Lighthouse
New Member
-Introduction-
Here there be Dragons roaring with the waves that strike the shore in the oceans heartbeat.
Here there be Thunder in clouds billowing, thick, and dark with intent of rain.
Here there be Glimpses of the Sun, only to have them hidden by ribbons of thin clouds painted in the pinks of setting light.
Fellow Traveler,
here there be Stories.
Dark? Certainly.
Mercurial? Undoubtable.
Yet, here there are faces carved from the simple wood of the twenty six letters within the English language.
-Basics-
[Multi Paragraph] [Male writer] [Long winded] [Active] [Long-term]
-A YouTube introduction-
[Multi Paragraph] [Male writer] [Long winded] [Active] [Long-term]
-A YouTube introduction-
-What to expect from me -
Some people have a destination in their stories.
Some people like to have their goal posts.
I am not so organized of a writer, or perhaps the characters themselves will not allow me to be so.
A single post, word, or punctuation, can change the very course of what I was seeing.
A single sentence, idea, or sway from either of us can change the very world they live in.
I breathe life into the masks that I paint the best I am able, but what they do with it?
I may have an idea, but no certainty.
To sum it up, I set my clockwork toys in an arena I've built for them, and watch them go.
With purpose, much of my ideas forward or even backward, are left vague, dislocated, or disjointed.
There are always opportunities in later places for either of us to navigate.
Holes in the complete picture only grants chance of more pieces to fall into place as if they were there from the very start.
In this vein, most of my stories are not so complex as to one needs to read a novel before even a single post.
If I have to look through ten pages of information, notes, histories of locations, or peoples... I will lose place, hope, or interest.
So, my worlds are very plug and play.
Build a character and tell them to open their eyes to see the world around them.
Simple as that.
I ask only three simple things of you as a writer.
Three little rules.
Respect
Honesty
and your words.
The real reason though? The reason I'm here?
Is because of you Fellow Traveler.
I can write in a notepad. I can scribble like a madman with crayon on a wall. I can dear diary my feelings away.
Here though?
Here, there is a voice to the echo of words.
Here, you can be found Fellow Traveler.
Here, we can dance with the twenty six letters that I am capable of.
So, with that said, shall we?
-Seeking Writers-
The Sins of those before us.
Tags - Monsters, Madness, Alice in Wonderland like ideas, Theology Myths, Medieval, Fantasy, Language Barrier
The shadows have grown long upon their thickening stems, and while they did not swallow the forest whole, their teeth were close enough. The sun brimmed just at the top of the trees, and the leaves rustled in the slight breeze that signaled the change of day. Birds, those of jay, coral tail, and wrens, chirped, sung, and chittered in the branches.Here it would seem even in the change of seasons, for many of the plants here had begun to varnish deep reds, ambers, and scarlets in their plumage, the air would remain warm enough. Perhaps there would be a slight prick of a chill, or so that momentary breeze promised, but warm enough all the same.
Those who managed the caravan had stopped for the evening, fires with their hung cooking pots stocked and blooming in fresh flames. The smells of fresh caught meat bristled the air with the crackling of fat, and the roasting smell of flanks being turned over the cooking heat. Though while some of the workers seemed to relax, lean back against the wooden wheels of their cargo hauling carriages, the dozen or so guards did not.
Dressed in leathers studded with crude wrought iron, they moved around the portion of the road that the others had circled off, a fortified position against bandits, wolves, or any manner of creature that may be lurking just over there in those deep pockets of shadows. Some held crossbows, others pikes, but the boss… for clearly that what he was, held a two handed sword.
With practiced, repeated patterns, they were wedging wooden branches beneath wheels to keep their caravan from rolling away or crushing a sleeping man in the night. The cook moved from pot to pot, adding this or that. The guards moved about, their stomachs rumbling loudly. The merchant, the only fat one among the lot, sat upon that wooden throne of his own carriage, observing from on high the proceedings of tonight's routine stop.
