Suicide is a Sad Game (standard:humor, 796 words)
Author: KShaw	Added: Mar 03 2005	Views/Reads: 3625/0	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
So, I’ve revealed to you that I’m a novelist. I’m also the owner of a vivid imagination. Meaning my first sentence may not be true. This fact is born out by my uncanny knack of inventing a lie for all and every occasion. At the time of writing I wish I c

Suicide is a sad game, for even when you've perfected the idea, which
most don't; there will always be the need for a ‘Dummies guide to 
Suicide.' 

Take my friend, Harry, a golfing partner. We shared many a round
together with him always trying to sneak the extra shot off the 
scorecard, like the time I caught him standing on his ball in the rough 
while pleading it was lost, and laughing at each other's stupidity. 
Harry lies at the foot of the hill next to the park. Which hill and 
which park is irrelevant. I went there yesterday, just to say a few 
words, listen to the silence, think about the achievement of his 
demise, and offer my belated congratulations. Golf was a kind of 
communion for us. The place he and I would go to avoid reality. 

Harry always said he'd never master anything, which, he would conclude,
is the reason he never got below twenty-four handicap. “Just once,” 
he'd say at some point during the round, “I'd like to do one thing 
better than anyone else. I'm seventy six years of age, Bert, and can't 
bring to mind one thing I've done perfectly.” 

This from a man who'd spent most of his adult life trying to kill
himself, first with drink, then fags, and lately with pain killers. The 
combination of which could be viewed as a long term attempt at suicide, 
but none quite finished him off. 

Harry was a bastard, not literally, but generally speaking. Murder was a
constant thought in the day to day life of Harry's wife.  It was the 
‘how' that caused her to stumble from year to year without ever coming 
up with a perfect solution. 

Harry, a rich man by modern standards, not a tycoon, just an ordinary
millionaire, had guarded his money well, investing wisely or not at 
all, and only betting on certainties. The kind of man who would bet me 
ten quid I wouldn't sink my next putt, which happened to be forty feet 
in length, rolling over a mound and steeply falling away to the right. 
The reason I would occasionally accept such a long shot was to take 
that rarest of opportunities to see him drop dead laughing. I failed 
him on a regular basis. 

Most suicidal people flop around the idea, even flirt with the odd
attempt, and some by pure accident actually manage it. 

That's why it's a sad game. 

Harry cared little for life's social graces, abusing most of them at the
side of his wife. So for many years Mrs. Harry amused her self with 
inventive and intuitive ideas on how to end her husband's life. While 
he slept in the chair, afternoon or evening, was always a good time to 
‘run him through' she would think, but that would only bring about long 
lasting recriminations. She rarely spoke about her adventures into such 
murderous thoughts, except to say something like: “I'll bloody kill 
him.” Not exactly ambiguous, but always laughed at by those who knew 
her. 

I stood at the graveside asking Harry how the hell he could see his next
putt from there, telling him to raise his head a little. I knew he'd 
cheated strokes off me for years, a slight toe-kick here, a few inches 
there, a tufted lie after cleaning his ball. There was never a hope of 
someone like me beating Harry. Harry always beat himself. 

So when we stood looking down on the eighteenth green; a hundred and
sixty two yard par three, with my balata sitting twenty feet from the 
pin, nestling the edge of the green, Harry looked at me, winked and 
grasped his five iron. 

It was a perfectly struck ball, as perfect as any seventy six year old
man can hit, and it flew through the air landing fifteen feet from the 
pin, where it bounced, curved on the slope, hesitated on the rim, and 
dropped out of sight. 

Members standing on the clubhouse veranda cheered and raised their
glasses, applauding his approach to the green as if he were Gary 
Player, dressed, as he was, in his black trousers and black golf shirt. 
Harry touched his ‘tam' politely, and plucked the ball out of the hole, 
holding it aloft like a champion. 

That evening Harry was found dead in his chair, a shotgun blast I heard.
He had achieved all he wanted. Harry was done. 

Suicide is a sad game. But not when you are as clever as Harry. He'd
achieved something for which he would be remembered:  one ‘creamed' 
five iron off the eighteenth tee. 

There's a new plaque in the clubhouse: Harry Parks. First player to
‘hole in one' on the eighteenth 

Harry's wife sobbed at the funeral. Yes, Harry was a bastard. 


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