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DARK WINDOWS #5 - Oct. 15, 2007 ===== ===== ===================> INTRO Having read well over 1,000 books now, I get a kick out of how authors never agree on whether introductions are necessary. Some say they like to tell the backstory, others seem to like talking about themselves, others say that the whole idea is pretentious or silly. Here, the intro is just a glimpse of what's on my mind as I compile each issue, and while I try to filter out all the negative world news and other crap that's way too easy to get upset by, sometimes it feels like there just isn't anything left. The spirit of Dark Windows is escaping into dreams, and staring at reality until the image starts to blur. This issue is packed with the unusual. Enjoy! = scott ===================> POEM the shape of things to come --- 1 1 1 Square things, round things, oblate spheroids all impaled and glued together by shifting wires that grow themselves to spawn further complexities yet. 2 2 2 Gears with buzzsaw teeth, bees' heads in waxen molds, a row of babies crushed paper-thin under a screaming train, all imbedded in a flowing salty gelatin of no particular shade. 3 3 3 Icicles hanging from drainpipes hanging from lacy gambrels under a crescent moon mood, all features overlapped in shining crystal. 4 4 4 all three scenes are now toasted on a spit to a charred, formless lump: the Shape of things to come. 5 5 5 You can change it if you try: just choose the babies, break the proper icicles, stoke the fire, and wait. --- = 7/86, published in Dreams & Nightmares #19/20 ===================> ODD CLIPS: (clips from old "factual" sources) "Olaus Magnus in the early part of the sixteenth century tells us a story of a nobleman and his retinue who lost their was in journeying through a wild forest and presently found themselves hopelessly foodless and shelterless. In the urgency of their need one of the servants disclosed to him in confidence that he had the power of turning himself into a wolf and doubted not but that, if his master would kindly excuse him for a while, he would be able to find the party some provision. Permission being given, the man disappeared into the forest under semblance of a wolf and very quickly returned with a lamb in his mouth and then, having fulfilled his mission, resumed his human form." [1] "London. -- A well dressed man created a scene in the Bank of England recently, and gave the clerical force a serious fight before he was overpowered. [...] When he was finally overcome a fully loaded revolver was taken from his pocket. [...] At the police station the prisoner declared he was a son of Queen Victoria, and that he had called at the bank to withdraw a deposit which he had there. He was examined by a physician and, being declared insane, was removed to a hospital. The man's identity is in doubt." [2] 1. The Review (Claresholm, Alberta) - 12 Jan 1911, quoting Hulme's "Lore and Legend" 2. "Madman in Bank of England", The Review (Claresholm, Alberta) - 26 Jan 1911 I can't help it, but I love old newspaper stories. And those funny fillers they used to use. ===================> STORY Whispering Sunken Stones --- There are things at the bottom of the Black Sea. Ships have felt it over the years, more recently they have come back with high-tech electronics and mapped the seafloor. The ring of echoes is there ... in the pitchblackness. The first wave of submersibles found the sunken field where the heads of huge statues dotted the sand. It was a creepy sight, huge artifacts forgotten in an airless, lifeless expanse of dark sea. William Emmerich paced the deck of the research ship Henna. Those stone heads, long-eared and fearful, were the talk of the ship, their reason for being. The science journals had scoffed at William's obsession -- even his sonar sweeps were dismissed as some tiny crater or at best a ring of stumps. Even after he showed the scale of them, his peers would make up theories, anything to dismiss the possibility. And the truth was clearest in his dreams. Ever since a decade ago when he had gone over this patch of the Sea in a fishing boat, he had seen it in his mind. Even now he coud close his eyes, feel the salty breeze on his face, and his mind filled with the images. Those stone giants, up to 80 meters high, had once walked the land. They were dead and gone a dozen ice ages ago, long before the great flood hinted at in folklore. On their final night, they formed a circle and chanted fitfully in a strange language like