The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuin

This is definitely my favorite short story of all time. You should read it.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

by Ursula K LeGuin - from The Wind's Twelve Quarters

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of
Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The ringing
of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between
houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown
gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public
buildings, processions

moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and
gray, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies
and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a
shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the
procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls
rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the
singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city,
where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and
girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and
long, lithe arms,exercised their restive horses before the race. The
horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were
braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their
nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly
excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our
ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west the mountains
stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so
clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned
withwhite-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark
blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that
marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of
the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding throughout the
city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful
faint sweetness of the air from time to time trembled and gathered
together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells.

Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of
Omelas?

They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do
not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become
archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain
assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next
for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his
noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled
slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep
slaves. They were not barbarians, I do not know the rules and laws of
their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they
did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the
stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the
bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet
shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. There were not less complex
than us.

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and
sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather
stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the
treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the
terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it
hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to
embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost
lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any
celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of Omelas?
They were not naive and happy children--though their children were, in
fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose
lives were not wretched. O miracle! But I wish I could describe it
better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a
city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps
it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming
it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For
instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or
helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that
the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just
discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor
destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category,
however--that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of
comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they could perfectly well have
central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of
marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources,
fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of
that: it doesn't matter. As you like it. I incline to think that
people from towns up and down the coast have been coming to to Omelas
during the last days before the Festival on very fast little trains
and double-decked trams, and that the trains station of Omelas is
actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than the
magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I fear that
Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells,
parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would
help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which
issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy
and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who
desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my
first idea. But really it would be better not to have any temples in
Omelas--at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely
the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like
divine souffles to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the
flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above
the copulations, and the gory of desire be proclaimed
upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of
these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing
I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there
be? I thought at first there were no drugs, but that is
puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of
drooz may perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a
great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after
some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very
arcane and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the
pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not habit-forming. For
more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer. What else, what
else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory, surely, the
celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do
without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the
right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A
boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not
against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest
in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's
summer: This is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the
victory they celebrate is that of life. I don't think many of them
need to take drooz.

Most of the processions have reached the Green Fields by now. A
marvelous smell of cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of
the provisioners. The faces of small children are amiably sticky; in
the benign gray beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich pastry are
entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are
beginning to group around the starting line of the course. An old
woman, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket,
and tall young men wear her flowers in their shining hair. A child of
nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd alone, playing on a wooden
flute.

People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him,
for he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly
rapt in the sweet, thing magic of the tune.

He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.

As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a
trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line: imperious,
melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender legs, and some
of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the
horses' necks and soothe them, whispering. "Quiet, quiet, there my
beauty, my hope..." They begin to form in rank along the starting
line. The crowds along the racecourse are like a field of grass and
flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has begun.

Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No?
Then let me describe one more thing.

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas,
or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there
is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps
in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed
window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a
couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a
rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar
dirt usually is.

The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet
or disused tool room. In the room, a child is sitting. It could be a
boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is
feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become
imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose
and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits
hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is
afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it
knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and
nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes,
except that sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or
interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person,
or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the
child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at
it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug
are hastily filled, the door is locked; the eyes disappear. The people
at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always
lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's
voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good, " it says. "Please let me
out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for
help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of
whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so
thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on
a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks
and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own
excrement continually.

They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have
come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They
all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and
some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty
of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of
their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their
makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of
their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and
twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those
who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an
adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the
matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always
shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had
thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence,
despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the
child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up
into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed
and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were
done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight
of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To
exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that
single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands
for the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within
the walls indeed.

The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word
spoken to the child.

Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when
they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may
brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to
realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get
much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food,
no real doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to
know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of
fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane
treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without
walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own
excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they
begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept
it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity
and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true
source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid,
irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not
free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and
their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of
their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of
their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with
children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling
in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful
music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the
sunlight of the first morning of summer.

Now do you believe them? Are they not more credible? But there is one
more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go see the child does
not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at
all. Sometimes also a man or a woman much older falls silent for a day
or two, then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and
walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out
of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking
across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl,
man or woman.

Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the
houses with yellow- lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the
fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They
go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they
do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less
imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe
it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to
know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

The Deal by Travis McKinney

The Deal by Travis McKinney

“Alright, listen to me and pay attention, this is how it works…” he said quickly. I wasn’t sure how long I had been waiting for him, but I had been standing there a while before I saw him, with his dreadlocks stretching halfway down his back as he walked across the street in to the lawn where I was standing, waiting. He pulled what looked like one of those needles used to blow up basketballs and footballs out of his pocket. It was golden. “You are going to take the needle and stick it into the vein in your left arm. Remember, left arm.” The thought of it scared me to half to death. I wasn’t sure that the needle was even sharp enough to pierce my skin and it still had the brown residue of God knows who’s blood on it.
“Okay,” I said, “and then what happens?”
“Well… you flip the switch,” he pointed to a small switch where the needle, if it were a needle used to blow up basketballs, would screw into the pump, “then you wait a few seconds… you have to be alone though, okay? You wait a few seconds and your body twitches and then you here a loud… CRACK!” He yelled at me and startled me. The man’s yell caught the attention of a few people walking on the street and they stared. I was afraid that the police would catch us, but deep down I knew that this dreadlocked man had done this so many times and he had watched himself and planned the perfect way and the perfect time to pass the needle on to me. I would be the carrier of the single most important and most dangerous object in the world. What I had in my hand could both save a child from being hit by a bus, and rip the universe to shreds. It could make anyone wish they were never born and could also grant that wish. It could bring back the dead.
“Okay, so how much do I owe you?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, you already paid me, or you will or whatever. You know what I mean.” I had no idea what he meant. A bus came around the corner. “Alright, this is it! This is it!” he exclaimed excitedly. The bus stopped at the bus stop in front of us. “Stay right here! Don’t move! I will be right back!” he yelled as he jumped on the bus. He said a few words to the driver and then started yelled my name. ‘How does he know my name?’ I thought. Looking at the people on the bus he yelled my name again. I was just about to answer him when I heard someone on the bus say, “What’s up man?” I couldn’t see the man’s face but I could see the two of them exchange words and then I saw the man on the bus hand the dreadlocked man an envelope.
“Alright, dude, your good to go,” the dreadlocked man said to me as he stepped off the bus.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“I was just making sure it worked.”
“Making sure it worked?”
“The needle, dude. I was making sure it worked on you and it does. You already time traveled.”

---------------------------

I think this is my favorite short story I have written. This exact scene happened in my dream a couple of nights ago in what was one of the best and most exciting dreams I have ever had.

Microfiction

Renovations

As he drove pass the school, they were driving their bulldozers, wrecking the rusted swing sets and monkey bars that had given so many children happiness for so many years. “You’re all killers of dreams!” he yelled as he drove on. He cried for those who were too young to have swung on the same swing-sets and climbed the same monkey bars he had as a child. He couldn’t see the boxes filled with the unassembled pieces of the new, larger, more colorful jungle gym.


I live across the street from an elementary school and today they were doing renovations to the recess area. I thought about yelling "You are all killers of dreams!" at the construction workers because I thought it would be probably about the funniest thing to here while you are tearing down a swing set, but I held my tongue. Anyway, this event is the spark that inspired this piece of microfiction.

SUNSETTER, MOONRISER: The Tragic & Explosive Death of Dean Rainard

SUNSETTER, MOONRISER: The Tragic & Explosive Death of Dean Rainard

Installment One: Starry Night

"Why do people like Van Gogh so much?" Dean Rainard asked his class, his brow furrowed cynically, his tone abrasive.

"What the hell makes Van Gogh so fucking important? Daisy! You like Van Gogh, right? What is so great about Van Gogh?"

Dean Rainard was an art historian. More specifically, a tenth grade art history teacher. Daisy Coalfield was one of his pupils.

"Yes, Mr. Rainard, I like Van Gogh," her voice quivered.

"And what is it that you like about him?"

"I dont know..." she said, "I guess I just like the way it looks."

"YOU JUST LIKE THE WAY IT LOOKS!? YOU JUST LIKE THE WAY IT LOOKS!?" Dean was yelling now at poor Daisy Coalfield. "Have you ever even heard of any other artist besides Van Gogh? Name one, just one..."

Daisy was stunned to the point of not being able to speak. The whole class was stunned to the point of not being able to speak. Even Mrs. Couch, the 11th grade, Intermediate English teacher in the classroom next door, who was on her planning period, was stunned to the point of not being able to speak. The walls of Eel River Athapaskan High School were not thick. Consequently, Mrs. Couch caught every word of Mr. Rainard's outburst. She had been eating a ham and cheese sandwich and upon hearing Dean Rainard's explosion, was so astonished that she inhaled part of her ham and cheese sandwich and died. She was found 45 minutes later by her boyfriend, the school janitor, Elvis Mann. But her death is not the subject of this story. Dean Rainard's death is the subject of this story.

