There were three who came to the outpost to hunt. The first was a young woman of eighteen. She was timid and bird-like, with a pale skin and eyes that betrayed a lack of sleep. The second was a man of twenty-eight. He was thin and had a rather morose countenance, but his large liquid eyes had some melancholy beauty about them. The third was a forthright woman of forty-two, and I was relieved that she, at least, had some steel and conversation about her.
I had been at the outstation for almost twelve years, and it was not unusual for groups to come hunting Anxieties. The jungle surrounding my bungalow was crawling with the creatures, or so I was told.
‘You’re lucky not to have seen one,’ the older woman, whose name was Lori Braddock, explained.
She was short and stout, her expression perennially suspicious, and when she looked at you square on you became aware of a tired, haunted aspect behind her eyes.
‘I’m in no doubt that you’re right,’ I replied.
We were sitting on rocking chairs on my veranda, smoking cheroots and drinking gin pahits as we looked towards the river. A chorus of cicadas sang nearby, quietly at first, before reaching a glorious crescendo that seemed to awaken the entire jungle.
‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. Braddock had met with mild success a decade earlier with a collection of essays about the post-war experience. I had read and enjoyed her essays, though I had heard mixed reviews about her subsequent works.
‘A miserable writer, if the critics are to be believed,’ she answered. ‘You have no idea how it cripples one to read disparaging remarks about the written incarnation of your soul.’
‘What have the critics ever written?’ I said consolingly. ‘I am sure flamingos lose no sleep when the pigeons write their critiques of pink.’
Braddock said nothing to this, but I saw the beginnings of a smile as her lips closed around the cheroot. A tendril of smoke spiraled from the tip.
‘And you,’ she said. ‘I gather you’ve been here a long time.’
I took a draw on the cheroot, enjoying the thick aromas of cedar and spices. ‘The surroundings soothe me.’
‘It seems to me a rather dark place, a realm of shadows and the unknown. But I suppose to a naturalist it must be quite fitting.’
‘And not entirely unknown,’ I replied with a grin. ‘I find that if people do not run from darkness their eyes soon adjust to it. Now that the colonists have gone-’
‘With their tails rightly between their legs,’ Braddock interjected. ‘I hear one of the plantation managers stayed on here for a time afterwards. You were close, weren’t you?’
I sipped my drink before answering. ‘Langley, yes, he was a capable man. I first made his acquaintance on my travels here. He was quite helpful in assisting me with my research, and for a time we maintained a close friendship. In the end, I believe, he missed the comforts of home.’
‘And are you not lonely? You were once quite a fixture of London society, from what I gather.’
‘Oh, I have guests often enough, and there are some small towns upriver. I find that I get on quite well with the native population, and I’m afraid the idea of London society does not thrill me as it once did. It doesn’t do for a man my age to concern himself with such things.’
I felt Braddock’s eyes on mine as I puffed on my cheroot, though she did not push the topic further, for which I was grateful. A chik chak gecko sang somewhere nearby, and in the glow of the lanterns we watched a meandering trail of flying insects pass before us.
‘Does the idea of the hunt tomorrow excite you?’ I asked at length.
Braddock then pierced me with a look of such contempt I immediately regretted the question. We sat in silence for some time after, and when the gin pahits and cheroots were finished, Braddock excused herself and bade me goodnight. I was left alone, looking into the darkness, hearing the gentle flow of the river without seeing it.
#
The following morning, at the break of dawn, the hunters breakfasted with me. We ate eggs followed by plantains and papaya, and we drank fresh coffee. I did not venture much conversation for I could see the trepidation in the faces of my guests, and it was clear from their behaviours that they were best left to their own thoughts.
It was unusual for me to accompany the guests on a hunt – in fact this would be my first time to do so – and the sight of the guns was unnerving. I did not bring my own, of course, for I was coming merely as a spectator, and I believed there was no reason to fear what I could not see. We set out shortly after breakfast, taking the path into the jungle that led from my back door.
Braddock led the way, with the younger woman behind her and the man in third. I took up the rear, being conscious to keep quiet in case it interfered with their objective in any way. For a long while not a word passed between us.
The day was warm, and I confess that I was soon sweating through my shirt. Sunlight beat down upon us through the emerald filter of the canopy, and warmth seemed to rise from the earth like an intoxicating perfume. It was not an unpleasant morning, however, for that part of the jungle was well known to me, and as we walked I was reminded of the bygone days. I remembered my first visit as a young man, when I spent weeks documenting the birds and beetles and snakes with the help of a group of local boys; then later after the colonists left, going for daily walks, Langley and I, alone.
I noticed that now and then there passed between the hunters certain looks that spoke of a shared experience – a sixth sense, perhaps – that I was not privy to, and it soon became obvious that something was afoot. Then, all of a sudden, Braddock took off at a run between the trees. The others simultaneously shot off in opposite directions, and I was at a loss as to whom, if any, I should follow.
Before I could decide, I heard the ominous report of a gun, and I took off after Braddock. I ran as best I could through the undergrowth, and some minutes later I came upon the writer crouched behind a fallen log. Though she did not turn to see my approach, she must have heard my heavy lumbering through the jungle for she raised a hand to command silence. I fell in beside her, catching my breath as I dropped to my knees.
‘There,’ Braddock breathed. ‘Twenty metres ahead, in the shadow of the tree.’
For several seconds I saw nothing, but then a slight movement caught my attention. There it was, the Anxiety, crouching next to the bole of a tree. It was a small thing, perhaps four feet tall, a wiry creature with long limbs. It was entirely black, lacking any discernible features, and its movements were jerky and undefined, like the characters in a cine film. Though it had no distinguishable face, I had the distinct impression that it was watching us.
It’s difficult to describe the sensation that overcame me in that moment, for it was entirely unfamiliar to me. All at once my whole being seemed to shrink, as though something had reached inside my chest and grabbed my very soul, and with bony fingers was attempting to wrestle it out of existence. My breaths became shallow, my head light, and I could focus on nothing around me. The world no longer belonged to the realms I knew – those of the past and the present – but to a stark and terrifying future that appeared as a mountainous black hole before me.
I was only vaguely aware of Braddock’s movements beside me, for I was unable to tear my gaze away from the horrid creature. I felt the jungle around me dissolve into nothing – all achievements, memories, and pleasures shrank into insignificance, and at the end there was nothing left but an all-encompassing emptiness.
It is with shame that I admit that in that moment, had Braddock turned the gun on me I would have considered it a welcome relief.
Suddenly the creature advanced towards us, crawling through the undergrowth on all fours, and only then did I have the sense to glance at Braddock. Her face was sickly pale and glazed with sweat, her whole body shook, and I thought for a moment that she might faint. It came as a surprise, then, when she took aim at the oncoming terror and pulled the trigger.
I shuddered at the sound, cowering at Braddock’s side. The creature fell backwards and lay still for a moment, but then to my dismay it returned to its feet and looked in our direction once more. Terror consumed me. I do not recall what happened next, for everything turned to darkness.
Presently I found that I was lying on a bed of ferns and Braddock’s hand was on my shoulder. It was as though I were waking from a dream. Braddock looked shaken but relieved, wearing the expression of one who has just completed a long-dreaded assignment. Dragging myself into a sitting position, I glanced instinctively to the spot where the creature had been.
‘It’s gone,’ Braddock said.
Indeed there appeared no trace of it. The jungle was still, silent but for the throaty squawk of a distant hornbill.
‘That’s not to say it won’t come back,’ Braddock said, eyeing me with concern. ‘Are you quite all right?’
‘That thing,’ I spluttered. My tongue seemed like a foreign body in my mouth. ‘What- what was it?’
Braddock shouldered her gun and extended a pudgy hand.
‘It is a soul shadow,’ she replied, pulling me to my feet. ‘The Anxieties prey upon a person’s spirit. I see that this one has taken a nibble of yours, too. A nibble can actually do one good; the trick is to not let it engulf you.’
