Name:     The Square Fool
IP:       131.94.145.150
Subject:  Once Upon a Wish
Email:
Website:  http://
Well, since everyone else, it seems, is becoming prone to random spoutings of prose, (you
ranters included,) I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon, (ordinarily not a good idea,) and put up
my own random spouting.
I wrote this sometime in the middle of last semester and have been intending to get it on my
page, (maybe,) since then. If I remember correctly, it's only the second attempt in my life of
writing any sort of fiction that got past the first fifty words or so. So don't be too harsh.
And don't worry, it's not as wrought with parentheses as this stupid intro thing is, anyway.
Also, title makes little sense unless it was a chapter of a much bigger book that will never
exist, so don't worry about it.Anyway...Once Upon a Wish
. . "What ails you, child?" An old man, kindly, wrinkled, exactly what one would imagine in a
Fairy Tale or grand story, sat carefully down in an equally story-born room.
. . With a sigh, a young man, perhaps twenty, fell into a chair across the room, stirring up a
cloud of dust which added to the fantastic quality of the place. "I seem to have lost myself."
Another sigh. "I don't know..." He buried his head in his hands, giving way to silence.
. . "No, you probably don't, do you?" the old man agreed. "Don't think so, anyway?" He pulled
himself heavily forward in his chair.
. . "My life is on the verge of falling apart. My accounts are not settled, my money is only
half in order, my life, back ... " He looked puzzled, and almost stopped, "somewhere...  swings
from perfection to forgetting each day exists. I have no idea where I stand. Personally, in what
I think important, I usually excel to the point that my external failings cannot other me, but
now even in those I find fault in myself. I have done nothing I can be proud of, for myself or
the world, for days. Perhaps weeks. Time is again so fast I feel left behind... these troubles
are not new, and all others deal with them, yet I cannot. Why do you take interest?" His tone
became almost bitter, and his chair creaked while he spoke, adding a creak to his voice that
would have, if he had been listening, given him pause. "Why should you help me?" After having
words pour out, uncontrolled, unpolished, this simple question seemed a return to reality. The
words could have been anguished, but came out as simply lost. Just gone, those words caught the
young man almost in surprise—he drew inward, almost scared, looking down and away from the old
one's eyes. "I'm sorry..."
. . The old man slowly nodded his head, silent for a long while. The young man couldn't help but
notice how the musty smell of the books laying strewn about everywhere was so terribly fitting
for this old man. "Those are grave problems indeeed," he said in his storybook voice, startling
his companion out of his contemplations.
. . "What?", the young man looked up again with a start. "Having killed a man, starving to
death, being crushed by an oppressive government, those are grave problems. mine? Nothing but
the whining of a man who fails to realize that he is rich."
. . "But you do realize it, young friend. And think: were you being chased for your life, you
would run equally well. The problem may be grave, but the solution, whether it works or not, is
simple. And the chased is propelled constantly by close consequences. What are your
consequences, and how close are they?" The young man wondered if he hadn't just conjured this
place out of his mind in a particularly elaborate and real daydream. He had said as much to
himself hundreds of times. The old man continued, "your problems may be much harder to solve
than you think..."
. . "Are they? It seems to me that I'm the only one unable to solve them." The young man paused
a second, as if to continue on some stronger point, but then his face, which the old man had
been staring at with surprisingly young eyes, lost something, and the young man slumped back,
sending up another musty cloud of dust which glimmered in a golden sunbeam. In a few moments,
though, that beam disappeared and the young man was left slumped back on his chair, spent.
Silence weighed heavily on the room.
. . With a sad chuckle, the young man broke its hold "If this were a show, the music would just
have stopped." A sight. "But it isn't. Silence pursues us always, some hungry animal devouring
all sound, but still waiting...." he looked up, questioningly , at the old man.
. . "An interesting thought," the old man replied, "but what happened to golden silence, and
thought I misuse that, what of a clean pure morning not disturbed by a single sound? But we lose
our issue to the side. Your problems, child. Else why are you here but to talk?"
. . "I'd rather be here just to talk. My problems desert me when I lose myself in the act of
conversation. Even thinking solely to myself about philosophy. But in losing them, I only make
them worse..." Looking up a few seconds later, he said "I almost wish I were runninf for my
life, fighting for the future of the world, like in some storybook." He studied the old man a
few seconds, tracing his silvered hair and wrinkled skin. ... Just like some storybook. "Surely
you can understand me," he said, finally.
. . "That I can," the storybook man replied, "That I can..."