Mr. Rainard looked at the slide of Starry Night which was being projected on the wall.

"Sunsetter, moonriser," he mumbled. He did not know why he mumbled this. Maybe it was because the image of the crescent moon in the painting was glowing like a sun, with a halo around it. Maybe it was simply a random firing of his brain mixed with the confusion and anger that was stirring inside it. He followed this with,

"VAN GOGH WAS A CRAZY PERSON."

You are a crazy person, thought Daisy Coalfield.

This was true. Dean Rainard was a crazy person. He had been a crazy person his entire life, but his craziness was the type of crazyness that one is able to hold inside himself for a period of time before being let go in an explosive and violent manner. Dean Rainard had held his craziness in his whole life until today. Today was the day he was letting it out.

"PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE WHY I HAVE COME TO HATE ART! IGNORANT, STUPID, FUCKING TENTH GRADERS THAT THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYTHING! THE ONLY REASON YOU LIKE ART IS BECAUSE OF HOW IT LOOKS! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! YOU DONT GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES OF IT, ALL YOU WANNA DO IS LOOK AT IT! LOOK AT IT AND ADMIRE HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS AND WONDERFUL AND COLORFUL AND YOU KNOW WHAT?" Then he said something that truly baffled his students. It would have truly baffled anyone who heard it.

"DID YOU KNOW IN EUROPE THEY DONT EVEN CALL IT A BATHROOM! THEY CALL IT A TOILET! THEY DONT TRY TO SUGARCOAT IT. THEY CALL IT HOW IT IS! A PLACE FOR SHITTING! YOU IGNORANT TENTH GRADE AMERICANS... YOU ARE ALL STUPID FUCKING AMERICANS!"

Dean Rainard then walked to the door, leaving behind his breifcase, and walked out of the classroom. Since Mrs. Couch had passed away, there was no one else in the vicinity of Dean Rainard's Tenth Grade art history class to hear and confront Mr. Rainard about the way he was speaking to his pupils. There was no one there to see him storm out of the class. The only witnesses were the students in his tenth grade art history class, who were now all crying or on the verge of tears.

Instalment Two: Dean, Dean, the Jumping Bean

Here is something everyone should know about people afflicted in the way Dean Rainard was afflicted: the affliction gradually accumulates over time. When he was a child, Dean Rainard attended Eel River Athapaskan Grammar School. While he was there he became the victim of countless attacks of bullies. Until third grade, a bully by the name of Graham Stokes would give him a punch in the stomach and take Dean’s lunch money everyday. One day, Graham Stokes beat Dean Rainard so badly that Rainard was hospitalised for three days on account of having a broken nose, two broken ribs, and internal bleeding. It is really sick what some kids will do for two dollars and fifty cents. Graham Stokes got expelled for this and when he was fifteen, got put in the crazy bin for killing all two hundred and fourteen of farmer Eli Gristle’s hens by decapitation.

It was Graham Stokes who, in the first grade, gave Dean Rainard the nickname that he would go by for the rest of his school career. The nickname was this:

Dean Dean the jumping bean

Jumping on a trampoline

Jump-so-high

Jump-so-low

He jumped on a buffalo!

This name stuck with him until he graduated from Eel River Athapaskan High School when he was eighteen. The name started out as a way for Graham Stokes and all his first grade buddies to insult Dean but eventually was adopted by the entire faculty of the school and even Dean’s own parents.

His mom would call him in for dinner,

“Dean-Dean-the-jumping-bean-jumping-on-a-trampoline-jump-so-high-jump-so-low-he-jumped-on-a-buffalo! Come in for dinner sweetheart!” And Dean would come.

Dean never told anyone how much he hated being called this. He simply learned to deal with it in two ways. One way he dealt with it was by becoming a fabulous multi-tasker. Doing as many things as he could simultaneously helped Dean keep his mind off how much he hated being called by his nickname. He learned to listen to music, while studying as many teenagers do. But his multi-tasking went further than this. He could write paragraphs upon paragraphs with his right hand, while drawing a self portrait with his left. He could jog while reading and eating ice cream. He obviously became quite famous for his multi-tasking. How could someone who was riding a bike and mixing ingredients for a cake go unnoticed? He was unknowing of it, but, although multi-tasking was a main defence mechanism for Dean Rainard, it would eventually bring about his death. The other way he dealt with the hatred of the nickname was by silently and unknowingly becoming a crazy person.

