I wanted someone to tell me a story.
A happy story.
A nice story.
Like a movie at the end of which you smile.
Across the street lived the Man Who Told Stories You Could Live.
No.
He wasn't God.
He could untangle the threads of time and space and take you to a new dimension.
Where you could be the story.
Or in the story.
Whichever one you wanted it to be.
You knew it was just his imagination.
But it was real.
Almost.
We all went to him every now and then.
To live fantasy and fiction.
To live a different life.
To be someone else living someone else's life.
Seven year olds went to him,wanting to hear stories of the days when Santa Claus was real.
Jill only wanted to be Alice.
A little boy wanted to be a pirate.
So he asked him to tell the story of a pirate.
Of treaures and swords and maps and ships.
Of battles and Captain Hooks.
Every waking moment seemed like the end of the world.
And that,is not catastrophic.
It's beautiful.
The little boy was the hero.
We all want to be heroes.
Mrs.Bidge lived at the end of the street.
To state the obvious,Mr.Bidge was dead.
And to state the obvious more so,Mr.and Mrs.Bidge had no children.
And more,she had a cat.
Named Ginger.
She knitted the entire day because she had read about old women doing the same in cheap second-hand novels.
We all have.
Not that it made her think it was the thing to do but doing something else seemed unholy.
Almost like sin.
As if there were snooty old women in her head who like perfect English ladies of the eighteenth and nineteenth century would look down upon her if she did so.
It fitted the picture.
Who the knitted sweater was for, is unknown.
Even to Mrs.Bidge.
Mrs.Bidge secretly wanted to be Scarlett.
O'Hara..?
"Now that was sin,"said the woman in her head.
She was unable to hide her desire to go to the Man Who Told Stories You Could Live.
It is sad she had nobody to hide it from.
But then she had her own reality.
We all do.
She did go to him one day though.
Like we all wish we could?
So did I.
I wanted someone to tell me a story.
Jack was an atheist.
He wanted to be God.
It was fun.
He became more of an atheist after that.
He knew he could be God.
All stories do come to an end.
Like the universe.
Because the universe too is a story.
So we went back to him over and over again.
It's sad when stories come to an end though.
When you cannot feel the magic anymore.
And you wish you could return to being in the middle of the book.
He made chairs.
The Man Who Told Stories..?
His house was gloomy,the wooden planks damp.
There was a small patch of grass outside the front door.
Though the patch didn't qualify for a patch and neither did the front door.
You could smell rain when you walked in.
Always.
We lived in such a part of he world.
The skies were always dark.
As if something was about to happen and you were standing at the edge of it.
We never knocked.
The door was a bunch of unshapely planks.
You only had to push and free one of them that was tall enough to satisfy the intended height of the door.
He was working.
He always was.
Chisled wood and ribbons strewn on the floor.
Saw dust hung in the air.
I wanted him to tell me a story.
A happy story.
A nice story.
Like the movie at the end of which you smile.
I wanted him to tell me a story i could live.
He did.
He sang me a song.
It's addictive.
