Nightmare Fuel Day 23 - The Canny Ones

This is an odd one.

Again, I wandered away from the prompt - pretty far. I started with the image, came to a story, started to write it and the scene I saw in my head at the start just wouldn't fit. So I'll leave you with what came of this, and let you think of how you see it.

Thanks for stopping by. 

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"The Canny Ones"

by L Czhorat Suskin

We once knew ourselves. We once knew where we were.

All of the things that make us who we are - our sorrows, our anger, our canniness and a thousand thousand other things - all of those thousand thousand things once lived within us. Within the balance of humours in our veins, behind the shell of our misshapen skulls, within the chambers of our beating hearts.

Sometimes one of us was too canny or too sorrowful or too angry. The sorrowful ones would sit alone and weep, the angry ones would rage and bluster. The canny ones, they were the worst of all. They'd pick at the weave of the very world, threatening to unravel just a thread. They were unpleasant or dangerous or just unhappy, the too-canny ones or too-sorrowful or too-angry ones. 

So we'd fix them.

So I'd fix them.

I am, truth be told, too canny by far. Cursed to see the world as a network of levers, balances, of puzzles. Cursed to restlessness, to discontent. It is, I suppose, quite OK on balance. It is acceptable because in my madness I can where people are wrong. Where the bile pushes too hard against the chambers of their stomach, where the blood flows too hot within the chambers of their heart. So, with ice flame, with knives and needles, I fix them.

I could fix you. Right now with the knife. Right here, that spot in the back of your head where the extra spirit is building up. You can feel it, can't you? Pressing all the way through to your eyeballs, making you see terrible things. That's why they brought you to me. Because you see things that aren't there, because you see things that give you ill dreams.

I can fix you with this chisel and this knife and this little bonesaw. 

I can fix you, but I won't. 

I'm getting old, my hands tremble. Not much, just a little. No amount of bleeding or purging or trepanning will fix that. I'm simply worn out.

But you... you're too canny and a touch mad. You can learn.

You can suffer so that they may be healed.

Seabamirum on Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59323989@N00/3468649494

Nightmare Fuel - Day 22 - I Dare You

This is another prompt I had no idea what to do with, so I made a poem of it. The breaks in meter were deliberate and meant to create a mood. You can judge if they succeeded. .
"I Dare You"
by L Czhorat Suskin
I Dare you, you said.
You dared me to bring the thing up to my head.
This empty white carcass unfilled with the spirits
the alien spirits
the alien spirits of insectlike dreamers
of insectlike dreamers with insectlike dreams in their insectlike heads.
You dared me, I said.
I'm not a woman who'd deny a dare
It is a magic that will make me bold
to risk a terror far beyond compare
a cause to brave a soul destroying blow
from insectlike dreams in insectlike heads
I dare you, you said to take the thing up to your head.
This horrible thing that we found by a corpse.
That we found by a corpse that was twisted in pain
That was twisted in pain from the mad spirit thing that insectile curse that drove into its brain.
My eyes remained upon you as I touched
the wretched bonecold frame up to my brow
Into my brain I feel its alien touch
My eyes unblinking, staring past the thing
I dare you, you said
You dared me, I said.
I took the thing up to my head.
I listened to whispers and insectile murmers
to insectile murmers that fill me with dread
They'll linger, they'll linger
these insectile murmers
they'll linger long after I pull the thing off of my head.
This foolish mad dare
this glorious dare I know what they're thinking,
I'll see them eyes open
You'll see them yourself
you'll see them you'll see them you'll see them
if only you'll take take up this horrible thing,
you'll take it right up to your head.
So join me, so take it, so join me
I dare you.

Nightmare Fuel Day 19 - The Heretic

Day 19, redux. The prompt was posted after I wrote the story, so I circled back. This deals with a theme I've been playing with in my head, but not in a way which I find entirely satisfactory. Anther one to revisit.

"The Heretic"
by L Czhorat Suskin

The warlock was drinking, more and faster than usual. His name was Chris, but we called him the warlock. The only man who'd stayed with the coven past learning that most of us were gay and no, we wouldn't let him watch. Nobody knew what he did or where he went between meetings; at first glance we'd thought him homeless with his wild, unkempt beard and yellowing teeth. At  a closer look, his clothes were always laundered, his body clean and well-nourished. So not homeless, but with his wild beard and wild eyes none of us could imagine him at a nine-to-five type of job. The one time Gail asked him what he did he'd shrugged it off with a wave of his hand and one word. "This."

