The Short Story Is Dying

Jeff:I hear the short story is dying. Pass it on.Evil Monkey:Thanks. Psst. The short story is crying. Pass it on.Evil Cat:Wha? Psst. The short story is lying. Pass it on.Evil Lizard-Skink:Okay. Psst. The short bored is lying. Pass it on.Evil Weezil:Huzzah! Psst. The lort shoring is flying. Pass it on.Evil Bumblebee:Voila! Psst. The vort shore is denying. Pass it on.Evil Earthworm:Ssssaaah. Psst. The vortmord is decaying. Pass it on.Evil Silverfish:Yavoh! Psst. The lamord is delaying. Pass it on.Evil Fleas:Plieez. Psst. The lame is flying. Pass it on.Evil Monkey:What? The lame are flying? Okay. Jeff, the lame are flying. Pass it on.Jeff:A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.Evil Monkey:Oh. It is dead, then...Jeff:It's just resting.Evil Monkey:Resting.Jeff:It's tired of being abused and mis-used and contorted out of shape and forced to fill a shape and made to tell a theme and chided into dance and goaded into bad decisions. It wants to rest. And it wants to grow more naturally. It wants the dull and the boring to leave it alone. It wants the controlling and the stay-at-homes to leave it alone. It wants a cup of water and a handful of dirt and long lazy day in the sun, in the shade, maybe with a good pen and a clean sheet of paper and a rising sense of something coming, something coming soon, something new.