It would seem peaceful.
It would seem routine.
It was for most of them, but for the occupants of that third carriage?
Well, they perhaps thought differently.
The bottom of the wood was lined with crude iron plates, and the railing led into black bars that arched up and over the cargo area. It was a cage, a cage that smelled of slavery. Thin, tattered, and hole covered tarp had long ago been cast over the shape, and tied in place. Fresh air did seep in through those worn gaps in the material, and brief glimpses of moon or sunlight crept in. Though perhaps it was just enough to hide the fact that there was suffering inside, for those outside the carriage at least of course.
To say that all the people of the caravan were villains in this story would be inaccurate, not so many events in life are so simple. There was one, who was particularly a bastard, and had been eyeing you through that little peep hole that his dagger at one point had made. Though there was the other, the one with blue eyes and youthful face. That one had brought not only you but the others food and drink. There was pity in that one's sea colored eyes, pain as well in the very edges of his gaze, but loyalty to either oath of coin kept the handsome figure from doing much else.
Routine.
As it was the day before, and the day before, and the day before.
Just another day on the road, to wherever it was they thought they were going.
And yet, like a single misplaced punctuation, a stranger stood on the road just up the way casting a long sunset shadow off into oblivion.
There was a yell in common, the words and tongue that easily could be understood.
“Identify yourself!”
The billow of the lungs was none other than the near giant of a man who led the other leather bound guards. That was the one with the large two handed sword, for those keeping track, and seemed to move with military brute strength.
What came in response, well, that wasn’t a language that was known. It was words certainly, had a rhyme and reason to them. Structure. All the hallmarks of a spoken communication, but it was crude, heavy and thick on the strangers tongue. It sounded…venomous to even untrained ears.
“Highwayman or madman?”
The one who leered often at you walked by the locked carriage, that weasel like voice of his easily cutting through the fabric even though there was no obvious hole nearby. It was him though, that much any of the occupants of the cage would know. Even the outline of his short frame crossed the light against the tarp like a black and white film of a prisoner walking to his execution.
I must ask some questions Fellow Traveler.
Have you ever been caught in a flash flood?
Have you ever been taken off your feet by a jet engine blast?
Have you ever stood in the water at the change of a tide?
It is a feeling like no other.
Suddenly you are lifted up, gathered into a force that is unstoppably more powerful than yourself. It happens so fast that even at first the human mind doesn’t comprehend that its very will, its desires or wants, is no longer part of the equation.
You are simply moved by whatever chaotic force the event forces on you.
So, at this moment Fellow Traveler, gravity seems to longer exist. Screams of confusion, panic, and terror fill that two second space. Oh, the mind would catch on at last as it drifted into the air, the caravan rolled… and I’m about to…
A skull can impact metal with great force, enough so that one can go unconscious.
Wavy lines for You as consciousness returns in blurry vision, pain rolling through skull like a jackhammer, but alive.
One of the other slaves within the belly of the cage, his arm twisted at an odd angle was wide eyed, but not with pain despite the broken limb. Lips rolling words, over and over and over and over again. Eyes wild, dark, maddened. The gaze focused on you.
“He opened his wings and swallowed the sun. He opened his wings and swallowed the sun.”
Others moaned, but only those within the cage seemed to be speaking. Only those within the bars seemed to be alive enough to feel pain. Out there beyond the tarp that still clung to the cage, there was not a noise as of yet. Not even the crackling of campfires, or the smell of roasting meats.
Something moved at last as those within the metal box started to grow more confused, but the shape wasn’t that of the weasel guard. It was as big as a man, yes, but it seemed to have a countless count of legs along its side. The long slender outline that was painted by the dying sun against the tarp looked like that of a centipede, yet the size of childish nightmares.
In long scythe-like jaws an outline of a man hung, but thankfully the body was dropped and the monster dove down after it and off the ‘screen’ of the tarp. That didn’t stop the sounds though. Sickening cracks of bone, snapping of sinew, and flesh being wrought.
