In memory of Mr. Kite

Once very long ago, there was a man who lived in our village. He was a man of some countenance and possessed a charming demeanor. He was a good man.

However, being only mortal as we all are, he had a bit of a penchant for buggery and an appetite for the ladies. Most of his nights were spent in the pursuit of the fairer sex and a good drink to follow. On nights when neither could be had, his juvenile demeanor would have at his intellect, setting forth into action misdeeds of nefarious nature all about the Village.

There were never indiscretions that resulted in anything more than misdemeanors, blowing out the gas lights, or tossing eggs at passing steamers; but enough to, more than once, send him scurrying off into the night, the constable in hot pursuit. Mr. Kite was a joyful sprite poking at the fabric of a stagnant society, laughing and running all the way.

Then one day, as all things go, Mr. Kite met a woman of incredible beauty, the woman to which he had become smitten, the woman to whom he would build a great throne and worship from below. This mortal divinity’s name was Chelsea.

His was a mockery of courtship filled with outlandish gestures and brazen confessions of the likes no one had ever seen before. The courtship lasted two weeks before the couple was wed, much to the chagrin of her father and the constant tears of her mother.

Now being that he was married, Mr. Kite forgot the things he never really knew, fealty, fidelity, monogamy. You see Mr. Kite did nothing to change the ways he had been so fond of and accustomed to, this made their marriage at best uncomfortable and at the very least, unseemly.

No one could speak to him, no one could get through to him that love is something very special and once damaged in any way, nearly impossible to mend. He didn’t care to hear the words for in his mind once married, forever mine.

This went on for some time, at least to a time when she could not take the humiliation any longer. Sauce for the goose, was her mantra. She would step out on him and it would teach the randy nave how to consider other people feelings.

One night she went out to a local pub and worked her wiles. She had no intention of doing anything beyond her virtue, the stories of her flirting would be enough for her, however as the night drew to a close, one of the Ahzeen she had flirted with took what he thought she owed him. He forced her into his home for six hours and did things to her far too graphic to be spoken of in this forum.

Vengeance is a tool best left to rest. That night broke them both. She was only a shell of a person, lost and wafting in the proverbial wind. Mr. Kite had never dealt with a situation as such and was astray in remedy.

He began the work he should have from the start, finding employ and making a home, and she so caught up in her shame and pain, found herself in the shoes she so hated from her husband. He would find himself wandering from tavern to tavern looking for his wife, to take her home and mend her ill’s, hoping that something he would do, would show her the truth of his new path.

It was Mid Point of Early Year that the culmination of events would come to a head. He was working the night shift at the cannery, when on his last break, just before dawn he heard his wife call his name. Instinct took over and he ran for his life to their home. Filled with dread, he flung the door open to find his home empty. He searched and searched to no avail until the sun was high in the morning sky.

It was at seven thirty three when the constable knocked on his door. The officer told him nothing save that he needed Mr. Kite to accompany him to the hospital. Agony tore on his soul as they made their way through the halls to a small closed room that was coldly furnished with a table in the center.

Mr. Kite fell to his knees; weeping uncontrollably and could not force himself to look upon the body that lay draped in a simple white sheet. It took more than two hours for him to regain himself enough to do what needed be done.

There on the table, as he raised the sheet, laid his great beauty, ghostly grey and diminished. He stood with a most horrid look on his face as single tear fell from his eye. He began to arrange her hair as she would have, and cleaned the mud from her face. No matter how distraught she may have been, no matter the anger, fear, or intolerance she felt, she would never be seen in a state of imperfection.

And so ended the world of Mr. Kite

Later, when she was laid to rest and the accusations settled like ash on the sea floor, Mr. Kite began the last half of his life. He would not enter his home again; rather, he dug up a yellow rose bush he had planted for her a year earlier. He climbed the peaks that overlooked our Village to a point where one could see the entire town. He dug with his bare hands a hole, and planted the bush.

Once in place Mr. Kite sat down in front of the bush and never moved again. He sat watching over the village day and night. No one knew how he ate, there were one or two folk who took him plates once a day, but soon that ended.

He began to be known as the Fool on the Hill. The villagers would look up to see him setting there wrapped up in the rose bush, mocking him, fearing him and one or two would pity him as they remembered back to the events that brought this about.

He sat as the rose bush began to grow around him and around his flesh. Soon the thorns pierced his skin and grew to encapsulate his entire body.

The doctor went up once to check on him. The constable went up to try and talk him down however both men came back wholly change by the experience. They would not go into detail but both were stupefied by the grief and devotion this man carried. They were astounded by the sheer will of Mr. Kite, to exist only on the most meager of sustenance and still have a full awareness of everything.

Mr. Kite was so entrenched in his grief that he determined to spend the remainder of his days in that once spot outside of town, halfway between the hell he had created and the heaven he wished to enter, his wife in hand. It was his goal to never move from that spot, not until he heard her voice again.

It was fifteen years that he sat. When word spread of his conviction the villagers stopped speaking ill of the man and began to understand him. More and more food appeared in front of him, people would trim the rose bush away from his face so he would in fact be able to hear if his wife called out to him.

The parson would reference Mr. Kite in his sermons and anyone with a heart in their chest at all, would do good deeds in his name. it was a true reformation in the village brought about by the most tragic of circumstances one could believe.

It was fifteen years to the day he sat down, that Mr. Kite died. He passed in his sleep, so the elders of the village say, painless and calm. I would like to think that he knew nothing but pain, the loss of his wife, the bush growing into his body, the Latter Year winds and the Blistering sun of Early Year.

I also like to think that through all the pain he never lost the hope or love that took him to that place in the beginning. It is my hope that in his last minutes as this world began to fade from him; he heard her calling him home somewhere behind the morning sun in the green fields of heaven.