(Story begins here.)
It was roughly two months in that I was the official master of M--- Manor that I first saw Elizabeth. It was late at night, roughly ten or eleven o'clock, it was hard to tell what the exact time was. I believe it was a full moon out; I should probably check on the almanac to confirm it by the next entry. I was asleep in the bedroom on the second floor, one of three bedrooms situated on the same floor. It was a rather isolated bedroom in comparison to the other two which were next to each other and on the other side. I remembered being rather exhausted that night, for I had spent the day meeting with a group of count officials who thought it most improper to have not meet the new master of M--- Manor, despite my protestations that it was more appropriate for me to pay them a visit, considering that I was the newcomer and that they were county officials and therefore the more distinguished. They dismissed my protestations and claimed that it was not as improper as I thought it was, and that it was time to keep up with the times, where one could easily go about visiting others should the urge arise, without having to pay excessive attention to the whole courtesy involved in the propriety of it all; after all, everyone belonged to the same county and are therefore neighbours, and in the notion of neighbourliness, there was no such thing as the superiod and the inferior. There were a good many discussions during the day, particularly on issues regarding taxation, land holdings and a whole myriad of minutae that I will not even bother to go into detail here. Suffice to say, it had been a long day, I was exhausted, and I was glad that I could finally get to bed.
As I lay there and slowly slipping into sleep, I woke up with a start from the distinct sound of a flute playing. It was a curious thing, that flute sound. The tune had a wistful feel to it, sombre, depressing. I did not remember anyone playing the flute in the household. There was me, and I do not play the flute. The houskeeper, Mr Higgins, did not play the flute either. I have met Mrs Higgins, the housekeeper's wife, and she did not play the flute as well. I was curious at what was going on, and made my way out to the corridor balcony that overlooked the main hall, where the grand stairs were located. Even from my position immediately outside of the bedroom, I could see quickly that there was someone in white at the bottom of the grand stairs, playing on the flute. There were some hints of long hair which suggested that its owner was female. I made my way towards the grand stairs and asked who she was and what she was doing playing the flute in the middle of the night at the manor where I was not expecting any visitors. She put aside her flute and looked up the stairs towards me and apologised profusely. She claimed that she was Elizabeth.
Elizabeth looked nothing like any ordinary woman. She had soft features, almost like nobility or at least a Lady of some peerage, which, when framed by her long hair, seemed to be contrasted in a way that was very appealing. I had wanted to strike a conversation with her when I casually glanced at her legs while following the outline of her white frock and realised that I could not see any actual feet touching the ground. It was at this point that she exhorted me to not run away after saying that I had discovered her secret. She proceeded to call me by name, and started telling me things like how I was the person she was waiting for all her life, making me promise to meet up with her whenever she appeared. Then, as mysteriously as she came, she left, this time ``walking'' towards a door at the bottom of the grand stairs. Seeing nothing else amiss, I went back to bed and tried to sleep off the whole matter.
(Story continues here.)
Saturday, 31 May 2014
Friday, 30 May 2014
Untitled
The army of students marched on, waving their placards and shouting slogans, the entire width of the road taken up by their number. A protest of epic proportions---some had estimated that no less than three hundred thousand students were assembled from the far corners of the kingdom to protest against the coup d'état against the puppet government. They demanded that the democratic process be returned to them, and that the army stand down from their unconstitutional ways.
The military leadership was silent on the matter. Ever since they forcefully removed the government from the parliament house, there was no word from them when the democratic process would be normalised. There were rumours that many of the representatives in parliament were pre-emptively thrown into military prisons by the military police as a means of enforcing the martial law. No one knew what to trust.
The students knew what they wanted. They wanted due process to be returned. It started as a small movement, but when government was overtaken by the military, the small movement ballooned into a full-scale national-level issue. Many were inspired by their parents' actions back in the day, when a similar military coup was demonstrated against by them to force the rebuild of the second constitutional monarchy. But this time, there was more at stake.
The battle for their country. The battle for their freedom against the tyranny of the over-powerful military.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 31-May-2014 18:43:53)
The military leadership was silent on the matter. Ever since they forcefully removed the government from the parliament house, there was no word from them when the democratic process would be normalised. There were rumours that many of the representatives in parliament were pre-emptively thrown into military prisons by the military police as a means of enforcing the martial law. No one knew what to trust.
The students knew what they wanted. They wanted due process to be returned. It started as a small movement, but when government was overtaken by the military, the small movement ballooned into a full-scale national-level issue. Many were inspired by their parents' actions back in the day, when a similar military coup was demonstrated against by them to force the rebuild of the second constitutional monarchy. But this time, there was more at stake.
The battle for their country. The battle for their freedom against the tyranny of the over-powerful military.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 31-May-2014 18:43:53)
Thursday, 29 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part XII
(Story begins here.)
Journal the Fifth of Reginald Archibald, Master of M--- Manor
Day 3
I have decided to start on the fifth book of my journal just so that I can easily document the issues and findings that I have discovered with respect to the affair involving Elizabeth, a curious apparition that seems to have manifested herself to me just two nights ago. The only reason why this journal exists is to, in all essence, provide my own rather meagre findings to complement the other discoveries, thoughts and opinions that the other masters of M--- Manor have observed and annotated in their own journals. I have, at this point, discovered that prior to my taking over of M--- Manor, there had been, at last count, nearly twenty-five other such masters of this place. I am of the opinion that most of them may have seen Elizabeth, but I have not had the time to verify anything as at now. It seems though, based on what I have read thus far from my immediate predecessor, that the actual dates of the occurrences of Elizabeth matter little; some masters have seen Elizabeth in the dead of Winter, others in Summer, and there were a few more distributed seemingly randomly between Spring and Autumn. The key commonalities, if it can so be called in the various descriptions of the observations \&c.\ thus highlighted, lies in which the relative number of days have occurred between the very first sighting to the day of any particular sighting. Thus, it is likely that in one case, a second sighting occurs on the fourth night, followed by the eighth, and in another, the second occurs on the fifth followed by the tenth \&c. I have not managed to discover the underlying governing relationship among these time periods, but such patterns have a consistent enough behaviour that the previous masters have made such annotations on their own from which, of course, I draw a summary of information from.
While it may seem odd to begin with the third day instead of the first, it is wise to note that I have only managed to decide to begin a fresh journal, my fifth, only because I have discovered, on the second day, that the library consists of journals of the previous masters who had also documented similar observations as had I. The one curious thing that seemed to have happened lies in the discovery of a rather odd looking piece of card, ivory in colour, with handwritten lines on it using a rather neat cursive whose style I cannot quite put my finger on. The contents, as I reproduce here, are the following:
``Beware of Elizabeth! The housekeeper lies. Search not for details on her. The truth will imprison you. You are forewarned.''
The premonitionary nature of this card is one that cannot be easily dismissed. It is also of a curious nature to have discovered that this card fell out of the journal of the last master of this manor, the very first journal that I have decided to read. Thinking that this card was merely of a recent vintage, I boldly disregarded its warning and decided that, in the pursuit of truth, I cannot afford to follow its exhortations thusly. Moreover, that the card was there was of a rather suspicious nature, and I had initially thought of it as being of foul play, from which the housekeeper, a Mr Higgins, was the primary suspect. I was rather surprised to find, upon reading the journal of the last master, that the same card, or at least, a card of a similar nature as the one that I hereby enclose in my journal for safekeeping, had also fallen out of the journal that he had read during his time.
Of the nature of the journal though, I have to say with great regret at this moment, that I had not read it through to its final conclusion. I had only begun to scratch the surface through the first few major entries before I was called away for various social obligations. I humbly beseech anyone who reads my journal and finding that I had failed in resolving the Elizabeth affair to pick up the previous master's journal to complement the information that he has learnt from what I had observed personally, for it makes little sense to replicate what is already in easy access for reference.
I shall now recount the first sighting of Elizabeth.
(Story continues here.)
Journal the Fifth of Reginald Archibald, Master of M--- Manor
Day 3
I have decided to start on the fifth book of my journal just so that I can easily document the issues and findings that I have discovered with respect to the affair involving Elizabeth, a curious apparition that seems to have manifested herself to me just two nights ago. The only reason why this journal exists is to, in all essence, provide my own rather meagre findings to complement the other discoveries, thoughts and opinions that the other masters of M--- Manor have observed and annotated in their own journals. I have, at this point, discovered that prior to my taking over of M--- Manor, there had been, at last count, nearly twenty-five other such masters of this place. I am of the opinion that most of them may have seen Elizabeth, but I have not had the time to verify anything as at now. It seems though, based on what I have read thus far from my immediate predecessor, that the actual dates of the occurrences of Elizabeth matter little; some masters have seen Elizabeth in the dead of Winter, others in Summer, and there were a few more distributed seemingly randomly between Spring and Autumn. The key commonalities, if it can so be called in the various descriptions of the observations \&c.\ thus highlighted, lies in which the relative number of days have occurred between the very first sighting to the day of any particular sighting. Thus, it is likely that in one case, a second sighting occurs on the fourth night, followed by the eighth, and in another, the second occurs on the fifth followed by the tenth \&c. I have not managed to discover the underlying governing relationship among these time periods, but such patterns have a consistent enough behaviour that the previous masters have made such annotations on their own from which, of course, I draw a summary of information from.
