Almost Heaven
Written by: Jackie Jordan
Mr. Peabody was a shy, tiny, timid man that hated his life and his job. A clerk in a bank, he succumbed to the ridicule and intimidation of his superiors by being a nobody who was blind in his left eye and wore thick glasses to correct the vision in the other. He was ordered around like a servant by the entire bank staff and found his only pleasure in reading books. During his breaks from work, he would hide in the basement and read Conan Doyle, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Mark Twain, and any other classic that he could acquire from the nearby library. He was labeled the ‘bookworm’ by his coworkers. They scorned and laughed at him daily, and made fun of him by gluing his current reading material together with glue.
Life in the late’50’s was not easy. The threat of nuclear war was the sign-of-the-times. Television programs were interrupted with emergency broadcasts from the federal government daily and students in public schools went through drills by hiding under their desks at the sound of warning sirens. Back-yard bomb shelters were the being built by the thousands.
On his break one day, Mr. Peabody was in his usual hiding place in the basement of the bank when the building began to shake. Dust rose from the floor and fell from the ceiling as files, boxes and books fell off of the shelves. Upon leaving the basement, Mr. Peabody realized that the inevitable threat had become true. A nuclear bomb leveled the city, leaving only rubble in its aftermath. All of his coworkers had perished, and exiting the bank he realized that the majority of the people in the city had met their demise, as well. The town was a smoldering pile of ruble.
Mr. Peabody accessed the situation and found solace in his newfound solitude. The nearby library had been demolished, but books were strewn about the area. He gathered stacks and stacks of books. Pleased with his array of reading material, he gloated over the fact that he would now be able to read in peace without being tormented by anyone. Books and books and books to read …he was in heaven. When he saw one of his favorite authors, Shakespeare, lying in the ruble he stepped over a cinderblock to pick it up and his glasses fell off, cracking the right lens. He was now legally blind.
Curled in a fetal position, Mr. Peabody cried in agony, realizing that his situation was now dismal and would be of horrid agony. With the world finally becoming an appealing place to him with an endless supply of books, now he could no longer read. The only remedy for him was death, so he cried in anguish and sought an end to his life…
In memory of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, 1959