Written many years ago by Arthur Hoppe ...
On the morning of his 42nd birthday, Grabwell Grommet awoke to a peal of particularly ominous thunder. Glancing out the window with his
bleary eyes, he saw written in fiery letters:
"SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL YOU, GRABWELL
GROMMET!"
With shaking hands, Grommet lit his first cigarette of the day. He didn't question the message. You don't question messages like that. His only question was, "Who?"
At breakfast as he salted his fried eggs and buttered his toast, he told his wife, Gratia, "Someone is trying to kill me."
"Who?" she asked with horror.
Grommet slowly stirred the cream and sugar into his
coffee and shook his head, "I don't know," he said.
Convinced though he was, Grommet wasn't going to the police with his story. He decided his only course was to go about his daily routine and hope somehow to outwit his would-be murderer. He tried to think on the drive to the office. But the frustration of making time by beating lights and switching lanes occupied him wholly. Nor, once behind his desk, could he think a moment what with jangling phones, urgent memos and the problems and decisions piling in as they did each day.
It wasn't until his second martini at lunch that the full terror of his position struck him. It was all he could do to finish his Lasagna Milanese. "I can't panic," he said to himself, lighting his cigar. "I simply must live my life as usual."
So he worked until seven as usual. Drove home fast as usual. Studied business reports as usual. And he took his usual two Seconal capsules in order to get his usual six hours sleep. As days passed, the man fully stuck to his routine. And as the months went by, he began to take a perverse pleasure in his ability to survive.
"Whoever's trying to get me," he'd say proudly to his wife, "hasn't got me yet. I'm too smart for him."
"Oh, please be careful," she'd reply, ladling him a second helping of beef stroganoff. The pride grew as he managed to go on living for years.
But as it must to all men, death came at last to Grabwell. It came at his desk on a particularly busy day. He was 53.
His grief-stricken widow demanded a full autopsy. But it showed only emphysema, arteriosclerosis, duodenal ulcers, cirrhosis of the liver, cardiac necrosis, cerebrovascular aneurysm, pulmonary edema, obesity,
circulatory insufficiency and a touch of lung cancer.
"How glad Grabwell would have been to know," said the widow smiling proudly through her tears, "that he died of natural causes."
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