FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #3

I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. An intriguing article in the "Death Quarterly" newspaper about the demise of one of the most important men of our time, Charlie Thatcher. A man just as much hated as he was loved. A man who had everything he wanted in the world but eventually lost it all... in a rather sad and peculiar manner, so to speak. Though the demise of Mr.Thatcher has spread a worldwide phenomenon, the details of his death are misinformed and turned from fact into fiction. My version of his death is the true version, I feel I must tell you this in case you become... misinformed by misinformaion.

In his majestic mansion, deep in the country atop a high hill, Mr. Thatcher awaited his supper. His supper, which was always made by his maid Gwen at exactly seven o’clock in the evening, consisted of chicken, peas, mashed potatoes and a glass of wine on the side. Of course Mr. Thatcher would have to be fed the delicious meal by Gwen by hand because he couldn’t do it himself, he has been paralyzed from the neck down for quite a while now.

He became paralyzed sometime in the Summer about ten years ago. He was in the back of his very own personal limousine with four gorgeous women (two of them underage) doing who knows what, when a large bus hit them from the rear right side,killing the women and nearly breaking Mr. Thatcher’s spine.The driver of the limo and everybody on the bus remained unharmed but terrified at the wreckage in front of them. As it turns out the limo driver was an under experienced minor who lost his license because of a D.U.I a short while before that, he ran the red light, it was his fault and as a result Thatcher had to pay the bus driver thousands of dollars in damages. Luckily Thatcher was a wealthy man.

Thatcher had always been a wealthy man, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth that he later turned into gold. His father was the creator of a large and very popular newspaper publishing company and when he died he gave all he had to his only son, Charlie Thatcher. Thatcher then foolishly sold the company and used the money to buy a motion picture production company. At the time it seemed foolish, but then the great depression swept most of North America, Thatcher’s old newspaper company went bankrupt and caused many of the new owners to become commit suicide. Thatcher’s new motion picture production company continued to thrive throughout the depression and continued to make Thatcher millions well after that.

Unfortunately for Thatcher he is alone now. Gwen is the only human he has talked to in a while and it’s only because she is the only one of his staff that has remained loyal to him and tolerated him this long. He has had an infamous history of being short tempered when he doesn’t get what he specifically wants, he once fired a maid because she accidentally gave him a blue M&M instead of a red one so he “accidentally” fired her. He has had two wives but they left him because of Thatcher’s adulterous ways. He never understood that it was not alright to cheat on his wives, he thinks just because his is rich and powerful he is an exception to the rules and indeed  he would make and break as many rules as he could and as often as he could. Who could stop him? He had all the money, the power, and all the politicians and police under his sleeve. He was unstoppable, unbreakable, immortal… at least until his tragic limousine accident which left him paralyzed.

Now Thatcher should realize that he is mortal, he is human. It should kill him, he should be feeling very depressed and helpless. Yet his ego tells him differently, to him he is a Greek god that even paralyzed can have great influence over the world, he thinks he can still move mountains and change stars. However if you saw how pathetic he is now you would think differently, he can’t even feed himself let alone move the stars or move the mountains. The only keeping him from certain death is the lovely maid Gwen… he doesn’t realize how lucky he is to have her by his side…

Gwen is the daughter of one of Thatcher’s dad’s business partners. She stuck by his father’s newspaper publishing company until the very end when it went bankrupt in the thirties. She was a childhood friend of Thatcher and upon his realization that everybody from the newspaper publishing company was going broke and becoming homeless he immediately hired her to be his maid for his then new mansion. Her pride told her not to do it, she would not become a pitiful maid for anyone, even a friend, but her situation and her brains told her to do it, so she accepted and went immediately to work. Thatcher always had a mean streak toward his staff but never to Gwen, even when she did something terribly wrong like give him tainted meat by accident which gave him food poisoning and  nearly killed him he did not show any discontent towards her, if she had been a maid for anybody else she would have been fired by now. Perhaps she realizes this and how lucky she is to have him and that’s why she has stayed with him for all these years.

Oddly Gwen and Thatcher had never had any sexual relations whatsoever, despite Gwen being an amazingly attractive woman and Thatcher being a very powerful and wealthy womanizer and adulterer. One would wonder why this is? Why would the man who can have any woman he desires not going after this one… is it out of respect? Surely he must have some attraction or desire for this woman? Thatcher answered this question beautifully a few years ago when a newspaper journalist asked him about his relations with his maid and longtime friend Gwen. “ If the sex was great then my bed would never be made and I would have to fire her, if the sex wasn’t great then it would be awkward and I would have to fire her. So, the most intelligent solution to the problem would to not have any sexual relations with her.”