While it may seem odd to begin with the third day instead of the first, it is wise to note that I have only managed to decide to begin a fresh journal, my fifth, only because I have discovered, on the second day, that the library consists of journals of the previous masters who had also documented similar observations as had I. The one curious thing that seemed to have happened lies in the discovery of a rather odd looking piece of card, ivory in colour, with handwritten lines on it using a rather neat cursive whose style I cannot quite put my finger on. The contents, as I reproduce here, are the following:
``Beware of Elizabeth! The housekeeper lies. Search not for details on her. The truth will imprison you. You are forewarned.''
The premonitionary nature of this card is one that cannot be easily dismissed. It is also of a curious nature to have discovered that this card fell out of the journal of the last master of this manor, the very first journal that I have decided to read. Thinking that this card was merely of a recent vintage, I boldly disregarded its warning and decided that, in the pursuit of truth, I cannot afford to follow its exhortations thusly. Moreover, that the card was there was of a rather suspicious nature, and I had initially thought of it as being of foul play, from which the housekeeper, a Mr Higgins, was the primary suspect. I was rather surprised to find, upon reading the journal of the last master, that the same card, or at least, a card of a similar nature as the one that I hereby enclose in my journal for safekeeping, had also fallen out of the journal that he had read during his time.
Of the nature of the journal though, I have to say with great regret at this moment, that I had not read it through to its final conclusion. I had only begun to scratch the surface through the first few major entries before I was called away for various social obligations. I humbly beseech anyone who reads my journal and finding that I had failed in resolving the Elizabeth affair to pick up the previous master's journal to complement the information that he has learnt from what I had observed personally, for it makes little sense to replicate what is already in easy access for reference.
I shall now recount the first sighting of Elizabeth.
(Story continues here.)
Wednesday, 28 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part XI
(Story begins here.)
Anton decided to press on, to find what he thought was going to be the truth. If he managed to find it, it would be great, and if he died trying, at least there were no regrets. It wasn't the case that Anton wanted to be a martyr of some sort; the manor itself was sufficiently obscure that even he didn't know anything about it until the trustees contacted him and informed him that he was the new master. In fact, the whole affair sounded so suspiciously strange that at first blush, he didn't want to accept the position. But after being persuaded again and again, he relented, and now the whole Elizabeth affair was starting to stare him down like a decision made wrong.
He wanted to right that decision. It was a matter of principle.
If the housekeeper (or family for that matter) had anything to do with it, he wanted justice to be served. Years of declaring homicides as suicides was morally reprehensible no matter how he looked at it. He blamed himself a little for his need for having a morally upright attitude to things, but in his heart he knew that doing the right thing was always the right way to proceed, no matter how costly it may end up. Besides, at this point, it was still his life on the line, and if he succeeded, he would have won back something that was priceless. There was nothing else that could beat that, no matter how one tried.
Anton looked at the desk clock and realised that he had already used up an hour of time making his decision. Lunch was coming up soon, and there was a high chance that Mr Higgins would drop by the study to summon him for his meal in the dining room. This meant that there was also a good chance of the housekeeper realising what it was that he was doing and therefore get all suspicious and might even potentially bring forward whatever nefarious programme he had due to the perception of a running out of time. That was clearly a situation that Anton didn't want happen. An idea suddenly dawned upon him---to use another book as a cover. He walked over to the religion section of the library and selected a beautifully bound version of the King James' Edition of the Holy Bible and laid it atop the empire desk and sat back down on the high-backed chair. He opened up the bible to somewhere near the centre pages, and opened up the journal, placing the latter immediately below the former so as to be covered easily by the much thicker book in front of it.
His primitive cover set up, Anton proceeded to read the journal.
(Story continues here.)
Anton decided to press on, to find what he thought was going to be the truth. If he managed to find it, it would be great, and if he died trying, at least there were no regrets. It wasn't the case that Anton wanted to be a martyr of some sort; the manor itself was sufficiently obscure that even he didn't know anything about it until the trustees contacted him and informed him that he was the new master. In fact, the whole affair sounded so suspiciously strange that at first blush, he didn't want to accept the position. But after being persuaded again and again, he relented, and now the whole Elizabeth affair was starting to stare him down like a decision made wrong.
He wanted to right that decision. It was a matter of principle.
If the housekeeper (or family for that matter) had anything to do with it, he wanted justice to be served. Years of declaring homicides as suicides was morally reprehensible no matter how he looked at it. He blamed himself a little for his need for having a morally upright attitude to things, but in his heart he knew that doing the right thing was always the right way to proceed, no matter how costly it may end up. Besides, at this point, it was still his life on the line, and if he succeeded, he would have won back something that was priceless. There was nothing else that could beat that, no matter how one tried.
Anton looked at the desk clock and realised that he had already used up an hour of time making his decision. Lunch was coming up soon, and there was a high chance that Mr Higgins would drop by the study to summon him for his meal in the dining room. This meant that there was also a good chance of the housekeeper realising what it was that he was doing and therefore get all suspicious and might even potentially bring forward whatever nefarious programme he had due to the perception of a running out of time. That was clearly a situation that Anton didn't want happen. An idea suddenly dawned upon him---to use another book as a cover. He walked over to the religion section of the library and selected a beautifully bound version of the King James' Edition of the Holy Bible and laid it atop the empire desk and sat back down on the high-backed chair. He opened up the bible to somewhere near the centre pages, and opened up the journal, placing the latter immediately below the former so as to be covered easily by the much thicker book in front of it.
His primitive cover set up, Anton proceeded to read the journal.
(Story continues here.)
Tuesday, 27 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part X
(Story begins here.)
Anton looked at the card that fell in amazement. It wasn't actually something that he was expecting, but it did seem to support his theory that the journals were out of order because some searching had been done on them, otherwise why would there be such an out-of-place object among the antiquated-looking journals? Anton slowly squatted down and picked up the card with his free hand. The card itself felt rough, like it was cheap stationery, unlike any of the much more elegant papers and cards that were available in the study itself. The side that Anton was looking at was plain, not quite white, but more ivory in colour. He wasn't sure if the slight even yellowing of the card was due to age or due to the material in which it was made of, but it wasn't that important. He impatiently flipped the card over.
There were two lines written in neat cursive on the new side that was revealed to Anton using a fountain pen. It was impossible to say who had written it for sure as it wasn't dated in any way, but the words that were on it sent a chill down Anton's spine.
``Beware of Elizabeth! The housekeeper lies. Search not for details on her. The truth will imprison you. You are forewarned.''
Anton stared blankly at the two lines on the card, dumbfounded, the ominous words ringing throughout his mind like a resonance. Was this meant to be a joke? Could it be something that Mr Higgins and his father alike have set up to hide some kind of deep secret, or was it something even more sinister? Why was the note so insistent in tone about forgetting about the matter while simultaneously asking one to be wary of Elizabeth? How would the truth imprison one? Who WAS Elizabeth?
Anton slowly stood up, one hand holding on to the journal, the other holding on to the card. He walked quietly to the empire desk and set both down as he dropped himself into the high-backed chair, slumping. He was at a dilemma. It was clear now that the card confirmed his theory, that the other masters before him had gone roughly the same route as he had thus far. That the journals were kept out of order meant that each new master had probably gone a little further than the previous one had, and each had tried to leave behind some kind of sign for his successor that something was amiss, and to warn the unknown successor of the folly that had befallen them when they dismissed all the warnings and wandered down the same path, which suggested that he ought to abandon his quest there and then. Yet somehow it seemed like he had a slightly better chance than his predecessors at figuring out the problem of Elizabeth and more importantly, learn of ways to escape from her grasp, whoever she may be, given that he now had the combine knowledge of all his predecessors, which meant that he could possibly solve the mystery once and for all, thus prompting him to redouble his efforts.
The two competing ideas bounced about in Anton's head for roughly an hour before he made his decision.
(Story continues here.)
