A Story with a Moral

Once upon a time there was a man named Harry. He was not particularly attractive nor particularly unattractive. Harry was very thin; however, this fact has absolutely nothing to do with the storyline and (no matter what you may think) will not become critically important later on.

Harry lived alone in his house except for a spider who lived in a corner of his kitchen. But most of this story will not take place in Harry's house, and the spider will not make an appearance either.

What is really important was that Harry loved to read books. And he loved to shop for books. So one day he decided to go to the bookstore (although this was something he did nearly once a week) and get some books. He discussed the idea over a cup of tea with his friend the spider (you really believed me, didn't you? when I said he wouldn't be appearing in this story), and they agreed that he should leave the house and get some fresh air.

So as the first few snowflakes of a large snowstorm began to fall, Harry walked out of his house and headed toward the bookstore. Harry had no car. This fact will not be important to any part of the storyline, so you can forget I said that.

When Harry had finally reached the bookstore, he went inside and picked up the first thing he saw, which happened to be a giant hardcover book with eight hundred and fifty-four pages. It was stained, and the pages were tattered and torn. But it looked interesting, and he took it up to the checkout to buy it. The cashier told him he could have it for free, so he took it outside and began to read it while sitting on a bench in the snow.

"Once upon a time," it began, "there was a little boy named Fredrick. He lived with his family..." The book continued on in excruciating detail of every character and setting mentioned in the book. Harry no longer wondered how it could be eight hundred and fifty-four pages long. It was an odd book. But he kept reading it.

Some time around page three hundred and twenty-two, the book finished its description of little Fredrick and his family, and Harry now knew more than he could ever, ever, ever have wanted to know about them. A plot emerged from the murky depths of hundreds of pages of description and swam unsteadily downstream as the story progressed. Finally Harry reached the halfway mark, and wondered how anyone had ever managed to get this published. But as he had nothing better to do at the moment, he continued reading it.

The plot finally fell underwater and drowned. Its ghost flickered in from time to time, but mostly remained hidden. Harry learned about Fredrick's friend Morris who lived in an ice-cream truck. He learned about Morris for sixty-seven pages. By now Harry was almost crying with boredom, but he pressed bravely on, thinking that surely there must be something in the book to make reading it worthwhile.

The next three hundred and fifty-nine pages, however, revealed nothing of even a glimmer of hope for any sort of proper storyline or ending. As Harry read the last page, he nearly screamed. The book had no ending. It broke off in the middle of a piece of dialogue.

Harry stood up and stretched his legs.

At that point a large clump of snow detached itself from the roof, landed on his neck and melted smugly down his back.

"Well that was dumb," said Harry. "I don't know why I even-"

The end.

The moral of this story is: don't read long, boring stories with no real point to them.