"what do you mean, this? Are you a professional warlock? Is that a job?"

He gestured impatiently with his half-smoked cigar. He always had a cigar. "You asked what I do. Right now, I'm doing this with you. Other times I do other things."

This, at the time, was a blessing for the full moon. Strength and health for the month ahead, acknowledgement of our place on the great wheel of existence, all that kind of thing. It was one of those fall evenings when the dark sneaks up on you but it's still warm enough to be outside without a jacket, but just barely. It was the time of the harvest, or would have been if any of us didn't work in real estate offices or retail stores or law firms. Poor Gail sells real estate, and I think she believes this stuff for real with an intensity well beyond the rest of us. She doesn't just believe. She believes. For the rest of us - or at least for me - it was always half needing to get out of the house, half a lingering "fuck you" to the patriarchy after years ago women's studies classes and maybe the last sliver the idea that something must be out there, that the world has to be a bit more than we see it to be.

And no, we never saw the warlock as part of the patriarchy. He was always too harmless, to hapless, to much an outsider. Male, but not of the male structure.

Or so we thought.

This year's ritual was nighttime, nighttime outside of town at a small graveyard behind an old stone church. Or in front of. It doesn't matter. What mattered was hallowed ground, consecrated not by the church but by the restless spirits of those souls whose mortal remains rested beneath. Old markers, worn thin as cardboard, thin as the shadows cast in the moonlight.

Seated together we were, side-by-side-by-side, a ring of whatever we were a ring of. Gail between me and the warlock, her hand in mine dry and cool as always her voice dry and cool in the dry and cool fall night air, the words from her lips hot and wet and with the names of Goddesses and spirits and

her hand wrenched free from mine, Gail jumping up and spinning glaring her eyes on the warlock

"What.did.you.say?" Her words were ice, cold ice, her eyes burning on his.

"The same as you. Invoking the aspects of God."

Her voice was ice. "What are you talking about? We worship the goddess here in all her aspects and the great wheel of nature, and the spirits of all things."

His eyes were as bright as hers, almost glowing in the moonlight air.

The circle broke, we sat uncomfortably, angrily. The warlock pulled a hip flask from his pocket, took a long pull. He sketched a pentacle in the dirt with one grubby finger. At the points his fingers traced complicated symbols, unreadable in the dimly light earth, "Hagiel, Uriel, Saint Jerome, the virgin, the Christ. Aspects of the Godhead into which he poured his divinity."

Before Gail could speak, I cut  her off "The pentacle looks like the craft, but your words sound like the patriarchal Christian bullshit we're trying to get away from. Uh.. no offence."

The warlock jabbed a finger at me. "They all have names. This" he gestured expansively with the half-burned cigar, indicating the church, the graveyard, his earth-sketched symbols, "this was all old a thousand years ago. This would be our heritage, if we didn't forget."

He turned his back towards us, speaking quietly towards the church, towards hallowed ground, his voice in rough latin. The words were gibberish, but the cadence familiar, comfortable.

Home.

Through the flow of words we heard names. Uriel and Hagiel and Sameal. The Magdalene. The Virgin. Gail turned away, back towards her convertable and her apartment and real-estate listings.

I took a step closer to the warlock, felt my voice joining his, speaking words I didn't know I knew.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the 21st: The Painting

Day the 21st. I'm still one behind my usual one-behind schedule, but will either catch up or fall farther behind with a couple days of upcoming travel.

This one, I suppose, is another fable. It's certainly a big step back towards reality after yesterday's experiment with modernism. The image didn't quite speak to me, so I used the version in my head instead. That one worked better, at least for my taste.

"The Painting"

by L Czhorat Suskin

"You want to buy that one?"

"Yeah. I kinda like it. He looks distinguished. And out of place. I feel that way sometimes."

The painting in question was of a man of indeterminate age standing stiffly at a beach. He did in fact look distinguished with his graying hair, his conservatively cut suit, his stiff posture. Also more than a bit out of place, alone in the bright sunshine, slightly backlit by late morning sun on bright blue waves.

