Challenge 117

So that’s what it’s like...

Nicolás Padrón ends his story “Thirteen” with a challenge of his own:

He decided not to give the blind man and his gulls any more thought. To continue thinking about them was slowly leaving him with one conclusion, too strange a conclusion even for him.

What is that conclusion?
What do the following having in common?
1. Byron Bailey’s “Encounter in the Sands”
2. Tala Bar’s Gaia, The Valley, part III, installment 1
3. Deep Bora’s “Once Upon a Time There Was Korea”
4. David P. Fraser’s “Apologize, Apologize”
A picture is worth a thousand words because we usually need at least that many to explain what it means. Fiction, at its best, provides that explanation. It can express emotions — often without naming them — as no picture can, and it can give us a lens through which to view the world. Thus, David P. Fraser’s “Apologize, Apologize” depicts in its own small way the crimes that General Roméo Dallaire faced in Rwanda and which he describes in Shake Hands with the Devil. The Challenge is:
1. Does the little boy remain sane in the face of evil?
2. How might the narrative be affected by changing the point of view to the third person?