Anton looked at the card that fell in amazement. It wasn't actually something that he was expecting, but it did seem to support his theory that the journals were out of order because some searching had been done on them, otherwise why would there be such an out-of-place object among the antiquated-looking journals? Anton slowly squatted down and picked up the card with his free hand. The card itself felt rough, like it was cheap stationery, unlike any of the much more elegant papers and cards that were available in the study itself. The side that Anton was looking at was plain, not quite white, but more ivory in colour. He wasn't sure if the slight even yellowing of the card was due to age or due to the material in which it was made of, but it wasn't that important. He impatiently flipped the card over.
There were two lines written in neat cursive on the new side that was revealed to Anton using a fountain pen. It was impossible to say who had written it for sure as it wasn't dated in any way, but the words that were on it sent a chill down Anton's spine.
``Beware of Elizabeth! The housekeeper lies. Search not for details on her. The truth will imprison you. You are forewarned.''
Anton stared blankly at the two lines on the card, dumbfounded, the ominous words ringing throughout his mind like a resonance. Was this meant to be a joke? Could it be something that Mr Higgins and his father alike have set up to hide some kind of deep secret, or was it something even more sinister? Why was the note so insistent in tone about forgetting about the matter while simultaneously asking one to be wary of Elizabeth? How would the truth imprison one? Who WAS Elizabeth?
Anton slowly stood up, one hand holding on to the journal, the other holding on to the card. He walked quietly to the empire desk and set both down as he dropped himself into the high-backed chair, slumping. He was at a dilemma. It was clear now that the card confirmed his theory, that the other masters before him had gone roughly the same route as he had thus far. That the journals were kept out of order meant that each new master had probably gone a little further than the previous one had, and each had tried to leave behind some kind of sign for his successor that something was amiss, and to warn the unknown successor of the folly that had befallen them when they dismissed all the warnings and wandered down the same path, which suggested that he ought to abandon his quest there and then. Yet somehow it seemed like he had a slightly better chance than his predecessors at figuring out the problem of Elizabeth and more importantly, learn of ways to escape from her grasp, whoever she may be, given that he now had the combine knowledge of all his predecessors, which meant that he could possibly solve the mystery once and for all, thus prompting him to redouble his efforts.
The two competing ideas bounced about in Anton's head for roughly an hour before he made his decision.
(Story continues here.)
Monday, 26 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part IX
(Story begins here.)
The study was built in a similar manner as the rest of the house, except that it was significantly more stylish. No expenses were spared in furnishing the room. The curtains were of the most luxurious velvet, while the walls were covered with pastel wallpapers that helped in projecting an aura of warmth in the room. The large windows opened out to the expansive back yard, and before it was a large mahogany empire desk, ornately carved and beautifully lacquered in the deepest of brown. Behind it, with its back to the windows was a leather high-backed chair whose colour and sheen matchedthat of the empire desk perfectly, giving the illusion that the two came as a set when they weren't. Below the desk was a large Persian rug that a previous master of the manor had brought back from Cairo whilst travelling in the middle east among the Arabs on business. The textile was intricately woven and soft to the touch, keeping the ground warm during the cold nights and cool during the warm days. It was said that the rug (it was more like a carpet than a rug) had been in the study for the past fifty years, but its colours were still vibrant, though with an aged quality that made it look dignified than worn. Nearer the door were two easy sitting chairs imported from Malaya, their rattan frames betraying their origins.
But these were nothing compared to the main attraction of the study, that is, the books themselves. On all the four walls that bordered the study, they were lined with bookshelves that spanned from floor to ceiling, and on them, rows upon rows of books of all forms of subject matter. Anton had spent some time in the study before, and during one of those times, the housekeeper had pointed out the main sorting criteria for the layout of the bookshelves, remarking that the library of books reflected upon the eclectic taste of many generations of masters of the manor. He had also reflected that not all masters had contributed their own tastes to the library, but even the least literary-inclined had added a book or two to the collection. Among those included some journals and diaries, the very things that Anton was most interested to dive into at this point.
Anton closed the door to the study behind him carefully and looked about him to take his bearings. It wasn't his first time in the study, but its sheer density of information still needed some time for orientation before anything useful could be gleaned. He figured out where the journal section was and made his way there. The journal section of the library spanned three shelves of a single bookshelf, and he groaned at the amount of reading he would have to do just to isolate the useful information. He paused for a moment to consider the best way to go about searching through the trove of information before deciding on working his way from the most recent master's journal back. It was probably more likely to contain information about Elizabeth that he can use anyway due to its close proximity in time. Anton thumbed through the spines of the journals which mercifully had their author's name and time period embossed in it, possibly after the journal was completed. The ordering wasn't quite in chronological order---there were signs that the journals had been searched through before and replaced possibly in a semi-haphazard manner. Anton's suspicions were confirmed when he found the journal of the last master and retrieved the volume.
A small white card fell off the volume and landed in front of Anton.
(Story continues here.)
The study was built in a similar manner as the rest of the house, except that it was significantly more stylish. No expenses were spared in furnishing the room. The curtains were of the most luxurious velvet, while the walls were covered with pastel wallpapers that helped in projecting an aura of warmth in the room. The large windows opened out to the expansive back yard, and before it was a large mahogany empire desk, ornately carved and beautifully lacquered in the deepest of brown. Behind it, with its back to the windows was a leather high-backed chair whose colour and sheen matchedthat of the empire desk perfectly, giving the illusion that the two came as a set when they weren't. Below the desk was a large Persian rug that a previous master of the manor had brought back from Cairo whilst travelling in the middle east among the Arabs on business. The textile was intricately woven and soft to the touch, keeping the ground warm during the cold nights and cool during the warm days. It was said that the rug (it was more like a carpet than a rug) had been in the study for the past fifty years, but its colours were still vibrant, though with an aged quality that made it look dignified than worn. Nearer the door were two easy sitting chairs imported from Malaya, their rattan frames betraying their origins.
But these were nothing compared to the main attraction of the study, that is, the books themselves. On all the four walls that bordered the study, they were lined with bookshelves that spanned from floor to ceiling, and on them, rows upon rows of books of all forms of subject matter. Anton had spent some time in the study before, and during one of those times, the housekeeper had pointed out the main sorting criteria for the layout of the bookshelves, remarking that the library of books reflected upon the eclectic taste of many generations of masters of the manor. He had also reflected that not all masters had contributed their own tastes to the library, but even the least literary-inclined had added a book or two to the collection. Among those included some journals and diaries, the very things that Anton was most interested to dive into at this point.
Anton closed the door to the study behind him carefully and looked about him to take his bearings. It wasn't his first time in the study, but its sheer density of information still needed some time for orientation before anything useful could be gleaned. He figured out where the journal section was and made his way there. The journal section of the library spanned three shelves of a single bookshelf, and he groaned at the amount of reading he would have to do just to isolate the useful information. He paused for a moment to consider the best way to go about searching through the trove of information before deciding on working his way from the most recent master's journal back. It was probably more likely to contain information about Elizabeth that he can use anyway due to its close proximity in time. Anton thumbed through the spines of the journals which mercifully had their author's name and time period embossed in it, possibly after the journal was completed. The ordering wasn't quite in chronological order---there were signs that the journals had been searched through before and replaced possibly in a semi-haphazard manner. Anton's suspicions were confirmed when he found the journal of the last master and retrieved the volume.
A small white card fell off the volume and landed in front of Anton.
(Story continues here.)
Sunday, 25 May 2014
Island in the River
As the day went by, Tom started to feel restless. He felt stupid. It was one thing to be out kayaking and landing on an island in the middle of the river, but it was another to somehow run the fibre-glass kayak aground, shattering bits of its keel, making it completely unseaworthy. A simple day trip was fast becoming more of a hassle than anything else.
Tom lamented. He had inspected the kayak before, and it was all fine and what-not, good for the sea. And he was no amateur either, having hundreds of kayaking trips prior to this one all over the place. Yet he managed to screw this one up bad. He blamed it on not scouting the island well enough---he might have discovered that the shore was lined with ridiculously sharp rock, as opposed to the sandy-type shores that he was expecting given what he had seen.
He sat there on the shore, looking across the river. The river was around two hundred metres wide, and the island was roughly in the middle of it all. Swimming back to shore was out of the question due to the strong underwater currents---he felt that when he was making his way over. There was no cellphone reception, and he didn't really bring anything more than a day pack, which meant that he had nothing that was usable for camping. Luckily it was summer time, and therefore the nights wouldn't be so bad. Food wasn't an issue because he brought along some dry rations that could last him a while.
His only hope was that Frieda would realise that he hadn't gotten back yet after she returned from her visit to her parents' place. He had sent her a text message telling her about his trip to the island for exploration and gave an estimated time of arrival back at the house, and he was hoping that when she returned, she would realise that he wasn't back yet and get all panicky and contact the right people to get help out to him.
Then he remembered that she had replied that she wouldn't be back till after the weekend. So much for a quick rescue.
