RAFTER
By Loui Cerviatti
The man folded up the aluminium step ladder and put it back against the wall. He then picked up the stool he had brought in from the house and positioned it in the middle of room. He climbed the stool and stood there in deep thought for a moment or two. Then with a sigh, placed the noose around his neck, kicked the stool, and received serious rope burns about his neck a second or so before the rafter snapped with a loud dry crack, unloosening it's load. He survived, although he could not utter a single word for ten days. His wife didn't. She rushed from the house the moment she heard the loud snap, ran to the garage, opened the door, and still rushing, ran into the sharp splintered end of the rafter. She died instantly, impaled in the left eye. Her husband sat on the cold greasy concrete floor. Legs spread and arms hanging uselessly near his crotch. His eyes protruding from their sockets, looked in the general direction of his wife, who was now, in slow motion, sliding off the titanic splinter and like a dying snake, soundlessly, curling herself on the floor. His thoughts, numbering in their thousands, were all bouncing off a black wall which only he could see.
The man succeeded in his second attempt six months later, by leaping from the roof of a tenement block. By then, the rafter in his old garage had been replaced. The old broken ones, rested at the city dump, where the copper stained gory one, had by now been meticulously cleaned by the local rodent population, and was protruding, like a dare, from the sides of a sizable garbage heap. Two by four and eight foot long. Perfect for the supporting beams of the new tree club house, thought young Jimmy as he tugged and jerked the timber out of the stinking pile and carted it home.
And with a little help from his younger brother Bobby, and lots of help from his father's tool-shed, tools which of course were now resting and rusting unused around the construction site, the tree club-house was finally erected.
The opening party of the tree club-house was of course a success. Except for the small matter of the (you know the rafter) giving way. The only major injury beside bruises and small bone breaks, went to the only girl invited to the club warming party. Molly Brown, eight years old, suffered a broken spine and never walked again. Molly was bright, 190 IQ. She always wanted to be the president of the country. Now she was a quad. Her head resting on a 2 by 4 piece of hardwood as neighbourhood parents ran around counting casualties.
Jimmie's father banned any further tree-house constructions as he collected long missing tools from around the disaster area and replaced them on their outlined racks in his tool-shed. The timber debris, collected and stockpiled behind the shed, awaited the winter burning.
The man folded up the aluminium step-ladder and put it back against the wall. He then picked up the stool he had brought in from the house and positioned it in the middle of the floor. He climbed the stool and stood there in deep thought for a moment or two. Then with a sigh, placed the noose around his neck just as a figure appeared in a blaze of light. The figure pointed a weapon he held in his hand towards the man and a shot rang out. The man fell from the stool. He was dead. The figure dropped the revolver next to the body then climbed the stool and untied the rope. Rope and figure disappeared in a flash of light just as the man's wife rushed in. She sold the house six months later and moved to Queensland, where she married a succesfull builder.
Molly Brown became the first female president of Australia, in 2009.
Jimmy became a pioneer in the science of neutrinos and moved to Canada where he received the Nobel prize in 2015 for his innovations of quantum theories. He disappeared from his home laboratory in Ontario in 2017 and was never seen again. He was practically forgotten by 2020.
Jimmie's father always had a good kit of tools hanging on his marked tool-board. What he didn't have though, was a supply of kindling next to his shed.
END
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