There's Nothing New Under the Sun

This tale occurs once upon a time, in a land far, far away. The hero is a woodcutter who lives in a forest with his pet cock. His wife is a nymph, his children changelings, his mother-in-law, wicked. It is the middle of winter, on a fine summer morning, with the colorful leaves falling from green budding trees.

The plot is this:

The protagonist sits alone in his room and writes about a protagonist who sits alone in his room writing about a protagonist who sits alone in his room. The protagonist has much he wishes to say but can't for the life of him think of a plot. So to kill time, the protagonist writes about a protagonist who can't for the life of him think of a plot.

Did nature really plan to torture the artist mind – as it did the pearl bearing oyster with a grain of sand?”

The protagonist watched an ant crawl across the page, hesitated, then smashed the ant with the thumb of his right hand. He flicked the black dot off his thumb. It was only an ant, after all.

"No man is an island," he thought. Every man is an island, he thought. "And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

A voice whispered from the dark recesses of the virginal page - all paths lead to self-consciousness; excessively conscious of oneself as an object of observation by others; excessively conscious of one's own thoughts. An occupational hazard. A sign of the times.

Always assume you're being watched.

The protagonist kneels before the porcelain altar, praying his guts out. With tearing eyes and throat burning, the disgorge, with its infinite nuances of shade and texture forms strange patterns.

A voice chants in the mist, “The whirlpool is waiting to give you a spin, give you a suck, down down, twirling around, moaning in orgasms of sticky pain, cold and alone, gnawing on bone, bathed in the scalding drone of yourself . . .”

An owl hoots ominously, a bat skitters across the face of the moon, a wolf howls in the distance.

But this is the present. Today . . . . . NOW! No, always in the past and the future. What has he just written? What will he write next?

Down on all fours eating the grasses of the cemetery.

Suddenly Mr. Clean bursts through a sliding glass door which is letting all the sun in and slaps the protagonist across the cheek.

“Thanks,” he says. “I needed that!”