I watched her now not with curiosity but with admiration.
‘And it didn’t engulf you?’ I asked.
‘It has come close a number of times. But I have not let it defeat me.’ She gestured to the empty jungle. ‘As you can see. Come, I’m quite ready for a cheroot and perhaps a gin and bitters.’
#
My two other guests had evidently enjoyed similar successes. They arrived back at the bungalow shortly after we did, and both were in high spirits. The girl, who had barely spoken a word from the moment I met her, seemed like a different person entirely, while the young man, who I had previously thought sullen and dull, was suddenly animated and cheerful.
After taking lunch I induced my guests to bathe in the river, and I fancy that they were quite taken with the novelty. The afternoon heat was just short of oppressive, and the cool water with its mossy aroma was just the ticket. A troop of macaques paid us a brief visit as we sat drying on the rocks, and the smiles on the faces of my guests were quite contagious.
We spent the evening trading tales. It was pleasant for me to hear stories of London society, for I had not been home in some years, and I believe my guests were entertained by my account of how I came to live in that secluded place. It transpired that the young man was a student of natural history, and I was flattered to discover that he counted my published works among his great inspirations.
‘But do you not miss civilization?’ he asked me, puffing contentedly on his cheroot.
‘Occasionally,’ I admitted, ‘though I am quite at home here.’
‘And you don’t mind what people say?’ asked the young woman.
‘And what do they say, dear?’ I replied.
The young woman glanced at Braddock, and then all three guests averted their eyes in unison.
‘Please be frank,’ I said. ‘I am not troubled easily by the opinions of others; you will find that I have rather a thick skin.’
‘Many have suggested that you are hiding,’ the young woman said, a trifle bashfully.
‘Hiding?’ I replied. ‘Nonsense. What would I be hiding from?’
There followed a silence that was quite uncomfortable. I came to the conclusion, of course, that certain details about my private life had become common knowledge in London society. I had no need to ask what those details were.
Though Braddock made attempts to salvage the conversation, it was plain that the jovial air of earlier could not be recovered. Presently the two younger guests retired to their beds and mosquito nets, and Braddock and I sat quietly on the veranda with our drinks.
Night had by now veiled the jungle, and we were serenaded by the usual evening orchestra of birds, insects, and mammals, underscored by the rhythmic flow of the river.
As I looked through the darkness I wondered if I had indeed been living in ignorance all those years. Maybe they were right; perhaps I was hiding. Perhaps this place was simply my refuge from the stark judgement of others, from the future, and just as the jungle represented the heart of darkness for my guests, perhaps London represented the very same for me.
Presently I saw a movement in the trees ahead, and I was disconcerted to find that my blood ran cold and beads of sweat gathered on my brow.
‘You see one, don’t you?’ Braddock said, seeing me frozen in my seat.
I did not blink or dare to tear my gaze from the shadowy movements close to the river. ‘Will I ever be at peace again?’ I breathed.
Braddock disappeared inside and returned moments later with her gun.
‘Peace is an illusion and a folly,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘Don’t dwell on what people say. Remember, the flamingo doesn’t lose sleep over the pigeon’s critique of pink.’
She winked, and had I not been so flustered I might have been amused by our reversal of roles.
‘Breathe,’ she said. ‘No one should be ashamed of pink feathers.’
I nodded and shouldered the gun as I set off towards the river. As I moved through the trees, deeper and deeper into the jungle, it occurred to me that I was journeying simultaneously into my past and into my unknown. The creatures had been there all along, living alongside me, just out of sight.
It was time to look them in the eye and show them my true colour.
When does life begin? Does it start in the air as the breeze carries a lover’s call? Does it start in earth as warm bodies roll around in the soft grass? Does it start with fire as a look ignites new possibilities? Does it start in water as the amniotic sac explodes and pushes us out into the world?
Air, earth, fire, and water ebb and flow through our lives. Aristotle related life’s four elements to each other. Our origin begins with one element and transitions into another as we find our way to our higher purpose or inevitable demise. Even though humans seem vastly different from each other, we are interconnected to one another and to the universe.
As I examined my life, I pondered in which of the four elements my life began to unravel. What choices could I have made so I could have been wiser, happier, and stronger? The Venn diagrams I built and destroyed over and over always pointed to the same place. I’ve determined that sometimes our lives are thrust into motion well before we are born.
My story started in earth – the dirt where my mother was raped.
I.
Fire
Nine months ago, my mother had to move in with me. For years, my brother and I had been trying to convince her to move into an assisted living facility. But convincing my mother to do something she didn’t want to do has always been a fruitless endeavor. She’d turn every incident into some crime we’d committed against her in the four decades or so since we’d been alive.
I’d been up seething about our argument from earlier in the day. That particular fight was about my brother not returning her phone calls on a timely basis, and it turned out to be my fault because if she didn’t have me, she wouldn’t have had him.
My mother had five rehearsed speeches which she replayed throughout the decades: 1) We were lucky she didn’t abort or abandon us when everyone else said she should have; 2) We were disappointments because we didn’t get into an Ivy League school after all she sacrificed for us; 3) We looked like our respective fathers and how unfortunate it was that we didn’t take after her side of the family; 4) I should have children so someone will take care of me when I’m old; and 5) We weren’t as good as other people’s children because we didn’t visit or call more often. It seemed my mother was in a perpetual state of being offended.
My new therapist and I had agreed on setting boundaries with those who triggered me. He had given me homework – breathing exercises and writing speeches to break ties. But just when I was ready to slam the door and run for my life, my mother would drop a soft bombshell to entangle our lives once more. The guilt would rush back into my veins, and I’d let her back in my life.
Her neighbor called me at one in the morning. My mother asked her not to contact me because the firemen and I knew she had left the stove on. I’d warned her several times.
“I’m not stupid, Hanna,” she screamed at me a few months ago when I placed a sticky note above the stove reminding her to turn it off. I noticed the burner on a few times when I visited her. She didn’t appear to be cooking. I assumed she had made her meal, cleaned up, and forgot about it. She swore she didn’t forget. She’d never been able to admit any wrong-doing on her part, and she wasn’t going to start this late in her life.
When I arrived at her house, she was thrashing on her soaked lawn. The fire department had drowned the contents of her house. The overflow drained out of the doors and onto the grass. The smoke hung low, causing everyone in the street to cough.
Her blue nightshirt was pulled up around her abdomen, her legs covered with mud. She was crying about her lost photos that proved she was the most beautiful girl in Cobb County. There was evidence she was pretty, whole, and unsoiled, and now it was gone.
She was never the same after that night. It’s as if the inferno that scorched our lives was extinguished. As the heat from the fire dissipated, so did her hatefulness, which turned into sadness and regret.
The neighbors shook their heads and blamed her behavior on the fire, but I knew better. She’d lie in the grass until she received sufficient consoling. She’d been like this all my life, perhaps all her life.
The neighbors didn’t disappoint. What human being wouldn’t cry along with a senior citizen who’d lost everything? I just stood there, watching and waiting, as always.
My brother’s wife refused to take her in. Their children were afraid of the daggers that flew out of my mother’s mouth. My brother was always unable to stand up to her. Even in a diminished state, she frightened him.
“You’re single, you take her.” He made an exaggerated smile. His eyes pleaded what his words couldn’t. I can’t deal with it.
“I’ll take her,” I told him.
My brother nodded. “Let me know if you need me to chip in, financially. Call me when I’m at work.”
“All r…” He ran off before I could finish. I let him off the hook again.
II.
Earth
I heard that we’d never be able to fully control the earth. It is at once stationary and at the same time, an ever-shifting entity. When we think our feet are planted on solid ground, the rug is not only pulled out from under us but the dust from the scuffle releases the truths we worked so hard to hide.
