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Wild Boars
The guy sat at the back of the shoppe, which was odd, if you were in from out of town, as it was a fabric shoppe, and a grizzled old man, as they go, sitting at the back on a pile of satin-y-like red fabric, smoking cigarette after cigarette and rumbling in his phlegmy kind of way was not the sort of thing you might expect to find at the back of a fabric shoppe. Or the front, for that matter.
But the people in town, they knew. Well, most of them, anyway. And what they knew tended to vary quite a bit.
For example, some, some people knew that they should avoid, at all costs, the fabric shoppe, because of the creepy guy at the back with the cigarettes and cough. This particular bit of knowledge was sometimes gained from listening to their elders talk in hushed tones about not going into the fabric shoppe with any intention of getting any of the satin-y red stuff, others had gained it through first hand knowledge, having stumbled back to the back of the fabric shoppe in search of sequins or ribbon or something and run across this grizzled old man they'd previously assumed was an urban legend.
That was one camp.
The other camp had him made out as some sort of modern day Socrates, who, failing to find the steps of a suitable school, plunked himself down on the nearest comfortable thing he could find. Granted, he probably got much less traffic flow than Socrates, as you had to admit that the back of a fabric shoppe was not the most ideal place for gaining the audience of random passersby, but he often argued that he preferred to work by word of mouth, much more like an old-style almost oracular hermit that people either found or they didn't (though he acknowledged you could also find or not someone standing on the steps of a public building, he'd grant you that, and after saying this he'd usually settle back into the red satin, lift his arms lazily upwards and yank yards and yards of blue ribbon, it was invariably blue, out of the ribbon dispenser above his head. The fabric shoppe attendants hated it when he did this, and asked patrons not to point out any dissimilarities between the old man's style and Socrates, as it usually wound up with blue ribbon all over the floor.) than sitting out in public. Besides, he didn't like the sun too much.
Now, if you've ever tried sitting on something coated in satin (and no, no, we don't want to hear the details), you'll know that it's no mean feat to sit down on a pile of the stuff and remain sitting there for an extended period of time, satin being one of the scientifically proven most slippery substances alive. Or known to man, as satin isn't technically alive. And that has been scientifically proven, despite outrage from certain tribes who believe in the animated properties of satin. But there you go, no satisfying all the people, all the time. It may be worth mentioning that those tribes that do believe in the animated properties of satin have an explanation for the scientific findings, and it involves some sort of 'stealth gene,' which itself is undetectable by scientific measures (what with being a stealth gene and all), which hides the satin's true nature for prying microscopes and other prying instruments.
So the man, he sat back there. Impressively, for managing to sit still on satin for that long a period of time, really. And he preached. He preached wisdom occasionally mixed with the odd cliché, which is somewhat unavoidable, when you're preaching the truth and wisdom, as some clichés became cliché because they were true.
All up until the day a visiting member of a tribe that just so happened to believe in the animated properties of satin came into the shoppe and told the old man about his beliefs. After that the man went back to his former day job at the hardware shoppe and left the fabric shoppe days behind him, but for one small roll of blue ribbon.
disclaimer:
There's a rumour, has been for a long time, that the final issue of Sane Magazine is going to come with almost no notice and it'll be one of the most heart-wrenching things you've ever read, touching your very soul, though only with your consent, to avoid any legal hassles in certain countries.
Another companion rumour to the preceding is that the Head Editor (who's off at the moment, as we've mentioned, though he still hangs about the office occasionally) has a Closed sign he keeps in his desk for that very day, when we show up at the office to put out the next week's bundle of joy, only to find the door's been locked and the closed sign put up in the window.
This week, as you may have noticed, we didn't happen to be locked out of the office.
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