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 Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 1:50 pm
Light. Light moved in the infinite yawning darkness.
A broken fractured pulse of light, far away, then suddenly near. Sputtering and dying. A falling star.
They’d have to change the bulb again, the clinking rattle of the loose filament reminded him of-
On. Off. On. Off. On - - Off
Off then never on again.
- She clinked the straw against the rim of the can as she watched him, adoring. Of course. Of course they did, she did. Did he?
It stretched overhead, flaking leaf and a hunched ancient bitterness. It was the wild haired man gone mad staring at him over bristle flecked raincoat with eyes which saw but no longer saw.
No it was a building. Logically it was a building.
His home was in ruins, the gardens twisted and overgrown. A carcass of swollen plaster and rust eaten bones of steel. The broken windows were eyes staring without life. Without life.
And he should care.
He wanted to care. She wasn’t there.
A coffin stark in the rain, rain that didn’t reach him, a hollow sorrow that wasn’t sorrow.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
There was no home, home was gone, home but never alone.
This was not his house, it was not his house, he had not lived here where the black shapes of cutting death swept silent through the gloom. Water all around him, in his mind, in his lungs. Smothering and oppressive. Crying out was softened by a bluster of bubbles. Bubbles in the paint where the water had crept in.
There was no feeling.
Shouldn’t have made it. Shouldn’t exist.
What is wrong with you? How can you sit there?
His vision was level with the musty mouldy carpet. He was dying. There was a puzzle piece missing. Numb. Numb. Hollow. The blood was sharp. His blood. The man’s blood. Man that was not him. No one was him.
You are not even human.
He longed for something. Something impossible to reach, something that was for ever, for ever and ever beyond him. In the yawning dark, in the black blood, the smothering cold he reached and the strength went from him, ragged, gasping, failing.
And what he reached for was suddenly not a thing but a place. A place he knew.
He didn’t.
A place he needed to be.
It was a building. Dying but not dead, alive with some ancient purpose, alive with power and promise. There and not there, shadows of wealth. Home. Home. Not home but a means.
Trees, vast claws reaching too. Reaching out and up. Up and up. Gnarled roots like a circulatory system. There then gone, murdering their captive. Eyes without a skull.
The sharp crack of crisp twigs underfoot, a rustle of leaves, the brisk scent of vegetation. Not Earth. Not Earth. It was wrong, all wrong.
Like a saw, back and forth, dragged and dragged, over and over.
A moth fluttered, its wings dragging with every downstroke. Changing everything with every sweep.
He couldn’t breathe. He needed to remember.
Rasping breathing.
On. Off. On. Off.
He didn’t know how to be sorry. All there was was greed. He’d trade it in, he’d trade it in for anything else. Because greed never. Never. Never ever ever let go.
Never let go.
Off.
He woke with a start, gasping, sitting up stark and upright, realising as the fog of sleep cleared that the rasping sound had been nothing but Butch’s slow breathing, that he was safe in his own bed. He disliked dreams, they felt like losing control, too close to emotion but too far away to pin down. Unusually, elements of this one lingered. The strange, crumbling mansion and the claw reaching forest. Something had called to him.
Dreams were illogical but this one was markedly unusual. Some instinct said that it was worth heeding for once, that he should look into what he recalled, memorable architecture and the pumpkin sun of Halloween.
He was ashamed of the sweat that slicked him, cold against the sheets, as if his body had been afraid without him, experienced emotion in lieu of its master. He felt anything but divine.
The alarm on his watch went off, a shrill barking sound as Butch woke up, startling him all over again.
he called and Lawrence rubbed his tired eyes.
“Yes. Good boy.” He said dismissively, letting the twisted creature’s eagerness subside before he added. “How would you like some walkies?” And then he closed his eyes again and slumped back in the bed, knowing that it would be some time before Butch would stop.
Several hours and several books worth of research later he found himself in the place known as the weeping forest, looking intently for some undefined place on the whim of a dream. It was one of the strangest, most illogical things he had done since his arrival on the ridiculous island.
And the dream wouldn't leave him.