All grew silent again, till the tarp itself would be torn away with a sharp powerful tug of an arm. There standing beside the overturned carriage, looking through what was meant to be the roof of the cage, was the guard who often gave them bread. Yet, those eyes in the failing light were no longer that of water. No, emerald green, the color of insect shells peered in from his skull now, and the chitins single click of his teeth against one another showed interest in what it saw.
The stranger stood behind the once-guard, his hand outstretched and something resting in his palm, a treasure yet unseen. Dressed in a black suit that was favored by royalty perhaps a few generations ago, not a stick of color in that cloth beside that lack of color. The stranger had dark eyes, dark as burnt coals, and used them to speak.
That gaze, the one that commanded authority with simply a glance, lanced itself towards the once-blue-eyed-guard, who without a word turned and began to walk away.
One of the other slaves slapped the injured man, for quicker and quicker his gibberish was becoming. “Shut up you fool!”
“He opened his wings and swallowed the sun. Heopenedhiswingsandswallowedthesun.”
Perhaps he was handsome, but such words are often not used in nightmares such as this, though there was a gentleness to those features that almost asked for trust. His right hand, gloved in black fabric, the same as the rest of him beside his neck and face, tilted down just enough to get a look at what the dark stranger was holding.
It was a crude thing of brass, circular object with a little glass cover. It was no bigger than a pocket watch, and most would know it almost instantly as a compass.Though that name alone would be wrong, for a compass would lead you to navigate across a map. It would teach you North, South, East, or West.
So, no, this was decidedly not a compass because it seemed to follow none of those rules.
As the man moved his hand in a small sweep to point across the slaves, the needle jittered, jolted and kept itself pointed … right…at…You.
Dark eyes that were somehow molten, moving parts like liquid deep in that unseen depths, moved up to meet Your gaze.
“Tavala rit-al”
That gloved hand, the one that simply seemed to be dipped in ink itself was free from the not-compass extended towards your direction. The metal of bars distorted without a sound, silent as shadows, and simply were bent open by unseen hands without effort.
The madman in the back continued to grow more rapidly tongued.
“Heopenedhiswingsandswallowedthesunheopenedhiswingsandswallowedthesun”
Despite what madness tells You, do not be fooled.
It was the horizon that at last devoured the sun, leaving the first blanket of true night across them.
Leaving the words of the stranger to be repeated in a tongue that sounded monstrous in the gloom.
“Tavala rit-al”
The Circle
Tags - Obsession, Stalking, Voyeurism, Supernatural, Modern, Fear of waterTake small breaths.
Do not seek to inhale a moment in one lungful.
The sun had yet to lift itself over the horizon, and has abandoned the world in the darkness of a moonless predawn . Stars, jaded by their chill of a winter that just now had made itself known, hung among the thin shredded colorless clouds that the atmosphere above pushed with bitter wind into tattered lines. Shadows form trees in the distance, and they blocked black shapes of houses, fences, and parked cars on the road into existence.
In this post daylight savings time of day, the man ran alone.
There were only the shadows that formed the world around him, the rhythm of his heart matching that of his tennis shoes, and the voice being fed to his mind through those inexpensive earbuds. So, the man sailed on in the predawn, one jogging step in front of another.
Take small breaths.
Do not seek to know love with one kiss.
Lamp posts, thought to bring more value, importance, and desired curb side appeal, were that of black straight shapes. One might see such glow givers in old noir films, glass boxes on top of black metal posts which puddle soft white glow around them. Through these glows, one by one, those gray tennis shoes splashed through the light. Soft white clouds escaped the nostrils and edge of cracked open mouth that let lungs have a bit more oxygen, but though the man’s body felt worn, he forced himself onward.
Take small breaths.
Taste a victory but do not feast on it.
