Search Results for 'dark'

Sleep wouldn’t come, and the narrow wooden pew was hard. Cedric had shifted to every possible position trying to get comfortable, and succeeded only in cricking his neck. He eased himself off the pew and crept outside. It was a clear crisp night and the moon shone brightly in the chapel yard. A broad flat tomb beckoned him, looking more promising to stretch out on than the wooden seats inside. It was the tomb of the 14th century mystic (often called witch) , Marguerite Isabeau. Many had claimed to see Isabeau flying around at night, draped in white robes.
Lying flat on his back on the tomb, with his cork bum as a pillow, Cedric wrapped the voluminous white choir boys robes around his body. Despite the chill air, he dozed off, dreaming of lemon pavlova.

~~~~

Igor Popinkin kept to the darkness beneath the trees as he made his way towards the Folly for the rendezvous with Mirabelle. The moon was bright and it was imperative that he stay well hidden. The shortcut through the chapel yard was an open stretch of ground where he might be spotted, but it was unlikely for there to be anyone there at this hour. He was so close now that he mustn’t made any rash mistakes now and spoil it. Igor paused momentarily, reminding himself to be fully present at all times and paying attention. That’s when he noticed Marguerite Isabeau, risen from the grave again ~ although not very far from it, in this instance, as she was lying on top of it, quite motionless. As if drawn by a magnet, he inched slowly towards her, mesmerized by her ghostly beauty. Closer and closer, until he was standing over her, peering down at her scarlet lips. His hot breath and specks of dribble running down her chin woke her, and she opened her eyes.

~~~~

“Am I dreaming?” asked Cedric breathlessly. “Or are you an angel?”
“No, you’re an angel”, replied a baffled Popinkin.
“Why thank you sweetie, oooh, a Russian angel! Love your accent ~ fancy meeting you here!”
“Where were you expecting to meet me then?” Igor replied, even more puzzled. “You mean you were expecting me, Marguerite?”
“Marguerite who?”
“Isabeau. You!” Exasperated with the conversation and confusion, and remembering his rendevous with Mirabelle, Popinkin said “Look, I have to go, but meet me here at the same time tomorrow night.”
Cedric sighed, but he did note that his stiff neck had gone and he felt much happier.

Anna’s voice and young face trailed off as the Queen emerged from her dream. Confused for a moment, she tried to get rid off the undefinable guilt she always felt when dreaming about her late sister. You simply didn’t speak about Anna. And you couldn’t take pleasure in childish dreams.

Her guilt soon transformed into a mild irritation and she frowned as she remembered the cavagnol game of the previous night. She had lost again. The amount didn’t really matter, it was more about the principle. She always lost. But she took a momentary pleasure in thinking that Jeanne-Antoinette also lost most of her bets.

With a sigh, she looked at the big ornate windows. Someone had opened the heavy velvet curtains while she was still asleep, and it certainly didn’t help keep the air warm in that time of year. Nonetheless, she enjoyed seeing the sky when she woke up, even in winter time when it was still dark or like today, when the colours of dawn preceded the Sun. She couldn’t believe she had slept so long.

It always was a too brief moment alone. As if summonned by magic, three maids entered the room silently, two of them holding her morning dress, that they carefully deposited on a chair, and the other holding the copper basin of fresh water for the Queen’s quick morning ablution. The maid put it on top of the sauteuse chest made of rose wood and carved beautifully. One of her daughters once told her that she swore the chest in her bedroom was alive and would jump on her bed at night to play with her.

One thought leading to another, she looked at her collection of stuffed toy, unconsciously counting them and checking if they were all in order. She had two cabinets made of rose wood especially for her “friends” as she used to call them. She had begun to buy them after she almost died giving birth so long ago. At first it was just a simple gift from the King. She first thought it to be a lion, but apparently it was one of those Asian dogs. The finish was crude, it had small beady eyes and the curly tail didn’t hold very long on its bottom, but she developed a liking for it. And after a few weeks, she felt it needed a friend, so she had a lion made as a companion for her asian dog.
Her ladies-in-waiting, began to bring her new ones, little dogs (she had a liking for them), zebras, fluffy cats and dwarf goats, she even had an owl and two rabbits, one white and one cerulean blue.