Tom sighed. Things weren't going as well as he could. The rations wouldn't last, and the lack of water was going to be a problem. It wasn't that the river was salty, but that it was unfiltered. He'd rather take his chances at dehydration than to chug the river water and be down with some kind of massive diarrhoea problem from poisoning.
Tom stood up, resolute. Help wasn't going to reach him in time, and already it was getting into the late part of the afternoon, which meant that he had no more than three hours of daylight left. He had to patch the kayak somehow. At least the rest of the structure was doing okay, except for the shattered hole at the keel where water would definitely leak through. He started scouring the island for something to patch the hole with and to bail out any excess water. He knew that he wasn't going to make it off the island that evening, but he wanted to make sure that he had a chance of escape the next day when the sun rose once again.
For once, he was thankful that summer had the shortest nights in the whole year.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 2014-05-26 18:01:24)
Tom lamented. He had inspected the kayak before, and it was all fine and what-not, good for the sea. And he was no amateur either, having hundreds of kayaking trips prior to this one all over the place. Yet he managed to screw this one up bad. He blamed it on not scouting the island well enough---he might have discovered that the shore was lined with ridiculously sharp rock, as opposed to the sandy-type shores that he was expecting given what he had seen.
He sat there on the shore, looking across the river. The river was around two hundred metres wide, and the island was roughly in the middle of it all. Swimming back to shore was out of the question due to the strong underwater currents---he felt that when he was making his way over. There was no cellphone reception, and he didn't really bring anything more than a day pack, which meant that he had nothing that was usable for camping. Luckily it was summer time, and therefore the nights wouldn't be so bad. Food wasn't an issue because he brought along some dry rations that could last him a while.
His only hope was that Frieda would realise that he hadn't gotten back yet after she returned from her visit to her parents' place. He had sent her a text message telling her about his trip to the island for exploration and gave an estimated time of arrival back at the house, and he was hoping that when she returned, she would realise that he wasn't back yet and get all panicky and contact the right people to get help out to him.
Then he remembered that she had replied that she wouldn't be back till after the weekend. So much for a quick rescue.
Tom sighed. Things weren't going as well as he could. The rations wouldn't last, and the lack of water was going to be a problem. It wasn't that the river was salty, but that it was unfiltered. He'd rather take his chances at dehydration than to chug the river water and be down with some kind of massive diarrhoea problem from poisoning.
Tom stood up, resolute. Help wasn't going to reach him in time, and already it was getting into the late part of the afternoon, which meant that he had no more than three hours of daylight left. He had to patch the kayak somehow. At least the rest of the structure was doing okay, except for the shattered hole at the keel where water would definitely leak through. He started scouring the island for something to patch the hole with and to bail out any excess water. He knew that he wasn't going to make it off the island that evening, but he wanted to make sure that he had a chance of escape the next day when the sun rose once again.
For once, he was thankful that summer had the shortest nights in the whole year.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 2014-05-26 18:01:24)
Saturday, 24 May 2014
The Hell...
I rolled out of bed as the sunlight streamed through the thin curtains, my head throbbing uncontrollably. I couldn't remember how exactly I got back to home---that part was somewhat hazy in my mind and frankly, I didn't really give a damn if I could remember it or not.
I wished I were dead.
Stting on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands, that was all I could remember. Wishing that I were dead. I didn't exactly have a death wish in a voluntary sense of the word, but things were so fucked up by this point that there was no reason to not just kill myself and end it all. I mentally ran through the whole series of fuck ups. First there was Aileen. We were to be married in two month's time, but somehow she managed to get herself pregnant, and I wasn't the father. She made a whole big fuss of ``keeping herself for the night of her marriage'' and somehow got herself knocked up. She told me that last night when I was going out with her, which promptly made me leave her in anger and head to the bar for a night of straight drinking. Then there was work. My boss was getting more and more psychotic, what with all the impossible deadlines and the crazy requirements. And the abuse. Verbal abuse. Always shouting at me and telling me that I'm some kind of loser who should've been fired to be replaced by one of the many hundred cheaper foreign talents. His mismanagement somehow became my incompetence. Finally there was that ongoing libel case from that public figure. I wasn't really gunning for her reputation, but was just trying to highlight some points on the policies that she was making. But somehow, either she or some faceless drone decided to take offence at what I wrote and slammed me with a rather expensive letter of writ demanding all kinds of impossible things.
My headache started to throb even stronger, and I tried to massage my temples in a bid to assauge it. The sunlight grew stronger, and through my squinted eyes, I stared at my alarm clock. Noon. No wonder it felt so discomforting. I stood up decisively and stepped into the shower, and cranked faucet up to its maximum. A torrent of near-freezing water emerged from the narrow shower head and slammed itself upon the crown of my head before following the contours and washing over my torso and parts beyond. The cold shocked my headache away temporarily, and I was instantly awake and alert. It did nothing to improve my outlook though---everything was as bleak as before. As I washed myself under the shower with the soap and shampoo, I kept on brooding on the three big problems that I had been facing, the hangover-induced migraine forgotten. I had to give a call to my lawyer regarding that libel case; we had to negotiate with her to reduce the amount of damages and what-not because it was just too much to be borne to be considered fair, considering that I didn't even single her out deliberately and explicitly. As for the psychotic boss, I had no idea on what to do about him. The only good thing was that it was the weekend and so I didn't have to spend the day looking and working with him, if that could be call working. And Aileen. My heart ached for a moment when I thought of her, but my reawakened rational side stepped in and shouted at myself to get a grip and realise that she was a lost cause. The wedding had to be cancelled. There was no way that such a level of cheating could be tolerated, no matter how deep and important our relationship was. It was clear that she didn't really treat the time we had with the kind of respect and care that I did, and so I was fully justified in calling off the wedding. There would be hell to pay though, since we've already made down payments on the reservations for the banquet, sent out the invitations, and all the other myriad of things that comes with a wedding preparation. And the parents and in-laws. My parents would probably begrudgingly understand, but the in-laws (or was it near-in-laws?) would be a tougher nut to crack. To them, she had always been the purest of all the divine virgins, and had never really accepted that I would be a good husband to her. Now that the marriage was going to be cancelled, they were sure to exploit it and cause a bloody ruckus. And since I had a twenty-four-hour lag behind her, she was likely to reach them first and give a sob-story version of how I was abandoning her and leave me to attempt to tell the full story under a case of heavy bias. I cursed Aileen under my breath for this unnecessary mess as I turned off the shower and dried myself before stepping out to get dressed.
I got to the living room and checked out the answering machine. There were twenty-five new messages on it. I knew I was living in the modern world, and that everyone had cellphones and what not, but I just preferred a landline. Call it nostalgia, or call it paranoia of always needing the ability to call out for help should the need arises, but the landline was second conduit to the world, the first beign the internet. I pressed the ``play messages'' button on the answering machine and went to the small kitchenette to make some light breakfast of instant noodles. I wasn't a fan of instant nnoodles, but it was the fastest thing that one could lay one's hands on that doesn't take more than ten minutes to prepare. And I knew that I didn't have that much time, if the answering machine was to be believed. As expected, the first few messages were from last night after I had left Aileen, where she called repeatedly to seek forgiveness and wanting me to take her back. Those turned quickly into the words of a raving lunatic who was threatening to take away what little I had, and to break me as a person for calling off the wedding after all she had done for me. Each such message delivered was just yet another piece of evidence to prove to me that ditching her was the best option. I had gone out with Aileen for nearly five years, and nothing seemed to tell me much about her except for that fateful moment and these messages. I suddenly felt vindicated for saying the words I did to her.
The last two messages came on as I was preparing to pour out the cooked instant noodles into the ceramic bowl that I had set on the table in the living room. They were from earlier that morning and from the lawyer, Mr Davison, who was representing me on the cases involving that libel lawsuit. He said to contact him as soon as possible---there were new developments that morning from the plaintiff's lawyers and he wanted to check with me on my views before he made a recommendation on the next step to take. The first message came at around eight in the morning, and the second came at around eleven, with him saying that he was not in the office any more but he was still contactable and he urged me to talk to him as soon as possible as the plaintiff's counsels were demanding an answer before Monday. I cursed her under my breath and started wondering to myself, just what was it with women these days? Were all of them so sensitive and flaky and biased in the era of ``women liberation''? Was it a fun game to just take a man and break him utterly and totally under the rules that were written and rewritten to be in the favour of their sex? I ate my breakfast in silence, pondering upon that ugly revelation that I thought I had.
