The Furious Story. Part Four: "The Journal Slams Shut"

Lost in thought, the schoolteacher wandered through the dense woodlands, occasionally pausing to observe a colorful box turtle or a slithering snake making its way through the underbrush. Only when the deepening dusk made it hard to see the way did he notice how far he'd traveled and how late it had become.

"Oh my!" said the schoolteacher, and turned to briskly make his way back to the cottage. Soon the sun set and the woods darkened to a brown-black haze and it took great concentration to see anything at all. 

The schoolteacher felt his way along the trail and on the occasions when he stumbled off the path, he was gripped with fear, not informed by rational thoughts, but by reflexes that welled from his heart and not his head. At these times, he imagined foes unseen and animals unheard and he wondered if he would ever see his little cottage again. But the path was never more than a few footsteps away and he was never away from it for more than a moment. 

Before long he saw the faint glow of the fireplace showing through the windows and he felt safe and warm. He threw a large stack of wood on the smoldering embers as if to force back the traces of darkness that still tormented his soul, and drank a full mug of whisky before falling into a deep sleep, still in his clothes. 

When he awoke, he thought of the darkness and its unseen threats and began to think about his story. He sat at his desk and began to write:

Once, at a very special moment in time, in a magical land, lived a remarkable person, and he was a...

...private detective investigating a murder.

But before he could add another word, letters formed on the page and the story responded: "A what? A detective? Surely you're joking! He is NOT a detective!

The schoolteacher was taken aback. "Well you've no need to get angry," he said, "and he is indeed a detective, and a very good one!" He began to draw a smartly dressed man in a long, black trench-coat with a belt pulled tightly at the waist and a dark grey fedora hat. The detective had one eyebrow raised as he smugly looked down at the taped outline of a figure on the ground.

"How do you know he's good," the story responded, "What do you know about detectives?" With this the detective in the drawing looked up from the ground with a curious expression on his face, as though he was eager to hear the schoolteacher's response to the question. 

The schoolteacher quipped back, "I know plenty about detectives. I must have read over one hundred true crime books." 

But the story jumped in, "You know NOTHING about detectives! Do you know how they find their first job, or how they are trained, or what motivates them to go into their peculiar line of work? Do you what they feel when they look upon a body, torn by bullets? Have you ever known any detectives – even ONE? Have you interviewed them? Have you so much as met one in passing? NO! NO! NO!"

"There is NO detective in this story!" And with that, the drawing of the detective jumped and ran off the page and the journal slammed itself shut.