Snickers Bar

"Oh Christ," he said stepping across the threshold into the second floor apartment unit. There was a dead man lying on the couch. No visible wounds, no signs of struggle, but definitely dead. But that was not the reason for his outburst.

He'd been a paramedic for twenty years. He was very familiar with death. The lives saved by him and his team were numerous. Getting upset at death had long ago vacated. In this case, the vocal exasperation was induced by the contents on the nearby plate on the coffee table.

The police had been called by the tenant in the neighboring unit. The TV was on too loud. In truth, it was not loud, but yes, too loud for 2 am. After the neighboring tenant received no response to pounding on the wall due to the loud TV, they put on their slippers and went to pound on the dead man's door. The initial knocks, also unanswered, quickly escalated to the pounding.

"If you don't open the door, I'll call the police." He did not, so the other did as he said.

The police kicked the door in after there was no response to the butt end of a flashlight banging on the door, including the verbal warning to 'open up.' Death was quickly diagnosed. TV was turned off. Paramedics were called.

The plate on the coffee table had a whole and untouched King size Snickers candy bar. There were three wrappers on the table. All King size. The dead man's digital blood sugar tracker had been removed from his wrist and was on the table next to the plate. The nub of what appeared to be bar number two was on the man's chest.

He had been a diabetic and must have figured that he'd lived enough. What might have been the final straw was not known, if it ever would be, if even the dead man knew. A final note had not yet been located, but the intent was clear. The dead man had decided to sign off. 

Earlier that evening he walked to the mini-mart, bought three large chocolate bars and a Coca-Cola, pealed off all three wrappers, the large and delicious candy bars were laid out to serve their purpose.

TV had been turned on. It was loud, but would not have seemed inordinately so earlier in the night, say 8 or 9 pm. The ambient noise from the other apartment units would have rendered this no more bothersome than ambient white noise. But as the night slipped into early morning and the other sources of noise were extinguished, this loud TV became the singular source of annoyance, as evidenced by the neighbor finally reaching down and donning their slippers.

As for the paramedic, the striking visual causing his outburst was that third candy bar. The unwrapped and untouched Snickers.

'Dammit. Nobody'll eat that now. Dude couldn't open them one at a time,' he thought to himself pondering the waste. 'Had to open all three, never got to three. At least he didn't peal off four Snickers. But hell, the shame of it,' as he watched the police tilt the plate, the Snickers skidded into a labeled evidence bag.

The paramedic was a good man. Good at his profession, even if a little askew at what riled him up. The dead man was lifted, then lowered into the body bag and zipped it closed. A teammate rolled the body bag out the door on the stretcher. Sure would be nice if he was as concerned for the carcass as he was the pristine chocolate bar.

If he'd been a doctor, this rugged brute, his bedside manner would be said to be decidedly poor. Yet so imperceptive, was lummox, that he had difficulty seeing beyond his own shoes. The real story wasn't what he was doing, the paramedic. The real story was why the dead man had done what he did.

Five hours earlier, returning from the mini-mart, the dead man had grabbed a plate from the kitchen cabinet and the small paper bag from the mini-mart, then trudged forth to the couch. His feet dragging as if he were tired. Tired from a busy and long day, or just too much rough living, could not be discerned from his languid gait.

Placing the plate on the coffee table, employing the unusual grace as if he were serving the queen mother, before sitting on the couch. The gravity of the evening's agenda subconsciously dictated his reverential deportment.

Letting out a great sigh, almost a moan, he reached for the remote control, turned on the TV, a baseball game, before returning the remote to the table by the plate.

He emptied the bag's contents to the table. The three big candy bars and a Coke, to make sure the job got done. Tonight wasn't going to need a do-over.

He opened the three candy bars, placed them one by one on the plate. Parallel, each. On an important task like this, they would not be allowed to lay all cattywampus. Symmetry would call the proceedings to order.

He opened the cold Coke, closed his eyes and took a deep draw. So delicious, as made so by a diabetic's strict diet and its sugary restrictions. Then came the first bite of the first bar. So dangerous, and so tasty, enhanced by the treats' long absence.