It was five O’clock and Mr. Thatcher was waiting for his dinner consisting of chicken, peas, mashed potatoes and glass of wine on the side. Gwen would usually be preparing the food for Thatcher to eat at seven O’clock by now but the week went by rather strangely and the pantry happened to be out of chicken, Gwen would have to drive into town into the nearest supermarket to get food which would usually take an hour to get there and back, Mr. Thatcher’s supper would be an hour late today.

It was always hard to get in and out of town for Gwen because of the influence, both positive and negative, Mr. Thatcher had throughout the rest of the world. He had some friends but most of the people who knew or knew of Thatcher hated him, wanted him dead. Thatcher’s mansion received almost twelve hundred death threats the past few months alone and three actual assassination attempts, all of which he came out of unharmed. The paparazzi follow Gwen whenever she goes to the supermarket, to spy and learn what food Thatcher is eating, they prod her for the condition of Mr. Thatcher in attempts to de-humanize him and his company, in attempts to destroy him. Unfortunately for Gwen this trip to the super market would be the last trip she ever makes again.

As she was pulling out of the driveway of the luxurious mansion she noticed a large crowd of protesters at the gate. Though she was used to seeing protesters and animal rights activists at the gates of Thatcher’s gates, this crowd seemed a bit more violent than any of the others. They threw rocks and the security that stopped people from getting inside the gate walls, a bit away was an ambulance incase somebody was in critical condition because of this mob. Gwen knew why these people were upset, it was because one of Thatcher’s employees had a dog fighting betting system in his house and Thatcher knew about it but didn’t do anything about it. He only fired this employee because he would come late because of his dog fighting ring, not because he had one.

When Gwen was driving away some protesters through rocks and signs at her car, others tried to get past the security and into the house and some even tried to jump in front of the car to prevent it from leaving. Gwen left the grounds as quickly as possible, however the paparazzi were soon on her trail, three cars full of the paparazzi to be exact. In a desperate attempt to evade them she made fast unexpected turns onto different roads alleys and streets. She drove past three red lights and hit a kid on a bike having him fly thirty feet and falling headfirst into the pavement in front of her, he died upon impact. Two of the three cars of paparazzi stopped to take pictures of the dead kid on the pavement. The other car full of paparazzi followed her, closely behind her no matter where she went. Gwen looked at her rear view mirror every few seconds to see if the car was still there, it was, there was no way she could lose the paparazzi. Unfortunately she spent so much time worrying about what was behind her that she wasn’t paying any attention to the traffic. She ran a red light just as a truck driver with a green light was trying to get through. The truck hit her on her driver’s side, the impact immediately killed her, it dislocated her neck from the rest of her body, a piece of jagged metal from her car pierced through her heart.

It was now seven O’clock and Mr. Thatcher was still waiting for his dinner consisting of chicken, peas, mashed potatoes and glass of wine on the side to be served to him by his  lovely maid Gwen. He was not aware that she had died in the freak car crash just a few minutes ago, to his knowledge she was in perfect health preparing his meal downstairs in the kitchen. The film he was watching ended and Thatcher ran out of patience so he yelled as loud as he could to get Gwen to come up and feed him.

“ GWEN!!! COME UPSTAIRS AND FEED ME MY DAMN SUPPER ALREADY!!!”

There was no answer, Thatcher was puzzled by the silence as Gwen would always answer him no matter where she was in the house or what she was doing.

“GWEN, MY MOVIE IS OVER CAN YOU COME TURN IT OFF PLEASE?”

Again, no answer. No matter what he yelled after that there would always be no answer. Nobody was expected to show up at the house except Gwen for another few days. The door to get outside was closed, he could not open it because he had no use of his arms, he could not shut off the film either. He could not use the phone to call for help because the room he was in did not have a phone and even if it did he would not be able to pick up the receiver and use it properly. He was without Gwen and helpless, unable to do anything except sit and stare at a frozen television screen with the words “The End” on it. Funny, because like the movie, it was “The End” for Mr. Thatcher.

He was found dead in his million dollar mansion from starvation by one of his security a few days later who had come to tell him the terrible news of Gwen’s tragic and untimely death. They were both forty five years of age.

 

 

back to Contest #3