Saturday's Storyteller: "Nobody trusts Jimmy."
by Belinda Roddie
Nobody trusts Jimmy. He is fat and bald and drinks far too much. He tells lies and can't seem to differentiate the truth from fantasy. Sometimes, he believes that he himself is a centaur - a god among literal horsemen.
Nobody trusts Jimmy. He likes to mock the ladies from lower classes. They don't mean to come from such dire straits, and yet he apes them, mimics them as if they are puppets dangling from fraying strings. It is unbecoming; even Jimmy's father says so.
Nobody trusts Jimmy. He once lit a quaint little pub on fire. It was a place where authors and artists alike convened to create images unlike anything seen in our dimension. Jimmy claims he is not an arsonist, yet some have heard his cackles from afar when the roofs spark and the walls crumble into lopsided chunks of ash. Do not take his words for granted; they aren't worth a shilling in our currency.
There was once a woman who decided to wed him. She was stout and hairless like him, and perhaps he truly loved her as much as she did him. They danced by the pond together and fed ducks until the birds had enlarged gullets and swollen stomachs. They sang songs to one another while Jimmy's bride-to-be picked a mandolin, the sweet sound traveling all the way through London. They were to be married in September, but once August came, the man was gone, fled to France or Belgium or some other European hellhole. They say he frequented brothels, but all the women spurned him. Such is the existence of a bloke such as himself.
It's a shame to have your heart broken by him.
I think one day, I saw him begging for alms on a street by Big Ben. As the clock chimed, his body quaked and swayed with each braying of the bell. As Parliament departed, so, too, did his sanity, and as his pleas became shrieks, I almost pitied him. But then I remembered his history - his snark, his delusions, his frequent bouts of intoxication - and I lost all sympathy, as if I had poured it out from an angry and leaky stein.
Perhaps he has died. Perhaps not. I haven't bothered to check. I wouldn't rely on any scraps of evidence that he is gone for good. He was a scoundrel, that one.
Nobody trusted Jimmy.
This week's prompt was actually not provided by a person, but instead by a small shop at the Dickens Fair called, "Dangerous Puppets." At the booth, we saw various wooden "oddities" - carved wooden figurines resembling strange creatures and animals - and one of the lines written on a particular trinket's placard was, "Nobody trusts Jimmy." My mother-in-law Bethany pointed it out, and I couldn't help using it.
Thanks, Dickens Fair!
Nobody trusts Jimmy. He is fat and bald and drinks far too much. He tells lies and can't seem to differentiate the truth from fantasy. Sometimes, he believes that he himself is a centaur - a god among literal horsemen.
Nobody trusts Jimmy. He likes to mock the ladies from lower classes. They don't mean to come from such dire straits, and yet he apes them, mimics them as if they are puppets dangling from fraying strings. It is unbecoming; even Jimmy's father says so.
Nobody trusts Jimmy. He once lit a quaint little pub on fire. It was a place where authors and artists alike convened to create images unlike anything seen in our dimension. Jimmy claims he is not an arsonist, yet some have heard his cackles from afar when the roofs spark and the walls crumble into lopsided chunks of ash. Do not take his words for granted; they aren't worth a shilling in our currency.
There was once a woman who decided to wed him. She was stout and hairless like him, and perhaps he truly loved her as much as she did him. They danced by the pond together and fed ducks until the birds had enlarged gullets and swollen stomachs. They sang songs to one another while Jimmy's bride-to-be picked a mandolin, the sweet sound traveling all the way through London. They were to be married in September, but once August came, the man was gone, fled to France or Belgium or some other European hellhole. They say he frequented brothels, but all the women spurned him. Such is the existence of a bloke such as himself.
It's a shame to have your heart broken by him.
I think one day, I saw him begging for alms on a street by Big Ben. As the clock chimed, his body quaked and swayed with each braying of the bell. As Parliament departed, so, too, did his sanity, and as his pleas became shrieks, I almost pitied him. But then I remembered his history - his snark, his delusions, his frequent bouts of intoxication - and I lost all sympathy, as if I had poured it out from an angry and leaky stein.
Perhaps he has died. Perhaps not. I haven't bothered to check. I wouldn't rely on any scraps of evidence that he is gone for good. He was a scoundrel, that one.
Nobody trusted Jimmy.
This week's prompt was actually not provided by a person, but instead by a small shop at the Dickens Fair called, "Dangerous Puppets." At the booth, we saw various wooden "oddities" - carved wooden figurines resembling strange creatures and animals - and one of the lines written on a particular trinket's placard was, "Nobody trusts Jimmy." My mother-in-law Bethany pointed it out, and I couldn't help using it.
Thanks, Dickens Fair!
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