ECHT STARK FOREVER

Echt Stark was the apple of his parents' eye.

Echt gave their life meaning.

They would do anything for him.

Born under a grey steely sky, the boy Echt slipped into the world and two became three.

The three who would face the world together.

Echt grew up in a cocoon of love and affection. His parents encouraged him to seek knowledge and understanding through all the media available, which Echt did. TV, video, cinema, theatre, books and music were the lectern of his mind.

But above all he loved comics and could not get enough of the heroic antics of his favourite characters. Echt worshipped their ways, their costumes and their powers.

He wished more than anything that he himself had super powers and set about making his mind and body the very best they could be. He would train his brain and muscles to become the equal of Olympians and more.

His parent's encouraged him to tone his physique and channel his mind to find the answers to the world's biggest questions. Yes they were a little worried about pushing him but Echt was a born hero.

He began to perform random acts of kindness and courtesy around the town. He solved some problems. He rescued cats from trees, mowed lawns for free, swept tons of leaves for elderly neighbours and there were rumours he had done much more daring, more sensational feats.

With local applause ringing in his ears, the boy's love of comics grew and so did his love of his favourite heroes. 

He adored the way they moved with confidence and prowess, their ability to turn heads and stop crowds with their grand gestures. Above all he loved their one-knee, fist on the ground landings.

There was something about this manoeuvre that captured his imagination like no other. 

He stared in astonishment at the finesse with which his heroes did it and the heights from which they came to land. The heroic landing was the very epitome of their fabulous moves, its awesome swoosh the zenith of their swagger.

Echt wanted nothing more than to master it.

He put himself through a brutally rigourous programme of athletics, gymnastics, callisthenics, bushido, savate, hapkido, trapeze, wrestling and many other physical regimes and disciplines. 

By the age of ten he was one of the world's greatest gymnasts and acrobats and people came from miles around to see him tumbling and rolling like, well ...one of his comic heroes.

His parents encouraged him to reach ever greater swishes and swirls, although they harboured some secret guilt about driving him on.

Echt trained harder and harder.

Eventually he announced that he was ready to attempt his own heroic landing. 

He had leapt from buckets, from boxes, from crates, from wooden horses, from chairs, from tables and from the tops of boulders. Like a diver he was increasing the height from which he landed on one knee, with one fist down and a huge cape billowing in the wind, the applause from his adoring fans charging his sinews to ever greater feats.

Echt announced to his parents that he was going to perform a grand landing that coming weekend. He would leap from the balcony of the town's museum and land on the civic plaza below.

They begged him not to do this but he assured them that he was ready. His body was ready and people would talk forever of his majestic act. His parents relented and the big day came round.

It was a sunny Saturday. The blue sky was almost cloudless and people were wearing T-shirts and shorts. Everyone was having a good time and when midday came around a sizable crowd had gathered around the sides of the plaza. High noon.

Echt could see the townsfolk below and hear their encouraging trills. At the very front were his devoted parents.

He had already decided that morning to jump from a much higher part of the museum. The lower balcony was just too low for anyone to remember it. He need altitude if this landing was the legend he wanted it to be. He needed it to be as legendary as the divine flourishes of his heroes.

Echt stepped into the daylight on the very top balcony of the old museum, a height of at least fifty feet from the plaza floor. 

The crowd gasped and his parents staggered with disbelief. they held their hands over their mouths in horror at the sight of their beloved son teetering on the edge so far above them. He had clearly lost his mind.

The boy looked at the people way below him and then stared into the sky. He thought of those airy citadels, where wondrous beings dwell in the clouds and of glorious capes swooshing in the hazy sunlight as they made their descent.

He thought of all this and jumped.

The throng was silent as Echt shot downwards, his own cape fluttering in the rare air like a victory flag. He looked wonderful, a sacred youngling caught in the bright rays of the sun.

After a few sinuous twists and rolls, it only took a couple of seconds and Echt was nearing the ground. He assumed the landing pose he had practised a million times, the heroic god-like posture of his comic idols.

He landed.

The first bones to shatter were his knuckles and knees. Next were his legs, his pelvis, his right arm and eventually his back as the shock wave ravaged his young body.

Echt crumpled like a paper bag, broken beyond repair.

His parents picked him up, a brittle wretch. Their hot tears of agony drenched his closed eyes. 

They opened and he whispered a single word to them.

"Sorry!"

It took countless hospital operations to piece together the shards of his hundred fractures. Many steel rods were inserted. But nothing could be done for his back. He would be without movement for the rest of his days.

His parents cared for him as best they could. He was grateful to them.

But his spirit had gone, his divine ambitions. Where was the billow of his cape in the light, where was the head held high? No cheering, no clapping, just sadness and sobbing. 

Echt was a thing to be avoided. To be passed quickly without a glance. To be crossed over the road for. His tragedy was everyone's and their guilt was the indelible mark of the age.

Years faded and the boy became a man-thing of sorts. He got older but could not move to be any age. He just sat staring at rotting comics in the boiling conservatory, where his parents left him all day and every day.

He stared at the distant healing sun and wanted to kneel in its golden flare one more time.

Echt shuffled off his sofa and fell to the floor. With excruciating pain he grated his clicking limbs into something like the one-knee landing he had dreamt of all those years before on the high balcony of the museum.

His hospital blanket shivered on his back as he looked at the fiery orb beyond the sky and he screamed. 

It was a scream of a thousand pains and a single joy for the boy he left behind on that terrible day.

Echt closed his eyes for the last time. His final wishes were scrawled on the comic book by his side.

His parents looked on and wept for the son they had lost. 

It felt like they would weep for an eternity and extinguish the light in this world.

They mourned but followed their son's wishes to the letter.

That night by the thick cover of darkness they took Echt's stiffening body to the plaza. They had hired a cement mixer and it met them there.

As instructed Echt was positioned precisely on the stone flags. Rigor Mortis had set in completely.

When all was ready the cement was poured. Just enough to cover their boy. His parents looked at him with pride and sadness one last time and left.

In the morning crowds gathered. There was a new statue in the plaza. A man on bended knee, his cape flying and his fist touching the ground like a hero.

The crowds stared, looked up to the sky and knew who he was.

Kneeling in the exact same spot where he'd landed from the top balcony those many years ago here he was again.

Echt Stark.

Forever.