A long time before now, there was a fantastic storyteller whose name and gender have been lost to time who lived in a village.  Every night when the days work had ended, the villagers would gather around to hear the great tales the storyteller would create on the spot. The stories would vary from small anecdotes drawn directly from the days experiences to vast epics that would span entire nights.

One day, a stranger from a distant land came to the village asking if they could reside there. They were welcomed into the village. That night the stranger saw the storyteller telling a story to a crowd of interested onlookers. The stranger, who had many stories gathered in her travels asked if she too could tell a story once the storyteller had finished. The storyteller felt a strange feeling in their gut, but felt they had no other option but to allow the stranger to speak. The stranger told a tale of fantastic places and peoples far from anything the villagers could have imagined. The storyteller may have had an excellent grasp of storytelling but they were unable to compare to the newness of the stranger’s stories. After the stranger finished her first story, the villagers asked for more, and they stayed late into the night listening to another one of the stranger’s stories. As the days went by fewer and fewer people asked the storyteller to tell stories, and when the villagers did, it seemed they could hardly hold their attention.

The storyteller struggled to create stories which would hold their audiences attention. The jealousy bubbled in their gut, until one day, a few weeks after the stranger had come to town, the storyteller began telling a new story.

“I heard that the stranger was actually the horrible thief from one of her stories, that every town she goes to, she distracts the villagers with fantastical tales, then takes the possessions that the villagers value the most. Then she leaves with the villagers being none the wiser.”

The villagers perked up their ears, and begun spinning stories of their own.

“I saw it, I swear, the stranger walking into a home and taking villagers fine clothes.”

“She disappears during the day, probably to rob unsuspecting passersby.”

The rumors began to swell until one day, the villagers brought the stranger to the center of town to confront her for her apparent thievery. They shouted and spat in her face, until the stranger took her bags and spread their contents for the villagers to see. There were no items for the villagers, but their were small gifts for each of the villagers as a gift of thanks for being so hospitable.

The stranger turned to the crowd. “I had wished to thank you for the kindness you have shown a stranger, and I still do, but it is clear to me that you will always see me as an outsider.”

The villagers begged the stranger to stay, and continue telling her wonderful stories. The storyteller promised that they would take the story back. In response, the stranger said, “Once you have told a story, you can never take it back. So, be careful of the stories you tell, AND the stories you listen to.” Then the stranger left the village, taking her stories, never to return.

I told this story to my roommates, which was initially very nerve wracking. Although we have all told stories to each other before, I had never told one in such a full fantasy context. However, I began to realize that it was very similar to when we had all played dungeons and dragons, which is a game that consists largely of group storytelling.

After that, I had adjusted to telling the story, and had a lot of fun with the last part of it. I realized that human beings are natural storytellers, and it is a major way in how we relate to the world.

When I began to think of this assignment, I immediately began to think along the terms of what could be considered an evil story. In the original, the evil story seems to be comprised of acts and imagery that we associate with the experiences of evil such as “fear and slaughter, disease and blood”. However, stories involving such subject matters are not necessarily the only way a story could be evil. The first story that came to my mind as being evil was Birth of A Nation by D.W. Griffiths. This story fed heavily to narratives of Black men being violent and dangerous, enabled the Klu Klux Klan to return to prominence, which lead to significant amounts of murders, violence, and suffering enacted against black americans. While my story does not feature nearly as insidious ramifications, I wanted to highlight the ways in which stories can create problematic real life consequences.

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