Five and a half miles, nine houses, fourteen fancy light posts, and a couple dozen souls. Those are the numbers that filled the road known as Lighthouse Circle. The ‘lake’ though that sat silently at the center of the community, truth be told, was more of a pond. Barely two miles across at its widest, water, a dark oily surface in the lack of light, sat unmoving as the man ran about the sidewalk just off the roadway.
In the gloom, upon a few of the properties was the evidence of families.
Children's bikes sat rooted upon porches, a mere suggestion of long streamers on handlebars barely drifting in the light as feathers touch of a breeze. A rope swing with a wooden board, tied to the outstretched limb of old oak, drifted back and forth aimlessly, almost offering the man a wave as gray tennis shoes padded by.
Take small breaths.
Have you ever lost time? Have you ever blinked and been someplace else? Has the world ever seemed to move around you, while all the while you were standing still?
Time has a funny way of dilating or contracting when someone is lost inside their head, constant or steady body movements meeting that steady accord of muscle memory.
The man, running in the dark, forgot for just a moment… just a second… what that voice inside those earbuds was telling him. To slow down. To savor. To take small breaths.
Instead the man was lost and fell into the confines of his own thoughts.
So, Fellow Traveler, join me in that moment of lost time.
Let the sands slip away between fingers.
Go ahead, take a good ol’ blink and end up somewhere else.
mrEeeee
The hand towel, a cheap thing of turquoise and brown, swiped across the steam laden mirror. Behind that once clouded reflection was the runner, and by his own action, he now stared at himself with those hazel eyes reflected right back at him.
Six foot, and just with that one extra inch taller, the man was a sight in that reflection. Body had been worked by almost the compulsive need to run. Fat padding, a thing that once had clung to that body, had been burned away into lean, long, hard muscle. Though with an almost sad note, his hands, broad powerful things, drifted down over bare stomach. Fingertips touched that dented line along pelvic bone. Though no matter how the man wished it, this was not a superhero fantasy, there was no six pack on lewd display, but the man had turned his life around.
In just over a year, a new man was looking back at him through that lens of the steam edged mirror.
Short, well shortish, brown hair had been trimmed almost a month ago, and hung down nearly to the tops of his eyes with its still wet weight. Hands were littered with small scars, lines, circles, things carved into his skin by what one could either consider tooth or nail. His body too was marked by animals, such was the way of the industry that once he had been part of.
Right thigh still held a nasty pinkish scar from where a Great Dane had clamped onto his leg.
Left forearm still had almost tribal-like markings, from when a Rag Doll wrapped about him and used it as a chew toy. That part of his life was not so long ago, and reminded him of those years with every glance of them.
That was the past though.
That was something the man left behind.
The man took a small breath and moved on.
Perhaps we should do the same Fellow Traveler, perhaps we should follow.
Perhaps we should blink.
Gray sweatpants, now clinging lopsidedly and loose about his waist, had been pulled on. Bare chested, hands having run through and slicked back that tousled and cleaned hair. The man had somewhere in that absence of time procured himself a steaming mug, and bare feet padded across the chilled floorboards.
The man’s skin flourished with small goosebumps, the heater only now having been clicked on, their old grumbly voices grumbly coming alive in the vents. Though he was doing well with the slight chill. The body he was in possession of these days was seemingly able to produce more and more heat, despite the fallen size in the clothing department.
Out to the left, a backdrop for us to watch as the man moved in front of it, was a window that viewed Lighthouse Circle. This home was at the outlet to the main road, and it stood sentinel to all who would enter this way. The man was at the mouth of it, in a place of possession, though this is not the reason it is pointed out.
Look and see as amber and pink rises into the air.
Watch as yellow and orange bloom against the glass windows.
Watch the colors lift above the roof and tree and splash into the lake-pond.
The man sat at a computer, framed by the dawning light through the window.
Though do not feel safe, or even unaware Fellow Traveler.
Let not this next part surprise.
For Lighthouse Circle is not what it seems to be.
Tak.
