“I am shocked, this place is absolutely awesome!” I whisper to myself as I looked up; at the huge mansion planted before me. I was given the opportunity to work on my community project for my school. It’s a project where you have to help someone in the community which is randomly assigned to you after you take a test. Well this is it, step after step I approach the door to earn and achieve my final prize. I step up and knock on the door waiting for an answer.
Then a voice comes booming outside, “It’s open!” The voice sounded aggressive and vexed, even with me hearing it from the outside.
How did this guy hear me knocking? I opened the door and began my new journey. I looked around the huge mansion and realized how dark and gloomy it was. Hallways dark, all the lights off, the stone statue of a young, tough looking man stares at me from across the entranceway. I looked around at every area downstairs, as each area I entered got darker from the last. I wondered why this place was so huge and dark for only one sick old man? My house isn’t anything like this place. This mansion makes my home look like an elephant compared to an ant. My house is always lit up and feels alive, while this one is dark and feels gloomy. My mom has always said we need our home to be vibrant for anyone who enters to not judge us because we’re poor. My mother works hard for me to live the best life I can. So it’ll be hard for me to get used to this space.
“Um, John Smith?” I yell looking for the old man I’m supposed to be taking care of. I’m guessing he’s shy and doesn’t want to say much. I would be too if a random kid was supposed to come to my house for my final days. “It’s Elpizo Adamos! The 13-year-old student that is supposed to be watching over you!” I yell again, but receive no answer. I continue my search in this infinite bottomless pit of a mansion. Thankfully, after I traveled upstairs and opened the final door at the edge of the floor, I found him. John Smith. Bland name, but I guess his parents somewhat had a vision.
He was just there, lying in his king sized bed with his eyes wide awake. I believe it’s due to me waking him up from his sleep that he was so aggressive answering me. He was an angry faced man, with brown skin with the stereotypical gray hair of an old man. His face was of course wrinkled, with a trimmed gray goatee. I was nervous, but I was ready. I slowly approached him because I didn’t know whether or not he wanted me to approach him. I slowly leaned in and introduced myself saying, “Hi I’m—-.”
“I heard you when you walked in here.” I was dismayed, the whole time I thought he was ignoring me, but I gained the sense that he didn't care.
I answered with the only way I thought of, “Well hello then sir, I’m told that you’re sick, and I am here to take care of you, do you need anything?”
“Not from you, I can get it myself.” I was astonished. At the next second, I saw him turn over and began sitting next to his bed side as he attempted to raise himself up to walk. It looked like a war, his knees quivering and shuddering as his mind began battling against his bodies’ attempts to knock him down.
“Mr. Smith, do you need some—-.”
“No, I got it myself!” He looked at me with the intensity of an aggressive military general, then all of a sudden, crash. The old man fell down on his right side. Part of me felt bad and the other half of me just felt guilty. Was it my fault he fell? Did I distract him? I don’t know, but I rushed in quickly and helped him up. “Well you don’t look to be in the best shape right now; I’m gonna take you to the couch,” I say with a smile on my face. All I began hearing was irritated muttering underneath the breath of the old man.
It felt like wrestling against a restless old dog. I gave the old man credit for never giving up. I somehow accomplished the voyage of getting down the stairs. Then slowly, but surely we made it to the couch. On the way down, I caught sight of him eyeing the coffee machine he had on the counter of the kitchen, which was right beside the living room where the tv and couch was located. I lay him down on the middle cushion of the couch as he continued nagging underneath his breath. “Okay, are you all set?” I gave him another smile. The response I received was just a dark and blank stare. I just sighed and went inside the kitchen and was prepared to make the coffee he was so fancied. I constantly thought to myself about why he was this way. I don’t understand why he was constantly nagging at me when I”m only here to help him. Hopefully I’ll eventually understand. While I was about to make the coffee I noticed something peculiar. There was a list of a specific coffee recipe. At first the list went by as normal for some hot coffee and then there was a step about using something that can be found in the cabinet for the coffee that was said to be a, “desperate need.” I walked and looked around at each individual cabinet and discovered what the list mentioned at the back of one of the cabinets.
I wondered why there wasn’t any specific branding for the item and why it was on the list. It was some white and beige cream. It was somewhat liquidy, but it looked solid in some areas. I just sighed and continued making the coffee. I finally finished preparing his coffee and took it to him and laid it down on the table in front of him. He gave me a piqued look as he scanned the coffee and slowly picked it up. He began drinking the coffee, after every sip he coughed in a pretty concerning manner. The cough made it seem as if he could pass out at any moment.
