Can anyone think of a story with roughly this plot?
You know that kids game “Telephone”? One person says something, the next repeats it and so on until the last person has to reveal the message, or at least what it was like when it got to them.
In the beginning of the story a character would relate a story to someone else, and someone would overhear it and pass it along to someone else. This would go on until it got to the final character who knows (or believes) that the oft passed and distorted message is about them and their significant other. Violence, either self-directed or towards the SO, is the final scene.
The children’s book For Sure! For Sure! has a plot like that.
I haven’t read it, but T.E.D. Klein’s short story “Ladder” sounds as if it might meet your needs:
“Ladder” works in precisely that mode, with an intriguing take on the old game of telephone spun into life itself. We all like to think we have a plan that we’re going to follow, but very few of us ever manage to do so. Klein’s story plays out an entire life in the space most writers need to set a living room scene. The story is a compact wonder.
(Found here.)
Has anyone read the T.E.D. Klein story? I don’t think I have, although I’ve read the Dark Gods book the article mentions.
The problem is that I’m trying to figure out if this is something I’ve really read or not. The plot for a story doesn’t usually arrive in my mind all laid out this way, which makes me suspect it’s a memory, not an orginial idea.