Nightmare Fuel, Day the Seventh - Happy DeathDay!

This is another literal take on an image which could just as easily be metaphor. 

It is true: we celebrate some things and not others.



"Happy Death Day!"



You're Invited!

When:        November 1, 2015, 10PM to 2AM
Where:       Spruceyard Cemetary
What:         DeathDay Party
Why:           We celebrate the beginning of the life's adventure, but never the end. Come join us for a deathday celebration! Games! Slides! Bouncy-castle! Drinks! Food! Good times!

RSVP by October 7th, 2015

NO BLACK ATTIRE PERMITTED! THIS is a Deathday celebration, not a funeral!!

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We all have that one friend, don't we? Not just the manic crazy one, but the quiet-crazy. The one who seems normal to outsiders, but comes out with really odd thoughts. Like a DeathDay party at a cemetary, the day after Halloween. It's the kind of event that feels weird, uncomfortable, and wrong yet strangely compelling. The kind of event that you just know if you missed you'd be missing out on some great stories.

So, I go.

I dress casual in  khakis and a button-down shirt, mindful of the "no black" admonition, arrive a late to find the party in full swing. And "swing" is the operative word; the promised bouncy castle is nowhere to be seen, but some enterprising soul has relocated playground equipment, including a slide and a full-sized metal-frame swing set - to the graveyard, the slightly rusted metal sharing space with the old stones, their markings long faded by the winds of time. How he got permission for such a thing is beyond me but the crowd - mostly too young and mostly too drunk - is eating it up, playing and laughing like the children they were all too recently.

I am not young, but not yet old either. There are, God willing, still a few more years before me than behind me. I'll admit it; there is a physical joy in taking a turn on the swings, in the juxtaposition of playfulness and death. The host himself follows me up the slide, our, small talk given weight by the venue: "It's a nice party, but I'm confused. Is someone dying? Are celebrating a specific death-day, or just death itself?"

He leaned close to me as I sat atop the slide, gazing down a smooth metal tracki toward the grave-markers below. His whisper in my ear was breathy, smelling of alcohol. "We're all dying. Perhaps... yours."

A shove in the small of my back sends me down, the bumps, rivets, and seems in the cool metal jabbing and poking my body as I slide inexorably and quickly toward the humble graves below.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Sixth - "Root"

I cheat at these.  I was early one day, so didn't use the photo prompt, which puts me a day behind.

This makes it a bit easier for me; I have nearly a full day after I see the image to ponder what I can make of it.

It also means that I can peek at others as soon as I'm done (I don't like to peek first, because it makes it too hard for the prompt to speak to me without crosstalk from their inspiration. Today, Erin Vataris had a lovely piece (she's quite good at this - possibly better than I am) which dovetails interestingly with this one. Read hers here, then read mine. Or the other way around. 

Enjoy!



"Roots"

Out here, where the world is still not quite tamed, we can still see a bit ahead. Oh, not clearly as our mothers' mothers did, but we can still see, as through a mist. The path is, after all, always there.

You'll be among the last of us, and the first. You'll not leave the untamed places so much as the untamed places will crumble away beneath your feet. Paths worn through the wilderness by footfalls gave way to blaze marks scratched into trees gave way to shinyhard reflective disks, fixed with iron nails.

Always it is iron. Always.

You'll hang on for a bit, here at the edges. The iron will, for a time, be weak. Little more than scraps, scattered through the shrinking wood. Perhaps you'll lure one of their pets away from the iron world, take the half-tamed creature as your companion, letting its wildhalf run free with you.

You'll not take a child, as we once did. The tame parts of the world are now too tame, too fenced in. You'll know that to steal even one child, even an undersized girlchild with no future in the land of iron - you'll know that even that would begin a great hunt, and end as such stories always do. It's never a good end for us and ours.

