THE MAN WHO WENT IN ALONE – a story that wasn’t

from THE MAN WHO WENT IN ALONE

“I once heard a fable. Wanna hear it?”

I was pretty sure I already knew it, but nodded anyway.

“It’s about the man. You know, the man who went in alone.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Stop me if you’ve heard it already,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure I won’t,” I replied.

“Yeah, well it goes like this. The man who went in alone never came out the other side. The man who came out the other side never found the way back in, but that’s okay, there never was another side, and alone was all there was.”

He waited on me to say something, but there was nothing to say. I already knew that fable. The one that couldn’t be.

“Okay then,” he said. “You go in alone.”

So I did. And he was right.

I never came out again.