It wasn't, truth be told, all that much of a gallery. Paintings of various size from various artists hung haphazardly on the rough wooden walls of the old grange hall. Seascapes next to still-lives and portraits and oversized primitives of barnyard animals. And seascapes, and seascapes. It was as if some secret meetings were held in smoke-filled rooms somewhere on the island in which all of the local painters were told to give the tourists what they want. Or if most of the artists just figured that most of their clientelle was there on vacation, and nobody goes to vacation on an island to buy a painting of a city.

They were on vacation, the couple squabbling over the artistic merits of the painting. "At the Seashore", oil on canvass. I suppose oil and water do mix, in some ways and in some times.

"There are so many others here that are more interesting. That have more color."

She started to wander away, he tarried a moment longer. "I like it. I've always liked the beach. An... not fitting in."

He paused. "I just got my bonus. We can afford it."

"You want to spend that much? And bring that home? You serious?"

They haggled with eachother before haggling with the gallerist. They'd take it home on the condition that it hang not in the living room but the smaller space that they called his home office but he secretly thought of as his study. That the next piece of artwork they bought had some damn color in it.

The painting never felt quite right in the study. For one thing, the man couldn't figure out how to illuminate it. With no lights it was too dark, but whatever he did threw a glare across the image, washing out the figure. Still, from a certain angle he could see what he'd seen those months before in the gallery: the conservatively cut suit, the severe features, the barest hint of a smile. Then came a promotion and children and less time alone to contemplate.

Sam Howzit on Flickr Creative Commons Attribution license. http://www.flickr.com/photos/12508217@N08/7239117322

It was years later, on the eve of their move, that they discussed the painting again. The man flipped off the little spotlight he'd installed above it, but the glare remained, as if etched into the canvass. "I guess I ruined it. Too bad. I'd always kinda liked it." he looked over at her. "Leave it behind?"

"Hmmm.. now I like it. The change in the light makes him look ... different. He's fading , but you can still see him from the right angle. It's more interesting."

In the new house, they'd put it in the living room. The walls of his new home office would remain bare.

NMF, Day the 20th. Not my Coven

This is another mad science experiment. It makes even less sense than the sheep meadow sheep from Day 10, but was at least an interesting departure.

A handful of literary allusions are sprinkled throughout, to two famous American poets. It also references a very specific place. I'm curious as to how obvious this is to those readers who are not me.

"Not my Coven"

by L Czhorat Suskin

They're not my coven. That's something I've not yet earned, if ever I will. Decent folk, wild folk, brave folk, yes. That and more. Puppets without strings, brave souls who'd leap a cemetery fence at midnight for the sheer joy of being where they don't belong, where they aren't wanted.

On the road together, to sing the body, Sergey driving and Jennifer shotgun the old car coloured like rust swaying the cradle endlessly rocking towards the shore, the end, the blue canary's primitive ancestry.

But they're not my coven. Brave and wild, supple and strong, they are earth and fire, air and water, but not spirit. I knew from the first I read their cards, from the laughter in their eyes as much as my inner oracle.

Each highway overpass is different from the next, and each gone in an eyeblink at each next eyeblink I sketch in the margin here, when we reach the end I'll have drawn the gate out of the world.

writing makes me carsick. It's been two hours.

They're not my coven. I may someday find one, but not today. They are my friends. And together we travel.

Late day light, stopped at a thin place thin like the bright place where the  howler met the poet  but not that, no never that. Clean, natural light here, warm emergency light glare behind white gauze Sergey laughing at nothing Jennifer laughing with him at nothing it's right nothing is funny, oh so very funny and it's so thin here. If this were a story it would start here, a tamewild place off the highway where we writ fairy-rings in vines and dirt and dreams. 

Where we finally broke free of the marionette strings off the the end.

They're not my coven. They didn't see them, didn't hear them, didn't see him when we stopped, him the childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. 

He's real. We're all real, in this thin place, near Paumonok shores. 

They're not my coven, but they brought me here, to the end, to the great monument like a phallus thrust upward at the gate of her, our mother. 

They're not my coven, but they brought me here.

To the End.

They're not my coven.

They might not bring me back.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the 19th. A Sketch, a Craft, a Scene

Yes, we missed a day here. Partly because I was away for the weekend, and partly because the daily prompt was late in arriving. I'll catch up at some point to get back to to the one-a-day for October. 

Since the daily prompt was late, I took the kids' craft from our day at the Washington Irving house up in Sleepy Hollow and built a quick story around that. Enjoy!

