Hedon's Heretic

It wasn't laziness that landed Oscar on the streets. He had worked hard for decades without complaint and been rewarded with a prestigious position at a university teaching philosophy. Yet as rapidly as his tenure approached, his mental health declined, at least in the eyes of his contemporaries. He became increasingly brazen about his disgust for modern culture, embracing man's nature as merely another animal, a belief which eventually culminated in a series of embarrassing diogenic countercultural displays which left the university with no choice but to abandon him.

Thus began a life of willful homelessness. He devolved into a beast of a man, shameless as a dog, sleeping where he liked, eating what he found, defecating where he pleased. Unkempt white hair burst from every side of him, accompanied by a rank odor.

He considered this simple life to be his greatest achievement, and when confronted with the weary faces of those who labored ceaselessly for wealth, he'd wear his biggest smile and ask an ancient question which had quickly become something of a motto for him. "Will you not give up being miserable?"

They never answered, and to the world around him he seemed more alien with each passing day. Those who knew him viewed him with pity, those who did not regarded him with disdain. He hadn't properly joined the ranks of the dregs of society in some abandoned corner where his ilk were more easily tolerated, instead he'd made his lonely camp around the only home he'd known since his youth, the university. He was a blight upon their otherwise fair campus. But he wasn't just an eyesore, he openly mocked those who's crumbs he picked through for sustenance, saying "Be relieved of your folly, your pets are happier than you!"

His academic tendency towards smugness combined with the revolting lifestyle written all over his grimy body made him quite the unpalatable preacher. In short time, he made many enemies, in particular a certain snobby few who had begun doing everything in their power to be rid of him. But for Oscar's part, he counted only one man as a foe: Ned Ingleman.

Ned fancied himself as pious, but unlike many who wasted away following one social pressure after another, he was no mere follower. He led them to their slaughter. Ned had — through a combination of birth lottery and devilish business acumen — accrued some great wealth, and in recent years spent much of it on philanthropy, a fact which he never ceased to remind everyone of. Almost weekly Ned would seek Oscar out to nag him, pleading with him to just be humbled and accept a proper bed. "You can still get back on your feet, Oscar, I believe in you." He would goad with a taut flat-lipped mockery, each word dripping with utter disdain, serving only to accentuate how punchable his face was. Worse, the charity he offered was contrived of chains. Oscar was not blind to the derision that guided Ned's words, and wouldn't be pacified into a life as chattel in one of those macabre temples that Ned called 'shelters'.

Ned considered Oscar to be a lazy, unmotivated man, wielding delusions of grandeur in a futile attempt to protect a fragile ego, one which had long since cracked upon the floor of the Dean's office when he'd been fired. But their feud had originated well after Oscar's disgrace, and over nothing of such consequence. It was simple, Ned had treated him not as a beast, which Oscar would've taken pride in, but as less than a beast, which roused a rare fury. In retrospect, Oscar thought, he ought to have noticed the way the shadows seemed to coalesce around Ned's house, marking it as vile. For years after, Oscar made a point of regularly defecating on Ned's doorstep. Their strife grew cyclically.

That is, until their years-long stalemate broke, and Oscar found the upper ground. One morning, on his way to relieve himself before the gate of Ned's mansion, Oscar witnessed the delivery of a package. Small, brown, temptingly inconsequential, the thing seemed to whisper to him. Take me. Living off of scraps, he had grown accustomed to taking that which others lost or discarded, but had never stooped to straightforward theft. Still, it seemed that fate, karma and coincidence had conspired to provide him with an opportunity, and he resolved to seize it.

When he tore the thing open, big orange text in a joyous font greeted him upon a beige card addressed to Ned. "You have been selected as this year's Good Samaritan." Beneath the card was a program for a gala being held in Ned's honor, and a VIP access pass. A myriad of half-baked plans hatched in Oscar's mind all at once. He smirked ruefully and ran away with the thing.

Finding a news stand, he compared the date on the letter to the one on the day's paper. Having no means of timekeeping, he began to trek to the clock tower every day at dawn, keeping tally of days passed by unthreading the laces from one more hole in his ruined shoes each morning.

When the day of the event finally came, he made his way there before the morning's light had relieved the street lamps, and waited. The lecture hall was shamefully familiar to him, as were the decadent parties held there to honor various faculty. He watched as guests began to arrive, all done up in elegant garments. They were poor fodder by Oscar's estimation, lives spent up as pawns in a game played only by the real menaces, he knew. Menaces like Ned.