Her eyes almost missed the twin ferrets, offered to her by Saint Germain after a gambling party. He had said they would bring her luck. She didn’t really liked them, they were scrawny and heavy, certainly weighted with lead.

It was time to get up, she had her weekly Polish concert to organize. One of her small pleasures.

Maurana found it difficult to climb in the coach with her 6” Goochi platform shoes. Golden intricate patterns on a red velvet. The first time she saw them on Internet, she immediately thought of Dorothy. What couldn’t she do with these shoes, she had thought. Where couldn’t she go ? She hadn’t thought of time travel at the time. Now the when couldn’t she go question seemed to be part of the shoes. She sat on the narrow seat, the one in the back. Sitting in that dark little coach, knees almost touching her face, the proud drag armor began to melt away, letting appear the insecurity of a teenager through the cracks.
The teenager wondered for a moment if he had bumped his skull on the steel frame of the sewer and was dreaming, or maybe he was dead. He looked at his two friends, Consuela/Cedric was desperately trying to find the network with his phone, trying to reach his mother again. He was always trying to reach his mother when in doubt.
Terry was climbing in the coach, apparently still herself as a drag. She seemed to be quite comfortable.

“I can’t believe we’re going to meet the Queen”, she said with a thrill. She sat near Maurana, trying to make her false bum fit in the narrow seat. Her knees were also dangerously near her chin. “We’ll have to find new wigs and dresses, more suitable for the circumstances”, she said with glitter in her eyes. “I’m so glad we are in this adventure together, you, Consuela and meeeeeee!!” She kissed Maurana on the cheek and the lost Queen was back on her Goochies.

Sadie got back in and looked at her e-zapper for a few seconds. “Tell your friend to get in. We have company. The Russians have sent their own team to retrieve the ferrets.”

“Aaahahah…” Linda Paul ended her laugh abrutptly and looked fearsomely at the three newly dubbed Musqueerteers. “You thought the competition was over, girls ? It had only just begun.”

The girls swallowed in unison, all pouting disappeared from their young drag faces.

“Sadie Merrie will guide you through the Time Sewer Machine, and your next challenge will be to arrive clean and shiny at your destination. A broken nail… A lost eyelash”
The crowd of defeated queens and the other clients gaped as Linda Paul’s kept silent longer than necessary.
“And you’ll be out. Ahahah. Everybody here will watch you and follow your every moves for this mission. So remain dignified, you represent all the Queens of our time”

When Linda Paul had talked about the Time Sewer Machine, Maurana had silently hoped it was a typo for Time Sewing Machine. But her hope faded away like a crying widow make-up when she saw where Sadie Merry had led them.
They sadly left the buzz and cheer ups to go through a small door in the backstage of the club. It opened in a dark courtyard. It was already night outside, and a breeze made the young Queens shiver. No light. There was a black hole in the middle of the yard and they could smell what was inside before they could see it.
“Phew”, said Consuela, “It’s worse than inside Maurice’s pants”. It didn’t help relax nor clear the atmosphere.

They heard the noise of an engine starting and suddenly the lights went on. Maurana looked behind her back and saw Sadie Merry near an electricity board with blinking lights. Their was something shiny about her whole being. It looked like a protective extensible gloss suit fitting her sobre attire and her beehive wig perfectly. It didn’t seem to touch the clothes or the humongous wig, and yet it was moving graciously around.

Terry looked at the sewer. The content had begun to turn around and was soon turning fast enough to create a kind of vortex of garbage. “Where are our suits ..?” asked Terry with a hopeful smile, looking around. The older Queen’s gaze killed this hope in a squish.

“You have to shout your team slogan, girls”, Sadie said flatly.
“A slogan ?” asked the Musqueerteers. They looked at each others, and Consuela giggled.
“Wigs for all”, she tentatively offered.