After the fire, she was fully dependent on me. It took weeks for my mother to acclimate to her new surroundings. She’d never been to my home. I can’t remember if I didn’t invite her or if she decided coming over wasn’t worth her time. And now she didn’t have a choice.
Any scent or sound could trigger her memories, and she began to reveal her stories. I had never heard any event from our lives in one continuous sitting. Between fits of rage or drunkenness, she threw out stinging slivers of my history. I’d never been able to piece together an entire story and in truth, never really believed much of what she said. She had a talent for spinning tales to make herself feel better about herself or to make someone else feel small.
Now, like lava scorching everything it touches along its path, she began to spew her stories, which flowed out of her mouth and into my unwelcoming ears. It was as if she had to relieve herself of everything she tried to conceal from me. The burden would finally shift from her tormented soul to mine.
One morning, my mother’s screams awakened me. All the windows were opened to drown out the imaginary odors. “I smell his cigarettes!”
“No one is smoking,” I reassured her.
“Can’t you smell it? I can’t get the smell of him off me.” She wiped her face with her sweaty hand.
“We’re the only ones here.”
“Alcohol. Sweat. Hate. Alcohol. Sweat. Hate. Alcohol. Sweat. Hate. ” It was as if she was conjuring up a spirit she had been hiding from her entire life.
“It’s okay. We’re alone.”
“Of course, you’d defend him. He’s your father. You never even knew him. I’m the one who raised you.”
I held my breath. She’d never told me who my father was. Would she finally let that secret go?
“I’ll get the lavender spray for you. You like that one, don’t you?”
“I can’t get the blood to stop! I need to wash it off.”
“What blood? I don’t see blood.”
“Look at what he did!”
“Sit down. I’ll get some tea for you.”
“Burn my clothes. Mother can’t know what happened. He said he’d send me home if I told anyone. If I don’t finish this job, I won’t graduate. Mother’s counting on me.”
I knew then she was telling the truth. She didn’t say I was a product of rape to punish me or to cover up that she had premarital sex. She was reliving a memory.
Every day, another secret seeped out from her memories. From what I’d been able to piece together over the next few months, she’d had an internship at a law firm during her senior year at college. Her mentor was a partner.
“He said he’d never seen such a pretty girl with such a great mind. He offered to show me around the city. I shouldn’t have gone.”
She attended Georgia State University, but her internship was in Chicago. She wasn’t familiar with the coffee shops, restaurants, and hot spots. He offered to take her to dinner then a walk around the park.
“He turned into an animal. He said I was a slut. I was only hired because he said I was hot. He said no one would believe me and if I kept my mouth shut, he’d give me a good recommendation.”
She cowered next to her bed. “He raped me behind the bush in the park.”
I had heard this before but without any of the details. It seemed real this time. Perhaps I should have shown more sympathy all the times she tried to unburden herself. I leaned down to hold her hand. She shoved me away.
“I need to wash the dirt off me,” she said.
III.
Air
Her doctor asked me to bring her in for a monthly checkup. He was worried she was not sleeping. My mother fought me about it until the doctor entered the exam room. She became silent and squeezed her gown closed.
“How are we today?” he asked.
“I didn’t try to poison myself, doctor.” She coughed, holding her throat.
“No one thinks that, dear.” He looked at me, and I shrugged my shoulders.
“Relax, dear. This won’t hurt.” He approached her with the stethoscope.
She jumped off the examination table and hugged the doctor around the ankles. He bent down to calm her.
“My friend said a lot of girls drink it to get rid of mistakes. It didn’t work. It just felt like fire in my throat. I threw up and I had to have her.”
“It’s okay, my dear. Let me speak to your daughter.”
Still on the floor, she pivoted toward me. “You wouldn’t die. Then you came, and continually tested me.”
“It’s okay Mother. Let me speak to the doctor.”
“I tried to be a good mother, even when you were defiant. I wouldn’t let you have cake, and you held your breath until you passed out. But I knew you wouldn’t die. You refused to die even after I drank the poison Betty gave me. You always had the will to live.”
“We understand,” said the doctor. “Let’s get ready to go home.”
The doctor turned to me. “Dementia patients often don’t remember things clearly. Let’s increase her meds.”
My mother stood up and grabbed my shoulders. “When you got hurt, I swear I took you to the hospital. I can prove I tried to save you. You fell out of the car when we arrived at the hospital, and you scraped your knees.” She pulled up my pant leg. “See the scar? There was too much going on so I never told the doctors about it.”
She vomited and fell back to the floor. She rocked back and forth, crying. “I did my best. I was too young to know what to do. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. I stroked her hair but she pushed me away. I grabbed some paper towels and began to wipe her off.
The doctor cleared his throat. “I’ll get a glass of water and a prescription for her. Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes, doctor,” I said.
The nurse came in to clean the vomit. I apologized but she assured me this wasn’t the first time she had seen this. I apologized again trying to hold in my tears.
“I know this isn’t what you planned to do with your life but you’re doing a good thing,” she told me.
My mother gasped for breath. She had always complained about how people smelled and the air quality was never good enough for her. Now, she seemed desperate to take in whatever she could get. I helped her up and took her home.
IV.
Water
The doctor suggested I put her in long-term care. It was obvious I didn’t have the training to take care of her anymore. The doctor explained it wasn’t my fault. I shouldn’t blame myself.
“She won’t go,” I told him.
“You could have her committed,” he said. “You’d have to go to court and have her declared incompetent.”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Well then, let’s start her on some therapies. With her advanced arthritis, I suggest water aerobics. Exercise also helps with stress and anxiety.”
It took over a month to find a center that would take a dementia patient. They warned me it was on a trial basis, and any infraction would end our sessions.
As the instructor guided my mother into the pool, she held her throat. “I can’t breathe. Don’t let me die. There are monsters in the sea.”
When my mother was sad, she’d take me to the lake near our apartment. In some sort of cleansing or baptism, she’d hold my head under water. It’s as though she tried to wash the dirty secrets out of her life.
I’d hold my breath as she held me under the water. From experience, I found it best to close my eyes. I didn’t want to see her legs struggle as she tried to steady herself in the sand. Even underwater, I could hear her explain why I deserved this. Perhaps the lack of oxygen let me tune her out. Her chatter became softer and softer as each second passed. My arms ceased to fight. I went to an imaginary place filled with dancing, ice cream, and laughter. I was pulled back into reality as she yanked me out of the water. My throat was raw as I gasped for air. I coughed and the lake water gushed out of me. I rolled over and choked on sand.
As I caught my breath, she’d recall how she watched her father drown when she was a small girl. He told her he’d never leave her with her alcoholic mother. He’d protect her from the craziness. But one day as she was building sandcastles, he walked into the lake and never returned.
She always held me afterward, patting my back. She promised we’d never go back to the lake. She promised she would change. She promised we would be happy. The sea monsters would drown her promises over and over again.
Ancient cultures believed the four elements – air, earth, fire, and water – helped humans understand suffering and taught them to liberate themselves from it. They also referenced a fifth element as space, zero, void, or heaven. I suppose it gave hope to those who couldn’t resolve their issues during this lifetime.
Ever since I could remember, my mother has threatened to end her life in an explosive and hurtful way. She wanted to show us how much she’d suffered and sacrificed. She wanted us to know how we hurt her. She wanted us to feel every creak, every inflammation, and all her emptiness. But in the end, she died in her sleep.
She had left explicit instructions for her funeral. She didn’t want to be cremated. The fire at her house haunted her. She would wake up screaming most nights, convinced I was trying to torch her hair off. She also wanted a monument that my brother and I could visit every week and give her our proper respects.
“It’s over,” my brother told me. He attempted to touch my arm but put his hand back to his side. “Are you coming?”
“I need a minute.”
He handed me a check. “This is my half of the bill.” His eyes scanned the cemetery as if he was looking for the easiest escape. Since he was a child, he couldn’t handle stress. When our mother started her tirades, he hid in the shed. I’d find him later shivering under the musty tarps.
