SSS Week Five: Eleanor Rigby

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope mothers everywhere enjoy the day. I hope your mother enjoys her day, reader. Throughout the day, think about how wonderful your mother is-- but remember that my mother is better! 

For this Short Story Sunday, the prompt is:

Write a story of your interpretation of a song.

I contemplated doing "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, but, the truth is, no-one actually knows the true meaning of the song. Freddie Mercury never actually stated what it is. Many think it's pure nonsense for the simple amusement. Some believe it's about a man killing another and going on trail for it. Some believe it's about someone coming out of the closet and facing the fact with themselves and the world around them. And many believe it's about someone who killed themselves and is already dead.

These themes all seemed rather dark. Then again, what else would one expect but dark from a song whose protagonist admits to their mother that he's just killed a man and put the gun against the victim's head, pulled his trigger now they're dead?

I decided to go with the song "Eleanor Rigby" by The Beatles. 

The meaning may be much deeper and complex, but I took the lyrics (which I will paste below the story) pretty much literal.

I don't know what to think of this tale about two lonely people. My writing style is pretty basic, using many simple sentences and speaking in present tense. It simply is what it is.

I do hope you enjoy it, though:



There are many people at a wedding. And what a joyful celebration it is! The bride and groom smile as they walk hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, through the crowds who throw uncooked rice in the air and who cheer as if it is the happiest day of their lives. It may very well be. After all, who doesn't enjoy a good wedding?

There stands a woman at this wedding, however, who isn't cheering. She isn't a guest. She isn't the bride-- though she is a bride. No-one knows her, and she knows no-one.

She knows many in her musings; friends and good acquaintances, close family and distant relatives, infatuations and love interests. She has no enemies, both in her imagination and in real life-- though she is never aware when she is in one or the other. Either she has a lonely life and a fashionable collection dreams, or a social life and isolated reveries. She doesn't know which is truth and which is fiction. It's not as if she simply doesn't know, however. The truth is, she doesn't wish to find out. She is too afraid of the answer. After all, someone told her once-- whether that someone was real or a figment of her imagination is unknown-- that you should never ask questions you don't want to know the answer to. Those, she thought, were wise words.

She has no enemies because no-one knows her-- therefore, giving people nay an opportunity to decide their opinions of her for themselves. She has no enemies in her dreams because she can't bear to have someone hate her.

As the bride and groom drive away and the guests leave, she does what she came to do; not to witness a wedding, but to pick up the rice that litters the ground. She has no money to buy her own rice, and she is sure the newlyweds wouldn't mind if she takes the leftovers. After all, they were thrown on the ground, stomped on by shined shoes and pointy heels. The grains are nothing to them.

She gathers all she can into her handkerchief and leaves, looking back no more at the church and the wedding that wasn't her own-- only a memory to soon be forgotten.

One would think a woman with no money who picks rice off the ground in front of a brick church building would wash and eat the grains for herself. She washes them, of course, but she doesn't eat them. She doesn't boil them until they are soft and edible and eat them as if it is her last meal.

She changes into the gown she had bought at a bridal boutique in Paris and slides a gold band on the fourth finger of her left hand which she had received in a little blue box from Tiffany's. Of course, these items were obtained in those ways only in her musings. After all, she has no money, remember? Both dress and ring were merely things she stumbled upon in a cedar chest which had been left behind in her attic by the previous resident, some years ago--how many, she cannot remember.

She feathers the makeup brushes containing no makeup across her face, her cheeks and her eyelids. She wouldn't usually doll up, but this is quite an occasion. After double-checking that she looks beautiful, she places a flower crown upon her head, turning to look out the window just in time to see him walking down the street. She smiles at him, though he isn't really there. He smiles back, indicating that she does, in fact, look lovely. Yes, it will be quite the occasion. A beautiful wedding, indeed.

Everyone attends. Everyone who doesn't exist, that is. They cheer. She can hear them as they do. She smiles at the man she had smiled at through the window-- the man who is now her husband. She decides to call him Paul. He looks like a Paul, she thinks.

She grips the bouquet she had picked moments before eagerly as the pastor says: "I now pronounce you man and wife-" She doesn't allow him to continue and leans in to kiss the nonexistent lips. She had always loved the idea of a couple so excited about their new commitment that they kiss each other before the pastor can even turn to the groom and say: "You may now kiss your bride." She thought it indefinitely romantic and still thinks so.

She throws the rice in the air, feeling gravity do its job with the grains, the fragments tapping her shoulders and head softly. She smiles at her husband's brown orbs-- for she had always wanted a brown-eyed man.

A certainly beautiful wedding.

°°

Father McKenzie had done many ceremonies in his life. Many weddings and many funerals. People only seem to marry or die in the town he resides in, to his misfortune. No-one attends his church services, and he contemplates this fact as he darns the hole in his socks, the world outside the parsonage dark and cold.

He doesn't dare to glance in the drawer to his right, the one filled with sermons of different topics. He writes a brand new one every week, taking it with him to church on Sundays. No-one ever shows up. The drawer is beginning to overfill and he wonders where to place his future, unheard sermons. He weaves the loose yarn of his sock furiously, wanting it to be perfect for Sunday.

Every Friday morning, he takes his best black suit to the dry cleaners'. He picks it up every Saturday afternoon-- all cleaned and pressed for church the next day. He shines his shoes until he sees his own reflection and irons his ties and handkerchiefs, taking out all the creases. He comes to church every week as though it's his first Sunday preaching. He never knows when his first Sunday with an audience will be. He prays it's soon.

He's been praying that prayer for a decade now.

No-one visits the parsonage unless they're looking to marry or plan the funeral of a loved one. No-one even knows his name.

"MacIntyre," they would say. "McCarthy." "McDonald." "McCoy."

No-one calls him "McKenzie." No-one.

He spends his nights mending socks and trouser legs and he spends his days writing sermons.

Father McKenzie is a modest man. He never brags and never boasts. But that doesn't mean he isn't proud of his sermons. He writes deep topics for people of every spiritual maturity. He researches constantly, learning more and more about the Bible every minute of the day. He prays and reads and writes and mends his sock.

All for nothing.

He keeps hope, praying that God will send him a congregation. Prays that God will give him friends. He will even be happy with an acquaintance, someone who knows his name. Yet no-one comes.

Only weddings and funerals. Couples and the dead.

Father McKenzie looks down at the closed casket in the ground on the grey day. He is surprised by the turnout for this funeral. Usually, there would be anywhere between a dozen and three dozen. But no-one came.

Eleanor Rigby. Even he hasn't heard the name. No-one has.

He had found a woman in an old wedding gown sitting on a bench outside of the church one day. She appeared to be sleeping. He didn't bother to wake her. The next day, he saw her again. Same dress, same position, still sleeping. The physicians said she had been dead for days. She died in her sleep. No-one recognised her and the only way they found her identity was a slip of paper in her hand. It read in a rough, lazy pen: 'Eleanor Rigby & Paul Mc.' with a date of the day she died written on the page with the word "married" in front of it, along with a few doodled hearts.

Father McKenzie had done a wedding that day. But this woman is unfamiliar to him. He would've remembered her. But he doesn't. Of all his ten years here, he has not seen or heard of her. Apparently, no-one else has either.

He prays and preaches aloud about death and salvation to no-one before burying the wooden box containing Eleanor Rigby. He wipes the dirt from his hands on the leg of his trousers, not caring that it may ruin the fabric. He turns and leaves, going back home to his solitude, fully aware that no-one was saved by his sermon of salvation.



The song:

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby
Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, 
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie 
Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, 
Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby 
Died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie 
Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?