Storytellersunplugged

The people attended the funeral, and toasted sombre flutes, when the King of Bad Days choked to death on a Calamity Fruit.

As everyone knows, the calamity fruit grows, on the Tortured Wallow Tree, in the Orchards of Misery. They are the succulent source of all ill fortune, when chewed and spat into a magical spittoon.

The old King was popular, giving a bad day once a moon, or if a person was naughty, then maybe two.

But the new King, his nephew, was devoid of humanity, and utterly addicted to the juice of calamity.

The gates groaned open on the unlucky sluice, and the people’s wails reached the ears of the Nony Moose. The Nony Moose came on hoof, his antlers strong, and promised to teach the king some right from wrong, if…the Moose’s price was paid. A single dark secret from each soul whose good days he saved.

The people coughed up the phlegm of their consciences - lies, conceits, and various deviances. The Nony Moose smiled, jammed his sack full of secrets, and strode to the palace on his world-saving junket.

He posed as a juggler of fire, water and air, and told bawdy jokes that brought a tear to the ear. Then he stole to the vault and silenced the guards with a cloud of foul gas from his black leotards. He swiped the king’s pride, the jewels of his family – the magic spittoon and every fruit of calamity.

While the King cried blue murder in his darkened palace, the Nony Moose poured calamity juice into a chalice. He drank and spat, intent on a lesson, to unluck, and unstuck, this vile wayward sovereign.

It rained on the king, outside and in, and suppurating pox infected his skin. Only one sock could he find, of any given pair, and a banana peel waited on every odd stair. His shower clogged up, and so did his toilet. Every task he tried, something did foil it.
The bad king learned quickly what a bad day entails, when one feels unlucky from scalp, to bowels, to queasy entrails.

The Nony Moose took pity and returned the king’s power, with the promise of worse if the king should again sour.

The people rejoiced. The king kept his word. The Nony Moose left with his bag full of secrets, unseen and unheard.