In Place of Panic

He was trying to push himself through it, but he couldn’t. The hole was too small, and he was too fat. Such a stupid thing to be fat, he thought. He pushed hard, trying to fall to the other side, but to no avail. He thought perhaps he could break the periphery of the hole and widen it a bit. But that was a tad hard to do with those chubby hands. He was stuck here now. He would be here for the rest of his life. The humanoids from the future would find his bones on each side of the hole. He’d be the first person to have a void, a hole, as his tomb. A nothing as something to be all that’s left of him. A hole as a tomb! Interesting, he thought. That could be a piece of modern art, couldn’t it? That kind of grave could become a trend even, and all the people who looked for novelty could ask that their bones be left around holes. It would be a classy little memorial that’d leave people baffled. Guillotines may even come back into fashion. Then the others, the normal people, would do it too, because it wouldn’t be a strange novelty anymore, it would be a norm. It would be something as ordinary as drinking sugary coffee and keeping your dead spouse’s ash. Hell, even sects might endorse it as their tradition and villages make feasts for it. And behind all of its history, at its core, would be him. He would be the beginning of a human habit. The father of a tradition. That would be magnificent! He decided to stay put then, and let himself die and be decomposed and start something big and lasting. He thought it was worth the boredom. But then a grumbling young boy kicked his butt and he got through the hole and slid down the slide.