booming bird-calls, while an ancient enemy oozed up from the ground, cursed them, and left their stony souls behind for all the future to see. William saw these things without the silt and sediment around them. He saw them in their death-trance, arms uplifted to the sky. He saw a glimpse of something in the air which heard their plea and materialized long enough to say it could not get involved in the affairs of mere mortals ... Science was taking too long. And science had just the heads to look at. The rest was buried too deep to recover. And even if they did somehow uncover the whole site, and the piles of stony arms which had broken off a hundred thousand years ago, science would reject the site, argue the dates, and find a way to pretend it had never been found. Emmerich leaped from the rail into the cold grasp of the sea, crying out the name of the ancient race that would never see daylight. He swam down into the sightless depths, deeper than a man could survive, longer than a man could go without breathing, carried ever downward by the primal powers. At long last, with a crushing weight of truth pressing down on him, he touched the stone face. He heard slow murmuring voices. He heard a stony welcome, the beginning of an ancient story. And he waved at the nearest submersible, just to make an unforgettable impression. --- Written 2/01, unpublished. More of a draft or dream than a complete story. ===================> DARKVISION: (captured dreams) In the Blackout --- Gravelly crunching, footstepping ahead up the slow hill. There's a blackout in progress, but far downhill, the town still glows; pink and silver glitter dancing between the trees. All is calm, silent, the sky a light haze, the air scented of summer. Drains hurrily chug down the last waters of the freak thunderstorm. A dog clinks it tag somewhere nearby, and there it is: a mobile speck of grey on all-grey. Trees stand brownly bare and still against a sky the shade of a dirty chalkboard. The moon glows halfly in a tiny wreath of clamchowder green. Onwards through the water-overrun silence. Drains shift their stereo relations as I move. Two tiny streams falling into the dark of the earth. Far behind now, the air like waiting mosquitoes, more deeply silent and scented. Ducks motion distantly. A car crunches along to the side, a brief headlight at the crossroads. A plane starflashes above, with a rumble. Lights are back now, each house aglow with the homey shade of white light on wood siding, each its own little pool of life. A dog barked at me at the corner, hacking away at the tranquility with its mindless affrontery. A lovely house shone warmly to me, and I sat crouchlike to describe it, but the owner shut down its lights and it was gone. At the corner, leaning back on a signpost moist with rain, scratchy with rust. Winds pick up the earthy, wormy air and wrap it about me in prolonged pushes. Lightly on my face and billowing within my jacket. High up, a rushing sound, of trees telling secrets. The road leads down, away. The wind becomes firmer, more persistent, breezing coldly at my face. The road is a deadgrey strip against a slightly tilted array of treeframes, bending abruptly into a distant hillshape. Sounds: watery splipping into crunching gravelsounds, lightly flishing grass steps between. Terrain: wet, ankles aside and unfirm, otherwise solid with blown sticks passing underfoot. I look up and there's someone standing ten paces ahead, on the roadside in the mud. Watching. My heart jumps suddenly, but I step forward and it is dead silent, unmoving. Then a weak, buckling sound upon the wind shows that it is just a roadsign after all. My pages flap happily against my chest, wanting so much to go free, to scurry and dance, to return to randomness. I do not let them go. A siren rises and falls somewhere over a hill, one cycle, then nothing more. The wind carves a mohawk of my hair as I push forward. Puddles gleam silvery, yet murky brown all about. A car comes close, changes its mind, and fades. Trees blackly lined, branches in a depthless, unsortable tangle; they quiver about amongst themselves. Off the road now, over the old rockwall, into the woods. I step deeply into the leafgrained wet mulch of the ground. Branches unseen bend against me, clutching into my pantlegs, arms, face. Some fall aside, yielding; some snap to fall eversosoftly to the ground. Every now and then, a thorn clutches me in callous talonry. Further ... The moon picks out some branches, hanging whitely in midair. Here all