The volume was turned up two more notches, he lay back on the couch, all stretched out with feet on the cushion, another bite followed by another. The ballgame's innings rolled by on the TV, as did the fatal succession of bites. As the first bar was concluded, he reached for the second.

As he advanced to the second Snickers, a sob emanated from the fellow. So much sadness and grief had been absorbed in his lifetime that it could no longer be contained. Another sob, half suppressed, followed by another notch of volume.

He took the first bite of the second bar. The tears started to flow. Slow, but there would be no stopping them now, not that he wanted them stopped. Not that he cared.

Another bite which became difficult to chew on account of the crying and occasional chest heaves. A big drink of soda. The crowd on TV was cheering loudly. The on screen excitement and tension was mounting.

He felt lightheaded, took still another bite. He was confused, no longer remembering what exactly had been that final straw. Why had he decided to end himself? Just as uncertainly, he didn't know if he wanted to stop.

[Inspired by a southern California story 20 years ago about a diabetic man who ate himself to death by means of two candy bars, plus one unwrapped and untouched.]

It Was An Honest Mistake

It was a lovely start for these two early 20-somethings. The coy smiles, brief and playful dialogue, the innocence. It would not end as such.

They met at an airport. Both waiting at the same gate for the same flight, engaged in the same time-passing activity. Reading. Both of them with books. She enjoyed the novelty of another reader. Few of her friends were. What's this guy's story, she thought. She took two steps toward him and spoke.

"What book are you reading?"

He looked up. Hadn't even noticed her before. That smile. The eye contact. She had an ambience to her, as if gravity had less pull on her than everyone else. His brain went blank.

Though operating with a blank head, he had the good sense to smile back, not that he could help himself, then read the title off his book's cover. He had to read it, because he had forgotten, the excitement of the moment, smitten as he was.

He was not smooth at this. He lacked game, went the parlance of his friends and peers. He knew it, and had inadvertently turned his playful sincerity into his game. That in itself wouldn't make him a baller when it came to dating, not while lacking initiative and confidence. But heck, sometimes you nail the landing, even if only accidentally.

It was a brief exchange. What, two minutes? Their plane was boarding. Passengers were asked to line up in their groups. He would lose her. What'd he have to lose if he overextended himself here? Well, other than a shut down in front of an audience of all these other passengers listening in, though offering the courtesy of pretending not to. They were in their twenties, and handsome as heck, both of them, as is everyone at that age. All eyes were on them, the vicarious thrill, hoping for a connection. It would not disappoint.

"Are you local here? Or are you flying home," he asked.

She was local. Him too. And then, he doesn't quite know why or how he did it, but he mustered the courage to go forth, "When we return to southern California after our visits away, would you like to exchange books?"

She did. His heart leapt. Especially when she smiled, and looked back to him after they'd gotten in line. At this point, sadly, their relationship had already peaked.

When they returned to southern California, the two did get together, ostensibly to exchange books. Truth is, neither would read the other's. That possibility would be precluded.

Bowling and milkshakes, he proposed.

"I want to see you, but not over bowling. Milkshakes," she elegantly countered.

At the ice cream shop she excused herself to go to the restroom. But she was in a fun mood and ice cream is ice cream. It's all delicious. Difficult to order a mistake when dealing with this stuff.

"Hey, I'm going to the little girls room. Order something for me. Surprise me," she said as she walked away. Then, from 10 feet away she remembered, turned, and added, "No nuts."

The thing is, there were other patrons in there creating a distracting white noise, music was playing on the store-pumped ceiling audio system, and she had not completely turned toward him before speaking, the oblique angle causing lost clarity. It all coagulated to the fact that he missed the most important piece of the message.

He missed the No. Nuts, he heard. He smiled and issued a courtesy head nod. She likes nuts, he figured. That means Rocky Road, of course. He ordered. The shakes were made, paid for, and handed forward.

He sat at the tiny ice cream parlor table for two. Quaint. She returned and sat across from him. He liked being close to her. He handed the shake, they dinked their cups, and took big pulls off their straws. Then a second.

