Tag: creative writing

there are monsters in small places 5

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Ezrah as long as he had lived in Brightview had never seen the top of Deadman’s Boulder – even though Evander would scramble to the top ever since he was seven and Ezrah was three, even though ever since then Evander would sneer down at Ezrah.

“Coming up?” Ezrah would not respond.

“What are you, scared? Do you think there are…monsters up here?” Ezrah still thought there were monsters under his bed, and even though Evander didn’t think that, Ezrah would sleep much better once the monsters decided to move out.

“Monsters?” Ezrah whispered. Thinking exactly of the variety that lived under his bed.

“Oh, yes,” Evander grinned, “big scary ones.” His cruelness made Ezrah feel alone. “Are you gonna come up or are you gonna be a sissy?” Ezrah shook his head and shrank back to be alone somewhere else, every time really convinced that there were monsters up there, big scary ones.

That’s why Ezrah was immediately jealous when he found Ros at the top of Deadman’s Boulder only three weeks since she had come to Brightview. The edge of his voice cut towards her through the wind.

“What are you doing up there? You know there are monsters,” he snapped. “Big scary ones,” he added, only half convinced of it himself. Ros did not get angry at him. She was silent like she had joined the soft green moss lining this rock.

“No there’s not,” she responded after being moss for a long time. “There are sirens.” Ezrah was about to start high school and had long since stopped believing that there were monsters hiding in the jagged peaks, but he had never considered sirens, and he thought had heard something from the peak of the boulder that he could not see. “Come see,” Ros invited. Ezrah paused with his foot on a pedal-like out hang for a second he heard Evander instead of her. “Are you coming?” she asked and the moment broke like water over the boulder.

nightshade 1

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“Grandpa, tell me a story!” Tori said, holding her small hands, up, folded together, a wordless pleased. Grandpa chucked.

“How about,” he said, reaching down to take her hand, “I show you a story instead?” Tori pulled back as he led her to the door.

“We’re going into the woods,” she wavered, “at night?” Grandpa chucked again and pulled Tori into his arms

“Don’t you worry, munchkin,” he said kindly, “nothing can hurt you while I’m around.”

The dry fall leaves, frosted over by the first cold snap of the season, crunched under grandpa’s large leather working boots.

His warm arms calmed Tori’s rapidly beating toddler heart and she grew enough courage to pull her face out of his faded flannel and started to notice the night-darkened woods around them. A completely different woods than the daytime woods she played in, completely different trees than the daytime trees she climbed.

No, this was an entirely different world than then the world the Nightshade Forest inhabited in the day.

subtlety & subterfuge 1

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The Kensingtons’ apartments were aglow. The transformed room’s luminescence esteemed the ball in the opinions of the young guests as the most magnificent they had ever seen; but even the less youthful guests could be prevailed upon to assent to its magnificence.

The ball had been arranged on the favour promised by the indulgent Mrs. Kensington to Alice, the youngest sister of Miss Abbott. The favour was not lost on young Alice who now chatted amiably with a group of young men, the former having taken her leave of dancing to catch her breath.

Miss Victoria Abbott herself occupied the least conspicuous corner of the room, enjoying the company of her sister and closest friend Ella. They were at that moment commenting on the quality of the company when a young man whom they had seen often and heard of much more often joined them to make his first acquaintance with the two eldest Abbotts. The young man bowed.

“I hope you will excuse my intrusion,” he began, “but I could not help overhearing your lively commentary on the company I have only recently had the pleasure of acquainting myself. I expect you will forgive my desire to understand your opinions of your friends of many years.” Miss Abbott stiffly but courteously bowed in response.

“Your intrusion is not unwelcome.”

“I thank you. Excuse me, for it seems I have forgotten to introduce myself. I am Julius Kinsley.”

“Victoria Abbott.” Ella curtsied.

“Ella.”

“A pleasure.” Mr. Kinsley’s eyes lingered on Ella before he spoke again, contemplating her sparing communication attributing it to shyness of sudden and unexpeceted company.

“Please, continue your conversation, I meant not to interrupt.” Ella contrary to Mr. Kinsley’s fleeting first impression, began amiably the revival of a tired topic between the two sisters.

“We were simply noticing, Mr. Kinsley, how different some people seem to be at balls and yet how remarkably similar others are.”

“And if you shouldn’t mind telling a stranger, Miss Ella, who were the objects of your observations?”

“Have you had the pleasure of an acquaintance with Lottie Norwood?”

“It may be that I have. I have no recollection of whether we met on the floor or the side of it so much lively company have I enjoyed since my arrival,” Kingsley noted.