He married a version of my mother. He left our house and entered another prison. Perhaps he never learned to think for himself. He reminded me of elephants in captivity. They are only chained for a few years but they get used to being confined. After a while, they no longer tried to flee.
He looked to me for approval. Still, he needed permission to leave. “Go, be with your family. I’ll handle this.” I knew with his payment of the funeral expenses, I’d never see him again. The thorn-covered bond between us was buried six feet under our feet.
“Thank you,” he said and disappeared down the hill.
The winter rain poured down in sheets. The brisk wind wrapped around me and pushed me to the ground. I couldn’t believe she was gone. I dug into the fresh mound of dirt on my mother’s grave. Face down, inhaling desperation and red clay, my arms dug deeper to get closer to her hoping to hear all the things left unsaid.
I wanted to pat her on the back and tell her everything was going to be okay. I wanted to tell her she couldn’t leave until we resolved everything between us. I wanted to tell her I didn’t hate her. The space between us shrank but wasn’t yet closed.
I wanted her to tell me she loved me before the elements took her away forever.
If you join r/windowlessroom on Reddit, you will learn about the Gift of the Meaningless Library, and your obsession will begin.
First, you will see a series of threads on the forum. Most of these are discussions, posted by general users. For example, see the below screenshot:
r/windowlessroom. Posted by u/DesperateHope two years ago.
Subject: What is the Meaningless Library?
Hello fellow introverts!
Great to be part of the forum. Everyone’s here for the same reason right? We’ve all heard the rumours. My friend told me about this a while back, though she never got far.
So, any guesses on what/where the Library is, and what the ‘Gift of the Vague’ gives us?
TheBackground: Thanks for posting! Members of the community, please note that our moderators check all posts for unsavory behavior. This is a place where you can be yourselves freely.
// I am a bot and this action was performed automatically //
QuietWatcher: Nice to see you here OP. I’ve just joined too. I heard the Library’s Gift gives you some Marvel superpowers—superspeed, strength, invisibility. Excited to see if I’m accepted 😉
UncorroboratedIdentity: Lol, check out OP, pretending he’s got a friend. Let’s face it, on this forum we’re all loners. That’s why we’re here after all. I reckon the Library’s a metaphor or something. You know, for some Cthulhu shit.
ShorelessSea: As long as it can help me escape.
u/DesperateHope: Damn downer much lol. Escape isn’t a fun superpower.
ShorelessSea: Is this a joke to you all?? You shouldn’t be here.
So many speculations. So many try and define the Library, and the Gift. They claim it must be from an angel, or the magic of some primordial god, or our own delusions about modern life, reflected back at us.
I don’t recommend you participate in such discussions. Except for ShorelessSea, all of the above users were banned by the moderators soon after posting.
Not that you want to, do you? You want to lurk. To watch.
Good.
However, there are threads you will need to respond to, where the Moderators have posted questions. It is these that they really pay attention to. And you need to impress them, to access the Library.
Do not worry, I am here to help you. Below are the questions, and example answers taken from older forums. My annotations are in brackets. Note those that were successful, and those that weren’t.
r/windowlessroom. Posted by TheBackground two years ago.
Subject: Question 1
Who are you?
TheBackground: Members of the community—please note that our moderators will be checking any posts for unsavory behavior. This is a place where you can be yourselves freely.
// I am a bot and this action was performed automatically //
ScreenGhost: I’m a father to three beautiful children. I’m a loving husband. I’m also an ex-con, which I guess is why I’m here in the first place. I’ve heard what the Library can offer someone like me. A fresh start. For me, and my family.
ShorelessSea: I don’t know who I am. I don’t care, either.
(ScreenGhost was unsuccessful. I’m sure you expected that though. The Gift would never suit someone with such heavy identity.)
r/windowlessroom. Posted by TheBackground two years ago.
Subject: Question 2
If you could be anything, what would you be?
(successful answers:)
HushedForest: A one way mirror.
SilentFortress: A ream of stardust.
ShorelessSea: A winter’s night.
(unsuccessful answers:)
ScreenGhost: A dragon.
xXNINJALORDXx: A hero.
ArmyGirl: A good person.
r/windowlessroom. Posted by TheBackground two years ago.
Subject: Question 3
If you were invisible, what would you do?
FunkRenegade: I know I’m supposed to answer honestly, so here goes. I’d do tons of stuff. Imagine walking into a bank, and taking all the money you wanted. Hell, you’d not even need money anymore. Imagine going out, and seeing a hot girl, and knowing you could follow her home and watch her undress. I’d do it all. There’s so many of my friends I’ve wanted to see naked, and watch, and touch.
JealousName: I’m not sure I’d do anything different. I’d just go about my day, doing what I always did.
(Both answers were unsuccessful. FunkRenegade’s ideas are clearly sordid and mean. JealousName’s content was not the problem. The problem was that she was lying.)
r/windowlessroom. Posted by TheBackground two years ago.
Subject: Question 4
Tell us about a time when you felt limited.
ShorelessSea: My family sees me as the breadwinner. I work twelve hour shifts at a warehouse, four nights a week. I barely see Emily, my wife, but she leaves me messages on our dining room table, like we’re some 19th century couple. “You’re beautiful.” “You’re my saviour.” “You what keeps our family alive.”
What bothers me isn’t the work. I like packing Amazon boxes twelve hours a day. It’s easy and repetitive, and I can lose myself in the labyrinth of shelves, hide from everyone at least for a moment.
No, it’s Emily’s labels of me. Her expectations. They push me into something I’m not. My identity is so much less. Even when she’s not there, I feel like she’s watching me, peeking behind cardboard boxes, expecting me to be great.
That’s why I’m here, I think. I want to be free. Carrying so many meanings is exhausting.
(ShorelessSea’s answer was successful.)
You understand what to do. It’s very simple. Answer the questions. I’ve offered you all the help I can—most applicants never get this level of insight.
Take time to consider your answers. The moderators want your truths, not your surface responses. If you’re lying, they will know. They’ve all been where you are, after all.
I’d say good luck, but luck doesn’t matter here. Not to us.
Step Two: Installation
We all have a need, don’t we, to see, but not be seen. Consider how all of us pour our lives into TV and films and novels, into these stories we can’t ever change. We love to exist apart from the drama of these other worlds, love to laugh and cry and want these people that can never see us. We find the Fourth Wall a comfort, and a power. We long for it.
It hurts when the show expires, the book terminates, and we are forced back into ourselves.
Congratulations. I’ve just heard. You passed.
The Moderators have now given you access into the r/meaninglesslibrary subreddit. Welcome.
They have also told me that you work for the Ministry of Defence. I wondered how you were paying my fees.
Be calm. This doesn’t hurt your chances. We know that’s not why you’re really here, despite what your bosses think about the Gift of the Vague, and the ‘tactical advantage’ you told them it could give your agency. You’re not an Espionage Support Officer. I’m not saying you’re more than that title, but less.
Let that thought sit with you. Liberating, isn’t it?
Onto your next stage. You can now access the old locked threads. If you wish, you may talk with other successful applicants.
You are a step closer, but there are now more questions to answer. They are old posts now. Responding to them may feel like you are speaking to a grave.
I will share more examples.
You may have doubts. You may wonder whether the rumours are true, or if the Gift of the Vague is a fairy tale, a creepypasta, an internet lie.
Have faith.
r/meaninglesslibrary. Posted by TheBackground ten years ago.
Subject: Question 1
What is the fundamental human need?
CarefulReflection: To devour things.
TVLover: To be loved.
RiverBorder: To be understood.
NamelessNeed: To watch.
SilentLake: To be.
ShorelessSea: To define and categorise. And I hate it.
(I hope by now you can guess that the first three were unsuccessful)
r/meaninglesslibrary. Posted by TheBackground ten years ago.
Subject: Question 2
Tell us about a time you were truly happy.
ShorelessSea: The other day, I stopped at a service station.