The result was almost immediate, but not immediate enough to stop that second draw. He'd never seen her without a smile. For a moment he didn't even recognize her.

A small cough at first. Then an almost grinding sound from her throat. Almost like a gas lawn mower engine trying to catch, but could not. A hand went to her throat. Her esophagus was closing in because of her nut allergy.

"What flavor . . .," she was having trouble speaking and could not complete her question. She held up her shake.

"Rocky Road. You like nuts," he replied, straight faced with a mounting terror.

"Allergic. Call 9 1 1," she breathed out, barely audible, clutching at her throat now with both hands.

She collapsed and fell over out of her chair onto the checkered black and white tile floor. The floor was pristinely clean, except for the Rocky Road shake spilled across all the way to the ice cream counter.

All eyes in the store were on her. Then on him standing over her with a terrified look on his face.

"Nut allergy," he said.

One of the employees was on their game and called an ambulance.

It was a tense few minutes before the ambulance arrived. They were so new to each other, these two, that he didn't know what to do or what to say to help her keep calm.

He reached for her hand, but his was sticky with ice cream so he released her hand and reached for a napkin. She knew not the reason for the vacated hand, not that it would have mattered in the high emotion of the moment, the stickiness. Her heart went empty.

She was looking into his face. She'd always enjoyed looking into his eyes. She felt she could see all the way into him. Except this time, without the eye contact, she saw shear fright, and his dumb sideburns that she was willing to generously forgive until now.

His hand rested nebulously on one of her shoes. A thick-soled Doc Marten. Purchased new for the date. It was safe contact, he figured.

"I'm sorry. Really, really sorry," he said to her, kneeling and hunched over her. She couldn't breath and was close to passing out. 

The ambulance arrived. The paramedics burst in. There were two of them.

"Nut allergy. Dork ordered her a Rocky Road," crisply briefed the employee, time being of the essence. Everyone looked at him.

One paramedic was down on his knees talking to her, calm and decisive, holding her hand. The second returned to the ambulance for the stretcher. They had her strapped in and heading out the door in three minutes. 

"It was an honest mistake," he practically yelled after her, having gotten to his feet and taken a few steps toward the door as the paramedics wheeled her out.

Everything had happened so fast that nobody had moved until after she was out and the ambulance had sped away.

"Don't look at me that way. It was an honest mistake," he said to the other patrons as he walked out the door, his shake in hand.

[Inspired by the song by The Bravery, It Was An Honest Mistake [click HERE to listen to song]. What kind of honest mistake could be so extraordinary as to compel a song, I'd thought in recent years whenever the song came on the radio. The milkshake idea struck me this morning while driving with my mom after picking up shrimp tacos from Del Taco. My mind often wanders to milkshakes in free moments. That's when it hit me. Nut allergy! wdk 4/29/2025]

Time Traveling Saviors

The tension in that college study hall was thick and jammed pack with people. High emotion and volatile language discussing the harm being done by humanity unto planet earth. The globe's ambient temperature was on the rise. The climate was changing and its equilibrium all askew.

Too many vital resources had been, and were still, carelessly dug up and pulled from the earth. The mere extraction process of these minerals and rare metals, that reckless and brusque human touch, resulting in tremendous amounts of vast billowing toxic effluent bilging forth. It was gross.

Those earthly cavities were being left wide open like gaping canker sores, or worse, talks of filling them with waste from landfills or who knows what. Like some ill fated compost bin. Totally unsustainable. Meanwhile, waste clouds emanated across the globe from the innumerable coal energy power plants, with ever more on the docket. How could someone not see how this was going to end?

As the discourse of the heated open forum reached a critical denouement, scattered crying was breaking out as some attendees had become overwhelmed. Their thoughtful dedication was so far advanced that their mental state was in collapse. No way could this environmental carnage be reversed to make the earth safe for future generations. It was already too late. 

Strongly enough did many feel, their dedication to save the earth, that they were committed to the mission of not prolonging humanity, closing the loop on those future generations. Their safety precaution, these collegiate waifs, was to have no children.

