Fred on the roof

Fred on the roof

Fred was sitting on the roof.

His light blond hair was clearly visible against the brown roof tiles and is light blue eyes were shining. Yes, today, now on the roof was one of the few moments of his young life, where they were shining. They were sparkling like a happy leaf fire in autumn.

But the crowd of people below could not see that. Today was the day the whole neighbourhood was paying attention to him. All those years, the whole damned 14 years he had been in the world, he didn't get that much attention as he did now.

When someone wanted to end their life, “oh“ and “awww“ came from everywhere.

And before that?

Like ants they were scuttling on the street, helpless, small creatures, to serve him.

God wasn't called God anymore. He was called Fred now.

Everyone looked up at him. Everyone obeyed him. Only thought: don't jump down there.

Fred as the puppeteer. Ladies and gentlemen, the time is up. Red or green? Death or life? Jumping or not?

Fred stood up.

“Oh!”, it came from everywhere like an echo. Some screamed “No!” and “Boy, watch out!” or “Boy, don't do that!”

Fred lifted his arms as if to jump.

What would be his last words?

“You're all so stupid!”, he screamed from the top of his lunges, opened the roof window and went back into the house.

I wrote this story in 2001 or 2002 when we were covering short stories in German and some fellow students complained that the stories we talked about were dull. Well, the point of short stories is not to be exciting in the first place anyway. When I came back from school, I remembered a task I had read in a book on writing stories or books. I didn't quite like the task originally. Now somehow I had a story in my head. Imagine a person on the roof of a house, about to jump. What would be his or her last words? What would be his or her last sentence?

I didn't want my person to jump, hence the ending of my story. I wrote it and brought it to school to the next lesson. The teacher agreed to include it into the lesson. Of course I had to read it out aloud myself. I hate reading out aloud.

I changed one sentence a little bit, because it turned out people understood it another way I meant it to. Otherwise the story is without any further changes and the way I wrote it originally.