Mr Camus

Man on the ledge

Mr Camus was of average height, average girth, average intelligence and perfectly average luck. He had falling, fading brown hair and thin spectacles. He had no formal form of income, and he was seldom awake at this hour, but today he wore a pale blue tie. Even Mr Camus agreed that it looked quite nice, almost a poetic tribute to his honour, as it flapped frantically in the wind. How perfect this picture will be in, in high definition, in living rooms and cafes across the country. It was moving every which way, in part because he had not tucked it into his shirt as he should have done, and in part because he was standing a top the tallest bridge in the city.

For all of his averageness, he was incredibly creative, if morally bankrupt. Each year, on this day, he would threaten to take his own life in a public demonstration. Today he picked the time and place with utmost care. The morning news helicopter which traversed the bay around the bridge would surely fly past, and remain there upon sighting him, bringing him all the eyes and surrender of prime-time television. The bridge would be jammed and they would all witness his greatness too. He took great pride in the weeks of planning and observation. No one does it like I do, he thought, no one is like Mr Camus. Mr Camus is the man to bring it all to life.

He stood with his chest out towards the great expanse of his domain, the wind licking his cheeks. It felt good for a spell, but his face grew cold and his fingers were stiffening. The wind whipped harder and harder. He forgot his coat, and his bag was no help. He brought only his snacks and a few emergency supplies. Something was tragically wrong. No cars moved in either direction. The on the bridge, but spinning between the two entries. It wasn’t flying past. His gravity was idle.

“This is outrageous!” he screamed. He shuffled for a few minutes to one side.

Ambulances and police cut the lanes off. A family-sized station wagon had morphed and mangled between a semi-trailer and a lane barrier. Glass and panel littered the bitumen like a blood stained quilt. No one honked, or beeped. The scene was too tragic. The folded metal and thick a thick plume of charcoal smoke heralded delay for hundreds of metres. The fire department arrived with buzz saws and cutters. It was quiet.

“Oh for heavens sake!” 

Judging the situation perilous he shuffled to the other end. It was hardly improved. The familiar patchwork of a thousand young faces in protest raised the already seething scourge within him.

“Selfish bastards!”

A few curious faces greeted Mr Camus as he climbed down the final rivet-bound spans of grey steel. Young people don’t know or notice anything he thought. They stand on the shoulders of giants! He turned to the nearest delinquent, a man with short blue here and glasses thicker than his own.

“What if I slipped on the way down? No one is watching!”

He scalded one youth after another and moved with the haste of an undersized man in a mood. He picked on them sporadically, for their curly hair, for their ripped jeans, for the way they dragged their feet, gaining gusto and theatre with each dispatch. He cursed at the crowd the whole way until he was among them, right in the throng of the smelly, sweaty good-for-nothing pretenders. But Mr Camus was creative, and he stopped stiff and still. It wasn’t fresh material, but he had something. They didn’t deserve the A-material anyway.  

He drew the plastic pistol above his head.

.

“I’m on the edge. I’ll do it!” He was impressed by his own commitment. His cry had a withering tenor. The voice lessons were more than fruitful.

“He’s got a gun! Get him!”

Three of the most despicable vagrants in the cackle tackled him from behind. They were proper lunatics. They took his gun and whipped him with it.

“What are you doing! Give that back! Can’t you see I’m suicidal!”

Mr Camus yelped and squirmed and writhed.

“Get the fascist!”

They cracked him a few more times all over. From his head to his ribs to his groin and his ass, no flesh was left untenderized. Mr Camus was crying, sobbing, begging and yelling all at once. It was a sickening display of helplessness from a grow man. The crowd cheered, hooped and hollered, yielding to the desires of an unruly mob finally in possession of their carcass.

“Teach him a lesson!”

“It’s plastic!”

“I know it’s plastic, give it back! And let me go!”

“He’s a fed! Undercover! With a plastic gun!”

“Cut your budget did they?”

 “Who wants a piece of him!”

In two seconds flat Mr Camus was surrounded by an unholy trinity of crazies, lunatics and maniacs taking turns in a bizarrely polite and orderly orchestra of violence, moving out & back in again like a ‘and then you step in’ barn dance, spitting, kicking and trampling with fantastic co-ordination. They ripped his shirt and took his tie and pants.

“The hell do you need my pants for!”

By heavens he felt vulnerable. The injustice of it all, he thought. One man’s dream, a dream for all of them, crushed by the heaving mass of the collective. Oh if they could only see him, in all his glory, and all the work he’s done, atop the bridge.

“Finally” Mr Camus shrieked. The crowd dispersed like kicked dust.

The police sliced through the protest, threatening fines and a night in the lock-up.

“Keep your eye out for the jumper! Set up an evac route. The chopper is up and around again.”

“He’s down here!” Mr Camus croaked between coughing, with his ass up, shielding his stomach.

The riot quad ran straight past him until he turned over.

“Drop the gun!”

Mr Camus was flipped over and walloped by the riot squad.

“Do you know who I am? You feckless imbeciles? Do you think I have time for this?”

"Oh it's this idiot."