Useless

A man stood on the corner of a deadly silent and dark street. A distance away, he heard a train pass. Slowly yet surely it made its way across the land humming every so often as if reassuring someone of its presence. The man reached for a watch in his pocket but glanced at it only for a moment before hastily putting it back and looking around. 

The strange man wore a black suit with black pants and had on an all-black wristwatch. In fact, the only thing that he did wear that wasn’t black was his top hat, which even then was a very dark gray. Yet it made no difference at this time of night, for it all looked the same. 

All around him was an eerie darkness. A darkness that filled the silence of the ominous night. The older man turned down a backroad leading toward a blinking light off in the distance. 

A little ways down the two-laned road was a stoplight that steadily blinked yellow off and on. And on each side of the road were houses. Houses that stretched outward toward the stoplight, as if they were trying to hold the man in the dark for as long as possible. Eventually, the man sat down, leaning his head against the light post and looked around. He sat there for quite some time, not knowing what to do other than to wait. 

An older man approached dressed equally well a minute or so later carrying a fairly large, cumbersome lawn chair.

"Care to take a seat?" The old man said to the now looking surprisingly young lad.

“I guess,” said the younger man as he stood up, and helped open the cumbersome chair. He placed the chair facing the old man in the middle of the street.

It was quiet for some time, just the two of them, one sitting down and the other standing up both looking in similar directions. The two men looked at each other a few times but never really spoke. The older man eventually took out some paper and an oddly shaped, yet elegant pen. He then put the pen and paper up against the post so as to write on. The blinking yellow light above seemed to be losing its steadiness as the older man did this, but the light never fully went out. 

“Is there a reason for you coming here, or must I wait longer”, said the old man.

The younger man said nothing, instead, he pulled out a cigar, aging his face tremendously, and stared out into the night once again. 

The older man, losing his patience laid the pen and paper, on the ground at his feet and began to walk away.

“You forgot your chair”, said the younger man finally.

“No, I didn’t. It’s yours, keep it.”

The younger man grew uneasy and slightly desperate at the sound of the older man’s voice. “You can keep it, I don’t want your chair, old man.”

“‘Keep it' is what I said. You know I do have other places to be. I have other people to see, other people who care about their time and what they do with it. Now if you don’t care all that much about the time you have, so be it, but don’t you drag others down the same path of nonsensical time-wasting.”

“Come on sir just take your chair, I’ll even help you with it.”

“Nooo, I don’t like that one, one of its left legs are bent slightly. It makes the world wobble underneath one's feet.”

The younger man picked up the chair, leaving the pen and paper in its place next to the post and caught up with the old man walking down the desolate street.

The old man had long spider-like legs, matched with twig-like arms that where connected on his back. He wore round glasses with golden rims and a sluggish looking top hat which fell to one side. 

Behind the men, the stoplight ceased to beat.

“Tell me, did you have a reason for calling me, or was this just a game played to take up my precious time.”

“It was no game sir, I do have my reason.”

“Tell me then. What made you so keen to see ME of all people. You do know who I am, or should I say, what I am?”

“Yes I do, I know who you are. Now that I have done my thinking, please listen to my request.”

“Very well.”

“Sir, you may think of me as lazy, but I am a father of 2 children. Two wonderful, beautiful childr-”

“Aaanndd?”

“Well about a week or so ago, it was the eldest of the two’s, Jane’s, birthday. And, well, you see on the birthday cake I wrote Maurice’s name, my other child.”

The old man immediately burst out laughing hysterically. “You mean to tell me, that you mistook your eldest daughter for one of your other children?!”

“No, it isn’t like th-”

“Heeeeehehehe, haaahaha. That has to be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard someone come to me for. I thought you killed the damn thing with all that thinking you were doing back there, HOOOhoohoho. You do know I am capable of fixing any mistake. You do know that right?”

“Please sir, please she hasn’t left her room since the moment I handed her the cake. Please, sir, she didn’t even want to open the presents I had for her. Not even the presents, that’s all a 7-year-old cares about in life.”

“Obviously she does care for other things. And if you don’t know that by know, I’m not sure the girl is the one I should be fixing.”

“Please sir, all I’m saying is that you remove this one memory from her mind. Please, sir, I can’t take this amount of hatred coming from such innocence.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Yes, yes definitely.”

“Do you have the money for this.”

“I do. We may not have much, but my wife and I scraped off enough for this.”

“Very well then, hand me my pen and paper.”

“Your pen and paper? What pen?”

“The one I left on the ground at the post back there. Next to the stoplight. You do have it with you, don’t you?”

“I saw no pen, next to the post. All I picked up was this here chair.”

“Quickly then, run back to the post before dawn and retrieve my pen and paper. I need those to fix your child. Oh and keep your money, pay me when you return.”

The younger man took off back down the road toward the once lit stoplight. 

The older man stood in his place, watching the young man race off into the once eerie night. He turned around facing opposite the running man and walked off down the backroad leaving the lawn chair in its place. And as he did so, he pulled out an oddly shaped pen and tossed it down a gutter, muttering to himself the word useless.

The next day, after giving up searching for the elderly man, the younger man returned to his household and found his eldest daughter eating a bowl of Trix cereal unaware of the birthday cake incident. But that wasn't the only thing the old man changed that night. That wasn't even half of it.