The Magic Can of Spaghetti

Down a little lane, and behind some bins, was a door…

and behind the door, a darkened room…

…and at the end of the room, a couch…

…and on the couch, was Steve.

and in Steve’s hand, was a can of spaghetti.

Because Steve was unemployed.

Steve was thinking about all the jobs he used to have.

When he was young, he used to work at the little local independent cinema,

…but eventually he got too old for that.

Then he used to work in the factory, making things…

…but the factory relocated further out.

Then he worked in a pawn shop, selling other people’s things…

…until someone sold the pawnshop and opened a trendy cafe.

So Steve got a job working the door at a dodgy pub,

…but it eventually turned into a gastro-pub and the new patrons didn’t fight so much.

So Steve worked for a while in the little bookshop, but eventually it closed because people bought all their books online.

So Steve thought he’d write a children’s book, because that seemed to be what everyone did these days.

He walked through the park, and thought up his stories….

He walked along the canal and imagined fantastical things…

He went home, and he wrote them all down, day in, day out, for a week.

And finally he finished, staggered out of his door and into the alleyway and held it up into the sun and said. “It’s finished!”

And so then he sent it to some publishers.

But nobody wanted it.

And a few months later Steve died.

Alone.

When the men came to clean up his house they packed the manuscript up with all the other stuff…

…and sent it to wherever dead people’s things go.

Years and years went by and then one day the storage place closed because it was being converted into a block of apartments.

All the boxes of things were put up for auction, and people from the neighbourhood came to bid on old stuff to put in their new apartments.

Someone picked up the manuscript, and bought it for $3.

They took it home, and they read it…

…and read it again… and again…. and again…

…and they laughed and cried and were amazed and went straight to their computer and set up a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign to publish it.

And the book got published and went straight to the top of the bestseller list,

…and eventually a full feature length film came out where that new leading man of the moment earnestly played Steve,

Steve the factory worker,

Steve the pawn shop manager,

Steve the bouncer,

Steve the bookshop guy,

and finally,

Steve the children’s book writer.

The film was supposed to premiere at Steve’s old cinema…

…but it had since closed down and became a wine bar.