“Mr. Smith, are you okay?” I say in a worried tone as I rush up to him.
“I’m fine boy, this is just how I like my coffee” he said as he moved my hands off of him.
“Was it the cream?” I constantly thought to myself as I backed away from him and stood there. The scene got awkward fast, as he slowly grabbed the remote from the side of him and began watching the television. I felt the need to get to know the old man more, especially since these are his last days and it seemed like he was a pretty successful man. I thought to myself that I could possibly learn a thing or two from this sick old man. I proceeded to sit on the left side of him on the couch while he watched television. It was still pretty awkward, and I thought of multiple different ways to break the ice.
I finally manned up and said some words, “You know, when I first got here, I was in absolute amazement on how big this place is, how did you do it?” The old man turned and looked at me with a face of annoyance and said,
“I did it by myself,” he said to me as he picked up the coffee mug from the right side of him and placed it on the table.
I looked down at the floor and thought again to myself how hard of a nut this old man is to crack, so I changed my approach. “So you live out here by yourself huh? No family lives near here?” The old man's eyes began widening, which was the most emotion I’ve seen him display this entire time. He picked up the cup of coffee and began drinking more of it until it was all empty.
He began shaking his head and responded, “Never needed anybody, did it all by myself.”
I took another sigh, but this sigh was quiet. I didn’t want the old man to be offended by my sigh, so I proceeded to ask more questions, but I received even more vague answers, eventually I just gave up on the idea for right now. I thought to myself that maybe he wasn’t used to me yet and didn’t answer any questions to a complete stranger.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. There was one thing though that caught my attention to the point where I was thinking about it for a while. When he was about to go to bed, I took him up to his room and found it upon myself to leave him there in his bed to go grab myself a snack, which took me about half an hour to do so. When I got upstairs I saw the old man at a table creating something. It was a hat. For how old he was, I was aghast at how fast and efficient he was with creating hats.
“So you’re pretty good at making hats?”
The old man continued at his work and was silent for a couple of seconds, “It’s a hobby.”
I sat there and watched him go to work, and when he was finished he hung it up on the coat rack and I helped him to bed. After that I was picked up by my mother and was brought home.
She was curious about what happened on my first day. I described the experience as just boring. She asked for more details about the old man, but I gave her very vague details about him. I felt that it would’ve been an invasion of privacy if I gave her too much information about the old man’s life.
The next day started off somewhat crazy. When I got there I traveled upstairs and found the old man on the floor, silent. I rushed to him and asked him if he was okay.
The old man looked at me and muttered, “I’ll get it myself.”
I instantly knew he was trying to make some more coffee. So I took him downstairs. Bringing his arm over my back like when you have a friend with an injured leg, and you have to carry him. He silently nagged at me all the way there and I placed him on the couch in the living room so he could watch television like the day before. I looked around, I realized that the house was dirtier than I thought. So I prepared the coffee, the same recipe as the day before, and took it to him. “Hey Mr. Smith, I’m going to go clean now okay?” I received no response and just got a slow head nod.
So I gave the old man a smile and walked off and began “clean”. Some rooms are more difficult than others. The bathroom surprisingly was one of the easier rooms to “clean”. His bedroom wasn’t dirty either. While I was “cleaning”, I entered this room that was like a huge library. Books everywhere, scaled multiple feet high. While I was “cleaning” the library, I knocked a book over. I picked it up. It turned out not to be a book, but a journal. The author of the journal really caught my attention as well. The author was named, “Maria Smith” which created a lot of questions. “Who is this person?” “Is she connected to Mr. Smith in any way?” “Was she a distant relative, or mother?” I constantly thought of all these questions, but I decided not to read the journal. I thought it was none of my business and I didn’t want my curiosity to get the best of me. So I placed the book back on the shelf, but I didn’t realize when I left the room that the book fell back off the shelf, but I didn’t notice.
After more “cleaning”, I walked back down to check up on Mr. Smith. He was still downstairs, watching television with his coffee on the table in front of him. “Are you doing good Mr. Smith?” I asked as I gave him a grin.
He gave me one of his famous sharp looks as he looked back at the television. “What was it that fell from upstairs?”
I was astonished once again. Surprisingly he heard me drop the book from upstairs. This guy was pretty good at hearing things for his age, and especially his condition. He begins coughing rapidly again and I rush to check up on him. “Are you okay Mr. Smith?” as I ran into him and crouched down next to him.
