it high above the park for an hour before coming home for dinner. It bothered him that the park got busier through the summer and Harold concentrated hard to try and block out the noise of people shrieking and dogs barking. Sometimes though, it was quiet. The best time for this was early spring, the weather was too cold for most people to go down the park but Harold would go. He could pretend he was all alone, in the park, in the town, flying high above the empty streets alongside the kite. In the warmer months when people began to disturb his Tuesday peace it seemed more like the settling gloom of a misty rain.
It was a sad day when Harold drowned at home in his bathtub. People turned out to the funeral as a courtesy though most people barely knew who they were mourning. Some people could only identify him as that man who wouldn't meet your eyes and only ever smiled alone, in the park.
Harold passed on into Heaven; he had always been polite to everyone and went to church every Sunday morning so it was no big surprise. When he first became conscious of his surroundings he relaxed into the familiar surroundings of the park down the street from his house. He lifted his kite and flung it into the air and basked in the quiet and solitude all around him. His park was empty.
There were no worries, no distractions, no fear of people laughing or jeering or being there at all. Harold just somehow understood that he was blissfully alone. He floated there alongside his kite without a care for who knows how long. Minutes, months, millennia.
He couldn't explain it but it was eternal. Eternal peace, eternal sunshine, eternal calm from all the thoughts he had lived with inside his head his whole life and he could bask in honest silence for the first time ever.
Idly roused from his floating thoughts, sometime in this eternal sunny afternoon, Harold noticed another presence in his park. Someone was by the flower beds, sat on the bench, or just stood there. Occasionally, he would be near Harold. He would look up at the kite just like a friend might stand at his side and he would stay for hours or days on end, completely still. He should have been upsetting the peace and balance. Any other time Harold would have wished for him to leave. After all, people made him nervous and uncomfortable.
This Tuesday, Harold didn't care.
If you can leave a helpful comment i would be so grateful because this was entirely experimental for me.