Johnny Rialto Ruiz

Johnny Rialto Ruiz experienced bucketloads of sadness.

He couldn't believe how much of it there was. He did not understand why it didn't go away.

Everywhere he went, every move he made, sadness stalked him. It was as if sadness became animated, that it had its own life, that it could think and move. That it could outwit him.

He tried to live in the moment, he tried to be grateful for the holes in his shoes. He did as he was told by the experts who knew exactly how to make the most out of life. Apparently their advice was not universally applicable. Maybe it was the experts who outwitted him.

He was nice. He was very nice. He was nice to other people. Everyone. So very nice. But they were not nice to him. The niceness that he put out there evaporated into the atmosphere. People sucked it in like oxygen and then moved on. Without appreciation.

This he did not understand either.

The people who stole his niceness were like people leaving a restaurant with a doggie bag in hand, who sudddenly come across a homeless man. People who reach into the bag, eat the leftovers in front of the homeless man and throw the bag at his feet.

Niceness never came back to him.

But the sadness was relentless. He woke up to it, walked through the day hand in hand with it, sat with it by his side at dinner and while watching TV, went to bed with it.

It exhausted him. It hollowed out his guts.

The harder he fought it the more tenacious it became. Until it overwhelmed him.

He was found dead in his recliner. 

No evidence of suicide, no evidence of foul play. No fuss, no muss.

Just death. 

Johnny Rialto Ruiz's soul hovered over his body as John Krakow and Edna Pufkin puzzled over his death. As they processed and eventually cleared the scene. Their conclusion? He just died. Died of natural causes apparently.

Johnny's soul tried so hard to bridge the gap. Tried to tell them that he died from sadness. A suffocating, all-encompassing sadness. Tried to tell them that sadness kills.

But they could not hear him. 

The deafening roar of their own sadness - Krakow's raging alcoholism, Pufkin's violent marriage - drowned out Johnny Rialto Ruiz's desperate attempt to communicate the harsh reality.

Sadness is the number one cause of death in the world.