“Answer my question boy,” is all he said. I slightly leaned back and stood back up,
“It was nothing, I was just cleaning in the library and something fell.” Mr. Smith began to pick up his coffee mug again and drank it till it’s all empty.
“You seem to really like that coffee huh Mr. Smith?” as I gave him a small grin.
“It’s just how I like it,” he said as he leaned back and coughed again.
“Well, I’ll go back to cleaning I guess,” I say as I walk off and go back upstairs. I realized that he was following me with his eyes as I walked away from him. The rest of the day went by the same as the day before, just with me “cleaning” is the only exception. I was constantly thinking about the journal I found and how Mr. Smith mentioned it. I thought to myself, “Did he know it was the journal? How connected is that journal to him?” I was tempted to bust into the library and read the journal, but I still felt that it would be disrespectful to read something that belonged to Mr. Smith without his permission. Later, when I was taking him to bed I caught him making something else, this time it was a shirt. It looked like something he had been working on for a while and he was almost done with it. When he was done working on part of the shirt, he hung it up on the same coat rack he placed the hat.
I spent that whole night thinking about the journal, and I even asked my mom about it. My mom always had the best answers to concerns that I have in my life.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“You at least acknowledged that the journal at least meant something to him, so it’s good that you’re showing Mr. Smith some respect by not rummaging in his stuff.”
Cleaning the old mansion invigorated me. Each room became a focus of my energy, like unearthing fossils or finding arrowheads in a field. I sat Mr. Smith in his usual chair and handed him his coffee.
“Is my coffee just how I like it?”
“Yes sir, exactly how you like it.”
As I was dusting the mantle in one of the many bedrooms, all I heard was a thud. It sounded like it came from the library, “Was it a robber? Was it some type of animal, like perhaps a cat, dog, or even a raccoon? Or was it Mr. Smith? No way could it be Mr. Smith. He struggles to get out of bed every morning and always falls when he walks. How in the world could he possibly get up here?” I rushed into the library. It turned out that my worry was correct. There was Mr. Smith on the floor with that journal in his hand.
“Mr. Smith, are you okay?” as I rushed in and leaned next to him. It looked like there were tears welling down his face, but he was battling to hold them back. It got silent, seconds went by that I didn’t receive an answer. Until all of a sudden he looked at me and muttered,
“My coffee, it wasn’t how I liked it.”
I was astounded. I made the coffee exactly like it was on the list, but then I realized I forgot to add the “special need” cream type item to the coffee. I thought to myself as well of, what does coffee have to do with any of this? I was too stunned to speak, the sight of Mr. Smith looking like he’s battling tears and him lying there on the ground, and me too frozen to even act.
Then the silence was broken again by one name, “Maria.”
Mr. Smith’s voice sounded depressed and broken. Then all I heard once again, “Why did you hurt Maria?”
There were so many questions swirling through my head. At least one of my questions was answered. I now knew that the author of the journal was connected to Mr. Smith.
Then all of the sudden on repeat I heard, “Did you hurt Maria?” “Did you hurt Maria?” “Did you hurt Maria?” in a cold voice that I was used to hearing from Mr. Smith.
It sounded like some type of hypnotism was brought upon me. Everything went silent again for a minute, then all of a sudden Mr. Smith got up. He got up, walked out of the room and wandered into the hallway. I was too frozen to even act, but then I thought of how important it was that I earn those volunteer hours. That was why I was even here in the first place, if I let Mr. Smith down here, I wouldn’t achieve my final prize.
So I rushed outside of the room, looking for Mr. Smith, then I wandered into his room. He sat at the edge of his bed with his head down, journal at hand. “Mr. Smith—-”
“Sit beside me boy.” he said to me, cutting me off.
This time, his tone was more sympathetic than usual and the stare he gave me was as well. So I walked over to him and sat down next to him.
He looked at me in the eyes and muttered, “Why are you here?”
I was stunned at the question, I felt like he should know why I’m here. He should’ve been told why I was here. “I’m here for my community project.” I answered as I looked down to the floor. I felt bad, I couldn’t look him in the eyes, I felt like I messed up a screw in his head. Then I thought about it, the book probably fell when I left the library yesterday.
My thoughts were interrupted by Mr. Smith once again, “I know that, but what is your goal?”
“Um, to earn the respect of my peers.” Mr. Smith slowly shook his head at my response.
“What does that mean to you?” I felt like he was still looking at me and I was just peering at the ground.