Sadie Merry rolled her eyes and pushed them in the sewer which was now glowing purple. She could hear the crowd inside the club chanting “Wigs for all! Wigs for all!” She jumped in the trashole, wishing she hadn’t eaten barbecue pork chops before coming.

After leaving the parcel in the capable hands of the Post Office staff (and while she was there remembering to send a cute birthday card with kittens on it to her friend Trove and a note to Jove and Erove saying how nice it was to see them recently) Flove was ready for her next assignment.

She was stationed in Rotorua and although the exact nature of the assignment had not been explained to her she believed herself to be there in a journalistic capacity. She found herself standing in the ocean with a group of people, strangers, watching a game of rugby. The rugby game was also in the ocean. She had some brief interactions with her companions and had to move away from a rather unpleasant man who was annoying her. After the match, they all walked back to a small town — via the ocean. It was dark and Flove was initially hesitant because she was not a good swimmer, but she felt some security as her companions seemed composed about the journey. The ocean was not as deep as she had anticipated. Even though the water eventually came up to her shoulders, she found she was able to walk the whole distance. At one point she noticed the fins of a shark swim by in the inky darkness of the water, but she regarded it with childish delight, rather than fear.

flower synch! but her mind was dulled with tiredness and she could not explain, although they questioned her relentlessly.

“Just align with whatever path you are on… it is by far the easiest way” she whispered as she dropped off to sleep.

She woke to find herself on a path. It was dark and only the ground directly beneath her feet was visible. It was hard to move forward under these conditions and she desperately wanted to see more. She fought with the darkness until, eventually, she realised the darkness was an illusion. With that realisation she took hold of the darkness and it fell away in her hands revealing a stage.

The stage was bare, other than an old boot and a plain wooden chair. She sat on the chair and looked around.

“This is a bit gloomy” she said. “I want flowers”. And deep crimson wild sweet peas appeared. “I want lots of flowers! And I want blue sky and sunshine and a few fluffy white clouds and a gentle sun shower for me to dance in and a rainbow to fill the sky with wonder.” And as she wished, the bare stage was transformed to a landscape filled with a vibrant profusion of colour and life.

Was it a nightmare? It felt nightmarish, but why? How? What was the nightmare? Was she going mad, finally slipping, down down into the swarming fogs of fear? Making it up? A tormented sick April fool, a late fool, creeping around in the dark? She rubbed her ankles, cold as ice, achilles heels scorched from the lightning. Was she making it up? Lighting, like Victorian gas lamps, the flashing pinpoints on the grey neutral gridweave of perception, falling, falling, into the damp dripping mist. A howling beagle held tightly in the confines of a rigid box, surely she makes it up, but why? It doesn’t make sense, it’s too loose, she howls for the tight rigid box of perception, while the beagle howls to be released. Black drips, drips onto the stack of books, smelling of smoke, inky tar drip drip drip from the chimney pipe, it doesn’t make sense, there was no fire at all that night, where do the black inky drips come from? Is she making it all up, and if so, why? Behind the row of trees a voice calling, calling, the haggard face of a crone appears, offering the black and white puppy from behind the fence. Oh no, a black and white puppy, not black and white, no, she replied, no, no, averting her eyes from its innocent face. Layers of nightmares swirl in the river mist, and nothing makes sense. And it all makes sense, and she screams for the confines of the rigid box as the beagle howls for release.

meanwhile in South Africa, an alphabet slaughtering surge made landfall, scattering the inhabitants, celebrities and everyday heroes alike. Some suspected the elusive Wordblade

“Alliteration ascends the assonance of abseiling abstract aspects of anterior antiquities from ancient altars,
Bouldering down blocks of brooks that break the boring & bland borders of bondage,
And blinking through bleak and black boxes of brisk bravery.
Creeping into crops of crooked crocks with crotches of cockroaches cramming into cans of calamity, the crisp cat crackles the calling.
Dreaming of damning devils and demons dancing in droplets of dreary darkness drags the drunken diligence from the draught’s damnation,
Even the everlasting ethereal elves ebbed and eased into the effervescent eloquent estate of eternal elitism.

