"It doesn't feel like life any more. It feels like a forced existence; when every breath I take is not taken for anything or anyone."
Such thoughts ran through this man's head as he ties a hangman's noose from the ceiling. He turns to look at the house that he has built. Sketches lie on the table, for other houses he will never live in. He wanted work so bad he designed a mansion for a two hot meals a day. The room he's in was a gift to him by a girl he loved. She was a prize he was never good enough to be honored with. He'll just keep chasing. It was like catching a wild bird. She was married, to a man who thrust this sad excuse for an existence's head into the garbage can when he was in high school.
That sad excuse for an existence now lives with the wild bird he never caught and her captor, who put her in a beautiful cage. She's trapped. Still, she lives with him because he has the money and the sad excuse for an existence lives with them because he doesn't.
And now death seems like not another necessary part of life, but the necessary and immediate ending of it.
He looks around. He wears a beautiful suit his mother tailored for him for a college dance before she passed on. A tiny sparrow, its feathers ruffled and wet from the rain, hops on his windowsill. He watches it fly away. He wishes to go too, but like every useless process he has undergone in his life, he will do so, in style. He has a safe with two hundred dollars in it. He will not use the money for food, or for shelter. It isn't worth it. He will buy a coffin.
He walks out of his room and locks the door to hide his intentions from the world. He goes out of the house and down the street to a part of town, which people hate to visit. The undertaker.
The store is covered with coffins. Some, those he will, never over his dead body, be buried in. Others are so ornately carved and beautifully made that he does not feel like he deserves to even be near them. A man walks out of the shadows, wiping his hands with a dirty cloth.
"Yes?" he asks.
I like this one, how much is it?" says the architect.
"That's one's custom made, not for sale."
Is anything here not custom made?" he asks the shopkeeper.
"Everything here is custom made. Name your price, and tell me who you are and I will custom make one for you."
The architect looks the coffin beside him. It was tall. Enough room for two bodies stacked one above the other.
"That one was built for a man who wishes to fuck every whore in heaven," the shopkeeper says.
"Heaven doesn't have whores,' he says.
"You'd be surprised."
"If a baby is produced, then sex becomes a beautiful thing. God knows how many he'll father in that god forsaken place," the shopkeeper says, "So, who are you?"
"I'm no one."
The architect walks to the window, and peers out. There is nothing there but pipes and the exposed parts of the city's drainage systems.
"You see there, the grills on that drain. I am no better than they are," he says.
"And yet a woman slipped and fell into the drain, breaking her skull, when they were taken out for repair one day," the shopkeeper says. He looks at the sad excuse for an existence sternly.
"What do you want in life," the shopkeeper asks.
"I don't think you should be concerned about my life when it's my death that you're selling," he says.'
"I don't think you should concern yourself with death when you should be living," says the shopkeeper, "What do you do?"
"I'm an architect," says the man.
"What would you like to do?"
"I'd like to build the grandest structures known to man; the ones that people flock to see. The ones with the country flag flying on top because the government is proud of having such a masterpiece on their land," the architect says.
"And have you reached that caliber?" asks the shopkeeper, who has now sat down on a coffin.
"Don't you see, friend. I never will. Perhaps now it is time for me to stop wasting my time in this life and end it," he says.
"Why do you want to die?" the shopkeeper asks, "isn't there a girl you love, who you'd live for."
"There is but she will never love me."
"Aren't you aware that there are millions of other on this planet? Are you aware that by killing yourself now you are taking happiness away from the one person who could love you and that you could love? Would you like such a crime placed upon your dead body?"
The man thinks.
"I just want a coffin. I'll give you all the money I have, just please, build me one."
The silence in the store hangs heavy as the shopkeeper contemplates the young man's offer.
"How much?" asks the shopkeeper.
"I have two hundred dollar and the clothes on my back," says the man.
"Not enough, and keep the clothes on. What heterosexual man wants to see another naked? I cannot build you a coffin," replies the shopkeeper. The architect turns away.
"I will be back, one day, and whatever price you name, will seem like nothing to me," he calls back as he walks out of the store, the store bells ringing behind him.
He has made a vow. As he walks out of that part of town, he begins to see the world differently. Every girl that walks past him seems to be a huge burden to bear. The weight of the world crushes him as he thinks about what the shopkeeper has said. Would he be hurting her if he died? What about him? No, it cannot be, he is heterosexual.
And would she, who is walking down the street, her skin glowing and her cheeks pink from happiness with the rest of her friends hate him one day because there is no one to build a roof over her head for herself and her husband.
Will she curse every architect who has thought himself failed and killed himself because he couldn't find work, when she so desperately needs an architect to build her a house?
And now every breath he takes seems to hold a reason. He wishes to exist. He wishes for life to go on. He returns to his room and looks at the mass of orders on his desk. Orders that he has never noticed before.
And he draws. The next day he builds. He carries stones with the other slave workers because that is the burden he has to bear. He is building a house for a nice family, with a nice daughter who brings him hot coffee as he pours over his sketches. She smiles at him and he smiles back at her.
He walks out of the house he lives in now, with nothing but a box of belongings. He has nowhere else to live, but he will not live there. She is sad to see him go, but he doesn't want her any more and so he leaves.
He sleeps on a bench that night; unafraid of what lurks in the darkness for there is a light from within him that protects him from any danger. It has enabled him to fight for his life from even the largest monster. It has enabled him to live.
He sleeps that night with a purpose, a dream, to carry on with his life. Many streets away, rich man walks out of an undertaker's shop. He is not carrying a coffin; he has come to thank the man that has changed his life. The shopkeeper looks down at his accounts. They are not accounts of money. That he has, plenty of it, from rich donors who have come to thank him for giving them a reason to live. He crosses off another name on his list.
He remains the only undertaker that does not give people an end, in a coffin, but a beginning to the life they wish to live.