Unfurled

• Lauren Dixon, Grade 11
• Poetry
• 2011

The world has an uncanny way of turning people bitter. Like fruit never picked and left to wither, Ed Furl was an old man with a grey approximation of the things that surrounded him. Ancient enough to be dead, and already dying on the inside, the colour had been leached from his life. Life had slipped past and with it went his laughter, his smile and his happiness. He no longer knew what he was missing.

The chamber of his mind reverberated with lost opportunities and soured regrets. Cobwebs skewed his vision of life, like a fine mist over memories. Circumstances that, at first, had numbed his senses, had now turned him bitter. The hand of fate he had been dealt was one of unbearable loss that he carefully locked away in the recesses of his addled mind.

Ed, although old, was not stupid. After all, he had served his country in combat. He knew the value of precision planning. He knew the value of patience. As he stepped outside on that bone chilling day in late July, the leaves crunched under his slippers as he hobbled across the frosty yard to the wrought iron gate. Under the mango tree, over the bridge, he picked his way across town, stopping briefly at the grave yard. ‘Two of them,’ he thought to himself, ‘Right here in the cold, cold earth.’

The golf course, clear across the other side of town, was milky green in the early morning sun. Cobwebs, unbroken in the still morning air, glistened as a testimony to the genius of patience and tenacity. Ed fumbled beneath his oversized coat. He stood at the highest point of the golf course. From here, he could see everything and everyone. He had been here, rehearsed this moment, a million times before. As the ammunition clicked into the metal shaft, his eyes peeled across the rolling green. Trees, tall and twisted with age, momentarily obscured his view. It took him some time to find what he was looking for.

Finally, it came into view. Laughing carelessly, bouncing across the expanse of green in a golf buggy, barely one hundred metres away. Ed’s heart beat uncontrollably as he raised a shaking hand and aimed. In his last seconds, the man turned and stared down the cold metallic barrel that would seal his fate. His cheerful face bleached, his eyes lost their light and his ears filled with blood as the bullet discharged and lodged in his skull.

Ed smiled. It was done. The doctor was dead. Now he could finally manoeuvre the closing scene of his own life.
* * *

“It saddens me greatly to stand here today at the funeral of such a strong man. Ed Furl experienced very few happy moments in his life, but those he had were spent with his beautiful wife, Elaine. A courageous soldier, a devoted husband and a loving father, it is my hope that Ed found comfort in his last days on earth before his accidental death. Ed suffered the unbearable pain of losing his wife and baby son in childbirth. It is my hope that Ed found some compensation in life for the tragic hand he was dealt.”