For the feeble and fumbling fatuous frontiers, the folly frolicked and fornicated with the familiar friend from foes’ fervent fevers;
Greater than gradient grand gestures of gestaltic granite grasses,
The gruesome grizzle grabbed the gore by the gripped grunting.
Higher than homelands of hands in horizons,
Heavens and Hells or Hades hazily hear the honing of the horses and horns-
In internal infernos of inflicting infringes of institutional insurrections Interrogations instigated imminent innate innovations.
Jacknives of jaundiced and jilted jokers jabbed at the jumping jingles of the jesting jackals that jet over jerseys of jeering,
For the Killer Krakens kelp the kites from kids who keep kaleidoscopes of kind and keen keepers.

Longer than languid lads that laze in lost latitudes the lieutenant lounged behind lines of lingering losses-
Maids mellowed around mazes of men and manners of mad moments and made for mates on mattresses on mothered matrimony.
Noisy & never-ending neckties on nests of nicked numbers never nominated the nurses that nosed the nuns for nuns’ nihilism
Beyond the Oligarchs of overt operations of obligating omnipotence ostracizing the omniscience & omitting its ownership to the omnipresent order.
Pilgrims to pentagons by people from poached & palpitated places of placards of propaganda pondered their positions in this power polarity
When quivering quills of quavering queens quelled the quarterly quests of the quaint quarrels.

Because roving rivers of raging ravines and raving reviews raced to the rest of the ripped rampant ravages and revelled at the rambling randomness
Structured subsiding and subsidized societies should string the strongholds of the supreme sultans of seeded senses.
Taking the trusty treaty the trussed toppled truants took the trickling ticking of time to the tables of trampled trees of timber,
For under the ubiquitous umbilical umbrellas of ultra-sounds from upper-level ulcers underground underworlds underestimated the union.

Vivid visions of voracious vampires of vexing vacuum vortexes vilified the vindicated vindictives from the violent vapid vanity
While wild & wily whiskers of whispered whisky whisked the wailing widows
From the wells of wanting when the wanton warriors walked on waters.
Yards of years of yearning the yesterday’s yonder yarns of yellow yolk yawned Into the youth’s yoked yams
For zigzags of zapped zebras to zip the zest in zealous zones.”

The pond was full of black tadpoles. The creatures were wriggling restlessly, following invisible currents, connecting dark stains packed with thousands of them. Benjamin Goat immersed a small plastic bottle into one of the biggest node, it sucked the little buggers like a fat syringe.
“Such a small container won’t reduce their population too much”, he thought. Indeed, he had always wondered why there were so many of them in the early stages and why you would see so few frogs or toads. The remaining tadpoles were beginning to gather around his hand. He repressed a shiver. A new idea for a movie just sprang up from his subconscious. Something to do with man-eater tadpoles. That would certainly hit the box office for months.
He smiled. There were enough of them in the bottle.

“Yuck!” said a fat pink lady before licking her strawberry ice cream.

“It’s for my son”, said Benjamin just before realizing he was justifying again. His psychiatrist had told him there was no need for justifying, it was like apologizing, and he needn’t apologize, he was the great Benjamin Goat after all. He snorted and mimicked drinking from his bottle. This time, she was disgusted. She made the mistake to hold her ice cream too far from herself and one of those Gib’s monkey with the pink ass stole it. She was shouting now, people would pay attention to her instead of him. People always pay attention to what’s more annoying.
Paradoxically, he felt a pang of jealousy. He was not used to let go of others’ attention.

His cell phone vibrated, three long vibrations and seven short ones. The code for his secret society. It was a great idea to put it in his last movie, unfortunately it hadn’t had the desired effect. People were so gullible that they would believe everything that came out in a fiction movie.
“The Jesuit is in the place”, said a vocoded voice. That was all. It could only mean one thing. It was all going according to the plan. He smiled and handed out the bottle to a kid. He wouldn’t need that after all.