Instalment 3: History

Eel River Athapaskan Highschool is located in Olympia, California, a small town outside of Fortuna, about three miles from the Eel River which flows northwest into the Pacific Ocean. Eel River Athapaskan High School is the only high school in Olympia. It is connected to the only middle school in Olympia, Eel River Athapaskan Middle School, which is connected to the only Elementary School in Olympia, Eel River Athapaskan Grammar School.

Dean Rainard had lived in Olympia most of his life. Only briefly had he lived in Fortuna while attending college at Fortuna Community College where he double majored in Art History and Early Hungarian Literature. He had always been very interested in, and connected with both of these subjects. His grandfather was Lazlo Farkas, an immigrant from Hungary and a leader in the art movement known as Futurism. Lazlo Farkas, being Jewish, came over to America during the rise of the Nazi party in Europe. He, like many others of his time, could smell the trouble brewing in Europe and decided it would be far better to be a Jew in Anti-Semitic America than in a Jew in the hands of the Nazis. Farkas was twenty-three when he came to America.

On arrival in America, he changed his name to Lazlo Franks. In his first week of being in America, he met the love of his life, Julia Johnson, a full-blooded American who instantly fell in love with Lazlo Franks’ exotic accent. Lazlo and Julia married and begot three children, all girls, Juliette, Carol, and Elizabeth (Little Betty). Little Betty Franks grew up and ran away with Larry Rainard to California. It was in Olympia, California where they got married and had one single child, Dean Rainard. Dean Rainard had never been to Hungary, the land of his ancestory. He had never been to Europe. He had never been out of California. He had never experienced anyone calling a bathroom a toilet. The only reason that he knew that Europeans called bathrooms toilets was because of a Humanities class he took when he was in tenth grade at Eel River Athapaskan High School. His teacher was Dr. Winslow Stephens. Dr. Winslow Stephens was subject of the Queen of England.

Every semester, during Dr. Winslow Stephens’ famed lecture on the history of the toilet, he would say, “Did you know that in Europe they don’t even call it a bathroom? The call it a toilet! They don’t try to sugarcoat it. The call it how it is! A PLACE FOR SHITTING!” At this all the students of Dr. Winslow Stephens’ tenth grade Humanities class would erupt with laughter. They loved Dr. Stephens’ because he would cuss. Dean Rainard loved him. He wanted to be him when he grew up. Dean Rainard cussed in his class and the class cried. Dean Rainard had grown up and was nothing like the beloved Dr. Winslow Stephens. He was his antithesis. Where Dr. Stephens had a loving wife and two loving children, Dean Rainard had threw away his only chance at love when he left his first and only love, Denise Wright, whom he was engaged to marry. Where Dr. Stephens was well educated in many areas, and at Oxford I might add, Dean Rainard only knew a whole lot about Art History and Hungarian literature. Where Dr. Stephens had come to love art even more by teaching it to his students, Dean Rainard had come to hate it. But all of this was partly due to the fact that he was a crazy person.

Instalment 4: “I WAS WRONG”

Dean Rainard, like most Art Historians, was not an artist. He had always thought that he had no artistic ability and therefore had never tried art out. Until the day he died, which was this day, he had never even painted one single painting. When his grandfather, the late Lazlo Franks, died, he died with hardly any possessions. All Dean inherited was a canvas on an easel, a brush, and a tube of Cerulean Blue. His inheritance had sat untouched in his basement for twenty-four years.

Dean Rainard walked out of Eel River Athapaskan High School with tears in his eyes. He didn’t know what was happening to him. He had no clue that he was a crazy person. Most crazy people don’t know that they are crazy people. He walked the small streets of Olympia all the way to Holiday Road, on which he lived. He walked up to his drive way. The top third of his white button-up dress shirt was now soaked with mucus. He cried his way into his small ordinary house, and down in to his small ordinary basement. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this. His basement had no windows. He sat there, on the floor of his basement for three hours crying.

