I had long since gotten used to the blindness from my condition. You would have normally thought that keeping the blindfold over your eyes for almost a century must have become somewhat difficult by now – but I was as good as any sighted person who had never had my sight. For example, I can experience the warmth of the sun setting on my skin on a hot day.
The scenes in my short story will mostly be based on the familiar setting of an old fairy tale. I am not a crazy person who would rewrite the world’s most popular stories for a quick buck. Yet, I must confess: I have never heard of the “anaemic, altruistic girl” Hannah. Neither have I heard of the story “Parcheesi-eau”. I have never read the bible and so am not inspired by its contents or characters. My story might be an original take on a classic theme, but it is by no means plagiarized. It is all my own.
In what follows I will put the crown kings wouldn’t put on their heads and the magic beans that don’t exist into the world of today.
There had to be a better way to tell a story in the modern world. The two-dimensional way so far used to tell stories has become obsolete for me. I want to go beyond it. I want to bring the fairy tale of old into the modern age.
I was busy teaching myself to be a better writer of modern fairy tales; or rather, a new type of literary art called “modern fables”.
As I was on the verge of completing my first modern fable, I heard noises of approaching people. It was like the street outside my window was full of people talking, laughing and filing out of their homes. Not just inside my apartment building but over the entire city. It sounded as if the city’s entire populace had turned into a swarm of people and were making their way toward this one spot. Whatever it was, it was getting louder and nearer.
Shortly thereafter, the front door of my apartment was knocked open by a real crowd of people. It was as if the whole city had flooded into my apartment, not just to greet me, but to ask questions that I was unable to answer.
“What are you doing here?”
“Are you the one who has written all this?”
“How have you done it?”
I waved my hand in the air; a silent excuse to the people and went out my window. From the balcony, I climbed onto the roof.
The most of the people followed me and soon the entire outside area of my apartment was crowded with people. Some had climbed onto the roof with me, some onto the balcony and still more had climbed onto their friends’ shoulders and gotten onto the roof that way. This caused excitement in the crowd and it surprised me how easy it was for people to have fun and take pleasure in what they saw happening.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said to the crowd, “Why don’t you let me in?”
They instantly stopped moving and listened to me.
“Thank you very much.”
And I explained to the curious mass of people what I had been doing for the past hundred years or so. Many were amazed. Many were full of thoughts and questions.