Wtf is the "fable" genre there for? I just noticed it... of course, I didn't actually read any stories under that genre... but anyways, I wrote this in response.

The Fable

It was that particular time of year when the clouds are suddenly cloudy, and the animals no longer feast on the carcasses of dead migrating mammoths. The time in which the birds squawk angrily, and the grass takes on a sultry tone as it once again goes through its adolescent phase. The time where the moon is illuminated in a yellowish hue as it waxes gibbously, though no one can see it due to the thick smog emanating from the city below.

This is not the fable. Yet...

Like small winged insects converging upon a porch-light, they came. They came as their ancestors had done a millennia ago, and probably in the same way as the ones before that had come as well. Obviously, it was in their blood, a speck of something that thrived among their hemoglobin, feasting upon whatever it could find (except of course for blood cells, hormones, and drugs... it hated those). This was the ritual.

This was no cult, though it may seem carnal. There were no human sacrifices or mass suicides, it was simply something that dragged some ancient instinct out of some long-forgotten parts of their minds, probably the areas reserved for useless math formulas and the names of people's pets. None thought it suspicious that they suddenly had some uncanny urge to migrate to the city. They all knew what awaited them there.

The storyteller.

So it happened each decade that the ancestors of Hodge the Merciful/Merciless (depending on the translation) met annually at the family reunion in the grungy-looking cave below the subways once every century. It grew so cramped that they were all forced to stand, pressed up against their fellow clansmen.

Their attention would always be focused only on the storyteller. He was a man of enormous age (say, 798) who was allowed to live for the sole purpose of telling stories. Or rather, the story. Or rather, the fable. Not just any 'the fable,' though, it could of course only be The Fable.

No one could say for sure whether The Fable was entirely fact, or entirely fiction. The only thing they were certain of was that magical feeling every time the storyteller's raspy voice began. It picked them up, sniffing them and touching them in very disturbing ways, then set them down again with a hunger for more. But they would have to wait another year for that feeling to set in again.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention?” the storyteller would always begin. These words would always leave the crowd silent, deep in thought and on the verge of tears. “What I am about to tell you is not a mere story. No, it is nothing of the sort. Neither is it a tale, a myth, a sonnet, a yarn, a ballad, a wives-tale, a big fish, a legend, a piece of folklore, a prophecy, a regalement, or a work of classic fiction. Nay, my friends, what you are about to hear is a Fable.”

Cheers, whoops, and sensuous moans would always arise from the crowd at that point, though the last one could never be pinned down on anyone in particular, and many people hypothesized that the cave itself was making them.

At that point, the storyteller would give them some news about himself, such as his love life or some books that he recommended. And after that, the fable would begin with those ever so classic words.

“Once upon a time...” he would begin, and a hush would fall on the already-silent crowd, forming a quiet so still and soundless that it would kill the average audiophile. The story would then proceed. “...there was a young boy named Hodge.”

The subway train would then pass, and the storyteller would pause throughout the interruption. As soon as it was gone, however, he would continue.

“The End.”

The story's end brought screams of joy, and everyone present was in tears, moved by the amazingly deep significance of The Fable. Those gathered there would leave changed, resolving to never be the same again, already yearning for the next telling. The storyteller himself would be so impassioned by the fable that he would suffer a minor stroke each time and enter a coma for the next few days. The Fable was a burden he was glad to be the one to bear.

The people would scatter and return to their normal lives in which the clouds are less cloudy, the animals readily devour mammoth carcasses, the birds are peaceful and the grass is still quite amiable, the moon wanes crescently, and the air is clear as can be.