The fresh breeze on her face awoke Aqua Luna. She struggled a moment to open her eyes, and realized that it was completely dark around her. The floor she was lying on was soft and spongy, and when she moved to sit the soil emitted a weak suction noise as if full of water. But it was dry, that she could tell after so many years of cleaning. And the smell on her finger was merely that of her familiar detergents.
She was feeling a bit numb and in a neutral mood. She couldn’t remember how she arrived here. She hesitated a moment and asked “Where am I ?” Her voice sounded muffled and distant to her.
“You’re on my ship,” an unknown male voice answered after a few seconds.
“Why is it so dark?”
“I didn’t want to frighten you.”
“Am I a prisoner ?” she asked, checking if she could feel something else past the numbness. “Are you going to torture me ?” she probed with no more success with her feelings.
“To the contrary, earthling, you are a very valuable person to us.”
She thought about her work. Maybe the Long Poonese mafia abducted her to extract some information.
It was so dark that colors and shapes were beginning to appear before her eyes.
“Did you drug me ?”
“It was a necessary precautionary measure for your own good. “

“Godfrey, I can’t help but wonder if all this imagined mayhem in my house (Mari Fe’s house, not Ed’s although Ed did choose some of Mari Fe’s furniture, when they were lovers in the past, as you know of course you old peanut) caused the electricity blackout lasting several hours last night.” mused Elizabeth. “I feel sure there is a connection, especially as the ten dogs all appeared (or not, as the case may be) to be wearing invisibility cloaks in the dark.”

Terry was a bit confused by all these blinks in and out. He needed some cheese and decided to focus the multronic stream of his TTI (Time Travel Implant) to a fridge in the region called Spain.

Unfortunately, the flux went right through a mousehole and he didn’t quite get to Spain. He was in a dark room. Noises were muffled here and there was no smell he could recognize. Before doing anything foolish, he turned on his night vision and everything appeared with cartoonish colours and enhanced black edges. It was the only one available when he borrowed it from Dr Frankenlaughner’s lab. You got used to it, eventually.

The room was still dark, but a cartoonish dark. That was mysterious. A squirking sound, like an amazonian squirrel, startled him. His curiosity was picked. He took a piece of what was left of his Marie biscuit and began to walk as silently as he could toward the squirrel sound.

Cornella had been enjoying the bamboo shoots until she found out about the dog leg broth they were cooked in. “Really, I can eat no more” she said unhappily, pushing away the bowl and glancing around the room. “What the devil is that?” she exclaimed as her eye fell on the tall dark mysterious cabinet. “Where did that come from?”

Lord and Lady Appleton glanced at each other. “I told you to be more careful, Jedward” whispered Mirabelle. “What’s that doing in here?”

“Oh, ha ha, why that’s just a little trinket I picked up in Long Poon, Cornella. It’s nothing, nothing at all.” Lord Appleton cleared his throat noisily. “Just an old cabinet, nothing really.”

“What’s inside?” asked Cornella, moving towards the dark wooden doors. “What an interesting insignia, it reminds me of something.”

“Don’t open it!” shreiked the Appletons. “It’s, er, full of dog legs.”

Cornella frowned, wondering why dog legs kept popping up.

“Guess it was about bloody time I got back here” Franlise said, her feather duster firmly clutched in her left hand.
The matronly black woman started dusting vigourously, sending myriads of half-written papers flying in the air.
“My draaafts!” Elizabeth shriek was lost in the gusts of winds.

“Bugger, bugger, bugger” the impromptu cleaning lady started to enunciate in a most perfect Queen’s English. “Nothing like some good buggery bugger to start the day and clear the lungs. And many a little makes a damn buggery mickle, isn’t that right darling?”. She said, striking a pilates pose in between the cleaning.

Elizabeth stood aghast, not knowing what to say but a meek “Didn’t I fire you?” to which Franlise knew better than to answer with nought but a smile.
Drawing a sharp letter opener from behind her back, she nimbly leaned toward Elizabeth, with all her white teeth glowing in the dark apartment where even the aspidistras had long gone dried up and wrinkled, their pots now no more than mere ashtrays.