The day was going to be long, for sure. The urge to end my life had long since passed from the cold shower and food, but the problems still remained, and I was not any wiser in terms of how and what to do. I figured I should contact Mr Davison first, since that libel case had a high chance of blowing even larger out of proportion than what it had so far. The media had a field day reporting when the case broke, and instead of the typical David-versus-Goliath type story that supported the underlying, they went all out to slam me, claiming that I was making personal attacks on her integrity through the blog posts that I had made in criticism of the ineffectiveness of the policies that she had made. That made me mad, of course, since I was very careful in not attacking anyone personally but to focus on the pros and cons of the policies themselves. Somehow though it was deemed that I had crossed some invisible line between policy criticism and making personal attacks. That she was a public figure working in parliament did not help matters; it felt that I had accidentally stumbled upon the cabal of them versus the little people, and since I was ``little people'', I had to be quashed completely and absolutely. Somewhat reluctantly, I picked up the phone and dialed Mr Davison's number. The call was almost immediately picked up.
``Davison here. Who's calling?''
``James. You left me a couple of messages asking me to contact you?''
``Oh yes! Definitely.'' There was a longish pause on the other side of the line. ``James, we need to talk. In person. That case is going to get very out of hand if we don't make a decision now. And there are things that I cannot safely discuss over the phone like this. Do you think you can make your way down to my office within the hour? I'm still there; I know I said I wasn't going to be, but well you know, things cropped up and so I'm still here. I'll wait for you if you can come. It is that urgent.''
``Alright Mr Davison. I will be there. Shouldn't take more than thirty minutes if I can catch a cab.''
``Excellent! I'll see you then. Just let the security at the lobby know that you're looking for me and they will buzz you in after checking in with me. You know how that works right?'' I replied in the affirmative. ``Okay. Talk to you when we meet. Bye for now.''
``Oh and by the way,'' Mr Davison suddenly said just as I was about to take the hand set away from my ear, ``be on the look out as you make your way over.''
I was somewhat confused with what his last words were, but replied something vaguely and put down the phone. What was that supposed to mean, ``be on the look out as you make your way over'', was my life supposed to be in some kind of danger? That would be quite ridiculous; I saw no reason why that warning could even make any sense. I finished up the last bits of my instant noodles and debated giving Aileen's parents a call to tell them that the wedding was off. As I changed out of my home clothes into something more presentable, I realised that it was probably wiser to not make that phone call. It was likely to be taking a damn long time, and given the urgency that Mr Davison was trying to convey to me, was probably not a good idea to get involved with that for now. There was plenty of time (relatively speaking) to get that one sorted out over the libel law suit.
I was soon out of the apartment and heading down the stairs, after locking up behind me. I stood along the street outside the apartment and looked about for a cab. The roads were lightly populated with cars, but there was no taxi to be found. As I looked up the road, I saw a white mini-van turning down on to my street. I didn't know why I found that mini-van so interesting to keep my eyes on it, but deep within me it felt as though something was about to go horribly wrong. The mini-van kept close the sidewalk and accelerated slowly as it moved closer to me. My unease kept me from paying attention to the road to look out for a free taxi-cab. As the mini-van got closer, it started to accelerate a little, and I was about to ignore it when it suddenly screeched to a stop just beside me and a few men dressed in black from head to toe leapt out of the rear and charged towards me. I panicked and started running away from them, but they were too quick. I was clobbered in the head and I lost consciousness.
I wished I were dead.
Stting on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands, that was all I could remember. Wishing that I were dead. I didn't exactly have a death wish in a voluntary sense of the word, but things were so fucked up by this point that there was no reason to not just kill myself and end it all. I mentally ran through the whole series of fuck ups. First there was Aileen. We were to be married in two month's time, but somehow she managed to get herself pregnant, and I wasn't the father. She made a whole big fuss of ``keeping herself for the night of her marriage'' and somehow got herself knocked up. She told me that last night when I was going out with her, which promptly made me leave her in anger and head to the bar for a night of straight drinking. Then there was work. My boss was getting more and more psychotic, what with all the impossible deadlines and the crazy requirements. And the abuse. Verbal abuse. Always shouting at me and telling me that I'm some kind of loser who should've been fired to be replaced by one of the many hundred cheaper foreign talents. His mismanagement somehow became my incompetence. Finally there was that ongoing libel case from that public figure. I wasn't really gunning for her reputation, but was just trying to highlight some points on the policies that she was making. But somehow, either she or some faceless drone decided to take offence at what I wrote and slammed me with a rather expensive letter of writ demanding all kinds of impossible things.
My headache started to throb even stronger, and I tried to massage my temples in a bid to assauge it. The sunlight grew stronger, and through my squinted eyes, I stared at my alarm clock. Noon. No wonder it felt so discomforting. I stood up decisively and stepped into the shower, and cranked faucet up to its maximum. A torrent of near-freezing water emerged from the narrow shower head and slammed itself upon the crown of my head before following the contours and washing over my torso and parts beyond. The cold shocked my headache away temporarily, and I was instantly awake and alert. It did nothing to improve my outlook though---everything was as bleak as before. As I washed myself under the shower with the soap and shampoo, I kept on brooding on the three big problems that I had been facing, the hangover-induced migraine forgotten. I had to give a call to my lawyer regarding that libel case; we had to negotiate with her to reduce the amount of damages and what-not because it was just too much to be borne to be considered fair, considering that I didn't even single her out deliberately and explicitly. As for the psychotic boss, I had no idea on what to do about him. The only good thing was that it was the weekend and so I didn't have to spend the day looking and working with him, if that could be call working. And Aileen. My heart ached for a moment when I thought of her, but my reawakened rational side stepped in and shouted at myself to get a grip and realise that she was a lost cause. The wedding had to be cancelled. There was no way that such a level of cheating could be tolerated, no matter how deep and important our relationship was. It was clear that she didn't really treat the time we had with the kind of respect and care that I did, and so I was fully justified in calling off the wedding. There would be hell to pay though, since we've already made down payments on the reservations for the banquet, sent out the invitations, and all the other myriad of things that comes with a wedding preparation. And the parents and in-laws. My parents would probably begrudgingly understand, but the in-laws (or was it near-in-laws?) would be a tougher nut to crack. To them, she had always been the purest of all the divine virgins, and had never really accepted that I would be a good husband to her. Now that the marriage was going to be cancelled, they were sure to exploit it and cause a bloody ruckus. And since I had a twenty-four-hour lag behind her, she was likely to reach them first and give a sob-story version of how I was abandoning her and leave me to attempt to tell the full story under a case of heavy bias. I cursed Aileen under my breath for this unnecessary mess as I turned off the shower and dried myself before stepping out to get dressed.
I got to the living room and checked out the answering machine. There were twenty-five new messages on it. I knew I was living in the modern world, and that everyone had cellphones and what not, but I just preferred a landline. Call it nostalgia, or call it paranoia of always needing the ability to call out for help should the need arises, but the landline was second conduit to the world, the first beign the internet. I pressed the ``play messages'' button on the answering machine and went to the small kitchenette to make some light breakfast of instant noodles. I wasn't a fan of instant nnoodles, but it was the fastest thing that one could lay one's hands on that doesn't take more than ten minutes to prepare. And I knew that I didn't have that much time, if the answering machine was to be believed. As expected, the first few messages were from last night after I had left Aileen, where she called repeatedly to seek forgiveness and wanting me to take her back. Those turned quickly into the words of a raving lunatic who was threatening to take away what little I had, and to break me as a person for calling off the wedding after all she had done for me. Each such message delivered was just yet another piece of evidence to prove to me that ditching her was the best option. I had gone out with Aileen for nearly five years, and nothing seemed to tell me much about her except for that fateful moment and these messages. I suddenly felt vindicated for saying the words I did to her.
The last two messages came on as I was preparing to pour out the cooked instant noodles into the ceramic bowl that I had set on the table in the living room. They were from earlier that morning and from the lawyer, Mr Davison, who was representing me on the cases involving that libel lawsuit. He said to contact him as soon as possible---there were new developments that morning from the plaintiff's lawyers and he wanted to check with me on my views before he made a recommendation on the next step to take. The first message came at around eight in the morning, and the second came at around eleven, with him saying that he was not in the office any more but he was still contactable and he urged me to talk to him as soon as possible as the plaintiff's counsels were demanding an answer before Monday. I cursed her under my breath and started wondering to myself, just what was it with women these days? Were all of them so sensitive and flaky and biased in the era of ``women liberation''? Was it a fun game to just take a man and break him utterly and totally under the rules that were written and rewritten to be in the favour of their sex? I ate my breakfast in silence, pondering upon that ugly revelation that I thought I had.