I was driving back from a job interview for a Marine Ecological Biologist. The job was in Scotland, seven hours drive from our house, but I went because Emily wanted me to stop doing nights at the warehouse, and start using my degree.
I didn’t get the job. The recruiter rang me on the way home. He sounded so sad, like he knew what he was giving me—the label, the definition, of a reject.
So, I stopped at this services. It was pretty small, just a pair on beige concrete buildings, huddled off the M6. It had a café, The Coffee Shack—if it was a chain, I’d never heard of it. It had maybe twenty foldaway plastic tables, none of which were occupied for more than half an hour. The servers were all tired middle-aged women, who made the coffee by pressing a button. Somehow the whole place smelt of lemon disinfectant.
I turned off my phone, and found a spot in one corner, where the striplights weren’t working. No-one could see me.
It was perfect.
It was like I didn’t exist. I could watch everyone pass by, and they didn’t see me. Everything about me fell away, until I was just being. I found I didn’t care about the job at all.
I was finally free.
It didn’t last, of course. When I got back home, I told Emily about the rejection. She said it was okay, that we’d manage, but I could feel her disappointment, like I was her child rather than her partner. All the labels and definitions that everyone had even given me came back. I was so heavy with them, I couldn’t breathe.
(ShorelessSea’s answer was successful)
r/meaninglesslibrary. Posted by TheBackground ten years ago.
Subject: Question 3
Do you want to die?
SilentLake: It’s hard writing this, but maybe. I think so. I’m ready for this to end.
ShorelessSea: No. There’s so much to live for.
(SilentLake was booked into ten weeks of private counselling sessions the next day. His account was then banned.)
r/meaninglesslibrary. Posted by TheBackground ten years ago.
Subject: Question 4
If you were unknowable, what would you be?
(I won’t give you help for this one. Just answer honestly. Take your time. Think for days, weeks, months if you need to. There is no rush. It took me two years and the promise of a divorce before I could find the right words.
While you consider, you may notice things changing in your house. Your front door ajar when you were sure you checked all four bolts. Your work laptop unlocked, with its email open. Your second bedroom freshly dusted, the worn sofabed open and ruffled, like it was slept in.
Waking up in the darkness, sure you felt a breath on your face.
All part of the process. The moderators are thorough in their checks.)
Step Three: Dislocation
Goodness. You have passed again.
It is incredibly rare, for someone to move through the stages so quickly. If I didn’t trust the Moderators, I’d wonder if you were cheating.
But I do trust the Moderators. Absolutely.
You have been granted access to the final subreddit. R/CimmerianLighthouse.
Yes, the Library was a metaphor. The Moderators needed some way for our minds to approximate what they offer. The Cimmerian Lighthouse is another one. It is hosted on Reddit, but its workings are far deeper. The server clocks reset constantly, and all users are nameless save TheBackground. It is perfect, for people like us. We are one of only a handful, to get to this place.
R/CimmerianLighthouse contains a single post:
r/CimmerianLighthouse. Posted by TheBackground two hundred years ago.
Subject: Meeting Link.
On that thread will be a link to a video stream.
Yes, it is time. You will now meet the Moderators.
You have already encountered them of course. But this time, they will let you see them.
Understand the honour of this. Each of the Moderators has received the Gift of the Vague. It is their antithesis, to let you do what you’re about to.
But you need to look, to understand. There are no questions for this third step. Only this final challenge.
You have seen a Moderator, haven’t you?
I wonder what your brain attempted, when you opened that video stream. Did you see a stroke of shadow, and believe it first fur, then a snout, then just a trick of the shadow? Did you see a stitch of lines that looked like a silver necklace, then a curled snake, then a string of eyes? Did you feel like you were reading a book, reading for hours, yet not understanding a word?
One thing I know you saw: a livestream of inanimate things, then the sense of a presence, sliding in and out of your consciousness like a mark on the carpet that seems a face in one light, then only a bloodstain the next.
Yes, the Gift of the Vague is real, and the Gifted walk among us.
Understand this. You have already seen the Gifted a thousand times. You just haven’t realized it. They are the man in the unoccupied café table, the watcher behind the one-way glass, the stranger sleeping in the second room. They are so much less than a person, and so much purer.
Call it what you will. Magic. A Miracle. A Haunting. You will have questions: where did this power come from? Why?
I don’t know. I only know that they have always been here, with us. Perhaps a god gave them this gift. Perhaps they evolved this way, a survival strategy to cope with the relentless meanings that are forced on us all.
The answers don’t matter. What matters is that you too can be given this Gift. All your wishes can be granted.
Of course, right now you are terrified. It is such human nature, to define, to categorise. Understand your fear is your base impulses, enshrined in your reptile brain, trying to assert themselves. Just as you resisted the urge to stab your boss in the eye with your blue Staedtler ballpoint pen, you can resist this.
I will give you some time. If you still decide that you want this Gift, wire my final payment across, and I will guide you through the final step.
Step Four: Disintegration
I thought I might be hearing from you. You are calm now. You want this.
Then follow my instructions to purify yourself.
You will first need to cut out any Significant Others in your life. Spouses. Parents. Children. Bosses, if you can. Anyone whose gaze defines you.
You then must free yourself of all your material wealth. Property. Money. Things. We don’t care how—we don’t need them. This isn’t a cult.
Once you have done this, once you are wandering and alone, floating in the drifts of all the other lives in your city, as a final act of devotion you will need to sever a digit. A toe, perhaps, or a finger. Which one is up to you.
All of this shows your commitment. Once you have done this, once you have been washed as clean as you can of all your meanings, access the video link again. Ask the Moderators to share their Gift.
Congratulations.
I admit, I am envious.
After all, I am one of the Failures.
I came so close. I saw the Moderators, not once, but twice.
Yet when I tried to leave Emily, I lasted only days. Without her definitions, the endless pressure of her belief, I fell apart. I felt like I was in a vacuum. When I saw the Gifted again, I could not ask. Instead, I committed sacrilege. I saw its endless interpretations and invested them with meaning. In its patterns, I saw Emily’s eyes, shining with hope.
To be Gifted is to exist outside of understanding. To be a watcher, a pure expression of being. I wasn’t desolate enough, defiant enough, daring enough, to choose to never be known.
Emily left me anyway. Now I live alone, in a basement apartment, a windowless room. The ghost of her hope haunts me. I never tried to reach out to her. I thought there was still a chance, that I too could be granted the Gift.
I should contact her. I’ve got money now; enough, perhaps, to buy us a new life. Because seeing you go through this all so effortlessly makes me understand that, no matter how much I want solitude, I need other people. I will never be Gifted. I love my limits too much.
I’m sorry, for making you cut off your index finger. You didn’t need to do that part. I was jealous, you see, that you could have what I couldn’t. I wanted you to suffer.
I’m writing this final memo on lined paper rather than over email. It’s on my desk. I hope you come to see it. Perhaps you want to have your revenge: haunt my house, break my things, smile and cry at the image of me drinking alone, in my single bed. That’s fine, it’s all fine. My mind won’t let me see you. I won’t know you’re there.
But when you arrive, I need you to see me. Understand me. Please.
“All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage.“
Julia Cameron – The Artist’s Way
After running the Writers Mastermind for a year and a half, the biggest problem I see with struggling authors is not that they don’t have talent or that they can’t learn what it takes to be successful. It’s not believing in themselves, not giving themselves a chance to get good, and not thinking they’re worth wild success—thereby not committing fully to their creative life.
If you always put writing last, if you feel like no one takes you seriously, if you are hiding in the shadows watching others achieve the dream that you know in your heart you are capable of and are meant to live, I am in the same position as you.
That is why this year we are going to go through The Artist’s Way process by Julia Cameron. It is a 12 Week path to higher creativity. Many artists, writers, actors, and other creatives credit Julia Cameron’s method to helping them break through to become their fully realized creative selves. I am a huge fan of her work and her mission.
