The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark: A Novel (17 page)

“Hello?” Kara said.

“Hi Kara, it’s Roland.” He could barely hear her over the noise in the background.

“What do you want?” she said.

“I’ve had the worst day of my life,” Roland said. “I had the wrong numbers and I didn’t win the lottery. I quit my job and alienated everyone at work and then my grandmother exploded. And now some guy in an orange golf shirt is coming to grind my balls into a fine paste.”

“Wow,” Kara said. “How terrible for you.”

Roland couldn’t tell from her tone of voice whether or not she meant that.

“Hold on a second,” Kara said. Roland could hear a man’s voice in the background. “Just wait right here and we’ll walk up and hand it to you,” the voice said.

“Where are you? What are you doing?” Roland said.

“I’m at the television studio. There’s going to be a presentation in the next minute or so.”

“A presentation?”

“Yes, a presentation. Listen Roland, you shouldn’t be calling me anymore. You broke up with me, remember?”

“You’re not still mad about that trading up comment, are you?” he said.

“Oh no, I’m not upset at all.”

“Then help me. Tell me what I should do. I’m thinking of jumping out my apartment window.”

“But you live on the ninth floor,” Kara said. “You’d probably die.”

“I know! That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Roland said. “I’m thinking about killing myself.”

There was a pause in which Roland thought Kara had hung up. “Hello? Hello?”

“Turn on the Channel 5 news right now,” she said.

“What?”

Kara hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

Roland labored over to his fake suede couch and sat down in front of the
TV
. He clicked the remote to Channel 5 just as the news was exiting a commercial. A scattershot of images promoting the next hour’s stories flashed across the screen and then a female news anchor in a pink pantsuit appeared behind a desk.

“We go now to our affiliate
KPLN
for breaking news,” she said. “I believe congratulations are in order for one lucky lady today?” The screen cut to a local news studio in which Kara was standing beside a reporter. On her left was a representative from the lottery corporation, one of the same men Roland had shown his losing ticket to just the other day. The lottery official was holding a large novelty check with Kara’s name emblazoned on the front and the amount of four million dollars in big black bold letters. That block of ice that had fallen into the pit of Roland’s stomach now leaked down toward his toes.

Kara had a big smile on her face. She reached out and shook the man’s hand.

The lottery official handed over the check and a small round of applause sounded in the studio. Then the reporter asked her the important questions — “What are you going to do with your winnings? What do you have to say to all your friends out there?”

Kara appeared to think about it for a moment and then said, “I don’t know what to tell you. I guess you just have to realize you can’t control the actions of others. All you can do is control your perspective in this world.”

The news cut back to that same anchor in her puffy pink pantsuit.

“Well, doesn’t that story just warm your heart?” she said. “Now to our local zoo where the beloved orca whale Mika is due to give birth any day now . . .”

Roland turned off the television and staggered to the center of the room. He fell to his knees, let out an agonized wail and wished he was dead.

When Henrik Nordmark awoke the next morning, he felt like a pilgrim who had traveled thousands of miles across barren lands only to discover there was no trace of the messiah waiting for him at the end of his journey. His quest to become unique had left him feeling even more ordinary, even more generic. He closed his blinds and sat in the dark, intending to pine away hopelessly in his apartment all day. Henrik moped for exactly three minutes before he realized he could simply no longer live like this. He couldn’t be plain and boring — not for one more day. This contemptible world had cursed him with a tedious, mind-numbing existence of wearisome days and uninspired nights. Since the moment he was born, Henrik had been waiting to die. He just hadn’t realized it until now. His journey led him right back to where he started and he didn’t have the strength or the courage to embark on another one.

And now Henrik, armed with the realization that for forty-two years he’d done nothing but drearily wait out the end of his days, decided he could wait no longer. He couldn’t live another day in a world where no one noticed him, where he hardly took notice of himself. Henrik Nordmark would take his own life.

But first, he would go to the market for one last plum.

twenty-four

Henrik trudged down the street in a dreary daze, his every step an added torture, his pace mimicking the dismal march of the condemned. He circled the corner onto the street where the market was located. Once inside the market, he dug through the plums with his fingers until he found a truly moist plum, one bursting with thick red juice. He paid the cashier and then walked out onto the sidewalk where he dug his teeth in. Henrik’s teeth penetrated the plum’s skin and he felt the sweet sappy liquid against his tongue.

He was planning to take two more bites and then step into oncoming traffic when someone screamed his name. Henrik turned around and saw the injured Dunkin’ Donuts employee shuffling zombie-like toward him, his uniform stained with blood and a frenzied look of rage in his eyes.

Clyde raised his gun and shot it in the air. The sound of bullets stopped traffic and sent pedestrians fleeing in all directions. Clyde was still too far away to get a clean shot. He fired the gun a second time and screamed Henrik’s name.