The day was going to be long, for sure. The urge to end my life had long since passed from the cold shower and food, but the problems still remained, and I was not any wiser in terms of how and what to do. I figured I should contact Mr Davison first, since that libel case had a high chance of blowing even larger out of proportion than what it had so far. The media had a field day reporting when the case broke, and instead of the typical David-versus-Goliath type story that supported the underlying, they went all out to slam me, claiming that I was making personal attacks on her integrity through the blog posts that I had made in criticism of the ineffectiveness of the policies that she had made. That made me mad, of course, since I was very careful in not attacking anyone personally but to focus on the pros and cons of the policies themselves. Somehow though it was deemed that I had crossed some invisible line between policy criticism and making personal attacks. That she was a public figure working in parliament did not help matters; it felt that I had accidentally stumbled upon the cabal of them versus the little people, and since I was ``little people'', I had to be quashed completely and absolutely. Somewhat reluctantly, I picked up the phone and dialed Mr Davison's number. The call was almost immediately picked up.
``Davison here. Who's calling?''
``James. You left me a couple of messages asking me to contact you?''
``Oh yes! Definitely.'' There was a longish pause on the other side of the line. ``James, we need to talk. In person. That case is going to get very out of hand if we don't make a decision now. And there are things that I cannot safely discuss over the phone like this. Do you think you can make your way down to my office within the hour? I'm still there; I know I said I wasn't going to be, but well you know, things cropped up and so I'm still here. I'll wait for you if you can come. It is that urgent.''
``Alright Mr Davison. I will be there. Shouldn't take more than thirty minutes if I can catch a cab.''
``Excellent! I'll see you then. Just let the security at the lobby know that you're looking for me and they will buzz you in after checking in with me. You know how that works right?'' I replied in the affirmative. ``Okay. Talk to you when we meet. Bye for now.''
``Oh and by the way,'' Mr Davison suddenly said just as I was about to take the hand set away from my ear, ``be on the look out as you make your way over.''
I was somewhat confused with what his last words were, but replied something vaguely and put down the phone. What was that supposed to mean, ``be on the look out as you make your way over'', was my life supposed to be in some kind of danger? That would be quite ridiculous; I saw no reason why that warning could even make any sense. I finished up the last bits of my instant noodles and debated giving Aileen's parents a call to tell them that the wedding was off. As I changed out of my home clothes into something more presentable, I realised that it was probably wiser to not make that phone call. It was likely to be taking a damn long time, and given the urgency that Mr Davison was trying to convey to me, was probably not a good idea to get involved with that for now. There was plenty of time (relatively speaking) to get that one sorted out over the libel law suit.
I was soon out of the apartment and heading down the stairs, after locking up behind me. I stood along the street outside the apartment and looked about for a cab. The roads were lightly populated with cars, but there was no taxi to be found. As I looked up the road, I saw a white mini-van turning down on to my street. I didn't know why I found that mini-van so interesting to keep my eyes on it, but deep within me it felt as though something was about to go horribly wrong. The mini-van kept close the sidewalk and accelerated slowly as it moved closer to me. My unease kept me from paying attention to the road to look out for a free taxi-cab. As the mini-van got closer, it started to accelerate a little, and I was about to ignore it when it suddenly screeched to a stop just beside me and a few men dressed in black from head to toe leapt out of the rear and charged towards me. I panicked and started running away from them, but they were too quick. I was clobbered in the head and I lost consciousness.
Friday, 23 May 2014
That Oscillating Head Guy
The slow oscillation of the head was a dead giveaway. Eliza stared at the emaciated-looking man with great fear---she had seen him before somewhere else, and that time, he was much rounder, well-fed, affluent. But now, his skin was sallow and yellow, hanging loose about his cheeks, his exposed forearms showing nothing more than his skin and bones, his eyeballs showing through the thin eyelids that were present.
He had been observing her for a while, she knew it. It was one of those sixth-sense moments; she couldn't explain how, but she just... knew that he had been eyeing her. He had once propositioned her, a long time ago, when he was still affluent. But she didn't like him then, and still didn't like him now---in him she sensed the presence of a great disturbance, a type of evil aura that was hard to fully explain away. It was more than the mere lecherous feel that many men gave her. She knew she attracted lots of attention due to the way she looked, but in him she felt that there was something devilish and unspeakable beneath that exterior.
That feeling worsened when she saw his current look. When he found her observing him observing her, a thin smile formed on his withering lips as his head continued its odd oscillation. Eliza started to panic, and quickly unlocked her door and entered it. Almost at once she could sense him running towards her. She slammed the heavy oaken door behind her and bolted it up, glad for once that there were no windows that did not have the ugly looking iron grilles.
She could hear the furious pounding on her door as she dialled the number to the police post that was in charge of the neighbourhood. The pounding grew incessant and was accompanied by loud shouts of her name.
The line went through and was picked up by the operator. Breathlessly, Eliza stated her location and her predicament, and the operator assured her that he would despatch a patrol officer to drop by and check out her problem. She thanked him and put the phone down.
The pounding carried on for a few more moments before it stopped completely.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 23-May-2014 21:38:11)
He had been observing her for a while, she knew it. It was one of those sixth-sense moments; she couldn't explain how, but she just... knew that he had been eyeing her. He had once propositioned her, a long time ago, when he was still affluent. But she didn't like him then, and still didn't like him now---in him she sensed the presence of a great disturbance, a type of evil aura that was hard to fully explain away. It was more than the mere lecherous feel that many men gave her. She knew she attracted lots of attention due to the way she looked, but in him she felt that there was something devilish and unspeakable beneath that exterior.
That feeling worsened when she saw his current look. When he found her observing him observing her, a thin smile formed on his withering lips as his head continued its odd oscillation. Eliza started to panic, and quickly unlocked her door and entered it. Almost at once she could sense him running towards her. She slammed the heavy oaken door behind her and bolted it up, glad for once that there were no windows that did not have the ugly looking iron grilles.
She could hear the furious pounding on her door as she dialled the number to the police post that was in charge of the neighbourhood. The pounding grew incessant and was accompanied by loud shouts of her name.
The line went through and was picked up by the operator. Breathlessly, Eliza stated her location and her predicament, and the operator assured her that he would despatch a patrol officer to drop by and check out her problem. She thanked him and put the phone down.
The pounding carried on for a few more moments before it stopped completely.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 23-May-2014 21:38:11)
Thursday, 22 May 2014
Wednesday, 21 May 2014
Tuesday, 20 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part VIII
(Story begins here.)
There was, of course, a small catch. He needed to make his inquiries without incurring the suspicions of the housekeeper, a tall task considering just how out of the way the manor was relative to the nearest church where records were kept. Then another thought came to Anton's mind. Wasn't it the case that there was a private library located in the study on the second floor? Perhaps that library could contain some background information about the manor and its previous occupants that he can use to fine-tune his external inquiries. He had at most seven or so days given the narration of the housekeeper under the most pessimistic assumptions, and he was determined to make use of them to verify the tales he were told and to seek a solution to the underlying problem.
Anton picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth before setting it gently on the table. Mr Higgins had already appeared in the room despite his earlier request to back out from the increasingly uncomfortable conversation, ready to give any sort of aid to Anton.
``Has Master Anton finished his meal?'' The housekeeper asked, his voice much calmed from before.
``Yes Mr Higgins, could you please help me clear the table?''
``That is my intention,'' Mr Higgins bowed as he stood aside and helped Anton to move the chair backwards so that the latter could stand up and get out of it.
``Mr Higgins, what is my schedule like for the day? Am I expecting guests from the neighbours? I am intending to spend some time in the study to work on some reading and wouldn't really like to be disturbed if possible.''
``Just the Crawfords for dinner, Master Anton. You promised them an appointment in reply to a letter that they had written you expressing their apologies for not being able to call upon you earlier when you first took residence due to the family being away on business in the city itself. The appointment was set to six o'clock this evening.''
Anton scratched his chin. It wasn't that bad of a social obligation to uphold, considering that he had two large unbroken blocks of time to see if he can make any sense of the tales that were told to him. Besides, it was going to be hard to push away the appointment seeing as he was the one who proposed the date and time in the first place. He nodded at the housekeeper, who bowed and backed up a little. He then made his way back up the grand stairs and turned towards the corridor leading to the study before pushing open the heavy wooden doors and stepping in.
(Story continues here.)
There was, of course, a small catch. He needed to make his inquiries without incurring the suspicions of the housekeeper, a tall task considering just how out of the way the manor was relative to the nearest church where records were kept. Then another thought came to Anton's mind. Wasn't it the case that there was a private library located in the study on the second floor? Perhaps that library could contain some background information about the manor and its previous occupants that he can use to fine-tune his external inquiries. He had at most seven or so days given the narration of the housekeeper under the most pessimistic assumptions, and he was determined to make use of them to verify the tales he were told and to seek a solution to the underlying problem.