There is nothing good for me, there has never been anything good for me, there never will be anything good for me, he thought. Dean Rainard sat there and sobbed for three hours, a pitiful mess. A lump of craziness in a white button-up dress shirt completely soaked in mucus. After three hours, he got himself up still crying. He looked over and saw his inheritance from Lazlo Franks in the corner of the room. He walked over to it. The canvas was huge, six feet wide and four feet tall. Getting it into the basement twenty-four years earlier had been a pain. Dean unscrewed the cap of the Cerulean Blue. It smelled nice, like chemicals. It was a soothing smell, like how gasoline is a soothing smell. It is interesting how even in the deepest moments of insanity, the clearist thoughts of clarity can still come to a crazy persons head. The chemical smell of the paint brought the clearist thoughts of clarity to Dean Rainard’s head. He squirted a glob of Cerulean Blue into the palm of his hand and lifted it to his nose. It brought back a memory that he couldn’t really put his finger on. He didn’t know what it reminded him of. Childhood? His grandfather? Did I even ever meet my grandfather? he thought. What ever the memory was he couldn’t tell. And whatever it was, was making him cry even harder.

He took the brush and dipped it in the glob on his hand. He wrote three words on the canvas over and over:

I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I…

He wrote it in big, bold, capital letters.

I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG…

Dean Rainard covered the canvas with these words. He wrote the phrase ‘I WAS WRONG’ 322 times. By the time he was done with the painting his entire left arm and most of his shirt was covered in paint and mucus. He walked up stairs, tracking paint through most of the house, still sobbing. He walked to the laundry room, took off his clothes, and put them in the washer. He then walked into his bathroom and hopped in the shower.

Instalment 5: Death from Hyper-Multisternutation

The medical term for Dean Rainard’s death is Hyper-multisternutation. Hyper-multisternutation is real, and is the cause of three deaths a year in America on average. Not many people know what HMS is, and many of the people that do know what it is don’t think it really exists. But it does, look it up.

One of the leading researchers in the causes in HMS, the Ukrainian Dr. Bohslav-Boris Krevo, published a journal on HMS in 1997 where he stated,

“In our research, we have concluded that there is no relative correlation between HMS and SHC [Spontaneous Human Combustion]. Though many people still believe that they are related, they in fact have no apparent relativity. […] We have hardly any clue to why HMS occurs, or how to protect oneself from it, although it should be noted that the very few people who share the tragic fate of becoming victims of HMS, also share the tendency to be fabulous multi-taskers.”

Something everyone should know about the type of craziness that Dean Rainard was a victim of: it is somewhat governed by Newton’s third law. Newton’s third law particularly pertains to the physical world, but the physical world works much like the mental world. Newton’s third law can be summed up in to one sentence, “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” So, when Newton’s third law is applied to the case of Dean Rainard’s craziness, anyone can see that with the clearest thoughts of clarity that came to his head, the most insane thoughts of insanity came as well.

While Dean Rainard was in the shower his clearest thoughts of clarity weaned, and his thoughts of insanity returned. He was being attacked by the thoughts more than he ever was in his entire life. He was still weeping, and was remembering everything about his life that made him go crazy: Graham Stokes, his nickname, how he was a terrible teacher, how he left the love of his life in cowardice, how he was nothing like Dr. Winslow Stephens. He remembered how he used to take care of these thoughts, by multi-tasking. Dean Rainard then went into a fit of multi-tasking that killed him. He peed, sneezed, farted, burped, puked, coughed, defecated, yawned, and cried, all while saying quietly, “Oh my.”

And let’s not forget that he had laundry in the washer as well.

Officials found Dean Rainard fourteen hours later. There was a missing account put on file for him since he wasn’t at school the next day and the police sent a squad car to his place on Holiday Road to see if he was there. The police officer that found Dean Rainard was Conrad Vincent. Conrad Vincent had only been on the Olympia Police Force for three weeks. When Conrad Vincent found Dean Rainard in the shower, most of Dean’s body had already gone down the drain. Vincent didn’t know just what he had witnessed. There was blood, and guts and faecal matter covering the walls of the small bathroom. Vincent immediately vomited and called for backup. It was concluded after investigation that Rainard had been a victim of HMS and consequently exploded. The remains of his body that didn’t go down the drain were scraped off of the walls and ceiling and floor and cremated just as Dean Rainard would have wanted.

Dean’s painting entitled ‘I WAS WRONG’ caught the eye of Dr. Winslow Stephens, who had since retried and become a renowned art collector and critic. Stephens bought the painting from the Olympia government for next to nothing. This was all in 2003. Since then, the painting's value has sky rocketed up to fifteen million dollars and is now on display in the Guggenheim Museum, in Manhattan.

There has been much literature written about theories of what Dean Rainard could have been so wrong about. Maybe it was leaving his first and only love, Denise Wright. Maybe it was his view that the only art with value is art that has sociological aspects to it. Maybe it was the fact that he was nothing like Dr. Winslow Stephens. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because he was made wrong.