“I’ll feel like I’m on top of the world. For someone my age, only few are capable of dealing with someone like you. Some students only do the bare minimum. I wanted to do more, so I could be on top.” Mr. Smith’s eyes once again widened up as he coughed once again. I felt like his condition was getting worse, so I tried to rush towards him, but he lifted his hand up signaling for me to stop.
“Elpizo Adamos, is it?”
I nodded my head and grinned at him. That was the first time he ever said my name. He normally just called me “boy.”
“You know, there was a point of time when I thought I was on top as well as you Elpizo.” I thought to myself of what he was talking about. Was he going to explain everything, the coffee, the nonstop tv, the statues and pictures, the journal. I didn’t know for sure, but I hoped so.
“Growing up, I had a pretty wealthy family. My dad was a successful business man while my mom was a successful nurse.”
As he gets up and walks towards the station where he created the hat and was in the process of making the shirt. He took the shirt off the coat rack. “Come over here Elpizo.” I walked to where he was and stood by him. “My parents never paid much attention to me, the most they did was buy me toys, food, or give me money to go places whenever I felt like it. I never really felt like their son growing up, I felt like a trash can that they could dump their money into. So I would normally take time out of my day designing things. Clothes, hats, shoes, everything. I could never really talk to my parents about things that bothered me.”
I sighed, my mother is the complete opposite. I remembered how I could tell my mother anything that was bothering me at the time.
“That would result in how I treated everyone at school, growing up I never really had friends. That was due to how I treated everyone like they were some type of trash. I thought I was ahead of everyone because of how rich and successful my parents were. I had a goal in mind though, to start my own business and earn my own money, because at that young age I thought I was already better than my parents.”
I was in awe of two things. The first thing being the story, I felt confused on why he was dumping this all on me. The second thing was again, how good he was at creating those shirts.
“When I went off to college, I found myself ahead of everyone else once again. The thing is, I didn’t take any of my parents' riches with me. I still treated everyone like garbage, talking to them however I wanted because I already felt better than them. Until I met one person by the name of Maria Johnson.”
“She’s the author of that journal that I see you found yesterday, and that was the book that fell yesterday, wasn’t it?” I was frozen once again, did he know this entire time? Was that why he was scanning me everytime I walked upstairs? I was going to say something, but I let him continue. “She was a kind hearted woman, the complete opposite of myself. At the beginning, I wanted nothing to do with her. Over time however, we became pretty good friends and eventually lovers. We shared each other's dreams with one another. We both had a dream of starting our own business and shedding away from our parents. The difference was, her parents were poor and abused her. Her father was a drunk, while her mother was a prostitute. She constantly talked about how her parents would constantly argue and took the anger from that argument and turned it against her.”
He looked like he was about to cry, but again, he was battling against it. “We decided to make a clothing brand, which was something else me and her had in common. So we started a business, called Smith’s. Yes it was simple, but that was the only name we thought of because we were getting married. The business was successful and we earned so much money from the business. So we decided to move here and buy a huge mansion here. Maria would constantly talk about how we will have multiple children here running around because of how much space we had in the house.
After about 7 years of being in business, me and Maria had a son, named Marcus. This is where it went all downhill. Like I previously said I had no friends growing up and kept no one close, so Maria and Marcus were the only things I had. OVer time, Maria spent more and more time taking care of Marcus and not at the store. She was very talented and was probably better than me at creating clothes, so I needed her. We would argue over it every day and how I would normally just tell her to get a babysitter for Marcus. After a while, I became more hostile with her and one day I just snapped. I hit Maria right where baby Marcus was watching. She had gotten flashbacks from her parents and that was the last time I saw Maria or Marcus.”
“I realized what I was fueled by, I was fueled by that drive to be better than my parents. So much that I pushed away the only two people I ever really cared for. After Maria left I was driven even more, I began working ten times harder than I ever worked, driven to keep my status near the top of the world and to be better than my parents and everyone else. Over time, after about two decades, the business was still going well, but my body took a toll. I realized how empty the mansion was and had visions of what it would have been like to have multiple kids running around the home. I constantly thought about how Maria and Marcus would be doing at that moment, but I wanted to keep pushing for myself. One day in particular I was walking in the library and found Maria’s journal.