They would voluntarily end the troublesome cycle by simply ending humanity. They were willing to do their part by pruning enough branches from enough family trees, their goal, they collectively hoped, would yield the desired victory for the earth. Cull the herd. Damn the humanity.

The hysteria rose. The content of the discourse degenerated further to sloganeering and unintelligible emotional outbursts. The crying of some led to the crying of more, then many, with the occasional wail.

One person in the room, having been silent, patiently absorbing the distress of his neighbors. Maybe it was time to challenge the mood in the room with a particular thought he'd been banging away at, in his quiet moments of reflection. It had long played out in his head. It was, after all, the company line.

He found it soothing, this idea, especially when he felt precarious questions probing into this increasingly tremulous future. Maybe today he would bear it out, expose it for critical discernment. Share it with the group, field the challenge to allow the open-minded to titrate out their own conclusions. This was, after all, a prospective outcome to which he was directly involved.

A test by fire. 'Why not now,' he thought to himself finding, to his surprise, that he'd already stood up to command his say.

He gently cleared his throat, raised his hand, and hesitantly waved it in the air. A vague back and forth motion. No smile on his face, as he was not prone to public speaking and was wrestling with the discomfort of so many eyeballs upon him.

Their attention commanded, he had the floor, by the curiosity of his unpracticed poise, and he hadn't even spoken a word yet. Be careful, he thought to himself, not to convey condescension, no jocularity, and don't give away too much. They turned and looked at him. It went like this.

"Maybe there's another way."

"Another way for what," said one, snidely.

"For the future to play out."

"You haven't listened."

"I've listened. I think, maybe . . . I don't subscribe."

"Subscribe to what?"

"The idea that humanity ends the earth."

"What don't you get, man? How does this not end badly," a mischievous smile on the heckler's face, thinking he'd have an easy scamper over this naive dullard.

"Because of the time travelers."

He stopped here, as if, somehow, everyone would know what he was talking about. They didn't, of course. So out of the blue was his remark, a proposed solution so unexpected, that it took a few seconds to register. Then everyone started looking around at each other, as if looking to see if anyone else understood. Which they did not. Nobody did. Eyes resettled back to him.

"Dude, what are you talking about?"

"The time travelers."

"Who? Where and what are you talking about," his countenance spoke of trouble. His depth of climate discussions, none had ever gone in this direction. His voice wavering as dramatically as his compromised confidence.

"Time travelers will come to keep us going."

"Time travel. Not yet invented, dork. Ergo, there are no time travelers."

"Not yet, but it's coming. Humanity merely need keep this bus humming along well enough, and long enough, for science to advance until that invention of time travel."

Again with the pause, people looking at each other, then back at him. Still no smiles. No head nods of affirmation. Nothing signifying that this was a joke, which it was not. Were they being played, the collegians considered, the weeping whelps? They knew not, so the probing continued.

"What?" Someone had chimed in. Engagement still at hand.

"In the future when time travel is invented, time travelers will be sent with their advanced future technology and science. They'll apply fixes needed to their past to preserve the future. They'll preserve their own future, their very existence, these time travelers, humanity, by fixing our present situations, with their technological donations from the future,"

"Donations?"

"Their intentional and purposeful technological gifts of knowledge. They're called donations."

"Technology to fix what?"

"Don't know, but future humans will know. They'll time travel backwards to the past and leak out future technology to spark invention or environmental developments. That's how humanity will save itself, and the globe, by prolonging its own longevity."

"First off, you're nuts. Second off, first rule of time travel is that you can't change the past." Some amongst them remained unruly, a smugness suggesting that they'd gotten him, which they had not.

"There'll be no changing of the past, only changing of the present. Well, their past, the time travelers, but our present. That they can do."

"That's changing the past, dude."

"Nope. It's changing our present, as it occurs. There will be no altering of the past. No history books to be reprinted or updated. So no, past is not being changed."

