always the recluse

He had always been a recluse. Quiet, shy, polite when spoken to. But he never spoke out of turn. To anyone. At all. He had always been a recluse. They had thought, and spread rumors, about him. That weren’t very flattering. He was a murderer, a psychopath. He kept children inside a basement, tortured them. Abused them. Things that human beings come up with. To accuse others of. And things they do themselves. He had always been a recluse. And each week, there was a new rumor about him. They didn’t seem to get bored of it. It was a sleepy neighborhood after all. Where nothing happened. They needed some entertainment. He had nice clothes. Which was unusual here. So why he chose to live here, when he could have lived farther downtown, or across the river, they didn’t know. He had always been a recluse. And they spread rumors about him. But when push came to shove, he was there.

The world was in chaos and disarray. And not in the dramatic, magnanimous sense. In the very real sense. In the sense that they should have been prepared, and weren’t. In the sense that time after time, decade after decade - which seemed like a long time, but to the world, was the blink of an eye - they faced these problems. Yet most of them didn’t learn from them, and did what all humans have the tendency to do, fall back into the blissful, warm, big, comforting hands of complacency. It nurtured them, kissed their foreheads, and made them forget all about it. And so, the world was not prepared.

There were always opportunists. He was not one of them. When push came to shove, he was there. Not price gouging. He could afford them, and he had had foresight. So he bought a whole bunch. And began to sell them, at the price he’d bought them, to the neighbors. Soon, there were huge lines outside his door, people standing six feet apart, people finding out within six degrees of separation, the generous soul that was selling this much needed necessity at market price. They were too scared by the pandemic that was showering the world with its terror and fear, to wonder why. Couldn’t a human being just be nice. Be kind? And they left it at that.

He had so many bottles, it seemed his supply would never run out. He only gave away one. And he always seemed to know when yours was finished. He’d be able to look you in the eye, and know if you were lying or not. You would gulp at the perception, and not try to trick him again. He was a hero in the neighborhood.

He had always been a recluse. They had spread rumors about him. Terrible rumors. Yet, when push came to shove, this man, who was not of their race, who was privileged, was the one to help them. They used the bottles he gave them. They didn’t notice that their hands were getting rough and red. They didn’t notice the incessant itching. They didn’t notice when they bled