He'd half expected to be turned away immediately, but security was loose, and though he was certainly out of place, they let him in upon seeing the VIP pass he'd acquired. He didn't have to push through the growing crowd, the people recoiled from him instinctively. The room was mostly filled with tables, decorated with grand vases and fine silverware and illuminated by candlelight. The whole east wall of the hall was a large raised stage, equipped with a mic and as yet unoccupied instruments for a band. Oscar approached the stage, collecting bewildered glances like trophies that would forever be mounted on the walls of his mental palace. A man near the stage held up a hand to stop him, but once again relented upon seeing the pass he wielded. Nobody had the gumption to stop him, lest they be caught on camera assaulting a clearly homeless man at a charity gala.

His legs shook as he took the stage, whether with nerves or malnourishment he knew not. For an old man memories are precious things, and Oscar had spent many days sinking deep into them, such that when he found himself addressing a crowd, though it had been many years since he had last done so, he felt oddly comfortable.

"Hello, my name is Oscar." His voice had once been smooth and deep and commanding, now it was jarring, raspy and frail. He cleared his throat. He had no planned remarks, his mere presence would be enough. Still, he was certain there was something to say, since he had momentarily reacquired the only thing he'd missed from his time as a teacher: an audience.

Most of the crowd seemed to assume from Oscar's stature that this was some clever setup for a big punchline where their Good Samaritan would walk in to the tune of some fanciful music and claim the stage, righting the wrong of Oscar's presence there. This certainty seemed to fade with each word from his mouth.

"Many of you know me. Those who don't have likely seen me around. I used to sleep on the benches in the park, until you split them with metal separators. I used to sleep in the window wells at shops, but you reformed the concrete into spikes to run me off." He looked out upon the sea of faces with subtly masked pity and a hint of contempt. So much time they spent living, yet so little spent being alive, and still they wasted more to harass him. "During spring, I took shelter from the rain under a bridge, you filled the underpass with huge rocks. In the winter, there was a heat vent outside the cafeteria which provided me warmth, you gated it off."

The crowd stirred, he was losing them. "So you can understand my relief when I encountered our Good Samaritan." Time to rein them back in. "I had always imagined that he was a kind man. I found him taking the time to share some leftovers from a meal with a fresh litter of raccoons. Surely a man with such respect for beasts would treat me with equal charity. Still, years of experience being thrown off of such affluent properties made my approach tenuous, and rather than bothering him I decided to take my chances splitting the scraps with the rascals."

There was a loaded silence in the room as the crowd split between those taken aback by his vocabulary and those who waited still for a punchline. "But Ned caught sight of me." Oscar paused as he saw Ned bursting through the hall's double doors, all pomp and vigor, still unaware of the goings-on. Oscar sped up the pace of his words. "But he cared more for the beasts than for me. He shooed me away and called the police." Two men started walking towards the stage.

"It is, in this city, illegal for you to share food with me, illegal to build any kind of unsanctioned shelter for me, illegal for me to 'stand in one place for too long'. You have codified a life of miserable business for yourselves, and when confronted with me — a monument which reminds you of this foolishness — have tried to codify me away also." Dragged from the mic at center stage, his voice found a youthful strength once more and his shouting still filled the room. "But I'm glad you've all got time and money to get together and pat each other on the back for being so generous!"

The realization that there was no punchline passed through the crowd like a wave, eliciting mixed whispers and groans. Even as large hands grasped him beneath his underarms and hoisted him towards the door, Oscar wore an elated smile. He caught Ned's eyes, squalid and furious, and rejoiced as the foul man's jowls shook in anger. Oscar needn't even deride Ned to ruin his day, and this was why Ned hated him so. Him merely existing in Ned's space illustrated a point. Oscar had something Ned would never have: Enough.

The men carrying him were rougher than they needed to be, perhaps embarrassed at having let him through so easily. They cast him back outside, and when his head hit the curb a small pool of blood formed beneath it, oozing down the concrete. He knew that his words had fallen on deaf ears, and that space in the world for those like him would continue to recede. But he also knew that he'd remember this meager victory forever. Paying the pain no heed, he relaxed on the warm pavement and passed out.

Dusk approached, and Oscar was made vaguely aware of the gala's patrons leaving, awoken by their snickers at his sprawled out body, and the familiar nuzzling of a black Labrador's wet and fuzzy nose against his forearm. This evoked memories of a beloved pet from his youth, and he turned with a wide grin to greet the pup as an equal, but it was nowhere to be seen.

The sensation of soft fur transformed bizarrely into a gentle brushing, the subtle trickle of blood morphed into a soreness of tears, and Oscar's smile faded into bewilderment as neurons snapped back into place. Gone was the gala, gone was the pavement. Instead he was greeted with the brush of a broom's end against his forearm. He was strewn atop a shoddy table, before him stood a befuddled teenager in a black and red uniform, brandishing a broom with a tenuous grip.

"I'm sorry sir, I kinda liked your story, but this is a Wendy's. We have to ask you to leave."