Again people looking at each other. A few nervous snickers. Were they being played? Or swayed? Has all their environmental alarming been for not? Are time travelers in our future? Not yet ready to yield, were some. Additional challenges hit the floor.

"How would they get back to their own time if the time travel technology doesn't exist in the present?"

"They wouldn't get back. It's a one-way trip, like that dog sent up to space by the Russians in the '50s."

"I thought it was a monkey."

"The monkey was in 1983. The dog was 1957."

"Stop with the dogs and monkeys. Back to the human time travelers. If they exist, or will exist, at some point they'd be found out. Why haven't we encountered any?"

"Encountered time travelers? Who says you haven't?"

"Well, I mean, dude, where are they?"

"If a time traveler were to admit that they were a time traveler, an unwavering argument, escalation-inducing vigilance, because it was truth, what'd happen to them?"

"They'd sound crazy."

"Agree. Anyone claiming to be a time traveler, and not steeply backpedaling from that beachhead with alacrity, they'd probably sound crazy. Add the lack of present day documentation and ID numbers . . ."

"So humanity is being saved by crazy people?"

"They'd probably not be crazy initially, the time travelers, like when they first arrive in our present. But the stress of time travel would have to be tremendous. I bet that'd be a lot of G-forces hitting a brain. That'd maybe push them there, into crazy territory."

"Again, so we'd be saved by crazy people."

"The contention is that they're not crazy when they arrive. But the time travelers would have a time challenge, not just for their travel, but the efficacy of their mission. They would likely need to complete their mission of future-knowledge transmission, their knowledge donation, before they go crazy induced by the biological stress of time travel."

"I think he's making sense," was a distinguishable remark amongst the mutterings from the back of the room, and like the sweet susurration of slicing a thick tray of brownies, a few 'yeahs' started to make their way forward.

Still though, many people were not certain if he was joking. The guy showed no give. I'll be damned. He believes it, thought some collegians. He believes that time travelers are really going to save humanity.

"How does he know so much," asked one.

"Wait, are you one of them? The time travelers? He's gotta be, right," posed a second.

He paused, then muffed a weak, "Well, that'd be crazy," failing to hide a smile, which did more reaffirming than denying. Whispering could be heard throughout the room. The converts accumulated, but all were not yet swayed.

"I don't think you know what you're talking about," halfheartedly challenged another, piously prolonging the idea that he who is most upset about the climate loves the planet the most.

"Maybe I can't explain. I just know. It's like, I can't explain quantum computing, but my lack of ability to explain doesn't prevent quantum computing from actually existing, because it does, and I can't." 

The probing died down. He had held his ground, possibly with too much vehemence. Truth is, he knew his side of the discourse to be true. He was, in fact, one of the aforementioned time travelers sent back to save humanity.

He sat down, gathered his things, and awaited a distraction where he could safely extract himself without commotion.

His mission had been successfully peddled. His mind would soon give way to the encroaching insanity induced by the bodily ravages of time travel, a known debilitating consequence.

He and his time travel cohort had cognitive tests to conduct daily, furnished by Operation Command. Because that daily testing is designed to confirm a time traveler has started that final descent toward insanity, the enthusiasm for that test dissipates like the carbonation in a long left open soda can.

He was months deep into his mission, the knowledge donation safely conveyed to those present day humans best positioned to advance that knowledge forward. The means by which conveyance was made was nebulous, but necessary and effective.

With that portion of his mission concluded, he was not eager to confirm his inevitable mental struggle. His sanity was slowly and certainly leaking out of him like a bucket with a tiny drip. Only, that drip would expand until it ran out like an open water faucet, until there'd be nothing left. At least, that's how he imagined it. That was his future, what remained of it, he figured, so why rush it.

His thinking had lately grown loose. A test could confirm it, but really, why now. So, with his accustomed deliberateness, he deliberately stopped his daily sanity testing.

In the meantime he occasionally amused himself intermingling with the hysterics. It had been mostly listening until this afternoon. This was his first time daring to speak truth. What could it harm, he thought? They'd just call him crazy, which he was, or would be soon. The consequences of time travel.