"At the Fence"

by L Czhorat Suskin

Madison looked forlornly at the skull. It wasn't much of a skull. A cheap plastic thing from what her grandmother would have called the dime store. Grams loved plastic almost as much as she loved dime stores and their recently-arrived tenfold successors. So many whimsical trinkets she could worry at and enjoy and not care about; a vision taking her morning constitutional in plastic baubles and bangles while her gold and diamonds slumbered in a hidden nook behind the flour.

Madison only knew about the walks from the old woman's letters. Even at the funeral, she'd spoken with nobody who'd seen her walking, who even knew that she still did it, day after day, for decades now.

Madison sighed deeply, took in the shiny new section of pickets, dove white against the dirty pigeon greys up and down the length of fence. Dark skid marks on dark asphalt, pointing at the new fence like a sign, a warning, a portent.

She reached up, a little above head level, and jammed the skull onto the central of the new white pickets. Something broke inside, a sicklyred bulb in one eye blinked alive for  a moment, then faded. A post-mortem wink.

Madison set the dollar-store hat with the fake ribbon atop the dollar-store skull. "Sorry, grams. Your real hat is safe at home. And sorry more people weren't there.

I'll visit."

It was a long week settling affairs, cleaning house, disposing of those goods no longer needed. Searches for more surprises like the gold bangles behind the flower, like the diamonds wrapped in old socks. It was past the time of dealing with Gram, and just dealing with the banality of death; cleaning up, filing away, discarding all that remained of a life.

Image by Me

Weeks passed without a return visit to the site, to the place it happened, to her makeshift shrine. On the eve of her departure, the last time she'd ever set foot in her old hometown, she came back.

The new pickets were already slowly fading to match their neighbors, a scar starting to scab over. The skull, just where she'd left it, grew mottled and worn, more like authentic bone than cheap plastic. Someone else had visited, added a colorful green scarf around the skull's neck, a cigarette in its plastic teeth. Madison felt an emptiness deep in her gut, spread through her chest and head. She leaned her head against the old pickets, just for a moment. Did this mean someone else loved her grandmother? Whatever it was, the shrine was gone. Taken for her just as Grams had been. There was nothing here for her anymore. 

She turned to leave, not seeing the single wisp of smoke from the gently burning cigarette in the cold plastic mouth of the skull.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the 18th. A fable.

No horror this time, but a simple fable.

Next week, watch this space for the promised return of some AV posts. It's been lots of fiction as of late. Not that that's a bad thing.



"Among The Greenwood Trees"
by L Czhorat Suskin


The forest was even greater when we first came to live in this place. The might greenwood trees stood tall, creating a living cathedral of shaded sanctuary for those who would choose to walk among their woods. Then, as our settlement grew to a town and the town grew towards adulthood as a city some of us became rich, as people always strive to do. And, it was natural that the rich would want a little more space.

So, they'd hire some lumberjacks and cut down a greenwood tree or two. It would make a little clearing, and island of sunlight within the great woods. Some said it better let them see the face of god.

This made the people angry and jealous. They didn't like that those who'd worked harder, been more successful, and given their town its share of wealth would be the only ones to see God face-to-face. Some of the older unmarried women, turned bitter from years of being spurned, started spreading lies that the real gods were the nature-demons within the trees. We knew that all they really cared for was to sneak out to the deep woods for some obscene rituals, and that without God's blessing they'd never have more than that. So, of course, we paid them no mind.

Then a few more men became rich, then a few more. Each rich man would cut down a few trees and then, when someone moved too close to him, find a place deeper in the desert and cut a few more. It wouldn't do to have a neighbor sharing your window to God, of course. Some feared that we'rd reach a time when the few rich men would devour the whole forest, that we'd lose the greenwood trees that gave Greenwood City its name. The crazy witch-women were disgusting perverts, but they may have been right that, without action, the forest might be lost.

It was Hutch who saved the forest for us. Hutch was a banker, and the wealthiest, most successful banker there was. When it came time to move his house, he had it built right into two greenwood trees, roof and walls and windows currently wrapped around trunks and roods and lower branches. He told everyone that even the brightest painted house was no more pleasing to God than His handywork in the great Greendwood trees, and that this was how he'd live.

The rich aren't fools, no matter what you may think,. They watched Hutch and learned from his example. Today, you can still see the great greenwood trees, if you take the time to visit a rich man's yard.

Photo by Drew Perlmutter of HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/abandoned-adventure_n_3982338.html