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April13, 2008 - Dark Windows #15 - Apr 1, 2008 (approx.) >> |
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DARK WINDOWS #14 - March 15, 2008 ===== ===== ===================> INTRO Back in high school and college, keeping a journal was a fun thing to do. There was so much downtime, and it kept me from snoring in class. Surrounded by people, at any moment someone might do something stupid or dramatic, and I was there to jot it down. My journal (from which most of the dreams included in Dark Windows come from) fizzled out after that. There's just no drama in a world of working and trying to pay bills, where each day is more or less the same. Sure, I can still get sparks of ideas while walking down the street. That reminds me ... the only time I ever had a tire blowout on the freeway, a black cat had run in front of the car when I was still only a block away from home. But the urge to document life just isn't there. Oddly, even when I'm at a sci-fi convention, and the people density is there, and wacky things are happening, I also don't feel like writing it down. In that case, it's the kind of antics that really only sci-fi convention-goers would understand. Every now & then I write a "catch up" piece for myself, just a text file in a folder named "journal," but it just doesn't feel like a journal anymore. Just like a typical day doesn't feel like a day anymore, just a blur of crap that needs to get done. The only highlights are often the dreams, and I do manage to capture a few. I hope you have been enjoying them along the way. = scott ===================> POEM Night Wind --- When we were moving through the woods, We were breezes to the oaks, The briefest passages of air against the time of their patience, How they seemed to see, to know, to whisper a slow secret from one to the next, When I touched you at last, We felt safe between their arms We felt them need us companions for a moment under New England skies. --- =3/87, published in Earth Realms anthology (2001) ===================> ODD CLIPS: (clips from old "factual" sources) Hakewell informs us, from the testimony of Nannez, that the Emperor of China had archers and porters fifteen feet high. [1] Sir Theodore Mayence, who was physician to three English soveriegns, and supposed to have been Shakespeare's Dr. Caius, believed in supernatural agency, and frequently prescribed the most disgusting and absurd medicines, such as the heart of a mule ripped up alive, a portion of the lungs of a man who had died a violent death, or the hand of a thief who had been gibbeted on some particular day. [2] Nauseous medicines have ever been deemed the most efficacious, on the reasoning that as every thing medicinal is nauseous, every thing that is nauseous must be medical. [3] 1,2,3. J. G. Millingen, Curiosities of Medical Experience (2nd ed.) (Bentley, London, 1839) ===================> STORY Point of Exile (part 2 of 2) ----- The bombers streaked to their target with a metallic roar, their burdens clasped beneath them with clawed struts, their pilots mindlinked to the King scanning the horizon as their destination crawled into view. The King impulsed his order and the planes swooped down over the lovely castle as the King's other forces transported themselves to the area and deployed themselves. The lead pilot hovered over the enemy courtyard and looked over its vacantness before thumbing the loudspeaker into life. "Exiles, be warned! your great escalation of power has been taken as a threat against those who sentenced you. You must be destroyed!" Twice repeated, the bombs fell. Powers kicked through walls into dust, and cinder screams burst rampant around the bewildered exiles, as they stumbled towards the gate. "What power? What have we done?" Enlac cried out. They tried to escape, but a billow of rubblesteam coursed through the gate as the infantry forced their way into the castle. Retreating through collapsing corridors, the exiles ran headlong through mists of flaring ruin, the ruins of innocent dreams. Kingdom stonemen strode casually in pursuit of them, their programmed bloodlust thirsting them for the sure victory ahead. Then they were cornered in a tower, with the troops still approaching and the jet fighters receding above. Enlac prepared to jump out the window into the moat as a last resort, but he stood at the opening for a moment too long. A spear caught him through the shoulders and a flurry of arrows stapled him in the windowframe. Kurle was thus trapped alone, and the first axeshaft pierced the door before him. The stairwell was clogged with debris, and the way to the dungeon was two stairways below. He sagged against the ancient masonry and awaited death with a curse on his mind. But then the entire tower cycled through to somewhere else. Dead Enlac was torn from his gruesome perch by the Winds Between, and the tower lurched as it found new ground to stand on. The voice of the tower spoke. "Every now and then, it is time to change worlds. Go have a look around." Kurle shoved the tattered door open, and fell nine feet to an asphalt hardness, attacked by sights and sounds he could not comprehend. He looked around at the flashing city, and its immenseness almost crushed him flat, but then the sound of an approaching siren cut through him, he had to run. Nobody who saw him leap from the building survived, as he panicked and lashed out with elemental forces. He