“Well, now, what shall we do about all that spider cobwebs you’ve got yourself wrapped in…”

The entrances to Faerie (and indeed to other alternate realities and dimensions) had been shrouded in disbelief for several centuries, but times were changing and the fog of scepticism was dissipating, evaporating like river mist on a hot summer morning. Looking for the entrances deliberately, Blithe found, wasn’t the most efficacious method. Sat Nav alone would be unlikely to reveal them, unless the locating device was used in conjunction with impulse and intuition. Any device and method could be used effectively when combined with random impulse, even Google Earth or Google Moon. Blithe’s friend and colleage Dealea Flare was making good use of this device on her travels, using it as a personal non physical airline and space shuttle service. Dealea could get from A to B and back again in no time at all, or even from A to well beyond Z and back again in no time at all using this device in conjunction with impulse and large dose of intention and focus. Blithe had the impulse down pat but still had difficulty with the focus, which was largely a case of having too many intentions at once, most of them somewhat vague.

The more random and impulsive Blithe was, the better her investigations went, often leading her into a new and exciting exploration which may or may not be linked to the current intention. Such was the case when she went on a mundane shopping trip to the Rock of Gibber. As she sat sipping coffee at the Counterpart Cabana sidewalk cafe listening to the locals conversing in Gibberish, she noticed the extraordinary tangle of pipework on the building opposite. It reminded her of the steampunk world she had been investigating in her spare time. The text book steampunk world was intriguing to say the least, but rather grim, and tediously full of victims and fear. The inhabitants always seemed to be running away from someone. The steampunk world she was beginning to sense in Gibber was quite different in that it was a sunny cheerful alternate reality held together with a vast labyrinthine network of water pipes, scaffold, and connecting cables.

Blithe paid for her coffee and strolled off, noticing more and more scaffolding and tangles of pipes as she climbed the warren of narrow winding streets. The air was different the higher she climbed up the winding uneven steps, the sunlight was sharper and the shadows denser, and there was a crackling kind of hush as if the air was shimmering. Cables festooned the crumbling shuttered buildings like cobwebs, and centuries of layers of crackled sun faded pastel paint coated the closed doors. Open doors revealed dark passageways and alleys with bright rectangles of light glowing in the distance, and golden dry weeds sprouted from vents and windowsills casting dancing shadows on the uneven walls.

The usual signs of life were strangely absent and present at the same time; an occasional voice was heard from inside one of the houses, and there were pots of flowers growing here and there, indicating that a human hand had watered them with water from the pipe network. There was no music to be heard though, or any indication that the cable network was in use, and there were virtually no people on the streets. A lady in a brilliant blue dress who was climbing the steps from Gibber Town below paused to chat, agreeing with Blithe who remarked on the peaceful beauty of the place. The lady in blue said “Si, it’s very nice, but there are many steps, so many steps. If you are coming from below there are SO many steps!”

There was a boy watching a white dog watching an empty space on the pavement, so Blithe stopped to watch the boy watching the dog watching nothing. Eventually Blithe inquired “What is he looking at?” and the boy shrugged and continued to watch the dog watching nothing. Blithe watched for a little while, and then wandered off. A small child was giggling from inside a doorway, and a mothers voice asked what he was laughing at. The child was looking out of the door at nothing as far as Blithe could see.

As the sun climbed higher, Blithe began to descend into Gibber town, winding and weaving through the alleys, wondering how she had failed to notice this place half way up the Rock until now. She came to a crumbling wall with a doorway in it that looked out over the bay beyond the town below. This must be one of the entrances, she deduced, to this alternate world in Gibber. “Entrance”! Blithe had a revelation. “I never noticed that the word ENtrance and enTRANCE are spelled the same.” Later, back at the office, Frolic Caper-Belle said she thought it was probably a very significant clue. “I’ll file that in the Clue Box, Blithe”, she said.

{link: entrance}