Anton picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth before setting it gently on the table. Mr Higgins had already appeared in the room despite his earlier request to back out from the increasingly uncomfortable conversation, ready to give any sort of aid to Anton.
``Has Master Anton finished his meal?'' The housekeeper asked, his voice much calmed from before.
``Yes Mr Higgins, could you please help me clear the table?''
``That is my intention,'' Mr Higgins bowed as he stood aside and helped Anton to move the chair backwards so that the latter could stand up and get out of it.
``Mr Higgins, what is my schedule like for the day? Am I expecting guests from the neighbours? I am intending to spend some time in the study to work on some reading and wouldn't really like to be disturbed if possible.''
``Just the Crawfords for dinner, Master Anton. You promised them an appointment in reply to a letter that they had written you expressing their apologies for not being able to call upon you earlier when you first took residence due to the family being away on business in the city itself. The appointment was set to six o'clock this evening.''
Anton scratched his chin. It wasn't that bad of a social obligation to uphold, considering that he had two large unbroken blocks of time to see if he can make any sense of the tales that were told to him. Besides, it was going to be hard to push away the appointment seeing as he was the one who proposed the date and time in the first place. He nodded at the housekeeper, who bowed and backed up a little. He then made his way back up the grand stairs and turned towards the corridor leading to the study before pushing open the heavy wooden doors and stepping in.
(Story continues here.)
Monday, 19 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part VII
(Story begins here.)
``So, you mentioned that all the previous masters of the manor had asked you about the apparition. What happened to each of them?'' Anton asked as he observed the housekeeper's reaction. There was a sudden dark cloud that seemed to pass through the housekeeper's eyes, followed by the unmistakeable demonstration of fear from the sudden constriction of the pupil made obvious by the greenish iris. The housekeeper looked away and cleared his throat before trying to continue.
``They... they all met different ends. Some had hung themselves at various parts of the house---I will not tell you where, Master Anton, forgive me---while others had ended up throwing themselves off their horses in all manners, breaking their necks or heads as they did so. Foul play was never suspected. All official investigations always turned up ruling the deaths by either suicide or by misadventure. There were no obvious signs of the apparition being the cause, but somehow I suspected that it was the only reason why each of these men met their dooms the way they did since there was no other common linkage among them other than the fact that they could trace their lineage back to the ancestor in which the trust managing this manor was founded upon in one form or the other.''
``No foul play whatsoever? Not even the chance of the newer master trying to off the previous one or the trustees having some kind of conspiracy?'' Anton asked in disbelief.
``Not that I know of, not that the official investigations showed,'' the housekeeper answered quickly and earnestly.
``How long did they live between first seeing the apparition and their... untimely demise?''
``It varies,'' Mr Higgins replied, looking visibly shaken now. ``Some were gone within a week, others took as long as six to eight months before they... they perished. I'm sorry Master Anton, I have served many of these men before as their housekeeper the way I am serving you now, and each time I bring up the memories on them I am forced to revisit the trauma of finding their motionless bodies in their various broken ways, and... it had been too much. I had wanted to quit a long time ago, but there were no others who would dare to be the housekeeper here. The trustees pay me handsomely to be here, which explains why I am still here despite it all, but the sheer rememberance of the past has at times caused me no small amount of discomfort. Please forgive me, Master Anton as I take my leave. Already I think I have spoken too much.''
Mr Higgins stood up against Anton's half-hearted protestations, gave a small bow, before backing himself out of the dining room and back into the kitchen where his wife was.
Anton sat at the table and dug into the remainder of his food in silence, his mind cranking through what he had heard and experienced. He had no doubt as to what he had witnessed the night before, but having the same circumstance appearing over the past fifty or even more years was bordering more on the suspicious than the supernatural, considering that the stories that were told to each master was, according to the housekeeper, seemingly tailor-made for each person, something that was wholly inconsistent with many of the hauntings that he had known.
Apart from the house, and the lineage, the only other commonality among all of the previous masters was that their housekeepers were of the Higgins family. That the housekeeper was still willing to be present as merely a housekeeper was already very suspicious, the high pay notwithstanding. Why, if the pay were that good, would it not be better of the housekeeper were appointed by the trustees to be the official master of the manor instead of having so many men sent to their doom?
The more he ate and thought about the issue, the more absurd it started to sound in his head. There was plenty of opportunity for the housekeeper to exact mischief, though it was not clear what the motives may be. Anton couldn't be bothered with solving this apparent mystery on his hands, but the prospect of being the next dead master of the manor was much less appealling than expending effort to figure out just what was going on. With that in mind, Anton decided to spend his time researching on the history of the manor after breakfast.
(Story continues here.)
``So, you mentioned that all the previous masters of the manor had asked you about the apparition. What happened to each of them?'' Anton asked as he observed the housekeeper's reaction. There was a sudden dark cloud that seemed to pass through the housekeeper's eyes, followed by the unmistakeable demonstration of fear from the sudden constriction of the pupil made obvious by the greenish iris. The housekeeper looked away and cleared his throat before trying to continue.
``They... they all met different ends. Some had hung themselves at various parts of the house---I will not tell you where, Master Anton, forgive me---while others had ended up throwing themselves off their horses in all manners, breaking their necks or heads as they did so. Foul play was never suspected. All official investigations always turned up ruling the deaths by either suicide or by misadventure. There were no obvious signs of the apparition being the cause, but somehow I suspected that it was the only reason why each of these men met their dooms the way they did since there was no other common linkage among them other than the fact that they could trace their lineage back to the ancestor in which the trust managing this manor was founded upon in one form or the other.''
``No foul play whatsoever? Not even the chance of the newer master trying to off the previous one or the trustees having some kind of conspiracy?'' Anton asked in disbelief.
``Not that I know of, not that the official investigations showed,'' the housekeeper answered quickly and earnestly.
``How long did they live between first seeing the apparition and their... untimely demise?''
``It varies,'' Mr Higgins replied, looking visibly shaken now. ``Some were gone within a week, others took as long as six to eight months before they... they perished. I'm sorry Master Anton, I have served many of these men before as their housekeeper the way I am serving you now, and each time I bring up the memories on them I am forced to revisit the trauma of finding their motionless bodies in their various broken ways, and... it had been too much. I had wanted to quit a long time ago, but there were no others who would dare to be the housekeeper here. The trustees pay me handsomely to be here, which explains why I am still here despite it all, but the sheer rememberance of the past has at times caused me no small amount of discomfort. Please forgive me, Master Anton as I take my leave. Already I think I have spoken too much.''
Mr Higgins stood up against Anton's half-hearted protestations, gave a small bow, before backing himself out of the dining room and back into the kitchen where his wife was.
Anton sat at the table and dug into the remainder of his food in silence, his mind cranking through what he had heard and experienced. He had no doubt as to what he had witnessed the night before, but having the same circumstance appearing over the past fifty or even more years was bordering more on the suspicious than the supernatural, considering that the stories that were told to each master was, according to the housekeeper, seemingly tailor-made for each person, something that was wholly inconsistent with many of the hauntings that he had known.
Apart from the house, and the lineage, the only other commonality among all of the previous masters was that their housekeepers were of the Higgins family. That the housekeeper was still willing to be present as merely a housekeeper was already very suspicious, the high pay notwithstanding. Why, if the pay were that good, would it not be better of the housekeeper were appointed by the trustees to be the official master of the manor instead of having so many men sent to their doom?
The more he ate and thought about the issue, the more absurd it started to sound in his head. There was plenty of opportunity for the housekeeper to exact mischief, though it was not clear what the motives may be. Anton couldn't be bothered with solving this apparent mystery on his hands, but the prospect of being the next dead master of the manor was much less appealling than expending effort to figure out just what was going on. With that in mind, Anton decided to spend his time researching on the history of the manor after breakfast.
(Story continues here.)
Sunday, 18 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part VI
(Story begins here.)
``Mr Higgins, don't leave---take a seat. Will you be so kind as to tell me more about Eliz... ah the apparition of the stairs?'' The housekeeper paused and looked at Anton quizzically and was about to reply when Anton interjected with, ``and please don't tell me how it is inappropriate for the housekeeper to sit at the dining table. I will hear none of this. When there are no guests about, you can be more at ease here than you would otherwise be accustomed to. All the officiousness is something that I cannot really tolerate within myself, and please humour me by being at ease and take a seat before you answer me anything.''
The housekeeper looked at Anton, gave a small bow, and pulled up the chair that was next to the head of the dining table and sat down. Anton started on his breakfast, and looked at Mr Higgins in expectation, waiting for the latter to begin his tale.
``Is there anything specific that you would like to know about the apparition, Master Anton?''
``Well Mr Higgins, nothing truly specific, just what you have known about Eliz... the apparition from the previous masters of the manor.''
