Ronald's Jest

In the earliest mist of the morn, I had indulged, as per the lucrative span of ordained endowment, the perfunctory leisure of an easy slapdash breakfast. I barely ruminated of any ensuing installments of the day, for my cycloptic prospect, had only eagerly ventured a guaranteed tribute of singular affair. My friend, from old times would visit, and in that special, infamy of our rapport, I found a plethora of fond memories, somewhat inaccessible, due to that profound duration of our distancing. His name, as I shall never forget it, nor hinder its syllables from the chambers of my forlorn heart, was Ronald, a man of flamboyant extravagance and a morbid appetite for adventure. I vaguely feared his coming, for he was not a man to anticipate, with the usual alignment of circumstance, or even the account of which, the absurd is given due probability of disinhibition. He was not mad, but forgive me, he was not at all sane. The afternoon came, as of a haze, and he finally arrived, punctual and as subdued as a wet cat. There was something awful in the composition of his whole, something that I could not elongate from a plausible tangent. I welcomed him, or at least the vestige of his person, miserably dewed into an anhedonic imposter, lingering by the misfortune, of an unspoken tragedy. His eyes only saw the ground, and his limbs had that apathetic, nonchalance of affected purport, and mastery. I sat him on the couch, beguiled by the mutual apprehension of our union, and the unsatisfying rudimentary collaboration of his form.

"This is not how I remember you, something is wrong" I spoke vehemently aghast, and then he returned to me, in a quivering sob,

"You're not wrong old friend, the physician has not rendered it decipherable to the common man, in his discourse. He has tried, but, you see..." Here the speaker paused, and in his corrugated facial lineaments, I saw an anxiety that had become despair, gather itself into conspicuous bouyance. He continued again,

"When the simple expressions of medical diagnosis, are given immaculate delivery, there is an unforgiving paradox, in its ensuing jurisdiction. I mean to say, it is better to have heard the jargon of science than to be told, that I have a malign mutation in the brain and I will soon die" and here Ronald buried his face, into his scrawny hands,

"It is only a hyperbole, no surely you will not die!" I said vehemently, now standing and smashing the heel of my foot upon the floor. I heard audible gasps, which at first evinced the sobs of an anguished soul, but at length they became, eerie uncouth chuckles, those of impish pleasure. He stood now on his feet to join me in altitude and I saw a wild intensity in his eyes, as he gripped my shoulders and said,

"You are too naive friend, it is only a joke, but I am sure this was an obvious register in your mind!" And then in letting me loose from his unwholesome grip he began to dance, but I did not espouse any contradiction to my initial observance, that my friend had been lost, when he sang the song 

"I only eat, from the apple of rot, from the fruits of mischief, from the hand of Lucifer, I only eat..."