“I read it and was ashamed, she felt so heartbroken over what I had done to her. Perhaps she even put it there on purpose so I could read it, one day. Again, I was driven by my drive to be better than everyone else. Which led me to buy a specific drug, to help me forget about Maria and Marcus. Which is the cream that you always put in my coffee.” I was flabbergasted, after all that information spilled on me. All my questions were answered. He wasn’t done however, “My body took a lot of damage like I already stated, the business went on for another 5 years until the damage took its toll and I became sick. MY illness that you know I have finally kicked in. I realized after all that time, that my desperation to be better than my parents and to be better than everyone else and remained on top, I was no better than anyone else. If anything, it led me to lose the only two things I slightly truly cared for.” I continued to stand there in silence. Watching as he’s almost finished with the shirt.
“Elpizo, you might be wondering why am I telling you this. The thing is, I’ve been paying attention to you. You might have thought I haven’t cared much about you, but I’ve been paying attention to who you are as a person. You’ve treated me better than anyone else who has been sent to take care of me. Everyone else has dismissed me and has never paid attention to me. I find hope in Elpizo, it might be too late for me, but it’s not too late for you. You have a goal to be on top, but there’s more to being on top than just being the best. My drive to be at the top pushed people away, but don’t do what I did Elpizo. Again, it’s not too late for you, but it is for me.”
I was too stunned to speak, but I had to push to say what I wanted to say. Hearing his story answered all of my questions. “It’s not too late for you, not yet.” I had to push that out. “You still haven’t died yet. Until you die it isn’t over.” Mr. Smith looked over at me with eyes of shock and was even surprised. He looked back down at his work and is around ninety-five percent done with the shirt. “You know Elpizo, you’re a really good kid. You’re going to do great things.” he looked back at me and we both nodded at one another. We both nodded at one another and a certain thing he did caught my eye, he grinned. The first time I ‘ve ever seen him display a non depressing emotion.
The next couple of days, Mr. Smith decided to live the rest of his life to fullest and to make up for all the years of pushing people away. We spent time together at the park, eating breakfast and lunch together, and I heard plenty of stories from him about his adventures being a clothing store manager. Those two weeks taught me so much about Mr. Smith, even more than he did that day. One day, he came over to see my family and have dinner with us. He hung up photos of himself, Maria, and Marcus across his home and smiles every time he sees them. It was nice seeing Mr. Smith smile, especially after all he's been through during his life.
It was a week after I met Mr. Smith and it felt like a whole adventure with him. Then he laid there on his bed, at his last breaths. It was just me and him as I sat next to his bed in a chair. We stared at each other while he coughed and looked at me and said, “Elpizo, did you learn what it means to truly be on top?” I was on the verge of tears, but I fought them and I said, “Yes I did, I now truly know what it means to be on top.” He smiled at me, and then looked over at the shirt and hat he made while I was there. “I want you to have that shirt and hat Elpizo, to never forget what you learned here.”
I nodded my head and went over and picked up the hat and shirt and put it on.
As he coughed and looked at me with a grin and said to me, “Don’t forget Elpizo, live your life for not only yourself, but for others. These past couple of days have been truly the best I’ve ever experienced, I truly felt free.”
I nodded my head at him as he turned his head and closed his eyes and said, “I'm coming home Maria,” he was gone. It was only three weeks I spent with him, but it felt like a year. Every morning past that day I looked at the hat and shirt he gave me to remind me of what I learned from him.
“Your father was a great man. He finally became the man you wanted him to be.” As I sit across from an adult man by the name of Marcus Smith, the son of John and Maria Smith. He scoots back and his chair and looks off in the distant street from where we sat at the cafe and smiled.
“Thank you Elpizo for that information about my father Elpizo. I never got to know my father. Something about my father compelled me, he hit my mother.” He said to me as he looked back at me with a smile.
“Oh, well that must’ve been a shock to you I assume Mr. Smith” I never knew that he didn’t know. It could be possible he just didn’t remember because he was a baby, or Maria just never told him.
“My mother never told me that, rather, she never explained to me why she left my father. I always assumed my father died over a point in time. After my mother died, I felt like I never received an answer.”
We both nodded at one another as I gave him another grin and a sigh, “Yeah your right, I miss your old man already.”
“Well, I now understand that he meant a lot to you and you meant a lot to him, hell, you were the one that truly saved his life and I thank you again for that Elpizo.”
I thanked him and gave him one more nod, as we both lifted up our coffee mugs.
“For Old Man Smith?” I say as I nodded.
“For Old Man Smith.” Marcus responds as he nods at me.
We cheer our cups together as we begin chugging down our coffee. The same coffee the way Old Man Smith liked it, but this time, without the “special need”.