Every Story is True
Hello. This is The Zed Review — written by E. Howard.
This is a crossroads for beginnings and endings — fiction and life.
Every story is true. I have met the dragon and the dragon is me.
Tell me a story that is not true and I will drag you personally through the talking forest with a little girl and her dancing scarecrow. Imagination made a promise to me at the age I became self-aware, at the age I started remembering that I could remember: I am all yours. I am your best friend forever. I will be with you wherever you go and take you any night you want to on flights over canyons and down deep into blue water caves. I’ve been to the end of the Universe with every iteration of Dr. Who.
My name is Beauregard and I have two left feet. That doesn’t mean we can’t dance. That doesn’t mean I won’t sing to you in Italian the alto harmonies of duets not written yet. That doesn’t mean I’ll always be ready for you-- sometimes you will have to wait. Sometimes you will have to hold your breath. Sometimes the thunder will KABOOM out of nowhere because I forgot to poke the lightning awake.
When that happens, maybe you’ll feel abandoned for a second.
But also it might remind you of the night we got lost in downtown LA, and this was before the hipsters started buying up and fixing up the old theaters. When we were supposed to meet Rita in Skid Row at 7th and San Pedro, but one alley looks like every other and past midnight the only friendly faces on the street slur their words too much to understand. We turn a corner and on the next block a revolving door looked safe, looked inviting -- We walk in. A bellhop slumps behind a shadowed desk. His cough echoes across the marble and stone.
“You’ve come in the side entrance,” and he looks up over his shoulder. A crystal chandelier tries its best to glint, hovering up the curved stairs with tittering voices, clinks of expensive glass, beyond the rubber trees.
“It’s alright. You’re alright now. Just go on up and order yourself some bourbon. You’ll be alright.”
He adjusts the name tag. Beauregard.