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Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 3:09 pm
If there was anything before the crisp smell of autumn, the wicked mixture of spice and licorice, the crackle of leaves as they rattled in the wind and spiraled across the pumpkin sun, Sorrow did not remember.
But in dreams, she saw things. Whether they were echoes of a racial memory, buried in the recesses of her instincts, or something inexplicably before she snapped into existence, it was hard to say.
She was not a ghost, but she saw flashes of towers she had never seen in the waking world, walls made entirely out of the jewel she wore around her neck. She sank her claws into the stone and braced herself against the cold hiss of rain, the wind whipped against her shoulders and the stormy sky belched out wave after wave of smokey thunder.
She climbed.
And higher, if she could only go a little higher, there was something waiting on her.
The stones sang as she gripped them. Each had a small tune, a little vibrating hum that quivered up through her toes and claws, and as she shivered, her scales sang too, opening and closing like she was swimming in a sea of mint leaves, until everything was harmonized.
Where the jewel-walls stood, they shined on the rain around them, and she could see it too, in dizzy colored patterns, the wind a pulsing tie-dye.
Soft, stark, grey, color, it was all alive.
And very, very old.
As she made her way to the top of the ramparts, there was a shift in the wind, and the wall began to change. The stone gave way to bleached marble, with veins of gold. The singing was harder to hear, now, and was more like...laughs? Giggles. Laughter shivering all up and down her, and her scales responded to that too, opening and clapping shut until they were struck with white and gold...
Sorrow pulled herself onto the top of one tower.
Below was a forest, thick and dark and familiar, tangled up around the base of all the laughing walls. The laughter of all kinds- not all of it nice, some of it very, very sharp, and her scales felt like they stood to pointed attention at it. Other laughs were gentle, fair, coaxing. In all of them, she thought she heard the whisper of her own name.
The forest kept on going. It was all that covered the ground for as far as she could see. The woods were twisted, dry, autumnal, and they too seemed to wave.
Sorrow was a listener, and she closed her eyes up and listened. Felt. What was this? Being called. Being beckoned. Wanting. Come and see, come and see, try your luck. Something merry, something wicked, something dangerous. But good vibes, bad vibes, it was all just vibes and if she left herself at neutral she could almost-
Her eyes flew open. The stones weren't under her feet any more. The long branchy fingers of the trees reached up and up, and she sucked in a breath-
To wake up in her bed, plain sheets rumpled up off to one side and her hands a bleached white. She could still feel the ringing echoes of laughter, phantom or not. And while she often dreamed about climbing, she had never gotten that far. Something was up.
She was up before her alarm, so still dozy, she went over to her sink and gargled a cup of rocks she'd gotten from outside, before spitting them back. They plinked. She got showered, and changed into one of the few oufits she owned, and pulled on her sneakers. She did a few stretches, and only once she wasn't sure she wouldn't doze back off, meditated. By the time she was ready, her scales were back to their regular color.
Jogging. Jogging would do her some good. Instead of heading over to the gym (where she usually hung out in hopes of picking up a sparring partner) she set out on the sidewalk and followed it wherever it wandered. Out and out, a winding snake, her ankles brushing the blades of grass that whispered up at her too, and in the grass, she could feel it, same as before, the tiny small singing voices, some no more than a faraway whisper, but none of them laughs.
She went around the other dorms, the gravestones (louder), the rickety iron fences, the large and well-cared for patch of pumpkins. On out, until...
She stopped.
Stepping onto the soil here, she got an even stranger, shivery feeling, and she'd read about thoughts being able to manifest, about everything being connected and tied forever, but she hadn't expected it here, stepped right on out of the dream. And if it was here, what else...?
Sorrow looked around.
There were signs, sure, warning about the dangers of the forest line, but there was no mistaking the dark and withered bark, the skyward-reaching wooden fingers, and now that she was on ground level, the knots and wrinkles in the trees twisted up so that some of them looked like screaming faces.
She stepped off the path, off the grass, past the line, and into the underbrush and the crunch of leaves, where a sudden wind picked up, and on it something that was, above all, a possibility.
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