The Ballads of The Skeleton Crew

The Ballad of the Gone Girl (3|1)

(№3.1)

Another admirable, magical thing about myths or sort of any legend you were told or came across in your life, is that a legend is not chiselled, carved into stone or rock, yes, as a matter-of-fact stories you might stumble upon one day, are a liquid, a very mysterious fluid not bond or bendable by time or limited by its seeming destruction and also susceptible to changes and implemented lies.

The only important variable it applies to equalise and anticipate in our calculation, are the imperfect solecisms of human nature.

Or better their longing for brutal adventure, for never-ceasing passion and everything in between, taking the liberty to embellish and amend the tellings of ancient tales to serve their purpose furthermore, sometimes indeed only for mindless entertainment, albeit properly for precise manipulation at other occasions.

As so, the humans in any historical time lap wished to experience a strong heart palpitating, cheeks reddening by the mere encountering of an enticing story, a new gem never encountered before, they'd carefully add to their collection of many such alike, to their never-ceasing attempt of gathering recent things, such as rumours and mutating gossip was. Fables of heroic deaths were quite popular and recurrently seized to perform anew in extrinsic crowds, ruminating about how peaceful drowning might be in the last crucial seconds with water snorted up your nose and painfully small bubbles of precious air dwindling, escaping your livid lips, before yielded away from the shores of life somewhere else. Or really simply-stricken legends, how once the ruler of an enchanted land was to track and hunt down bestiary wolves, devouring with untamed hunger sheep and bulls and daft humans roaming nightly the streets where only monsters waited in dear forbearing, knowing some would swing unquenched by the stench of death, bestowing appalling dismay and terror upon his people over the course of dreadful months.

Long before they were comfortable computer screens, long before there were pristine-white sheets of paper to drool over while managing to write a few verses, that wouldn't sound so bad, people of ancient calibre had other methods, different types of crafting and storytelling, carrying thought to paper and prior to stone, papyrus or leather.

With their mere voices – believe it or not – they had the ability to evoke and fill the minds of fellow villagers with every painting, haunting image they sought to conjure and summon with precision and detail, wireless towards the bereft of breath listeners.

The storytellers adjusted their tone to the environment, brought requisites for sustenance, perhaps actors to let the story move on a different path, a more visible one through the drama of theatre, popular in Greece and soon creating their own genus, category of the ornate art of scripture, termed according to the avid cupidity of people fornent to doom and drama.

Or some preferred only to sit in front of a fire, a sizable, near audience of no more than a dozen, almost squealing in anticipation for a new tale, as the storyteller rubbed his hands and started opening various doors with his charismatic, ruthful voice, staring into the consuming, hungry flames seemingly only enhancing and fueling the abilities of the storyteller, esteeming long before the wistful, impressed shudder of clapping and exulting would dawn upon the group, after the tale had been told, the applause finally the biggest reward story-tellers craved, just as the attention proposed better than liquid gold.

The gathered listeners were often so mute to have not missed a crucial passage of the story, only the breaking and cracking of the fire ought to be heard, ribbons of anthracite smoke eddying upwards, curled within, imparting the ambiance with a tinge of enigma.

When a myth was once told, it was very hard to get rid of it, as it holds onto every straw, begging and screaming to be continued, to be alive, to be turned upwards and downwards in all mouth feasible, to never cease and nearly a duplicitous concept of human comprehension developed, as if they understood the complaint and needs of a myth and obeyed passionately, following the instructions without second-guessing, letting the story arrive and once anew thrive when other people stumbled upon these special, silent spectators, tuning in.