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Walter Flanagan,
Active Misanthrope, Dies at 94
Walter Flanagan, a man once described by his childhood priest as
“Satan’s crutches” died suddenly on February 15th in his Highland
Park home. He was 94 and had once told a neighbor whose paper he regularly
stole that his life’s work was “helping the rains flush this all out.”
The
cause of death was a broken neck from a fall he suffered on the 14th.
He had been standing naked on his rooftop throwing rocks at children that
were gathered near an ice cream truck when his left foot gave way. He fell
on his front lawn. He had an active criminal record, and leaves behind 37
novels he authored. Uniquely, each and every novel shares the same ending
in which gravity reverses and every human on earth is sucked into the
atmosphere and asphyxiated. In a creative twist, this phenomenal event
never affects anything else that is alive on the planet, only humans.
Mr.
Flanagan was born in San Pedro to a general in the U.S. Army who turned to
coffin making after his discharge and a mother who made children’s shoes
with no entry point for feet, and therefore no money. His lower-class
upbringing resulted in a lot of time spent alone, and though his parents
were devoted Evangelicals, religion didn’t play much a part in Mr.
Flanagan’s life. He was expelled from three Evangelical middle schools for
not thanking Jesus every time his food digested and from one Catholic high
school for bringing his own ruler from home to hit the nuns back with.
His
youthful rebellion sowed the seeds for a life of crime, and by the time he
reached the age of 30 he had been convicted of seven misdemeanors,
including sending bow-tied feces through the mail to congressmen and
pulling the fire alarms at various convalescent homes during winter months.
It
should be remembered that despite his troubles with the law and general
cynicism, Flanagan did make an attempt in the late nineties to be
politically active. While pro-lifers and pro-choicers battled it out over
abortion, Flanagan started his own movement, which he entitled
“anti-pro-life.” He made sure to note that this was not the same stance as
“pro-choice.”
Flanagan
fathered no children due to his self-administered vasectomy at the age of
thirteen. He is survived only by the wave of nihilism he spread throughout
the world. His closest friend, a Russian mailman he had locked in his
basement for the past seven years, was quoted upon his release as saying,
“He really not so bad. He pass out contraceptives to babies at nurseries.”
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