I’ve started The Artist’s Way process several times and never followed through. Obviously, that was my lack of commitment showing again. Also, I was trying to do it alone.
Julia Cameron generously encourages creatives to form peer-run groups for a collective process, so I’m inviting you to join our virtual circle. Going through it with a group will help others empower themselves creatively while ensuring that I don’t flake out!
How to take part?
With today’s jam-packed schedules, a 12-week crash course will be intense. Instead, we will focus on one of the 12 parts each month. That way, we can deeply invest ourselves in the process and enjoy the journey as well.
If you don’t buy the book, you can still follow along. I will send thoughts and exercises each week (and in the private Facebook group) and we will discuss what we discovered and experienced each week during the Monday Zoom meeting.
You decide your level of participation. If your short on time, just reading and meditating on the weekly thoughts will do you a world of good. If you want to go deeper, then you can complete the exercises in their entirety.
I suggest you give it all you got. Why waste one more year not living to your fullest creative potential?
The Artist’s Way – Online Group
January – Recovering a Sense of Safety
February – Recovering a Sense of Identity
March – Recovering a Sense of Power
April – Recovering a Sense of Integrity
May – Recovering a Sense of Possibility
June – Recovering a Sense of Abundance
July – Recovering a Sense of Connection
August – Recovering a Sense of Strength
September – Recovering a Sense of Compassion
October – Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection
November – Recovering a Sense of Autonomy
December – Recovering a Sens of Faith
Why is it all about “recovering?”
When we are born, we all have the fearless compulsion to create. We don’t think about why, or if anyone likes it, or if it earns money, or if it’s not as good as anyone else’s. Then, as we grow older, people, society, and responsibility stifle our enthusiasm and make our creative selves shrink inward.
In 2022, we recover that boundless, bold, and joyous sense of creativity we possessed as children. I believe once we tap into that, we become limitless and lit with a constant fire that ignites all other areas of our lives.
Note: I am not in any way affiliated with Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, or her publisher, nor to I claim to be any kind of certified practitioner/teacher.
As stated on her website: “Anyone can teach the course or begin a cluster by following the book and the guidelines below. It is my belief that creative recovery at its best is a nonhierarchical, peer-run, collective process.
There are no ‘accredited’ Artist’s Way teachers. Avoid anyone who offers to ‘certify’ you as a teacher– there is no such thing.”
What happens when 15 authors from 8 countries who write in various genres get together to create one short story?
We are proud to share our first ever Story Relay in the Writers Mastermind! The mission of the Story Relay is to create a fun collaboration in which each author has the freedom to take the story wherever they want it to go.
Nothing showcases our authors’ unique voices better than to have them contrasted against one another. The story took delightful and suspenseful turns. You will see how the characters developed and how the theme—a writer fighting against the naysayers and his own self-doubt—deepened, resulting in an inspiring, transcendental ending.
And now, we are pleased to present, From the Ashes, the story of Windles the writer and his pet chinchilla, Spanks. It’s a story most writers can relate to. We hope you enjoy it!
Windles was a horrible poet, the worst ever. The town even presented him a plaque that officially named him as such. Somehow, he couldn’t throw it away. It was the only award he’d ever gotten. He kept in covered with a red rain jacket in the back of his armoire. Sometimes he slipped his hand underneath to trace the etching of his name with his fingertips and imagine the title said that he was the greatest.
Even though people fled at the mention of his writing, he wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t, and compulsively scribbled poetry in a little, worn notebook several times a day. This he did in secret. It would be a scandal—a crime, some neighbors said— for The Worst Poet ever to keep bringing his ghastly verse into the world. So Windles kept this source of shame hidden in his sock drawer, like a landmine that was still active long after the enemy was defeated, one that might explode an innocent passerby decades later.
As if someone might ever find and read it, he told his pet chinchilla, Spanks. No one had visited him since his mom died.
Soon, his sock drawer became too small to deal with all his writings, its small space soon vomiting countless pages of small, scribbled lines of verbal diarrhea. Windles was not only writing his poetry on his alone time, he soon found himself writing more and more in the day to the point his diatribe on the page became his obsession. From morning till night, all he could think of were the words he would put on the page.
One night, he dreamed that ink was in his veins and his fingers had turned into pen and pencil, while he spat paper left and right. The more he wrote, the more he needed to write and the more he did so. Eventually, his little notebooks not only filled his sock drawer, but they also filled every surface in his bedroom. From the top of his nightstand to his wardrobe, to any surface he could find, and piles of small notebooks started to stack up even on the floor. As time went on, the smell of paper and ink-filled his nose and became a smell that would bring him comfort and joy. Soon, even the very noise in his bedroom had changed, the sounds being absorbed by the mounting stacks of paper that were all over the place. But soon, the comforting smell of paper and ink became a source of anxiety for poor Windles. Soon, his cozy dreams of creative writing started to take a hold of his very soul and created nightmares that would start to choke him in his sleep. It all started when…
The fire alarm went off. Windles awoke coughing. The thin light of the streetlamp outside was nothing more than a smudge of across his stinging eyes. His senses seemed to be floating around his head like the thick smoke, diffused and insensible. More raking coughs brought him to his knees and to air. There was a siren outside coming closer and banging at his front door, and suddenly it hit him. His house was on fire. He struggled to his feet and almost faltered back to a knee as his head swooned.
The fire was licking through the jamb of his bedroom door, crawling up the ceiling, across the walls and feeding on the piles of paper staked there. The flames swelled, devouring every word he’d ever written. As he flung open his desk draw, it came free in his hand, throwing him on his backside and showering the room in pages of floating stanzas.
The heat was unbearable. He could smell the hairs on his arms singing. Consciousness was leaving him as his words fell about him. He would die among them, a poet immolated by his own art. It would be perhaps the most artistic thing he’d ever done.
But then an axe smashed through the glass of his window.
Windles kept his eyes barely open. The axe landed near his head, cutting the wooden floor. The flames behind Windles reflected on its smooth surface.
He made an effort to focus on the window when a black shape jumped into his bedroom, surrounded by a halo of smoke and death. It crept towards him and crouched by his side.
Windles fell back to the floor, his eyes wide open as he suppressed his urge to cough.
“Who…who are you?” He tried to guess the face behind the black hood. However, only a dark hole seemed to pull him into unconsciousness.
The next thing he sensed was something lifting his whole body and floating out of the thick, hopeless ambience. That was all he needed to fall into the veils of slumber.
**********
A cool chill ran through his body. Windles opened his eyes and met the starry night sky above him. The crackle of burning wood and the scent of cedar filled the space. Windles sat straight, massaging his neck. A cough came out of his chest, making him spit dark mucus.
“Rest again. You need it.”
Windles looked for the voice which had just spoken when he saw the dark shape behind the campfire flames.
It lingered to him, and Windles tried to stand up, but his knees gave him away. The shape sat beside him and stretched a gloved hand to his head, but Windles jerked back, raising his arm.
“Don’t touch me!”
“No need to fear, Windles. We found you, finally.”
The voice rang softly in Windles head. Suddenly, a pair of stars shone in the faceless being.
“Who are you?” He asked in a whispered.
He watched the shape freeing its hands from the gloves and was shocked at the glowing skin. Then, it took off the hood, unleashing a long silver hair. And the face… Windles was sure that face had robbed the moonlight from the skies. It was ageless and filled with wisdom, innocence, beauty, and something else.
“Your poems contain immense power. Your creative energy has the clarity and strength of the purest diamonds.”
Windles couldn’t take his eyes off the starman’s face. He was sure he saw galaxies swirling just below the skin. The words ignited the dying embers of ego within him that longed for praise, and he realized that he had always known that he was a genius waiting to be discovered. That was why he hadn’t quit. Brilliance was never recognized by the filth it emerged from.
