A Story With A Story

This is a short story about a story.

In the middle of the street lay a used-to-be white binder with scraps of paper peeking out the stuffed sides. The spine was barely holding on to the front flaps, with fraying brown cardboard peeling out from the corners. Tiny, barely legible handwriting curved and bumped on every inch of the paper within, scrawling onward.

 

And then a hand swooped down and picked it up.

 

The wet black pavement waved goodbye as the raggedy binder was carried away by painted finger-tips. For a few years it sat, neglected not for the first time, in the back of a closet. Years later the painted fingertips moved away, off to a magical university land, and the binder was taken with, dumped in the bottom of a box.

 

The binder was then shoved, with many others, on a bookshelf where it laid, sleeping, until curious roommate eyes came upon it. Fingertips again touched its torn cardboard flaps and spine and flipped through its rusty rings. A story, a true one written for a lover, unfolded into the hands of the roommate who wept for the characters that were once breathing bodies.

 

It took three weeks for the roommate to gobble every bit of the glorious contents of that binder, and a month to type them all out on the square keys of a computer. The story, once the contents of an abandoned binder, was edited, printed, published and became the marvel of a young reader’s eyes.

 

More than just the roommate could read the fantastic tale. Hundreds, thousands, millions, let their eyes roam across the pages of a long forgotten text. They knew not where the words came from, only that they were marvelous, spectacular, inspiring.

 

And as years past, they were forgotten.

 

Some held tightly to their copies of the story, but even they soon passed away, and with them went the wonderful, delightful words.

 

Homeless, lost again, the incredible words found themselves again on the street, hugging the pavement and saying, “How have you been, old friend?” The corners bent, the cover dog-eared, the book with the beautiful words lay for a while. And then a pair fingertips lifted the book into the air, and its story began again.

Author's Note

Just opinions.

Reviews

[Malark]

I loved this story, it had good flow and a great premise. It really shed some light on what a story is and what it can become, but at the same time it never changes. Great job!

[Liv]

Thanks so much! For the review and for choosing this story as the best of the week!