Jonathan Grimm always loved solving puzzles. He knew all about
them. Jonathan knew the history of puzzles. He was an 80-year old widower.
His children and grandchildren all lived in different states. Jonathan didn’t
care. Now that he was all alone he had all the time in the world to put
together more puzzle pieces.
Sometimes his eldest son would call him because he was worried
about his father living all alone. He wouldn’t be able to talk very long.
Jonathan would usually cut him off and explain that he was too busy with his
jigsaw obsession to talk. When he really wanted people to leave him alone,
he would bore them with stories about the history of puzzles.
“Puzzles have been a part of America since the 1700’s. People
would put maps together that came in many tiny little pieces.”
His tales of the history of puzzles always got people off the phone
quickly. It also stopped people from calling him too much. That left Jonathan
with more time on his hands. Time he could spend to do more puzzles.
One evening Jonathan was working on several puzzles at once. He
heard a knock on the door. He was irritated that someone would interfere
with his favorite obsession. Jonathan’s curiosity eventually got the best of
him. He walked to the door and opened it. He looked around and there was
no one there. Then he noticed something. A box was on his doorstep. He
brought it inside and opened it. The box was filled with puzzle pieces! There
were no directions or cover. There were only many puzzle pieces.
“I’m going to have to solve this one!”
Jonathan started to put all the pieces together. The task of this
mysterious puzzle demanded his full attention. Jonathan realized that the
pieces formed a person from the waist up. It wasn’t a very big puzzle. The
puzzle was only twenty four inches in length and about twelve inches in
width. Jonathan notices that the man in the puzzle was wearing the same
clothes he was wearing. Then he put the pieces together that formed the
figure behind the man. A long skeleton hand with a bony finger pointing
was touching the man’s shoulder in the puzzle. Then Jonathan finished the
puzzle. He looked in horror as he saw his own face. He was the man in the
puzzle.
Jonathan felt a chill in the room. He felt an ice cold hand touch his
own shoulder. Jonathan stopped breathing. He looked at the mirror in front
of him and saw the long skeletal hand of death that was touching him.
It was almost a month before they found Jonathan’s body. During
his funeral, people were talking about who could have sent him the strange
puzzle. No one ever found out who sent Jonathan the puzzle. For generations
after his death, people in town found other hobbies to occupy their time. No
one wanted to share the same fate of seeing their own mortality, one piece at
a time.

by David Kempf, ’07