You'll live for a time on the edge, and watch the edges blur and creep. Watch even the untamed places grow less so, become as gardens. See the river - your river - spanned by ropes of copper, humming currents of power and thought crossing the ancient flow of water. You'll hear the voice of the wilderness, of the world growing fainter, you'll not know if the voices are being muffled or your hearing is failing as you age.

You'll age.

You'll hear tale of a city built on swampland, a city that still reveres the land. You'll bit me farewell as you begin the journey.

When you get there your heart will quicken as you see old roots of ancient trees breaking the surface of dirty water, gnarled shapes reminiscent of clawed hands, of old men, of life. The sight will speak to you so loudly and clearly that you'll not realize until you're upon them that you can't hear their voices, that they're silent.

Image by Mike Delgaudio, shared under a Creative Commons
Licence

You'll cry when you realize that the roots are a dead thing, a manikin of resin and shadows and trickery.

Far from the wild places of your home, which are wild no longer, you'll carve a home for yourself in the city, this dreadful iron city with its artificial heart of ersatz trees. There, after a time, you'll meet a man who carefully tends an artificial plastic houseplant, carrying it from windowsill to windowsill to follow the days' sun, whispering words of encouragement to it.

From him you'll learn how to love the empty shell of the city which you now call home. You'll visit the resin facsimile of roots and come to love it in your way, to finally, to hear the faint and mechanical voice of the iron, resin, and steel notwilderness.

Your love will only go so far; you'll never tend to it, never touch it, barely speak to it.

When you die, they'll burn your remains, and store them forever in an artificial urn, cunningly crafted to look like the roots of an ancient tree.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Fifth - Two Work Orders Issued in The City

A true story about how the world works. Were there a secret organization ruling the world, this is how they'd function.

Of course, the details and reasons never make their way to those on the front lines. We destroy our cities quietly, one step at a time, in the name of the greater good.


The prompt, in fairness, informs my thinking here but that's about it.





Work Request 427B
Location:                    

The City

Reported issues:

Nonconformance with Standard Cultural Practices. Unsavory Atmosphere NOT SAFE FOR CHILDREN

Actions Requested:    

Bring into conformance.

• Rezoning to dislocate undesirable commerce
• Clearing of "broken windows" and similar
• Introduction of approved merchants.

Variance accepted:   

Allow single "local character" to remain. Maximum suggestiveness level 13+

Status:                        

Completed, 11/9/2010.

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Work Review Request
Reference:                   

Request 427B

Reported Issues:           

Local disruption to image. Unsavory atmosphere. NSFC. Suggestiveness Factor increasing unacceptably

Actions Requested:      

Review Conformance and begin remediation

• Elimination of high suggestiveness-factor performances
• Review of standard characters for compliance with accepted practices
• Protection of sanctioned merchants and commerce
• Introduction of approved and sanctioned public works.

Variance  accepted:     

Grandfathered "local character" pending review of permit request and confirmation of payment.

Status:                               

Review in Progress

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Fourth - On the Train

So we continue. This is yesterday's prompt, offsetting me by exactly one day.

In terms of process that's good for me because it gives me a day to ponder and reflect, then an hour the next morning i which to write.

So, without further ado:


"On the Train"


You knew it was a magic pen. Don't give us any of that nonsense pretending that you didn't. The old man selling it on the streetcorner was clearly too well dressed, too healthy to be a typical ne'er do well down on his luck, and... you've never quite admitted it, even to yourself, but you have something special about you. You could always see when someone has something special about them, when they're perhaps touched by something from outside the world. A flicker? A shimmer? Nothing like that. It's just that some people appear -- more solid. More real to you. So from him you bought the pen.

It's a heavy thing, but you've always had large hands. It's old, made of some kind of bone or horn material worn smooth from decades of handling. It's tipped, of course, with a gold nib, inkstained by still with a comfortable flex. Who had written with that instrument? WHat had they written? You always wonder when you acquire an old pen, this time you remember double.