“Henrik Nordmark! You’re going to die!”

Henrik couldn’t believe Clyde had found him. He turned to run in the opposite direction only to see three old men in long black coats standing in his way. The one in the center discarded his coat and swung a cape over his shoulder. Crimson satin settled dramatically in the wind. This man had a crossbow in his hands and looked like a supervillain.

Henrik didn’t know what to do or where to turn. Instinctively, he looked up, only to see Roland, the young man from last night, standing on the ledge of his ninth-floor balcony.

“Why, God?” Roland cried. “Why?”

It was all happening so fast. Henrik felt as though he was in the center of a surreal dream. He knew from the looks on the faces of those old men that they were coming to kill him because he’d refused to
cottage
with them at the retirement home. The supervillain had handed his crossbow to the tall skinny one and they were within twenty feet now, taking aim.

Henrik turned and looked the other way. The wounded man with the arrows sticking out of his body was directly behind him, only twenty feet away as well.

These odds were too much to overcome. Henrik knew he was about to die. And he didn’t run or hide. Rather, staring death in the face, he turned philosophical. He thought to himself, what have I learned? What is the most important thing in this life and why am I here? His gaze shifted to the plum bursting with juice in his hand. One look at that sweet nectar and Henrik finally realized his place in this world. He didn’t have to be exceptional. He didn’t have to be different. He was put on this earth just to be Henrik — no more and no less — and what Henrik loved most was to drink in the juice of life. He thought
if I’m about to die, I’ll die experiencing all of what life has to offer
.

Henrik took a moist, sloppy bite from his plum.

The evildoers advanced.

Henrik had one bite left. He swore to himself that not even imminent death would stop him from living life to its fullest. He was about to place the plum in his mouth when fate intervened. The slippery morsel fell from Henrik’s fingers to the ground.

As Henrik bent over to pick it up, all hell broke loose.

Alfred fired the crossbow but missed Henrik by inches and the stray arrow hit Clyde with a fourth and final blow, this one straight in the heart.

Clyde’s gun went off as he died, shot Alfred in the chest and killed the old man instantly.

Conrad screamed at Billy Bones to pick up the crossbow, but Billy had been secretly suffering a series of silent strokes these past few days and the sound of Clyde’s gun caused Billy’s heart to stop. He staggered slightly and then fell over dead into a pile of garbage cans, a silly smile on his face. Undaunted, Conrad got on his knees and picked up the crossbow. He stood up and took an arrow from his quiver. Conrad struggled desperately to reload the weapon.

Henrik had righted himself as well and was standing like a deer in the headlights, watching the bodies fall.

Conrad left his two dead associates behind and screamed out for Henrik to identify himself so he could shoot him with an arrow.

“Goodbye cruel world,” a voice called from above.

Henrik looked up and saw Roland about to leap from his ninth-floor window.

Roland in turn saw Henrik and, hotheaded and suicidal as he was, decided to take Henrik out with him. He cursed Henrik’s name and then dived off the windowsill — directly toward the short bald man.

Henrik, in a moment of unprecedented inspiration, called to Conrad. “Here I am, sir. Do your worst.” Then he stepped aside.

Conrad stepped forward and prepared to fire. “Where are you?” he yelled, his English accent completely forgotten. “Where you at?”

Up above, Roland was suddenly wishing he hadn’t jumped. He screamed a bloody scream as he plummeted toward the earth and then crashed head first into Conrad. Both men died instantly. A stray arrow flew from the crossbow and landed inside the market among a stack of papayas.

Henrik stood in the midst of it all, dumbfounded and unscathed.

Twenty seconds passed before the cashier from the market ventured out into the street. Cautiously, the man who’d never taken notice of Henrik before approached. “My God, man,” he said. “You cheated death. I watched the whole thing. You cheated death not once, not twice, but three times. They’re going to write about you in the newspaper.”

“What will they say?”

“I don’t know,” the cashier said. “I don’t make up the headlines.”

“But if you did make up the headlines,” Henrik said, “what would you write?”

The cashier thought for a while and then said, “
Man Cheats Fate and Escapes Death Three Times
.”

“But what would the newspaper say about me?” Henrik asked.

The cashier thought long and hard.

“It would say that you’re one of a kind.”

Henrik Nordmark smiled when he heard the man’s words. He took the last piece of dirty plum and shoved it in his mouth. Henrik ground his incisors into everything it had to offer. One of a kind? he thought. That sounds anything but ordinary.

About the Author

Christopher Meades
lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 2009, his short story “The Walking Lady” won the Toyon Fiction Prize at Humboldt State University. Christopher’s work has also appeared in journals across Canada, the United States and the UK. One day he hopes to escape his cubicle and live by the beach. His website is
www.ChristopherMeades.com
.
The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark
is his first novel.