posted on April 4, 2010 at 11:22 am by Khali
“What do you need to show me? I’ve already agreed to help you. Not that I had much choice,” Callum snarls as Sionna lead him down the corridor. He still feels queasy from travelling between.
“You have every choice,” Sionna says with her infuriatingly calm voice.
“Showing up in my kitchen in the middle of the night with your spooky doom and gloom is hardly giving me a choice,” he retorts.
“If you had told me to leave I would have had no choice but to leave you alone.”
“And just how do you propose I could have ignored the rest of it?”
“The dreams? The creatures haunting you? That would have been none of my concern if you had refused me. “
“That’s cold,” he mutters. The corridor is cold and the walls seem to seeps moisture, but it does not smell like water. It smells sickly sweet, and it unsettles Callums stomach further.
“Cold perhaps, but practical.”
“Practical.”
“As I said, we are fighting a war,” Sionna sighs and turns a corner. Light filters into the corridor but it is not the clean white light from the moon they left behind. Instead it is a strange blue light, slightly sickly and even oily – it makes his flesh crawl when it moves over his skin. Sionna pauses at a doorway and produces a key which she slides into a keyhole. The light seeps under the door, and between the pieces of frame. Callum rubs his hands over his arms absently, trying to ease the trembling that has spread from his gut.
The hinges scream as the door swings open and Callums eyes tear. The light fills the room and it takes several seconds for Callum to deduce that the light is coming from chains. There are thousands of them it seems, coming from every point in the room and converging in the center. Something hangs in the center and Callum squints into the sickly blue glare.
Sionna’s eyes glitter in the strange light cast by the chains that bind the woman; for it is a woman, wrapped like a fly in a spider’s web. Her head hangs forward, ropes of ebony hair catching the blue light as they fell almost to the floor.
“This is the one who is the heir to the Seelie throne.”
“Why is she chained this way?” Callum asks, his skin crawling with the energy in the room.
“She has been cursed; possessed by a demon of the dark vastness. This is the only way we can bind her soul to this world and control the creature. Sometimes she is lucid, but most times she is lost to us.”
“What’s her name?”
“Nieve,” Sionna whispers and the figure in the center of the chains raises her head. Callum is struck by her ghostly, terrible beauty.
“Sionna,” the woman whispers, her voice seeming to echo and be echoed by a thousand other voices. Callum shudders at the sound, but he cannot look away. “I can see you today,” she says.
“I am pleased,” Sionna answers, and looks away.
“Can you unbind me?” Nieve asks, her voice sibilant with thousands of other voices.
“You know we cannot, Lady.”
There is a pause, but Callum can still hear the voices whispering to each other in languages that he cannot understand.
“He will unbind me,” Nieve says, only Callum knows with every fiber of his being that it is not the lady speaking. His chest suddenly feels tight and before he realizes what’s happening Sionna is shoving him backwards into the corridor and slamming the door shut. “Fools!” the voices hiss from beyond the door, echoed by the eerie rattle of the thousand chains.
Callum takes a deep and shaky breath and looks down to see Sionna gazing up at him, pressing him to the wall, fingers digging into his arm.
“You are well?”
“Fine, I think,” he gasps. She pushes herself away from his body and he suddenly feels cold. “What happened?”
“What I feared,” she says. “The demon knows you.”
“Of course it does, you just introduced us,” Callum hisses back.
“Hardly. Nieve was lucid when we entered, but the demon took power so quickly. You felt it, did you not?”
“Yes,” Callum says, and cannot suppress a shudder.
“We must hurry,” Sionna says and starts back the way they came. Callum does not hesitate to follow her.
From behind them, Callum hears the Lady scream, echoed over and over again my a million echoing voices.
listening to: Glass Tiger - Don’t Forget Me
Posted in Fiction, Sidhe, Writing | No Comments » | Tags: an alternate reality, fragments, inspiration, magic, muse, surreal, Writing
posted on March 7, 2010 at 12:34 pm by Khali
Do you dream?
Do you wake in the night with sweat on your brow, your heart thundering in your ears? Do you lay there, staring at the formless dark, daring it to take on shape as you struggle to recall the events that made your blood race through your veins and your breath catch in your throat? Of course you do. You have these nightmares just like the rest of us here in this dark province. You are just as much a shadow as the phantoms in your mind that clutch at your sanity in the wee hours of night.
You struggle out of bed, free yourself from the tangle of sweat-soaked sheets and stumble blindly to the bathroom, blink tears when you fumble the lights on. You brace yourself on the counter and will your breathing to ease, your heart to slow from its mad gallop so that you can focus, think about what it is you have seen. Your eyes adjust slowly, and by the time your vision is not impaired by the harsh yellow light you are breathing more like a normal man and not a prey animal. You peer at yourself in the mirror; the ordinariness of your surroundings, but you know, as surely as you know your own reflection, that there are things beyond all this ordinary that clamour to change reality. It is easier to face this fact in the light.
You take a deep breath and survey your figure; the lean lines of your naked torso in the yellow light; the stubble on your chin and the dark circles under your eyes that speak of your nocturnal odysseys into unknown spheres. You have so many questions and you know the answers do not lie in this bathroom. Nor in this suburb, nor in this city, but somewhere just as close. Close but other.
You’ve been dreaming in daylight now. You’ve seen some of the creatures from your nightmares on the streets, in the coffee shop where you get your latte in the morning. In the grocery store, the video store. They’ve been following you. Your dreaming mind is taking over your waking one. At least that’s what you’ve been telling yourself, but what if you’re wrong? What if that other place, that reality that exists in parallel with this one was breaking through? You shudder, brace youself again on the edge of the counter. You must be mad, it’s the only logical explanation.