“She enjoys whichever is more popular at the moment. She can now be seen to the side of the floor boasting of her latest attachment.”

bottoms dream 4

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Johnson arrived expecting to observe a session, and he expected, as he and the doctor had discussed, one high school volunteer, eyes shut, attached to a complicated set of electrodes. But the full sleep-lab set-up, repurposed for the new cutting-edge research, was formed around two volunteers back to back in the saltwater tank.

“Doctor, would you care to explain?” Johnson brought an accusatory edge into his voice.

The doctor had said nothing of this.

“Ah, welcome, Johnson. Please, have a seat.”

“You still owe me an explanation, Doctor.” The doctor smiled wanly.

“We know what it is to inhabit the unconscious, but what if two were forced to inhabit the same unconscious, the same depths of the mind. Does one mind form to the other or do they grow together? A shared space or a violent takeover? How do they fit into each others’ psyches?”

“You’re telling me they’re dreaming the same dream?”

“Not the same dream, no, but in the same space with the same symbols.”

“What happens when they wake?”

“This is pure science. We are on the edge of discovery, Johnson. We can send them into the depths of their minds, but in all my research, I have been unable to bring the depths up to us.” The question for Johnson was quickly answered but given no explanation. The machine shut itself down with no prompting from the doctor.

Raymond woke up like a sleeping prince, rising gracefully to the surface, but Rose was not so lucky. She moved nimbly kicking to the surface, and ripping the electrodes away from her skin, jumping from the lip of the tank like an acrobat.

Her lip curled as her eyes locked on
the doctor.

“You.” She raised a stone paperweight, jagged and wickedly sharp, from his desk over his head. Her next word was spoken like a spell. “Dolor.” Johnson knocked her down with one blow before she could deliver her pain.

bottoms dream 3

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“‘…and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again,’” Rose whispered into the darkness.

“That’s Shakespeare, English playwright. You like?” Her voice may have been low soft but her smile was loud, stretched wide to the right side of her face. She grinned at the darkness and its silence, and cupped her hands. “Flamma.” The crypts filled with a low white light.

Briefly she considered the fresh grave, but she had no interest in robbing a man she had respected, although he would make such an easy target. She drummed her fingers on the waiting tomb of the second prince. “Chaos has come…but what will chaos do?”

Raymond had seen the symbol on the wall above his parents’ bed. He had recognized it, but only in the distant recognition of dreams. As in, he knew what it meant, but he could not account for his knowing. An urge also plucked straight from his dreams pulled
him down to the crypts at a run. Royalty never rushes. It was a favourite aphorism of his brothers, but like most flowery things the crown prince said, Raymond doubted it and its sincerity.

Raymond too was royalty, but Raymond would rush through the crypts as though the deceased Castells were in mortal danger – and maybe they were.

His memories of Rose were vague and obscured, but they all pulled him his heart down in a deep melancholic dread. As his footsteps descended into stony tombs, the crypts fell dark and he caught the whisper of “nox” as it trailed up to meet him. The second prince of Castell may not have remembered Rose or the threat she posed, but he remembered one word, which and he threw this word into the darkness.

“Traitor.”

Rose, unresponsive, edged closer in a cascade of light footsteps. Raymond no longer rushed as dread dragged itself through his stomach. But he could not hold back his legs as they responded to her irresistible pull. The dread that she inspired closed his throat and choked him.

“Flamma,” Rose hissed. A shock ran through them as white light filled the crypts: surprise, recognition–, like high school friends cast in opposing roles–except it was nothing like that.

Their heads twitched and they swam up from the deep.

bottoms dream 2

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“’Concern with depth leads us in practice to pay special attention to whatever is below. This has been so since the beginning of psychoanalysis, and its notions of suppression, subconscious, and shadow.’ That was James Hillman. Do you understand?”

“Not really, Doctor, but please go on.”

“Very well. You’ve heard of sensory deprivation tanks I assume? These were thought to transport one into the subconscious mind. Though they are a primitive technology, simply salt water and a blindfold, they really do take subjects somewhere else.

“The problem with this method, however, is that it only offers only entry into the depth of the mind, admission, if you will, but we propose to offer a guided tour.”

“And you think your technology method can accomplish this?”

“Easily. We have located areas of the brain only active during REM, responsible for dreams and only dreams. Stimulating these areas with a mild electric current during sensory deprivation with a mild electric current brings the dreams from their depths. We
can finally access whatever is below.”

“Induced lucid dreaming?”

“In a gross simplification, yes.”

“And you think with this technology you can access the…subconscious?” The doctor picked up his dog-eared paperback again.

“‘Jung considered the fantasy images that run through our daydreams and night dreams, and which are present unconsciously in all our consciousness, to be the primary data of the
psyche.’”

“Hilman again?”

“You catch on fast, Johnson.”

bottoms dream 1

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Raymond knelt in dark torch-lit crypts.

