“TELL ME A story.”
“A story? Not now!”
“My dear boy, if not now, when? Seize the carp, John. Seize the carp.”
John sighed and rolled over onto his back, just in time for a large, lukewarm glob of goo to go SPLAT in his left eye.
“I can’t feel my legs,” he said.
“Pah!” the voice on the other side of the wall bellowed. “That’s no way to begin a story!”
John reached up to wipe the muck from his eye, and a bolt of pain cracked through his right arm.
“Why don’t you tell one?”
This time it was the voice that sighed. “Now, now, you know I have neither the facility nor—let’s face it—the faculties; nutty as a maggot-infested fruitcake. No, I am merely a player that frets and struts his hour upon two arthritic limbs. You, on the other hand, are incurably optimistic and still breathing. The perfect job description for a storyteller.”
John looked through the bars of his window. The sun was setting, casting a steamy glow over the door of the cell. He could feel his sweat mixing with the dried blood on his shirt and returning it to liquid.
“I don’t know how.”
“Balderdash,” the voice retorted. “It’s very simple. You begin at the beginning and end at the end.”
“And what’s the end?”
“My dear boy, I haven’t a clue.”
John sighed again and closed his eyes. “Once upon a time there was a boy who made coffins. . . .”
The voice chuckled. “Now that is an excellent way to begin.”