“You are so important, Windles, which is why we’ve searched for you. Unfortunately, we’re not the only ones. There are others who wish you harm, who want to abuse your gift for their own twisted purposes or, like the ones who set fire to your home, who wish you dead.”
Fear threatened to overwhelm Windles, but anger rushed in and propped up his quivering spirit. He always knew he had enemies. How dare they try to kill him and deprive the world of his greatness? He bared his teeth.
“Who are they?”
The starman shook his head, the long tendrils of his silver hair floating around him as if wafted by an ocean swell.
“They’re not important. All that matters is that we’ve found you and you’re safe. I’ll explain everything when we’re back with my people.”
“Step away from the poet.”
The starman whipped his head in the direction of the growly voice, and for a moment his eyes changed from stars to black holes. Dark shapes crept out of the night, eyes glinting in the firelight from multiple creatures, and Windles covered his nose to block the strong animal odor that assailed him.
A tiny figure scampered into the ambit of the campfire, its soot blackened fur not hiding its identity.
They came uttering a nonsense of syllables from mouths more akin to wounds. They had no features to speak of, only a semblance of human form, a vague echo of pride reduced to simian crawling. Whereas Windles’ strange silver-haired saviour had flesh of starlight, theirs was of night itself, though only an unobservant poet would think of the night as purely black. Within the void there were many colours, an etheric consortium of shades, each fractionally different from the last: midnight azures, abyssal purples, and deepest reds the hue of hearts-blood. Gazing too long could disturb the mind. Windles already felt them pulling his brain apart.
Spanks barked and whined, alternating between ferocious courage and abject dread. The starman regarded the intruders with cold focus.
“Begone,” the starman said. “He is mine.”
“Step away,” they hissed as one. Their meaning was hard to grasp, drowned out by other discordant noise: chittering, jabbering, sounds like pincers snipping. It was as though sense and form did not come easily to them. Chaos was their natural state. “We will free him, for we are without limitations…”
Windles knew, then, the choice he faced. It was all about the poetry, and perhaps it always had been. Hadn’t the starman said as much? But now, the appearance of this antithesis confirmed it. Windles stood upon a precipice, but unlike a suicidally inclined man at the end of their tether, it was not so clear as to whether falling would lead to death or transformation.
He thought he was content to go with the starman, the clear choice. But at the last moment, something within him changed his mind.
What proof did he really have that the starman was good and the other creatures were bad? He liked that the starman seemed more relatable, more human, but that wasn’t a reason to assume he was good.
All his life, Windles had been producing poetry he was rather fond of, but the rest of the world judged the worst. Maybe his instincts weren’t the best judge of character.
After a moment of shock, he looked at the starman and then the leaders of the other group. He saw both sides were as surprised as he was by the question. No one seemed to know what to say.
“What do you want of me?” Windles asked of the new arrivals.
He already knew what the starman thought. At least a little of it.
“We want to set you free,” the creatures said in their weird, synchronized voice. “You can bring sense to our existence.”
“They want to use you,” the starman interrupted.
“Don’t you?” Windles countered. “You said my poems contained power. What do you mean? What kind of power and why do you want it?”
“You will help my people build new worlds,” the starman said.
That feeling of power and strength flowed through Windles again as the starman stared him.
It was odd how his emotions were suddenly all over the place. Windles knew he was a poet and generally more emotional than other men, but even he wasn’t usually this unsettled.
Maybe the starman had some means of controlling his emotions. Windles had noticed his emotions going wild just before the other creatures arrived.
Which side should he trust? Did he have any other options?
Was this even real? Maybe this was all some twisted nightmare. The fire, the axe, this strange place, these strange creatures and . . . the Starman. His chest heaved and fell slowly, the rise and fall of his belly negligible to the eye. He closed his eyes and froze. Perhaps when they opened this illusion would shatter like some wicked spell cast upon him by those who have disdained his life’s work. Those wretched wastes of flesh who knew no better than to slander his life’s work. Years of blood sweat, and tears were infused into every word. Each scribbled character birthed with the anguish, torment, and fear of being read or heard.
One…. Two…. he counted slowly, his lips not parting, his body trembling like a leaf in a mild breeze. No matter what, this delusion must shatter when he opens his eyes, none of this can be real. His flesh prickled as all the hairs across his body bristled. It was quiet but he could feel the silent gazes probing him. They were penetrating eyes that bore into his flesh, burrowing into his soul like a worm in soil, digging for an answer to the spectacle before them.
Nineteen, twenty… his count became hurried and his breathing rapid. With the rise and subsequent fall of his chest was the visible bulge of his belly slamming against his shirt as if it would burst through. His fists clenched and nostrils flared. Large beads of perspiration dotted his brow. Once he reached fifty, he would open his eyes, and all of this would be over.
His eyelids smashed against his pupils as the foul stench of the beasts crinkled his nose as they slowly approached perplexed by this scene before them. To his side the soft pitter patter of the Starman’s feet could be heard. His head began to slowly wag.
Windle’s hands continued to tremble, the sweat dripping from his bony fingers as he tried to push away from the energy of the entities approaching him. His senses magnified with each beating of his heart. How was the sound so loud? He had never heard his own heartbeat like that before. Still, he could not open his eyes or finish the counting. Not only did he fear the entities, but he had forgotten about the pain in his body, the aftermath of the fire. Did he get out in time? What really happened? A wave of heat consumed him as if some invisible flame was held there against his skin. Was this death? Was he dying?
“Just finish counting. This would all be over soon,” he said to himself, forcing harsh breaths through clenched teeth. His entire body was shaking now.
“Stop!” he shouted.
It was becoming harder to keep his eyes shut. The sound of his heartbeat got louder.
“Windles! Windles, are you alright?”
The pleasantness of the voice startled his eyes open as bright lights shone down and burned his skin. Someone whistled as thunderous applause filled his ears. The room spun as he lay there, wherever there was, drowning in his own sweat.
“Windles?”
The room was a blur, but he would recognize that voice anywhere. His secret crush and host of the poetry contest towered over him. The warmth of her smile, a conduit for happiness, as if the universe chose her to channel its positivity through to him. She looked down at him, her silver curls dangled as if reaching out for him. That glowing skin of hers and that beautiful face, the one that robbed the moonlight from the skies.
Windles could smell lavender, like the fields behind his home with their vivid purple hues and tall, slender stems peeking through the grass exuding a fine fragrance in early summer. The scent was hampered now by the relentless stench of smoke that wouldn’t leave his nostrils. He opened his eyes to expect a bunch of flowers, a mistake in room number he was sure, as he had no one to send him anything. He caught his breath as he glanced at the chair next to his bed. It was none other than Lilith, the most beautiful woman he ever set eyes one. Her silver hair framing perfect features, her signature lavender essential oil perfuming his room. The neighbor he had spied on countless times but was too self-conscious to speak with was seated right next to him. Her gaze was down into her hands. Windles tried to sit up to see what she held.
Her gaze met his, “you’re awake. I have something for you.”
She rose from the chair and placed a small bundle into his lap adding, “Your chinchilla was roaming about in the street. I managed to collect him. I thought he might help you get better.”
Windle felt a knot form in his throat. He couldn’t remember the last time someone said a kind word to him let alone perform a gracious gesture.
“Spanks! Thank you, he’s alive. He’s all I have left. My writings, my poems are all gone.”
She looked at him with pity, “I’m sure you can write some more. The firemen said your flat was overflowing. Take care of yourself.”
With that, she left. Windle reached for the cabinet beside his bed. For once, luck was with him as he found a pencil and paper. He wrote with a fervor. Words flowed. When exhaustion hit, he put the pencil down, adjusted Spanks in the cradle of his arm and fell fast asleep.
As he slept, a nurse came in to check his vitals. Glancing down at his note pad, she read his words with abandon. Her husband, an editor of a prestigious literary magazine, would find his poetry unique, eloquent, inspired. She took a quick photo of the pages and sent a text …
Windles was rudely awakened by a sharp pain in his hand. His eyes popped open, and he discovered Spanks had chomped down on his flesh.