His sword hung gilded and decorative at his side as his parents decorated the room with their own useless and empty words. The king pulled his eyebrows together to deliver his poetic eulogy, the queen pushed sobs through her mouth and tears through her eyes to mimic grief, Adrian, the crown prince, maintained his stoic composure, letting it crack so as to pretend it difficult, but only Raymond, the second prince gave into a deep melancholy like his heart was a stone sinking into his boots.

It would not appear that way, but the second prince was the only member of the royal family whose mourning for the late Prince Henry Castell was sincere. The late prince had been a bitter old man and a quick enemy of the insincere.

“A great man has died today, and we deeply mourn his loss,” Raymond’s father
continued. The king had only ever thought his uncle a royal annoyance, useless and unsavory. Amid the empty ring of false condolences, the stone relief was lowered over the remains of a the misanthropic royal. He would have given laughed bitterly at his own insincere funeral. It was not as he had wanted, but his protests had died with him.

The funeral party departed to feast in honor of a man they had despised in life, and Raymond Castell walked alone in these empty crypts. He ran his fingers over the feet of his own marble relief, waiting for his death and his own flowery eulogy. He imagined his brother
giving it and he imagined him meaning not a word.

His head twitched to one side, hitting him like an electric shock or the sudden absence of a current. He twitched again and swam up from the deep.

pentacle 2

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PART 1 – THREE OF SWORDS (cont.)

Stepping out into the street was like being hit with a bucket of ice water. It may have been April, but the seaside town of Columbia remained cold and damp well into June when the fair-weather tourists would begin to show their faces.

Adrian, with a detached sense of calm, realized that they were running on fumes. Eventually, they would crash and understand what had happened. Until then, they reasoned, they should continue to walk. It they stopped, they might forget how to do the locomotion-thing in the first place.

If the fog had any goddamn respect, it would have swirled, or done something majestic like that. But no. It hung cold and dead in the sky, daring Adrian to make it stop. The wind picked up and danced around Adrian, but the fog stubbornly stayed put.

Columbia was one street and if you blinked, or, if like Adrian, your eyes had stopped noticing anything in front of them, you could miss it. And miss it they did. They took a step forward into an unexpected substance.

“Oh,” Adrian said passively. Because they had just realized that they had stepped into the ocean. They might not have even removed their right foot from the ocean had they not heard a familiar call of “Yo Adrian!” followed by an obscene amount of laughter, from the lifeguard tower.

When Adrian reached the top of the ladder, Aiden was still laughing to himself.

“You know that kind of gets old,” Adrian said.

“Maybe to you,” Aiden shrugged. His demeanor turned a variation of serious. A half-smile still poked around his stoic expression. To Aiden, being fully serious meant you were loosing the battle against life’s slew of hardships. “So,” he started, “did you see him.” Adrian nodded.

“Yeah, he’s dead alright,” they repeated. It seemed to be the only thing they could say about their uncle.

“Was there any doubt?” Aiden asked. Adrian sat down and dangled their legs over the edge of the tower’s platform.

“I don’t know,” they replied. “He just never seemed like kind of guy who would -“

“Commit suicide?” Aiden finished.

“Die,” Adrian said. “It just didn’t seem like he could die.” Aiden nodded.

“You’re right. It did seem like he could live forever.” The two friends fell silent. The rhythmic sound of the waves washed over them. The seagulls screamed bloody murder and dove, in turns, to the ocean’s surface. Aiden joined Adrian on the edge of the platform. Tears threatened Adrian’s eyes, but they knew they would have to wait to fall. Aiden turned to talk to them again.

“What else do you have to do?” he asked.

“I have to talk to Joyce, er, his lawyer…will stuff. I think,” Adrian responded, uncertainly. Their stoic autopilot was beginning to falter. Aiden looked at his watch.

“Give me 15 minutes until my shift ends and I’ll go with you,” Aiden said.

“I’lll be fine on my own,” Adrian said. Aiden put his hand up to his ear.

“What’s that? What’s that?” He dropped his hand. “Yeah, I don’t care. I’m coming.”

there are monsters in small places 4

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

They call it Deadman’s Boulder because every year, someone winds up dead there. Usually, it’s a tourist who thinks they can swim against the undertow and stay away from the sharp sea rock. Every year, through the usual town lottery, someone finds their body, skin opened or back twisted and neck snapped.

There are a lot of ways these people find themselves snagged on Deadman’s Boulder and none of them have to do with the undertow. They are thrown from the ocean by the scaly sixty-foot sea snake that no one had ever photographed. They are thrown the other way by people who think the same snake could use a sacrifice. They are sunk by sirens who draw them in with slippery songs.

But every year, one person from Brightview has to call the town police, directly because it takes 911 three transfers to find a place called Brightview, and say, “Chief, there’s another one.”