The old man moved to the woodlands to get away from death. He has no one left, outlived his parents, siblings, friends, wife, and most heartbreakingly, four children—everyone he loved lost to fates he couldn’t understand or control: drugs, cancer, suicide, gunshot, rubella, poisoning, cancer, tornado, head-on, falling, cancer. So once a day, he fires his rifle toward the city, imagines the bullet killing a complete stranger and the confusion afterward. He doesn’t check the news reports for the bullet’s final destination because to have control over the randomness of death, he must not know the who. More importantly, the stranger’s friends and family must not know the why. We must never know the why.
Photo by tanakawho