The keyboard was pressed as a steaming rim of coffee lifted to lips.
Tak.
The keyboard was pressed again, a different image appearing on the screen.
Tak.
Now take a small breath, Fellow Traveler.
Step behind the man and see.
Take a glance at those images.
Tak.
An older couple, drifting together in the mingled embrace of decades together, even if one of them was snoring. Beneath covers and blankets, the image was projected with a clearly night vision green hue. In the bottom right of the image a green set of words. ‘Malin 129B’.
Tak.
A single man, in the torrent of a bad dream, thrashed this way and that as if the covers itself were attempting to strangle him. In the bottom right corner of the screen ‘Triffin 130I’
Tak.
Tak.
Tak.
One by one the houses of the circle would be glanced through.
Image by image, every inch of the community could be seen, witnessed, guarded.
Blink
Tak.
At last the man ended upon the image of the exterior of the only remaining houses yet to be rented out, and through the interior the watcher flicked without so much as moving a muscle. Well, that was of course except to sip on his coffee.
Today was a big day.
The circle would be filled.
It would be complete.
You are moving in.
His name is James, and James took a small breath.
Do not seek to inhale a moment in one lungful.
The sun had yet to lift itself over the horizon, and has abandoned the world in the darkness of a moonless predawn . Stars, jaded by their chill of a winter that just now had made itself known, hung among the thin shredded colorless clouds that the atmosphere above pushed with bitter wind into tattered lines. Shadows form trees in the distance, and they blocked black shapes of houses, fences, and parked cars on the road into existence.
In this post daylight savings time of day, the man ran alone.
There were only the shadows that formed the world around him, the rhythm of his heart matching that of his tennis shoes, and the voice being fed to his mind through those inexpensive earbuds. So, the man sailed on in the predawn, one jogging step in front of another.
Take small breaths.
Do not seek to know love with one kiss.
Lamp posts, thought to bring more value, importance, and desired curb side appeal, were that of black straight shapes. One might see such glow givers in old noir films, glass boxes on top of black metal posts which puddle soft white glow around them. Through these glows, one by one, those gray tennis shoes splashed through the light. Soft white clouds escaped the nostrils and edge of cracked open mouth that let lungs have a bit more oxygen, but though the man’s body felt worn, he forced himself onward.
Take small breaths.
Taste a victory but do not feast on it.
Five and a half miles, nine houses, fourteen fancy light posts, and a couple dozen souls. Those are the numbers that filled the road known as Lighthouse Circle. The ‘lake’ though that sat silently at the center of the community, truth be told, was more of a pond. Barely two miles across at its widest, water, a dark oily surface in the lack of light, sat unmoving as the man ran about the sidewalk just off the roadway.
In the gloom, upon a few of the properties was the evidence of families.
Children's bikes sat rooted upon porches, a mere suggestion of long streamers on handlebars barely drifting in the light as feathers touch of a breeze. A rope swing with a wooden board, tied to the outstretched limb of old oak, drifted back and forth aimlessly, almost offering the man a wave as gray tennis shoes padded by.
Take small breaths.
Have you ever lost time? Have you ever blinked and been someplace else? Has the world ever seemed to move around you, while all the while you were standing still?
Time has a funny way of dilating or contracting when someone is lost inside their head, constant or steady body movements meeting that steady accord of muscle memory.
The man, running in the dark, forgot for just a moment… just a second… what that voice inside those earbuds was telling him. To slow down. To savor. To take small breaths.
Instead the man was lost and fell into the confines of his own thoughts.
So, Fellow Traveler, join me in that moment of lost time.
Let the sands slip away between fingers.
Go ahead, take a good ol’ blink and end up somewhere else.
mrEeeee
The hand towel, a cheap thing of turquoise and brown, swiped across the steam laden mirror. Behind that once clouded reflection was the runner, and by his own action, he now stared at himself with those hazel eyes reflected right back at him.