There’s a knock at your door. Your flesh crawls with something akin to dread. You slip on your bathrobe and pad barefoot through the kitchen to the door. The clock on the microwave reads 3am. You peer through the blind on the door and see nothing. Part of you wants to back away from the door and crawl back into the warmth of your bed, but another is irritated that someone would dare knock at this time of night. Against your better judgement, you pull open the door.
“There had better be an emergency,” you growl.
“Oh, but there is,” says a voice and you blink, look down. Your visitor stands there, hidden in the shadows. She barely comes up to your chest and her features are drawn into an expression you can barely decipher as a grim frown. “Invite me in, there is little time,” she says. You hesitate, remembering something about vampires and thresholds. But you are bigger than she is and you are not dreaming.
“Come in,” you say and step aside. She enters, glances around and settles herself in one of your kitchen chairs. You do not sit, but stand where you are, allowing the door to click shut. “Who are you?” you ask, not caring that your voice sounds harsh even in your ears.
“I am a messenger,” she says evenly.
“Do you have a name?”
“I have many,” she replies and you clench your teeth.
“Why are you here then?” you ask, trying another tack.
“To give you a message.”
“Naturally, since you’re a messenger,” you snap. “What is it then?”
“The world as you know it is in grave danger,” she says. “and you are the only one who can stop it.” You pause and hear yourself laugh a little: a snort of laughter that sounds loud and harsh in the silence.
“You’re being melodramatic. I’m no hero and you’re a lunatic,” you say, tying your robe tighter, you gesture to the door. “Get out.”
“They said you would be rude and unconvinced,” she replies, but does not budge from the chair.
“Who are “they” and why me?”
“They are the Oracles. It has been foretold that a mortal will be the one to save the Twin Worlds from annihilation. They believe that you are that mortal.”
“Why?”
“You have been dreaming, have you not?” she asks and her voice is suddenly gentle. You feel yourself falling - not physically, but inside; all the pieces of your nightmares and waking dreams falling into a pattern. Your gasp is loud in the early morning silence. You find yourself on your knees and the tiny woman is smiling sadly at you.
“Yes,” she says. “You are indeed the one.”
listening to: Collide - Halo
Posted in Fiction, Sidhe, Writing, fiction maybe | No Comments » | Tags: an alternate reality, fragments, muse, surreal, Writing
posted on September 6, 2009 at 12:13 am by Khali
I really haven’t written all that much lately. It’s not for lack of wanting to either, it’s just that there’s really nothing there for me to put down. (Ok, there are a few things I could write about fiction-wise, but they are merely half-formed ideas and may, or may not stay that way…) I sit down to blog or write and the cursor stares at me, taunts me and I can stand it less and less. I’m blaming this pre-trip post-training stress and I hope that when I get back that I will be better able to focus.
Riiight. I’ll be focussing on getting my butt back into school. *sigh* I would like to be able to spend as much time as I liked just doing as I liked with the writing, but alas, the days of wanton writerliness are either far behind me or far ahead. Wait, is that me trying to talk myself out of something? I should probably work on inspiring myself instead, no?
I think part of the appeal is invention, or even reinvention of worlds, of characters, anything. Partial escapism, partial god-complex. Lol.
To that end perhaps it’s time I did that first-line meme I’ve seen on so many author-blogs.
Justice and the Werewolf:
Justice had a headache. The grinding from the back of the truck did nothing for the pain in his head and set his teeth on edge. He felt a little like he was chewing on tinfoil. He took another drink from his water bottle and willed the acetaminophen to work faster.
Dragons from the Sky
Liam wiped moisture from his face, not knowing, or caring if it was sweat or tears.
Dragonbreed
The sand was hot on Kalindra’s sandaled feet as it spread out before her, sweeping to the horizon that danced with shimmers of heat.
Infinity
“Don’t you love me anymore?”
Araya begins to cry. “I love you more than you will ever know.”
“I want to stay with you.”
“I know sweetie, but this is a very important mission I’m sending you on.”
Io’s eyes brim, but she nods. She’s so brave for a kid. She’s tiny, smaller than she should be for a twelve-year-old, but Araya has done the best she could.
Mar-ya of the Sands
Mar-ya came to the top of the rise and gazed out over the expanse before her. She placed a hand on her swelling belly and felt the life within her move. She knew, with the instinct of hundreds of generations before her that her time was drawing nearer, and that finding a safe place to give birth was getting more and more important.
Spider, Spider
Lia stared at herself in the mirror and made faces at her reflection.
The Resurrection of Cat-Girl
Ahlliandra opened her yellow eyes to the dim light that blinked on outside her door.
Desert Deconstruction
Mira eyed the smudge on the horizon that had been her home for most of her life.
The Demon Train
The watch fires marked the boundaries of Annie’s world.
La Loba
The bones told stories.
untitled
She didn’t remember being hit by the car.
and last but not least HIWTHI (I know what it stands for but it is still only a working title as I don’t think it fits anymore, not after 64k words - also, this may not stay as the first line…)
Marlon walked slowly through the night, flicking his lighter absently and only half-aware of the cigarette that dangled from his lip.
I kinda like the Marlon Brando-esqueness of the cigarette dangle, but I think I need something with a little more oomph as a first line. And yes, oomph is a technical term.
listening to: Massive Attack - Mezzanine
eating: ice cream and rhubarb
Posted in Fiction | No Comments » | Tags: Writing
posted on August 15, 2009 at 9:47 am by Khali
“That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their being beaten round, or worked round, but in their ‘coming’ round! As though a lunatic should trust in the world’s ‘coming’ triangular!
“’I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all square,’ says Mr. Jobling, with some vagueness of expression and perhaps of meaning, too.”
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Posted in Quotations | No Comments » | Tags: Classics, Writing
