Simple

Delivery:

There was a man. He was a simple man with a simple house. He had many of the same outfits, and ate many of the same things. He had a quiet life, a life alone, a life with victorian silk wallpaper and always three medium sized logs piled up to throw on the fire. On his way to work every day, he passed a small chapel in the middle of the town to hear the bells toll at eight in the morning. Always it was cloudy with a chance of rain. Always were there flocks of wrens flying from tree to tree, and back up into the spires of the buildings. Quaint, yes, this small world of simplicity was all this man knew, and he did not care to know more than the small routine of his simple life, and his simple house, with his simple ways.

This man grew old, and he never married. He faithfully worked his job until the business offered him retirement. He had meager assets, and several nights by the fireplace reading. He didn't say much, and when he did, he was brief and organized. This man did not have a drinking problem, or a vanity problem, or a gluttony problem, or a lust problem. This man held a moral and positive life.

Throughout his life, he always passed this small, simple chapel. He always looked up to the steeple, and gazed upon the cross mounted atop in wonder. Every day, on his way to work, he looked up to the mounted cross. Although, quite curiously, he never went into the chapel, though he would always notice people walking in, or a door left open where people met inside. In all the decades of walking past, he never left his simple life, in his simple ways. He always looked at the cross, but never looked to the cross. He wondered what it was doing up there, all the way up there, where these birds simply rested until stirring away to other perches. He simply wondered.

One day, this simple man died a simple death in his simple twin sized bed. He was old, and died in his simple room where there sat one dresser, a small mirror by the door, a picture of a cottage by the sea, pale blue walls, dark wooded floors, a small oriental rug. The air was stale, and dust danced in the light that crept in through the white curtains. He had not many friends, and one distant cousin who lived two counties away. No one was notified for a month. He simply died. Passing out of existence in this simple town.

As this simple man burned in hell, he could only in severe agony think back to the cross, and the many years of his simple life that he could have moved out of his normalcy to find out what this cross meant. He was simply delivered to what his comfort had made for him. He didn't mean ill, or have any desire of this place, but he simply went on without having his life changed. As sad as this is, it is simply how it goes.