Broadspell

One of the initial thoughts I had for a story to the prompt (write a flash fiction about a traveling sales man with a double life) was about an entity who’s survival is contingent on the consumption of human identities. It never knew or could remember where it came from or its purpose, but only that the stories people shared with it was the sustenance that manifest its being.

Third party consumption wouldn’t do, in other words, the reading of novels or movies watched weren’t nutrient enough to stave off starvation. Hand written letters could provide, but in person parallel precision was the proper place setting.

Sitting three feet away seeing actual light spill around your hair. Eyes reflecting the world before you. The world filled with your fragrance. Your body language, how You fidget. Do you ooze with confidence, or crumble under stress? The immeasurable change in air pressure with every spoken word, revealing the inner shape of your mouth, All of the subtle tells of a true person. Your lived experience embellished or not. Names exchanged and pleasantries, a first course. Attention laser focused on each level of nuance, the story between the story. It never truly understood that it was simply existing, that in order to actually become it would have to tell its own story. It would have to be fare.

The other option I had in mind was an old story idea I had years back.  Where a man who has strange dreams of being someone else is on his way to work, encounters an Elvis Presley song for the first time and suddenly realizes he is Elvis Presley in a past life. He’s mortified at his secrets. He knows everything. That’s as far as I got on that idea.

I ended up settling for Sam’s Diner. A story I still don’t quite understand, or even know if I should understand. Perhaps it’s a dream had by a demon who hopes for repentance.

Here’s the link to that https://chadthealcoholic.substack.com/p/a-husband-and-wifes-pastime?r=i806v

Any who yesterday morning I tripped over this strange real life story that’s currently unfolding. A story about a poor girl who’s assaulted by her teacher decades ago. She’s contacted by an agency that wishes to tell her story in a book or something like this. She agrees to tell the story and eventually someone in her life suggests that she ought to find out if these people are a legit organization. When she asks, they admonish her for asking and never talk with her again. Years later a millionaire socialite releases a book that gets put on Oprah’s book club, a book detailing the authors experience of being assaulted by her teacher when she was young. Only problem is. It wasn’t her story to tell. It was her childhood friends story. But is claiming that it’s her story.  And now there’s a civil suit in progress. All very very strange. If I’m honest I wanted to trash bin this article but I thought of the similarities between fact and fiction. And perhaps one reason we need and love stories. And why were so protective of our stories. So… yeah. Here’s an article I didn’t give as much love and care to as would like to have. But wanted to share.  Here’s a link to how I found it about it.https://youtu.be/sp4qaZa2nvQ?si=6O2ZbmwJsUggBerH