ONCE UPON A TIME
A fairytale of a fairytale

by Jim Kittelberger

The visibility in the small room where he did all his writing was getting dimmer by the moment. The pipe he held tightly in his gritting teeth was expelling smoke as if being shot out of his small pipe by a pneumonic pump. The grooves in his forehead , deep though they were normally, were emulating a rutted farm yard, and the prescription needed to iron them out did not seem at hand.

This always happened when words failed him and would not come. This time though it seemed almost terminal. He had tried everything he could think of to snap out of it. He took walks, sliced apples, a remedy passed on to him by a fellow writer, played music, shut out all sound, did push-ups. Nothing seems to work. He reverted to typing familiar beginnings and had accomplished the disheartening task of typing two pages of ONCE UPON A TIME. Oh Lord save me, this is surely the writer's block of all writer's blocks.

As he sat in the smoke filled room staring at the window shade and the world beyond this room, a sudden gust of wind blew in and engulfed him with its cool mind-clearing sweetness, and at that moment the skin on his furrowed forehead relaxed and the furrows disappeared, and without thinking he touched the keys and started once again. As if by magic the words appeared, Once upon a time.....but he didn't stop this time....there were three bears...and you know the rest.