Ad Hoc Fiction

Blaško
“Here in Moklište, every story is like the cosmos, with ever-smaller systems fitting neatly into one another – a galaxy, a planet, a continent, a country, a province, a town, the present, the past, the grandpast, the great-grandpast and so on, until we get to the myths, which are each based on their own stories, passed down from generation to generation.”
    His voice fills the library like the creaking of a waterwheel, churning in the stream of his thoughts. He pauses. In the candlelight, the suits of armour, petrified by dust and web, hold their breath. Only when the pilgrim looks up from his hands, sleeping on a bed of shavings in his lap, beside his penknife and the whittled stake, does Blaško continue.
    “You can never tell the whole story, which is why it is always best to begin at the end. The present. Where we are now.”