The Life and Death of Belirious Bumble

They say that the nice guys always finish last. They also say that the good die young. But who are these people? Who is “they,” anyway? You don’t know them, and thus their word is null!

At least, this was the reasoning of one Belirious Bumble, a boy who was born October the 12^th of 1994 to a family of eight in Smortberry, Connecticut. His name is an interesting one because it is not, as you might have guessed, derived from the word delirious, but rather from the Latin word filirious, meaning annoyingly sedulous. From birth, young Bel had been a hard-worker who never gave up an attempt to serve his community. During his mother’s labor, he even contorted himself in such a away that he could slide out with ease, causing as little pain to her as possible. He was out in less than half an hour.

He strove to make not only his own life happy, but for the providence of everyone around him, seeking to undermine the institution of Hobbes and his state of nature. Not everyone could be greedy, he reasoned to himself. Look at me.

When he was six years old, a neighbor by the name of Mrs. Chubbinson, as popular media demands is an often occurrence, had her cat stuck in a tree. As both the firefighters and her husband were locked in an intense game of poker, one party playing in a town building and the other in Las Vegas, the poor old woman had no one to turn to to help her extremely fat cat down the trunk of this solid oak.

Our hero Bel happened to be walking past at the time, and noticed the venerable old hag with the waterworks on sitting on the curb. “Hey there, Mrs. Chubbinson! What’s wrong,” he asked with boyhood innocence and charm.

“My cat… he is… stuck!” Then she continued to sob her eyes out into her dress. She raised a wrinkled, chubby finger towards the feline in distress, who was grooming itself on top of a branch, ten feet from the ground. Being neither a rock climber or some type of prodigy white-boy dunker, Bel had no way of getting that cat out of the tree without assistance, so he thought and thought to the extents of is Kindergarten trained mind, and briskly ran off.

Some ten minutes later, he returned with a very long broom, approached the tree, and unceremoniously pushed the animal right off the branch. It fell quickly with a catlike squeal and could feel quite an empathy towards the shocked expression on Eleanor Chubbinson’s face as it plummeted towards the ground.

After a split second of freefall, the cat simply walked over to the door of the Chubbinson household and disappeared inside.

“Cat’s always land on there feet,” Bel simply stated to the bewildered old maid as he shouldered the broom and was on his way.

And so was his daily routine. Bel would see people struggling, and help them out, shrugging it off as all in a day’s work. By the time 2013 rolled around, he was a strapping young man who had respect from every member of the town and was ready to attend occupational school at the Smortberry Community College. Although it was never recorded, he had performed over 2000 hours of community service throughout his childhood and young adult years, even going so far as to give away his hand-restored pickup truck to a homeless man he saw on the side of the street.

One day, however, his life changed monumentally.

It was October 12^th, and Bel was celebrating his birthday with some friends at Applebee’s and was about to order up a steaming burger when he was accosted by a young girl, who had run to his table faster than Mr. Bolt ran track and panted, out of breath, trying to speak the English language. Her mouth was somewhat slobbery as well, and the whole situation gave Bel a look of peculiarity.

“What’s up, Mandy?” he asked slowly, looking at the preteen girl with nothing more than slight annoyance.

Pant, pant, “I left,” pant, pant, “My retainer,” pant, “In the subway station, on the bench” pant, pant.

“Um. Okay?”

“I need that retainer,” pant, pant, “Or my parents are going to kill me! They said that if I los it again, I would be grounded FOR LIFE!”

Bel shook his head, already knowing what she wanted him to do, and stood up warily, slipping on his canvas jacket. “Hey, A-bro-ham Lincoln,” said Franky, one of his cohorts by acquaintance, “where do you think you are going? I thought we were going to hang out for your birthday.”

“I have to go help out Mandy here. I should be back soon though. Aw, come on, man, don’t give me that look. You know I have to help. I always got to help.” His friends still looked somewhat pi**ed off, so he softened a little. “How about this, I’ll pay for your guys’ meals.” The group immediately brightened up, enticed by the threat of free food, and smiled a greedy human smile as he dished out thirty bucks.

And so he was off.

Bel started at a jog, then transitioned into a run, leaping over the three miles it took to get from the best restaurant in the city to the Southside downtown underground railroad station. He stopped just before it, catching his breath and looking down into the darkness. He began to wonder why a twelve-year-old girl was even down there in the first place, the descending stair marked by litter that included everything from moldy baby bottles to dirty syringes.

This Subway System was a major detriment to the town, the process of its upkeep driving many plausible investors away from the area, and the tunnels became worn out, old, and basically empty. Most people did no venture down there unless they were in a group during their commute.