turned and pushed his way through the nearest door, into the safety of a crowded, loud topless bar. When the police found him, he was slouched in a booth with two girls who obviously adored foreigners, an empty bottle of champagne before them. As the two officers approached, the girls eased away, humiliated. The police spoke a strange language, so did Kurle. Though Kurle understood his inquisitors, the reverse was not true, as everyone in that place was completely mind-dead. They wanted to know why he had parked a building on top of a religious demonstration. Kurle shrugged. Their words were like random blobs of sound to him. He listened, but could not piece the feelings together. He saw from their uniforms that these men were locally important, but Kurle had seen enough uniforms for one lifetime. They wanted to know why he had slashed a dozen witnesses with a sharp piece of humidity. He figured that they were insane and pointed to the bubble window behind him. The tower wasn't there, the police gawked. When they had again turned about, Kurle wasn't there. And neither were the ladies. Floating though nonentities of positionality, he twitched the tower from side to side with a subtle mindpulse. The women loved it. --- = written 7/28/85 - extended 3/22/92, published on Talespinner's Tavern (web, 1998) ===================> NOW AVAILABLE: NOW_AVAILABLE ===================> DARKVISION: (captured dreams) Dream Pieces, 2/86 ::: Sitting in a cluttered basement, not unlike my own, but not like it either. Jon & I were at a card table with some dice. Mom was at another card table nearby, sewing on an old greyish machine. I recall complaining about the whirring clunking noises, and getting up, digging out Jon's old black box (the one with the playbutton that doesn't like to stay in when you push it). As soon as I got up and walked for a few steps, it was MY basement again, and I picked out "90125", slapped it in. Mom was about to complain. Another Yes-album dream: just a piece of a piece. There was this silver album cover again, but this time it had larger pictures on the back, arranged vertically along the left-hand side. I think the credits read that Alan White was doing more vocals than usual, and Rabin and Kaye switched places. Most unlikely. Running along, I had to get back to the tennis courts. For the court had found me guilty, but I wasn't. I just happened to warp through into the scene of the killing. The Space wasn't in the tennis courts then, but Spaces like to drift about. I ran around the corner and saw the greenwire of my goal, but then the sheriff stepped out of hiding before me and shot. It was a punch in the stomach, hard, telling me to lay down and count my blessings. All strength left me as I fell. I spasmed, and everything felt wrong, numbed, then the pain grew, a seething vortex of agony centered on my chest. I held myself together, and watched the red seep between my huddled arms, pooling on the ground, oozing slowly and thickly into the storm drain; sideling around little pebbles and pushing tiny twigs as it went. The sheriff rambled some narrative as he approached; then I felt the Space around me and rolled into dark safety. ===================> MY NEWS: More quiet weeks here. I had two cinquains (poems) accepted by ShadowPoetry Quill. ===================> POEM Show & Tell --- and now standing in the light, a thing from long ago, bared here before your screens: small, stunted, half-mad with self-importance, grandeur. See how it mocks us, berates our magnificence? Oh how did we survive its age-long hold over us? And now before you, the evil -- Emotion. --- =3/87, published in In transit v1#5 (7/88) ===================> STORY BITES: (clips from old fictional sources) I could not get rid of the chilly horrid feeling those two screams had produced, combined with the disgusting smell, which was getting more and more obtrusive. It was foul, horrible, revolting, like some carrion, putrid and noxious. I prepared to take my chances ... [1] Suddenly I became all attention again. An entirely different sound now arrested me. It was distinctly a low groan, and followed almost immediately by heavy blows -- blows which fell on a soft substance, and then more groans, and again those sickening blows. [2] There in that empty hull, over that boardless floor, over those rotting joists, somebody or something was dragging some heavy weight ... [3] 1,2,3. Frank Cowper, Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk (story) ===================> POEM The inside story --- After years within this wall I wished to escape. Knowing all the wires and pipes, I wished to know more. So to the weakest place I scurried and gnawed for myself an eyehole to prove my suspicions of an outside world, to maybe glimpse though sacrilege the things which built my wall. Science balanced escapism, time balanced itself, the chewhole grew, finally punched through; foul alien outside air poured into my hole and burned my throat. Gasping, I plugged the opening, my dreams shattered, my escape quenched -- impossible now, my lungs marked my limits. My mind fought back, bravely I wished there was someone to warn here within my walls. --- = 3/87, published on Poet's Corner (web, 2/01) ===================> 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)2008 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: 1,945 words cumulative: 29,369 words |
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