is light and brown; the air no longer seems grey, merely ghostly. The feeling is different, though the same wind is still singing far above, a sound like eternity passing from place to place. It glides along, moving in comples flurries to the willing ear. None of the trees seem to move with it. Geese call out a far-off confusion, tapping water and fading again. A white birch stands out so nobly in this leaning brownform world, it alone embodies the greyness of the neighborhood sky, reaching thinly above me until its branches are lost in the ceiling of converging life. Now the ground is sloping down, but a sharp light edge signifies the cliff. Beyond are the darklight and lightdark layers of distance, trees unresolved clutching together into single patches of darker shades. Far away and down is a square of homelight, marking some distant latenightman in his own little world. But is his world the same? Is it truly continuous with my own? He is utterly unreachable, a mystery with his own dreams and thoughts and worries. Maybe he's alone, in that otherlife place of his. Maybe he was in bed with his life when the lights came on and spoiled their tribute to the powers of nature. Whatever the truth, is he now out in these woods like I am, walking into the face of the same undeniable, ancient truth? Will he walk to a geographical limit and stand there in the void, as I do now, and realize that after all our games, we are merely human? No other outcome is possible once the trees know we are here. --- a dreamwalk in an old journal, 3/19/1986. ===================> MY NEWS: My article "An Eye on Horror" was included in The Writer's Chatroom Spotlight newsletter (10/07). I sold 6 flash fiction pieces to a calendar/anthology called "Twisted Twins 365". My poem "The final word" is coming soon in Illumen. My chapbook "Jane Doe Discovered" is coming soon from SamsDotPublishing.com ===================> POEM In the blackout --- in the mad moments of a power-out clockflash a stare fell on myself and saw a blank space -- the light returned and brought me back from the wild void of detachment; far off the sky crumbled and pieces fell to the earth; things rooted to the ground resisted the pull of aeons; something newer and nearer collapsed and darkness poured out from within, while somewhere in the blackout world the wind caught me and carried me home. --- = 7/86, published in New Word #2 (1986) Another version of that same blackout ... ===================> STORY BITES: (clips from old fictional sources) "My skin was as cold as sliced cucumbers on ice." [1] "After his death, livid scarlet spots, like those on the flower, appeared upon his skin, and he shriveled like a withered leaf." [2] "The soul is so invisible a thing, often useless and sometimes troublesome, that I did not experience, as to this loss, more than that kind of emotion I might have, had I lost my visiting card in the street." [3] 1. "A Stitch in Time" (story) by Frank Belknap Long, in The Dark Beasts 2. "Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy's Curse" (story), by Louisa May Alcott 3. "The Generous Gambler" (story), by Charles Pierre Baudelaire ===================> POEM 2 + 2 = 9.4 --- "2 + 2 > 6" said the man so I knew he was drunk, shimmering I backed away into the all dark alley, but there were others, more than I could stand shouting absurd equations -- I cried out [windows opened: people told me to shut up] as they closed in on me. "So what is 2 + 2?" I asked this fearing the worst as there were four of them now. They said it was 9.4, the leader [3.4 all by himself] rallied the rest -- the inched breath-close I now know why 2 + 2 = 9.4: because knives & things. --- = 1987, published in Fennel Stalk #3 (winter 1987) ===================> CREDITS About the author: Scott Virtes has had over 400 stories & poems published since 1986. Look for them in Analog, Space & Time, Ideomancer, Dreams & Nightmares, Cafe Irreal, Planet, and more ... My Home page: http://tales.scvs.com?inw=dkw Notice: Odd Clips and Story Bites all come from original sources in the public domain, or are brief clips in the spirit of fair use (a.k.a. free advertising for the source). All other sections of this newsletter are copyright (c)2007 Scott Virtes. All rights reserved. Please don't grab chunks of my work and post them all over the place. If you ask permission, you'll find that I'm pretty easygoing. ;-) ===== this issue: 2264 words cumulative: 10,713 words p20,p22,p31,f01-06 |
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