“Ouch! Some friend you are,” he said bitterly and shoved his chinchilla away.
He glanced out the window and saw night had fallen. He must have been asleep for hours, but he was still tired and decided to close his eyes once more. No sooner had he done that, Spanks bit him again. He yelped and shook his hand. “Why you-”
“Hello Windles.”
He looked up in alarm and saw a large figure in the doorway, blotting out the light from the hallway. “Wh-who are you?”
“I apologize if I startled you. My name is Smith, and I’m the editor of Wowie! Magazine. We publish short stories, poetry, and cooking recipes. My wife is a nurse here and she sent me a picture of your work. I had to meet you as soon as possible! Your words, Windles, they sent shivers down my spine and made my liver quiver!”
“What?” Windles stared at him with a blank expression.
“What I’m trying to say is, I want to publish your work. Such brilliance only comes along once in a generation! What do you say?” Smith held out a meaty hand and waited.
Windles hesitated. This is what he always wanted, but it was happening so fast. “This sounds amazing, but I need to clear my head a bit first.” He slowly stood and shuffled to the window and lifted it. A cool, refreshing breeze wafted in. But then the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. The breeze carried a familiar animal odor, and it was getting stronger by the second.
Windles stumbled away from the window. “No, it couldn’t be. That wasn’t real…”
The room fell away. The window now a gaping hole into the abyss. He grasped towards a non-existent windowsill to regain his balance. His nostrils contracting at the corrosive strength of the alien scent. This had to be death.
All around him words spun in tornados of text. The nightmare played out; he was glued to a floor that no longer existed. His clothes, his bed, the building all slid into a tsunami of flames and ash.
Something brushed against his ankle. The floor fell away as Spanks, his only friend, clawed at his naked thigh. He felt no pain as Spanks scraped away the flesh, his ivory frame exposed to the light.
He looked down at his hands, the flesh peeled, leaving bone scorched to black. They morphed into sticks of charcoal, the tools of his art. The irony. His mouth sighed unheard words into the dark skies beyond the abyss.
A light in the distance. The light. His mother had spoken of white light, was she beyond its source? Or was this the abduction he had spoken on in his poetry. They had called him a fool in a foil hat. Been ashamed of his obsession with UFOs.
Was this another world calling him, willing to embrace his art as no other?
As words fell from the screen, as letters faded from notepaper over time, his body was failing him. Disintegrating before his own eyes. His frame falling away, one bone at a time.
He was an observer to his resurrection. His fingers reached up to the stars, the light now a beam of heat and white noise. He felt nothing and was overcome with agony. He could think of no words and couldn’t stop the rolodex of metaphor and haiku washing through his absent mind. But …
But the beam of heat and white noise reached down and took him away. Just like that, Windles felt his heart swelling with regret because he hadn’t believed in a higher power like his mother once had. He knew his time was short, and if he were to be a poet, he would be a poet for the right reasons. That’s what the glimmering man was trying to tell him the first time they met. However, it wasn’t up to Windles to decide anymore.
“Validation,” the white noise said. “This was your heart’s desire.”
Windles had been blinded by his years of languishing, alone, with nothing but his chinchilla to keep him company. He realized how crazy it had driven him. Seeking validation brought him to the edge. Windles had gone to unthinkable lengths just to be told, “I see you.”
Then the beam of heat showed him his life story. It felt like an eternity. Windles was at a loss for words when he saw himself that fateful night in his office, holding the lighter in his hands. Then he heard the voice of a woman he couldn’t see. “Please help my son. Don’t let him ruin his gift. Save him.”
At that moment, nothing else mattered. Windles was sorry. The memories of his mother flooded his mind, and he felt a sharp burn in his chest, like electricity. Only it was electricity …
Windles woke up on the hospital room floor with sheets on his chest and a woman holding a defibrillator above his face saying, “We got you back, at last. You collapsed because of a cardiac arrest, sir.”
Why the second chance? Was he really forgiven for what he tried to do? Windles pondered the questions repeatedly. He knew what he had to do.
Windles knew exactly what he had to do. He must write. Mrs. Smith, the kind nurse who sent his poetry to her magazine-publisher husband, also dropped off a few new notebooks and a package of pens. As soon as he broke the plastic, he began to write and quickly filled its pages.
On the third day of his stay in hospital, the doctor advised Windles that his health had improved, and he could now return home. He was thrilled with the news, but he had no home to return to. Where would he go?
Just as he was ready to leave, the Starman entered his room and said, “We are sorry for your loss and have arranged a hotel for you and Spanks until you can get back on your feet. The firemen will allow you now to check the grounds in case you can recover something.”
Excited, Windles grabbed Spanks, who would be good at detecting any of his belongings. But when they arrived at his house, his heart fell at seeing the structure on the ground. He decided to check the area in case he could find something to salvage.
While shuffling around the place, his foot knocked against what he believed was his armoire. He kicked the burnt wooden pieces and parts of the red rain jacket appeared. Windles tried to catch his breath when he considered what might have survived the fire.
Putting down his hand, he brushed away the red rain jacket, and lo and behold, the plaque naming him the worst poet ever had survived. However, his world had changed since that devastating fire where he lost all his poems. He was now a published poet, and the plaque no longer held any value, but he would keep it to remind him of the past.
Holding a piece of his past in his hands, Windles looked to the east where the sky held rain clouds a deep gray, a darkening of the horizon, threatening rain, but in his hands, he held a kind of sun with which his world could revolve if only he’d allow it. He had a future despite his reckless endangerment of himself and his pet. He once cared what the naysayers spoke into existence for him. No more. His words had power. He no longer needed others to tell him that.
Feeling as if the fire he’d wrought released the truth from its ashes, he understood he was always somebody. Validation need no longer be given and his worth relied solely upon his own counsel.
He turned to face the Starman, understanding that this figure of poise and his most recent object of fear, was no dream, the creatures from what he once thought of as a nightmare were also real. He had a choice to make, he thought, as he let go of the past, allowing the plaque to fall at his feet. In that moment, he wished he could ground the plaque into ashes as so much of his world had turned into, but it had survived for a reason.
“I know who I am now,” Windles said, staring into the Starman’s luminous eyes. “You and the monsters of my soul are no longer needed on this plain of existence. I release you. I have chosen to live. I have chosen to become, and I will fare well in this decision.”
“We will watch and see if you fare so well,” the Starman said, and it sounded like a threat, but Windles wasn’t concerned. He had seen the abyss and knew now where he belonged. He would take the room because he needed it, but he would not falter this time around. He would write as if he had no other choice, because he didn’t.
He hadn’t imagined the smell of lavender either, he thought, as he looked to the western corner of the land and saw the house of his neighbor in the distance. She had come to me, he thought, bringing me Spanks. As he walked to the waiting car, where a living part of his psyche stood holding the door open for him, he vowed to send her flowers. Maybe there was promise there too, he thought. Maybe like his poetry held power, so did his care for Lilith. Life was good, he thought, as he took another look across the landscape of his yesterdays and climbed into the car to head into his future as a true writer, and finally, an author.
How can you create characters your readers can’t stop thinking about?
We are excited to have writing coach, editor, and author,Joseph Sale, back to teach us a groundbreaking method that will help you create deep and believable characters. Instead of having to invent what happens next, your characters will act out naturally. This makes it easier to write incredibly compelling narratives that readers can’t put down!
What You’ll Learn
Why it’s important to determine the deeper psychology behind your characters’ behavior
Why you need to know the difference between objectives and motivations
Why Motivational Mapping is better than Myers-Briggs and other personality-based systems
How motivators create interesting conflict for stories
The importance of the lowest motivator and how to use it to create believable conflict between character
Self-knowledge will help you build better characters. Find out what your own motivators are!
Discover and Leverage The 9 Motivators of Your Characters
