'The Hermit'

“So how do you like your new room, Jeremy?” She asked, pushing her thick framed glasses up the bridge of her narrow nose.

He paused in his idleness, adjusting his position to give the question true consideration, “Just marvelous. Truly, like nothing I have seen before.”

“How so?” Her eyes shifted from her lap to Jeremy's introspective expression.

“It’s… It’s like… I mean the amenities alone are enough to justify the whole experience. Then there is the old hermit! What an amazing individual. His rags to riches story! Wonderful. Such a treat.”

The woman in the thick glasses looked down at her lap again.

“Have you talked to the hermit?” Jeremy asked, earnest inquisitivity plainly painted on his expression.

“I haven’t. What does he talk to you about?” The woman asked, her hands passively fiddling with a pen.

Jeremy ran his bony fingers through his hair and pulled in a deep breath. “We talk about everything really, how the sun is slowing down in its orbiting path, how the atomic structure is nearly identical to the organization of the galaxy, conservation of design throughout the scale of organic divergence… He has no formal education, but good lord is he well read. He spent a year in the Roman libraries in Florence Italy, you know. Quite exceptional.”

The woman turned her pen to a clipboard, scrolling unseen letters. “Have you ever seen the hermit talk to anyone else?”

“I suppose not. Let’s face it, most of the guests aren’t here for intelligent pursuits. They are happy to lounge in the sun and treat themselves to sweets.” Jeremy’s head cocked to the side for a moment before continuing, “It’s sad, I suppose.”

“What’s sad?” The woman asked, her pen returning to idle rotations between her fingers.

“Our last conversation.”

“What was discussed?”

“He told me what I had to do. At first I thought he was joking or mistaken… He so convincing though. After thinking about it I came to understand that he was right.”

“Jeremy, what did he tell you to do?”

Jeremy’s muscles snapped into tension like a slack rope losing it’s tied to a moving truck. The bones of his legs bent against the force of it as his ribcage compressed against the force of his bodies rotation. The woman’s pen was seized from her hand with such speed that it became a silver blur that disappeared into Jeremy’s neck before she could react. By the time Jeremy hit the floor his neck looked like a wine barrel executed by a firing squad.

The woman sat motionless for several seconds before the shaking flooded through her body.

The door to the padded room opened slowly and a man in a lab coat stepped into the room. “You have to announce the time of death. Here, use my pen to record it.” The man in the lab coat push his pen into the woman’s hand, the feel of it seeming to rouse her from her state of shock.

“Of course…” She pulled in a deep breath and wiped beads of congealing red from her glasses. “Jeremy Hillburn, died at 3:15 P.M. on Thursday November 21st, 1956, from self inflicted stab wounds to the throat. Jeremy reported first contact with ‘the hermit’ on October 1st, 1956. Subject perceived ‘the hermit’ as a fully formed and functional human. ‘The hermit’ lead this subject, the 47th, to commit suicide through what is reported as logical reasoning through vocal communication.”