But now Bel was going down, and he felt a little bit creeped out by the dark station, but was decided on helping the kid get her retainer back. So he strolled through the chamber, towards the far wall where the benched were, the cracked tile of the wall bending whatever light entered the station or filtered through the weak bulbs into a trippy visual phenomenon. After he stooped and picked up the slobbery, twisted wire, he felt something cold and metal against his neck.

“Give me whatever you got, kid,” said a gruff, familiar voice. “Let’s not make me use this thing.” The knife’s pressure increased.

“I’m sorry, man,” Bel said carefully, gritting his teeth. “I don’t have any money on me, I swear. I lent the last of it to my friends so that I could come here and pick up this-“

“Belirious Bumble?” the gruff voice asked, taken aback. The pressure left his neck and the knife flashed back into a coat pocket.

“Yes,” said Bel, wondering what was going on, “Why?” He turned and saw that his assailant was Timothy Boliah, a town drunk whom Bel had led home on various circumstances, dropping him off on his doorstep in return for a feeble “thank you.”

“It is you! Listen, I need to ask a favor from you, little brother. No, no, forget about the money. We’re friends, right?”

Bel just stared at him, and the man continued awkwardly. “So, my cousin Jacob lives at 234 Smogtown Road. Apartment number 603. Could you run and tell him that it’s going down this Friday at 8 PM?”

“What is.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. He’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“Listen, Mr. Boliah,” Bel said slowly, trying to back off and make a hasty retreat, “I really need to get back to Mandy with her retainer and my friends to hang out, or else they will be disappointed. I really don’t have the time for any shady business here.”

“Please, Belirious, please? I’m begging you, man. Please help me out.” The old guy was obviously a little inebriated and Bel started to feel a little sorry for the elderly gang-banger. “It would make me real happy to you, Brodo Baggins!” His beard quivered and his yellow lips puckered up.

Bel sighed. “Fine,” he said, then ran off up the stairs and towards the apartment building, ignoring the cries of the geezer that he was a saint, a SAINT he says.

Bel sprinted as fast as he could to get to the building that Timothy had indicated, which was large and a little seedy. However, the place was surrounded by a veritable entourage of a celebrity, the street crowded with nervous people and cop cars parked every way, all shining their spotlights on a window of the fifth floor, where a man stood perched precariously on the edge of the building, prepared to jump.

Someone noticed Bel standing there and urged him over. “Belirious Bumble, thank God that you are here. Jim Strand is up there and he says he is going to jump. He said he’s had enough and wants to leave this world. If anyone can talk him down, it’s you, Bel. Everyone likes you!”

This new turn of events made Bel sick to his stomach and full of regret for coming here. Why hadn’t he just run home.

“But… I have to go get Tim’s cousin Jacob and give him a message and get Mandy her retainer and get back to my friends to hang out. I… I… Well, looks like I don’t really have a choice with this one.”

And off Bel went, to try to talk down a suicidal insurance worker from his ledge atop the Smogtown apartment complex. He charged up the stairs, two at a time, trying to get to the man before he decided to end everything and embrace the darkness.

When he burst into the home of Jim, he pushed through a crowd of psychologists, cops, and priests, who all lingered in the small apartment room. He through himself onto the ledge and immediately began talking to the extremely surprised man.

“Jim. It’s me, Bel. No! Do not jump, hear me out. Remember way back when, when I helped you get your truck out of a mud puddle by getting into the filth and pushing while you revved the engine? Listen, I need you to get out of that mud puddle that you’ve gotten yourself into now. I will push, you just need to rev the engine. Now, what is wrong.”

“Well, see a long time ago-”

“Shut up!” Bel yelled. “Just tell me what is wrong.”

“No one loves me!” cried the man, tears running down his face. “I just need one person to say they really love me, and I will climb off this ledge and never climb back on again. I just need to hear it one time. From anyone!” He looked hopefully at Bel from the corner of his eye.

Bel sighed once more and said “I love you Jim. I really do. Now come back inside.”

The man complied and shuffle back in through one of the two windows. Immediately, shouts and applause came from the street below, which Bel hardly paid attention to, because someone spoke from above him. It was Jacob Boliah.

“Hey, is that you?” the man said drunkenly.

“Yes, and Tim wanted me to tell you-“

“Nah, hear me now, bro,” interrupted Jacob, slurring his words. “Can you go pick me up some Advil from the Seven-Eleven?”

Bel just looked down at his shoes, ignored the man, stepping towards the window. He made a new resolution. He would look out for himself from now on. He wouldn’t get involved in everyone else’s shenanigans, jut to make them happy.

As he stormed towards the window, he lost his footing and fell, falling on his head five stories below. And so it ended.

And no one was happy.