Six foot, and just with that one extra inch taller, the man was a sight in that reflection. Body had been worked by almost the compulsive need to run. Fat padding, a thing that once had clung to that body, had been burned away into lean, long, hard muscle. Though with an almost sad note, his hands, broad powerful things, drifted down over bare stomach. Fingertips touched that dented line along pelvic bone. Though no matter how the man wished it, this was not a superhero fantasy, there was no six pack on lewd display, but the man had turned his life around.
In just over a year, a new man was looking back at him through that lens of the steam edged mirror.
Short, well shortish, brown hair had been trimmed almost a month ago, and hung down nearly to the tops of his eyes with its still wet weight. Hands were littered with small scars, lines, circles, things carved into his skin by what one could either consider tooth or nail. His body too was marked by animals, such was the way of the industry that once he had been part of.
Right thigh still held a nasty pinkish scar from where a Great Dane had clamped onto his leg.
Left forearm still had almost tribal-like markings, from when a Rag Doll wrapped about him and used it as a chew toy. That part of his life was not so long ago, and reminded him of those years with every glance of them.
That was the past though.
That was something the man left behind.
The man took a small breath and moved on.
Perhaps we should do the same Fellow Traveler, perhaps we should follow.
Perhaps we should blink.
Gray sweatpants, now clinging lopsidedly and loose about his waist, had been pulled on. Bare chested, hands having run through and slicked back that tousled and cleaned hair. The man had somewhere in that absence of time procured himself a steaming mug, and bare feet padded across the chilled floorboards.
The man’s skin flourished with small goosebumps, the heater only now having been clicked on, their old grumbly voices grumbly coming alive in the vents. Though he was doing well with the slight chill. The body he was in possession of these days was seemingly able to produce more and more heat, despite the fallen size in the clothing department.
Out to the left, a backdrop for us to watch as the man moved in front of it, was a window that viewed Lighthouse Circle. This home was at the outlet to the main road, and it stood sentinel to all who would enter this way. The man was at the mouth of it, in a place of possession, though this is not the reason it is pointed out.
Look and see as amber and pink rises into the air.
Watch as yellow and orange bloom against the glass windows.
Watch the colors lift above the roof and tree and splash into the lake-pond.
The man sat at a computer, framed by the dawning light through the window.
Though do not feel safe, or even unaware Fellow Traveler.
Let not this next part surprise.
For Lighthouse Circle is not what it seems to be.
Tak.
The keyboard was pressed as a steaming rim of coffee lifted to lips.
Tak.
The keyboard was pressed again, a different image appearing on the screen.
Tak.
Now take a small breath, Fellow Traveler.
Step behind the man and see.
Take a glance at those images.
Tak.
An older couple, drifting together in the mingled embrace of decades together, even if one of them was snoring. Beneath covers and blankets, the image was projected with a clearly night vision green hue. In the bottom right of the image a green set of words. ‘Malin 129B’.
Tak.
A single man, in the torrent of a bad dream, thrashed this way and that as if the covers itself were attempting to strangle him. In the bottom right corner of the screen ‘Triffin 130I’
Tak.
Tak.
Tak.
One by one the houses of the circle would be glanced through.
Image by image, every inch of the community could be seen, witnessed, guarded.
Blink
Tak.
At last the man ended upon the image of the exterior of the only remaining houses yet to be rented out, and through the interior the watcher flicked without so much as moving a muscle. Well, that was of course except to sip on his coffee.
Today was a big day.
The circle would be filled.
It would be complete.
You are moving in.
His name is James, and James took a small breath.
Afterword
I fall Fellow Traveler.
I descend.
I come crashing right down into the ground.
I do not have wings, and so I have yet to learn to soar.
For those brief moments that I fall however?
Those spaces between writing and reading?
I tumble head over heel into the story, and for the briefest of moments I am weightless.
For the most fragile of seconds, I can be someplace else.
For almost a breaths length, I am someone else.
It is my addiction.
Story above all else.
Lighthouse
