Once upon a time, there was a place where nobody ever did anything wrong. Nobody was ever mean to anybody, nobody ever hurt anybody, cheated anybody, lied to anybody, stole from anybody, killed anybody. Of course, there was still pain in the world, because things still ended, people still died, they still got sick, got hurt, but because everyone knew that when bad things happened it wasn't intentional, it wasn't anybody's fault, it was just the way of the world, it somehow made things easier.
Life was easier. Life was simpler. Life was happier.
One old man had spent whole his life making people happy through his garden. The front of his house was filled with enormous sunflowers, that seemed as big and as round and as yellow as the bright sun that shone in the sky.
But, the old man wasn't content. He felt he hadn't done enough and he decided to do one last great thing before he died. He wanted people to truly understand and feel their happiness every single day. He didn't want them to take their lives for granted.
So, he decided to open a shop. A shop where people could experience deliberate, intentional pain. A shop where he would cause people emotional or physical pain. He thought that if everyone could just have a little taste of what life could have been like, in a world where people were cruel, heartless and malicious, then everyone would appreciate their own lives just that little bit more.
He started small, with a tiny needle, that he used to prick a customer's finger. In the beginning, this was enough. The customer got a thrill from the pain, the deliberate pain caused by the old man and they went back into their lives refreshed, grateful. But, after a while, the tiny needle wasn't enough. People wanted bigger needles, they wanted the old man to draw blood. Then the customers started demanding he step on their toes, or punch their faces, or kick their cats. Eventually, they began to want to cause the pain themselves, asking the old man the best way to break a person's thumb, how to trick someone into handing over their life savings, or how to cheat on their wives and husbands. Each time a customer returned, they demanded more pain, more pain to get back their feeling of happiness, their feeling of contentment, of gratefulness for their pain-free lives.
Reluctantly, the old man granted the requests. He remained convinced that things would right themselves eventually, that the existence of his shop was a moderating influence, by helping people commit these deeds, he was keeping control of the situation, monitoring it. But, one day, two brothers entered the shop. The elder was dark, with deeply intelligent flashing eyes. The younger was fair, with a sweet laughing mouth and slightly empty, innocent eyes.
The elder brother demanded the old man hand over a knife.
The old man was working andd didn't look up. He wasn't sure why, but for the first time, he felt genuinely uneasy. The older brother stepped closer and repeated his demand, more ferociously, as the younger brother stared at the books and boxes stored behind the old man's head.
'What do you want it for?' asked the old man, shuffling his papers.
'Why should I tell you?' snarled the brother.
The old man looked up then and stared straight into the older brother's eyes. 'What do you want it for?' he repeated, quietly, firmly. The older brother hesitated slightly, then curled back his lip.
'What does it matter? I'm going to create unhappiness with it. That's your business. So give me the knife.'
The older brother stared down at the old man. The younger brother had started to hum. It wasn't so much a song as it was random, punctuated notes, every one of which the younger brother decorated with a bounce of his head or his knees. The old man sighed and slowly opened the drawers of one of his desks. He drew out a big, old butcher's knife and passed it across the table to the older brother. The older brother took the knife with both hands, felt its weight, held it up to the light and brought it down again. Something in his faced seemed to soften momentarily, and the old man thought his concern had been misplaced. But, then, swiftly, the older brother turned, pulled his younger brother close and sunk the knife into the younger man's guts. There they stood, staring at each other, the two brothers, joined by the butcher's knife, until the younger brother's eyes glazed over, his body went limp and he began to slide towards the ground. The elder brother lay the younger gently down, and with his bright, intelligent eyes firmly held on the lifeless, staring ones below him, he turned the knife on himself, and collapsed on top of his brother.
The old man, who had been glued to his chair in fear, jumped to his feet as the elder brother hit the ground. He stared at the two men lying on the floor, and then out of his shop window into the street. Outside he saw people fighting, screaming at each other, hitting, spitting, kicking. Rubbish flew through the air, fires were raging in the street, in the buildings, smoke and pollution made the sky grey and blocked the sun. Overwhelmed by what he had done, what he had unleashed, the old man ran outside. He tried to pull people off each other, tried to put out fires with his bare hands. But no-one helped, no-one listened. Distraught, he walked aimlessly through the streets until he found himself standing outside his own home. The sunflowers that had once made him and those around him so happy were gone. His yard was full of stones and rubbish. But, then, in the corner of the yard he spied something bright, fresh and green. A tiny shoot was pushing its way up through the barren ground, trying to break through the piles of rubbish bearing down on it.
Carefully, the old man knelt down and decided to do one last great thing, before he died.