You knew it was a magic pen. You still knew when you write the few lines about the old man on the sidewalk:

He takes a nibble from the sidewalk, the ragged-edged cardboard spread before him a marketstall with no doors, bric-a-brac carefully arrayed, aligned perfectly with the sacred flow of traffic. Dreadlocks spill around his face, a rough halo crowning skin faded to the color of urban dust.

Not much yet, but it's a start, will be part of something bigger. It always will be.

Were this a fairy tale, he'd be gone when you walk passed his spot the  the next day, his role in the story over. As it's not a fairy tale,  he's still there, but less. The solidity has faded. You tell yourself it wasn't there, that it was a mistake, but you know better. It was there, it now isn't.

No matter. You're a creature of habit, one of many who write and scribble on the anonymous commuter rail. There are the sleepers, the newspaper-readers, and - like you - the writers. Not many, but one woman catches your eye. A youngish Asian woman holding a ballpoint pen in bright-red nailed fingers, scribbling something in a notebook in her lap. It's not creepy to look and look twice if you're gather material, is it? This is, after all, what you do.

On silvergrey patched blue vinyl seat
she lights, glowing rectangle flat on
her lap, redpainted nails dance as fingers
clutching the stylus make tiny gyrations, as if
self-ministering and old-time cure for madness.
Write and erase, write
and erase, write
and erase
write and
a tiny tremor of joy ripples
through her whole body.
I look away from the upturned
corner of her lips, leaving her
alone
in the afterglow.

You're rather fond of that one. The next day, in the same car,  is the same woman with the same red-painted nails. She doesn't look magical the way your second sight sometimes shows. She seems, if anything, faded. Less real. And so you write on someone else.

And so it goes, until you find yourself in a car full of what look to be ordinary commuters to anyone but you but are, in fact, desiccated husks, of increasingly blank slates where human bodies once were.

Seeing the world like this sickens you just a bit, but you know what to do.

You draw a fresh load of ink into your magical horn pen and sit down to write your memoir.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Third - the Nail

A cheat today; I'm up ahead of the daily prompt, so selected one of my own from the archives.

The image was from March of 2003 in New York City. 

If I like today's post image, I'll write another later or another day.

Enjoy!

"The Nail"

The kids left another nail in their garden patch.

It still bothers them that I look when I come to visit, the same way that it still bothers them deep inside that I call them kids. No matter. I raised him well enough to not say anything, and she's too scared to. There is politeness, but the nails.

The nails make me mad. 

Photo by L.C. Suskin

It's not just that they keep the little folk out, or hurt the ones that come. Little spikes of iron, carelessly sown amongst the roses and rosemary, the earthloving tulip bolds and bold daffodils, trumpetiting the arriving season. It's that it's come to feel deliberate. After I talked them into pulling the nails out of that little wood picket fencelette (too small to be a real fence. Oh, how I loved wordplay when I was a young girl! I should have been a writer) and tie it up with twine all properlike the nails kept appearing. The kids tell me they must of dropped when they pulled them from the fence, that they fell there by accident, but there's too many, too many different sizes and shapes. Where do so many nails come from?

No, the nails are there for spite. 

It's the same kind of spite that moves the flat bowl of salt from the east window to the west window, that swept away the line of salt I'd drawn on their rear doorsill and replaced it with sharptasting cinnamon. For the ants, they say, but I know different and they know I know different. 

She knows. I can see it in her eyes.

It's hard to pick up tiny nails from soft earth, the iron dirtyblack against the soil. If I had my gloves I'd do it now, but I don't want to risk burning my hands.

It is easy, as an old woman, to shuffle my feet. To stumble a bit on the way in, to break that damn line of cinnamon. Tomorrow I'll replace it with honest salt. As it should be.

As I go to the wrong side of the kitchen window to fetch the salt, I see it out of the corner of my eye: a single ant already crossing the threshhold

Soon there are more. Not the black ants I know from my youth, but tiny and dustyred, the color of rust. 

