PERSONAE NON GRATAE:
One Professional Adult Storyteller
Three Children, numbered One, Two, Three
Time: Any winter evening after 2004
Place: the living room of a posh top-story apartment with a fireplace under an emerald-tinted glass-domed roof. The prestigious Pechersk District of Kyiv in general. The fireplace is decorated all around with Christmas cards bearing various jolly, red-cheeked, walleyed, pedophile-like likenesses of Kyiv-based fiction writer Welsh Losser. Parrots of the house are perched on the wall under the glass dome nervously pecking up at the feet of crows, who are looking down from outside into the apartment, click-clacking over the glass and pecking back.
The storyteller – who was hired by wealthy parents to entertain their children (two brothers and the slightly less mentally developed child of a wealthy business partner and neighbor) in the comfort of their own home – is telling the story of how Welsh Losser, after finishing a hard day’s work at the PR firm, in the winter of 2004, was sauntering over the ice in his hobbling flatfooted fashion, head shaking, wet-lipped and idiotically smiling, spit flying uncontrollably from the side of the mouth every now and again, absolutely self-satisfied and delighted with the thought of how he would build himself up in the eyes of the local community, without any substantiation whatsoever, as an artist and writer, as well as possibly a publisher (but not an editor), on top of being a PR executive, businessman, consultant, actor, newsman, general expert, political adviser, Hollywood bit player, George Clooney-like model flashing an imitation expensive watch, international jet-setting playboy, aristocratic, spy-like, quite a dashing man, debonair, even devilishly intense, really, in his own way, if you photograph him at just the right angle and then touch up the photo here and there – that never hurt anyone – after all, the world is just a big PR carnival run by venture minimalists [untalented perfidious mediocrities – editor’s note]…
… when suddenly, from inside the cold gleaming dark, an unnamed maniac leaps like an unchained animal out of nowhere, maybe from behind a large snowdrift, at first in a fake sort of slow motion, as Losser puttered across Saint Michael’s Square, and…
Adult Storyteller: Now, children, as Welsh Losser was making believe that he was not being pursued by a maniac, whom Losser knew, in the hopes that by ignoring the nightmare, it would simply go away, the maniac started yelling at Losser as he picked up his run to full tilt, the maniac, that is, yelling and screaming incoherently like a crazed rabid wild beast, with the strangest thing being, perhaps, that there was absolutely no one around to hear the maniac or to save Losser.
And so, as Welsh Losser continued trying to ignore the raving maniac, as he, the maniac, charged him, he only increased the maniac’s rage, if that was possible, like a bellows to a furnace fire, by picking up his wobbly-kneed, fear-stricken limp, now pretending to make his way to Saint Michael’s Cathedral, which was actually destroyed by Stalin in the ‘30s, when –
Child One: Ooooohhh…
Adult Storyteller: What is it?
Child One: Will you just go on!
Child Two: Yeah, you’re wasting all our time on unnecessary details and explanations. Cut to the chase already!
Adult Storyteller: But I’m at the chase now…
Child Three: Welshlosser, welshlosser, ha-ha-ha-ha, welshlosser…
Child Two: Well then, cut to it more!
Child One: Yeah! So what happened, Wel Shlosser was killed; wasn’t he?! By the maniac!
Child Three: Welshlosser, welshlosser…
Adult Storyteller: Well, uh, yes… oh, and by the way, it’s not Wel Shlosser. It’s Welsh Losser. That’s Weeeeelssshh, Looooosseeer…
Child One: That’s what I said! Wel Shlosser! Now go on with the story! You’re wasting our time!
Child Two: Yeah! Go on!
Child Three: Ha-ha-ha-ha, welshlosser, welshlosser…
Adult Storyteller: Um, uh, okay, and so and then you see, the unnamed maniac jumps on Welsh Losser and bludgeons him to death, and it was only after he finished and ran off, jumping and yelping into the insane hollow of the crazed tarnished night that for some reason people suddenly started coming out of everywhere from all directions and running to the prostrate Welsh Losser, who was lying in the middle of Saint Michael’s Square, with a broken head, on the ice, soaked in his own blood!
Child One: What does bludgeon mean?
Child Two: Yeah! What’s that word mean?
Adult Storyteller: Well, technically, in this case it means to hit or batter someone, in this case Welsh Losser, all over the flesh with something like a big fat club or a sledgehammer until –
Child One: Aaaaahhh! You fucked the story up!
Child Two: Yeah, asshole, you’re a terrible storyteller – we’re never hiring you again!
Child Three: Welshlosser, hahahahaha, welshlosser, welshlosser…
Adult Storyteller: Why? I just used the word as an artistic expression – to aid dramatic effect. You don’t have to take it verbatim. After all, it’s only a story…
Child One: We don’t want your stupid effects! What’s the use of effects if they’re just going to fuck the story up? Completely! First, we don’t know what the fucking word means, and second, now that you’ve told us, it changes everything!
Child Two: Yeah, you big moron, you stupid jerk! The maniac was supposed to kill Wel Shlosser with his bare hands!
Child Three: Welshlosser, hahaha, wel…
Adult Storyteller: Yeah, but that’s just a technicality! That’s just –
Child One: Shut the fuck up! Anyway, our versions of how he was killed are better!
Child Three: Welshlosser, ha…
Child Two: Yeah! From now on, adult storyteller, you’re fired!
Adult Storyteller: But I –
Child One: I said shut up!
Child Two: Yeah, shut up! For example, it’s not necessarily that he died at the hands of the maniac. He might have found his death some other way, but it was the maniac that drove him to it!
Child Three: (etc…)
Child One: Yeah! For example…
TO BE CONTINUED
Filed by Jack Step, February 26, 2013