The scoundrel was a pirate.
“Scoundrel, why is it that you are a pirate?” he was asked by a captain, just a moment before his trial for piracy for which the penalty was known.
After serving it and the reincarnation into a body of another scoundrel, an antiques reseller, he began creating his business plans.
Once he organized an auction for purchase of toilet paper which he spent while taking notes on the–as the critics demystifying the literary essence of his artwork used to say–“beautiful poetry.”
Since no one ever bought it, he decided to go for a plan change and open up a Writers’ Units for Quick Deployment Agency.
On his business card one could read:
Traian Mitrevski, special writer Head of the Writers’ Units for Quick Deployment Agency – “Dead Horse Reflexes”
Soon the word about the agency spread throughout the kingdom, and then throughout the world. It was applied to by many reputable and internationally known writers, some of them even published.
However, the criteria were so strict that no one has come to the stage of bidding; none of the potential applicants managed to apply before the public calls deadline.
The application period was from 8:13:03 to 8: 13: 03: 08 time zone UTC + 5: 00 (Islamabad and Karachi), but the speed of the potential candidates filing for candidacy did not allow them to be called candidates for Agency for the Rapid Deployment of Writers.
Once he was called by a landowner whose fountain had gotten spoiled, and accordingly, needed express reaction.
Within a few minutes Traian has come, after successfully hacking the external gate by setting a new password, then slipping through ten guards, then hacking the inner door of the house, suspending and fixing the cameras, making two coffees and boiling five to six eggs (it was his routine to exercise immediately before) and finally, to come to the fountain and start writing.
He always wrote while standing. He stood on one leg. The left one. He was a leftist in the heart. Even in the kidney. Only the left one remained. (In that honor, he once wrote a poem: “Only the left remained.”)
He wrote for a few hours.
He wrote from heart, not for the audience.
When completed, he gave the sheet to the landowner and mysteriously disappeared.
No one ever saw him again.
The following words of wisdom were written on the paper:
“This fountain is like the mind of the true writer. Only a cracked pipe can pour so much water. Only a cracked mind can be a source of endless inspiration from monumental dimensions.”
He had written under a mysterious symbol: the word “AFRDOWDHR” and drawing pen. After years of interpretations, a team of scientists came to a conclusion that the word is actually a shortcut to the Agency For Rapid Deployment Of Writers – Dead Horse Reflexes. Nobody has managed to interpret the true meaning of the pen yet.
Stefan Markovski is a Macedonian writer, poet and philosopher, member of Macedonian Writers’ Association. Born in the town of Gevgelija (01. 12. 1990), he completed primary and secondary education in his hometown, graduating on the Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology “Blazhe Koneski”. He’s an alumni at the Institute of Philosophy of Ss. Cyril and Methodius State University of Skopje. Markovski is the author of 7 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
Image courtesy of Viktor Mogilat via Unsplash