A Short, Short Story

Alexander Powers Proudfoot was an inscrutable pip. No one and nothing could explain his prowess. Even the powerful mental monster, AI, was powerless against his fearless mental motions.

He lived in a hut on the edge of a river, and ate fractured fish he’d caught and slammed on a rock. He had nothing against the salvelinus fontinalis, and hated that they should suffer, so he killed them instantly on capture, and fried them on sticks, turned over flame.

He had no use for digital tools. He slept on a foam pad, covered with recycled blankets. The warm drapes were fashioned from reused materials, and kept him warm, even during the icy Scots’ winters.

Al, as his few friends called him, was an heir to the Huckaby fortune. The Huckaby’s, being a newspaper dynasty from Yorkshire, had all but died out, and Al was their sole heir.

Jilted by a rich coffee heiress years back, Al retired to the riverside hut, living on clean air and a wealth of solitude. He kept occupied with letters, writing to those he found in the local paper he picked up on his weekly jaunts to town. They were folk who needed help, but had avoided asking for it.

He’d obtain their addresses from his business agent, Thomas Cooper, and mail them each a million dollars from his hefty bank account. No one knew from whence the money came, and one day, Al was slamming a fish on a rock, when he slipped and fell. Slamming his noggin on the boulder, he left this perilous earth forever.

He’d given away the last of his millions, and was never seen again, but the people who’d received the anonymous funds, followed a similar trend, retiring to obscurity, and living for others.

Al looked down from heaven, pleased with his toil. The Almighty crowned his pate, saying, “Well done.”