The kids won't appreciate it, but I shuffle to the door, ready to protect my child's home against the coming iron.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Second: Light

Day two, and a double-post today to catch me up. Another short and simple one.

The image, of course, is from promotional material from the film The Exorcist. Knowing this may or may not have influenced what follows.

I'll note that, thus far, the prompt images have appeared in a fairly literal way. This will, I promise you, not always be the case.

"Light"

In the hospital room we barely noticed the glow. Well-lit as only operating rooms are,  us blinded by our joyful step into the unknown, neither of us noticed that our baby didn't cast a shadow. The truth is that it might not even have been so bright yet. The next morning it was clear, as I left my dear bride Maria recovering and walked to that observation window overlooking the neat array of bassinets. At first I thought it was a some trick of the light, but no; our Luna's skin was really and truly glowing, illuminating the web of scratches on the plastic bassinet. The nurses seemed to keep away from her.

So the tired mother and glowing baby headed home early, away from the prying eyes and suspicious glances, away from the nurse who crossed herself every time she looked at the glowing child, away.

The light ebbed and flowed, perhaps with mood, perhaps with hunger. Maria became a shut-in. Her parents were long departed, friends had left the city. By an unspoken agreement we kept Luna inside, with that blue and white striped blanket hospitals give you, alone with the tiny plastic bottles (BPA free!) to which Maria resorted when the little mouth refused to "latch on".

Alone with the glow.

A glow which was becoming an  unnatural, cold light. A glow that pierced my eyeballs and jabbed my brain when I woke up for the midnight feeding. A glow by which I could read to her, books she couldn't understand but with calming cadences (her favorites were the whimsical bear hunting berries and the little bunny going to sleep).  A glow that pushed at something in my head, that gave piercing and relentless headaches.

Maria wanted to call a doctor, call a medium, call a priest. Call someone. Anyone. I stood firm, fearing she'd be taken and we'd never see her again. Aside from the glow and refusal to take a breast she was a remarkably well-tempered baby. As least as far as I know.

I began working longer hours, as new parents must do to pay for all the things that would need paying for. I returned home very late to find the glow spilling out our window, casting an icycold pool of brightness onto the sidewalk.

For a long time I stood in the light, looking up towards the window. The light was growing, not fading. Just a day ago it had been dark out there.

Slowly, I climbed the steps, pausing outside our apartment door. Even here the glow was visible, showing in outline the poor sealing around our humble portal. Slowly I entered to a bright but silent home.

Luna is gone, Maria is gone.

There is nothing,

Nothing save a bright and sourceless light.

Nothing else.

Not even me.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the First - Initiation of the Fish's Keeper

Write horrible things with me.

So began the "Nightmare Fuel" project, three years ago. Each day for the month of October Bliss Morgan shares a photo prompt over on the Google Plus social network. Each day, those inclined write something.

This year I'll start with a trifle, a meditation. We'll see if we can finish all 31 again this year.

Those so inclined, feel free to join in. Otherwise, thanks for listening.

"Initiation of the Fish's Keeper"

You are the keeper.

 

Your calling - the very highest and noblest part of your calling - is to keep this single goldfish in a small bowl.

It's been the same goldfish for a very long time now. As long, some say, than the world has been alive.

Yes, it is quite small. Because of the bowl, of course. Few know this, but a goldfish in open water will grow and grow and grow. Even today's goldfish, worn by countless generations of the world's decay, can grow as large as a man's hand, or larger.

This is the ur-fish. Freed, it would grow without bound, it would devour the world and then, in the formless void, starve itself.

So we keep it. Here in this bowl.

We aren't cruel to the fish, as stunted as it is. Whisper a few words outside the glass. 

Give it a few extra flakes someday. 

Be sure to change the water. 

And, on the days the fish dies, quickly and quietly replace it. Remember that the new fish will be the ur-fish, the first. 

That it will be, though new, as old as the world itself.