All stories have their beginnings. No matter how a writer starts his or her story--may it be in the beginning, middle or at the end-- the tale will eventually start.
But to hear a story without an ending is as absurd as telling a child that the monster lying under his bed is to make friends with him. But the absurdity-- no matter how queer an idea might be-- is a uniqueness only a few could, and would, appreciate.
So does start the story of Noel, a story teller by heart.
His house stood alone in the middle of an underdeveloped town. It was like a chimaera of different houses put together to build a haven. It was his little heaven. It was-- in all possible explanation-- his heaven.
Ray knew the man almost all his life. He would barge in in a short notice and fumble with his books lay sitting on the table in the living room.
"You've been doing this to me since God knows when," Noel complained about Ray's coming into the house unannounced as tho it was the latter's house. He would always find the boy lying on his sofa, legs crossed, a literature book in hand.
"You could have written a poem about me."
"The hell I would." And he'd let the young man read his way to a not-so-much deserved sleep.
But there were times when the two of them talked about that one thing they have in common: love of stories.
Noel would talk for hours about recent books that he had read, the contemporary novels to watch out for, the classic one's worth admiring and poetry to philosophize over. Words have its charm on them. Words they both revered.
"I always love O. Henry. He's a genius," Ray would say.
"But underneath his ingenuity there lies a darker, more miserable part of him that well, perhaps, he used to write his stories with." Noel would do indian sit on the floor across from Ray.
A short story, he decided.
The title read "Without an Ending." Intriguing. Without the thought of prying into someone else's lives, he read the story.
Noel, Ray figured, was fond of laconic simplicity.
The story was about a man travelling from point to point. He was told that the nearest path from point A to point B is a straight line, but he made himself think that no straight lines existed, so he travelled without a map, but with the destination clear in his mind. With people having heard his stories, they tried to convince him to go this way, that way and eventually to stop this odyssey. He would not budge.
Until at last, after a long and arduous journey, he had found his destination.
But to Ray's surprise, that destination was a crossroad, two roads which ends dissolved in the horizon.
The protagonist in the story stepped forth and carried on his travel.
So did end the story.
"So much for a cliffhanger, isn't it?" Noel said. He had been peering at the younger man all throughout his reading.
"So much for an ending. It doesn't have one."
"But you have one in your mind, I assume," he ventured.
"But it won't fit in." He hesitated.
"Then, be my guest." There was a tone of taunting in his voice. He moved toward the bookshelf; the ray of the afternoon run was about to touch its foot. He just stood there; his back to the young man. He drew one book.
The silence that ensued prevented Ray from inquiring further. He contemplated Omel's work once more. The flawed hush become his ink, the eyes that bore into the paper the pen. He was a reader-- that's all. Never a writer. So whatever he would come up with might be sloppy. Amateurish.
"The roads lead either to his dream or to his damnation," he commenced the telling.
Noel's face contorted into a smile.
"He chose to take the road that will eventually lead him to a life that was long taken from him. Perhaps, no instinct is needed in the determination of his path Perhaps, he knew it all along. By heart. At the end of the road. . ." The telling continued as he desired. His words were carefully woven. Creatively woven for an amateur. After the river of words seized to flow, he felt exhausted but flabbergasted to find himself a storyteller.
Noel turned to look at the boy's eyes. "Do you know why wrote I wrote that?"
Ray was silent. Thinking.
"That story was about you." He said, almost matter-of-factly. There was profounde in his voice despite the lack of figurative power in his words.
"In what way," was all he managed to say.
"Our lives are like an unfinished stories. It is one long winding and convoluted road that stretches into infinity. There is really on real goals because it is death. But we are talking about what lies between these ends: what kids between our birth and death. That is happiness. It is something we choose. Something we handpicked with effort. Tell me, how did you consider the things that will happen to the protagonist of my stupid story?"
"I consider what's best. I know that this and that might happen but i know i chose what's best."
"You chose." It was a statement that required an answer, as if it were whipped as a query.
"Y-yes." He was hesitant.
"Then, why wouldn't you do it for yourself. Choose what's best for you because to be able to live is to be able to choose. Of course, we have our prices to pay for opting our dreams, ourselves over other things but those sacrifices. . . They were always worth it."
Ray's life flashed before his eyes. It was kind of funny how there chosen scenarios paraded before him as tho it would to a dying's eyes. Its feral flashing told of the things that held him back; the pieces of what he called treasurer that he could not let go, could not sacrifice. A glowing warmth as priceless as any other hemp but not so perishable as they might seen, lit like a thousand torches gathering. He felt invincible.
The end.
