Collapse Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
Cynthia had a very large problem – her world was collapsing. She
had been cut off from her family and from the world around her and everything
was falling apart. She lived alone in a needlessly grandiose house surrounded
by a great number of possessions that did little to fill the void that had been
left within her.
Cynthia Delius was a collector of archaic items, also known as a
hoarder. Not in a dysfunctional bad way, but still, she saved too much and
assigned too much value to it. There was a sentimentality to her that allowed
her to appreciate the past and relics long forgotten, but also trapped her with
an inability to move on.
In her younger days she was a bit of treasure hunter. She didn’t
care so much for the item, but for the chase and the thrill of the hunt. She
was the type to snipe items at auctions. But it meant she ended up with a broad
and diverse collection, not all of it wanted or desired. She didn’t hunt as
much now, and she had a much better appreciation for what she collected.
It had been years since she had seen her father, but she had
inherited a good chunk of his worldly possessions a few years earlier. He
wasn’t dead. He hadn’t died and left a will. After a lifetime of excess and
indulgence he had taken a vow of poverty and left his family his possessions in
a pre-death will. He didn’t actually believe in becoming poor, but took the
interpretation that a vow of poverty was really a vow to share. While not the
most traditional interpretation, it was seen as a means for him to improve
himself, so Cynthia embraced and encouraged the idea. What it really meant was
that she received a great deal of his worthless junk. He had spent a lifetime
seeking power and in that quest had acquired a great deal. Now, as an old man,
he passed that junk along to his children. Evenly distributed, of course. Some
of her more jaded siblings assumed he was just too lazy to dispose of his
things himself and selfishly freed himself of it by forcing it on his children.
Cynthia, while not in much contact with him, still held out hope for the man,
although she didn’t hold her breath while waiting.
With the demise of her father’s position of power, a vacuum had
been created, one which the rest of her family scrambled to fill. Cynthia had
no need for her brothers or sisters or her mother, or so she thought. She let
them fight and feud and she focused on keeping her corner of the world in
precise order. What she hadn’t counted on was the new order to things that
developed. Her family had been well regarded and famous. Her family had been
respected and feared. Her family had wealth. These were the things she had
counted on continuing. What she didn’t fully understand was how much of the
family really just meant her father. Her father had followers and investors and
favor. Her father had a lot of things the rest of them did not. While her
brothers and sisters fought for table scraps they failed to notice the
cupboards were bare. Cynthia, too, had failed to take note.
And so the world crumbled around her. There was a void that no
amount of possessions could fill. Cynthia hadn’t realized how important any of
it would be. She took it for granted that things had meaning. But when no one
knew or remembered or cared, all her meanings meant nothing to the outside
world. The outside world forgot and inside her mansion, she faded. Life faded.
Her possessions faded. Everything was a little bit duller. Everyday. She
couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken with her family, but she knew it
had been a long time. She wondered if their lives had suffered the same way
hers had. She needed them but was unable to bring herself to reach out. She was
afraid to leave her home. She was afraid to face a world that didn’t need her,
didn’t know her. She had a mansion that was full of times and places forgotten,
and she had always thought that would make her rich, but looking at them now,
at worlds that time had passed by, they only made her lonely. She wondered
where her father was now. She wondered if maybe he knew something she didn’t,
and had gotten things right after all.
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