The housekeeper looked at Anton, his face scrunched as though deep in thought, the wrinkles on his sixty-five-year-old face developing into much deeper crevices.
``As you know, Master Anton, I have been a housekeeper of this manor for over fifty years, having taken on the role as an understudy of my father who served as the previous housekeeper before he retired. Over the fifty years, there has been roughly three or four before you who sat here as masters of the manor. Within the first couple of months of their arrival to the manor, they would all exclaim the same thing.''
`` `Does ``Elizabeth'' ring a bell?' '' Anton replied.
``Yes,'' the housekeeper nodded, ``they all asked me if `Elizabeth' meant anything to me. And I had been truthful to each of them in saying that I knew no more than what I had heard from the previous masters of the manor who had met up with the apparition.''
``And what was it that you have heard from the previous masters?''
``The earliest thing I could remember was what I learnt from my father, the previous housekeeper. In his day, he said that `Elizabeth' was not something that appeared in the early days. It was only towards the latter part of his tenure that he heard the masters talking about the apparition. The story was almost always the same; the apparition would know the master's name, and please Master Anton, let me assure you that none of the other master's were called Anton, and would inform them that they were the person that it had been waiting for all its life. It would talk about some marriage that did not occur, and that it was left at the altar when it was still alive, and how it died of a broken heart. Then it would make a promise with the master of that time to meet up on a regular basis to be close to the part of the master that resembled some part of its lost love.''
Anton sat there in silence, eating his omelette quietly, his mind processing what the housekeeper just said. There were many parts that he had said that matched the experience that Anton had quite strongly, and yet Anton hadn't actually told Mr Higgins about what had actually occurred. And from the way that the housekeeper was saying it, Anton had a weird feeling that it never did end well for each of the masters of the manor who followed through with their promises to Elizabeth.
(Story continues here.)
``Mr Higgins, don't leave---take a seat. Will you be so kind as to tell me more about Eliz... ah the apparition of the stairs?'' The housekeeper paused and looked at Anton quizzically and was about to reply when Anton interjected with, ``and please don't tell me how it is inappropriate for the housekeeper to sit at the dining table. I will hear none of this. When there are no guests about, you can be more at ease here than you would otherwise be accustomed to. All the officiousness is something that I cannot really tolerate within myself, and please humour me by being at ease and take a seat before you answer me anything.''
The housekeeper looked at Anton, gave a small bow, and pulled up the chair that was next to the head of the dining table and sat down. Anton started on his breakfast, and looked at Mr Higgins in expectation, waiting for the latter to begin his tale.
``Is there anything specific that you would like to know about the apparition, Master Anton?''
``Well Mr Higgins, nothing truly specific, just what you have known about Eliz... the apparition from the previous masters of the manor.''
The housekeeper looked at Anton, his face scrunched as though deep in thought, the wrinkles on his sixty-five-year-old face developing into much deeper crevices.
``As you know, Master Anton, I have been a housekeeper of this manor for over fifty years, having taken on the role as an understudy of my father who served as the previous housekeeper before he retired. Over the fifty years, there has been roughly three or four before you who sat here as masters of the manor. Within the first couple of months of their arrival to the manor, they would all exclaim the same thing.''
`` `Does ``Elizabeth'' ring a bell?' '' Anton replied.
``Yes,'' the housekeeper nodded, ``they all asked me if `Elizabeth' meant anything to me. And I had been truthful to each of them in saying that I knew no more than what I had heard from the previous masters of the manor who had met up with the apparition.''
``And what was it that you have heard from the previous masters?''
``The earliest thing I could remember was what I learnt from my father, the previous housekeeper. In his day, he said that `Elizabeth' was not something that appeared in the early days. It was only towards the latter part of his tenure that he heard the masters talking about the apparition. The story was almost always the same; the apparition would know the master's name, and please Master Anton, let me assure you that none of the other master's were called Anton, and would inform them that they were the person that it had been waiting for all its life. It would talk about some marriage that did not occur, and that it was left at the altar when it was still alive, and how it died of a broken heart. Then it would make a promise with the master of that time to meet up on a regular basis to be close to the part of the master that resembled some part of its lost love.''
Anton sat there in silence, eating his omelette quietly, his mind processing what the housekeeper just said. There were many parts that he had said that matched the experience that Anton had quite strongly, and yet Anton hadn't actually told Mr Higgins about what had actually occurred. And from the way that the housekeeper was saying it, Anton had a weird feeling that it never did end well for each of the masters of the manor who followed through with their promises to Elizabeth.
(Story continues here.)
Saturday, 17 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part V
(Story begins here.)
``Why most certainly Mr Higgins, I will take you up on that offer.'' With that acknowledgement, the housekeeper gave a formal bow before attempting to take his leave of the room a second time. Anton was dying to ask more questions about what the previous masters of the house said about Elizabeth, but he knew that he wasn't going to get anything from the housekeeper at this point and just let him go. Anton made his way to the bath room and found the bath tub filled with hot water. Gently, he tested out the water with his elbow, and found it of satisfactory temperature, proceeded with a morning bath followed by the usual morning routine. When he was done, he made his way back to the bed room, where he saw that Mr Higgins had already laid out his morning wear for him. Anton got dressed and made his way out of the room and into the corridors.
In broad daylight, the Elizabethan architecture influence on the manor was very plain to see. The corridors were decorated by simple wood-panelled walls with repeated carvings of the fleur-de-lis motif stained into a deep, rich brown. The bannisters lining the corridor were constructed of similar wood, with the same kind of treatment and woodstaining as in the wall panels. As he walked along the corridors to descend the grand stairs, Anton couldn't help but glance about in wonder. The manor had been in existence for the better part of three hundred years, or so Anton was told, and it was only because of a large manhunt for a descendant of the originating family that Anton was discovered and persuaded to take up residence in the antiquated but well-kept manor.
Anton was no old country gentlemen. If anything, he would prefer wearing his denim jeans and sneakers about, or even bermudas if the weather permitted. It was, after all, past the era of traditional country-side sensibilities. But the trustees that had sent for him to take up residence in the manor had told him it was stipulated that the traditional customs are to be met as much as possible to maintain the old respectability of the family as much as possible, and that the housekeeper would be there to help Anton with keeping up with such important customs. Anton was amused initially, and protested againt it the first couple of weeks he was there. But as time went on, he started to realise the prudence needed, for most days of the week, his manor was visited by various gentlemen and ladies of the gentry, all as a part of neighbourliness that was common to the country side. Even though they were also living in the modern era, none of them would subscribe to the latest in fashion wear on their visits---they maintained a strong sense of dignity that made Anton glad that he could keep up with the necessity of the dress code and etiquette as helped along by Mr Higgins.
Having descended the grand stairs, Anton made his way to the right and entered the dining room, where Mr Higgins was standing at the ready at the head ofa long table, with the breakfast spread set in front of him at the head of the table. Mr Higgins gave Anton a short bow and motioned him to take his proper place. Once he had sat down, the housekeeper started to turn around to leave, only to be halted once again by Anton.
(Story continues here.)
``Why most certainly Mr Higgins, I will take you up on that offer.'' With that acknowledgement, the housekeeper gave a formal bow before attempting to take his leave of the room a second time. Anton was dying to ask more questions about what the previous masters of the house said about Elizabeth, but he knew that he wasn't going to get anything from the housekeeper at this point and just let him go. Anton made his way to the bath room and found the bath tub filled with hot water. Gently, he tested out the water with his elbow, and found it of satisfactory temperature, proceeded with a morning bath followed by the usual morning routine. When he was done, he made his way back to the bed room, where he saw that Mr Higgins had already laid out his morning wear for him. Anton got dressed and made his way out of the room and into the corridors.
In broad daylight, the Elizabethan architecture influence on the manor was very plain to see. The corridors were decorated by simple wood-panelled walls with repeated carvings of the fleur-de-lis motif stained into a deep, rich brown. The bannisters lining the corridor were constructed of similar wood, with the same kind of treatment and woodstaining as in the wall panels. As he walked along the corridors to descend the grand stairs, Anton couldn't help but glance about in wonder. The manor had been in existence for the better part of three hundred years, or so Anton was told, and it was only because of a large manhunt for a descendant of the originating family that Anton was discovered and persuaded to take up residence in the antiquated but well-kept manor.
Anton was no old country gentlemen. If anything, he would prefer wearing his denim jeans and sneakers about, or even bermudas if the weather permitted. It was, after all, past the era of traditional country-side sensibilities. But the trustees that had sent for him to take up residence in the manor had told him it was stipulated that the traditional customs are to be met as much as possible to maintain the old respectability of the family as much as possible, and that the housekeeper would be there to help Anton with keeping up with such important customs. Anton was amused initially, and protested againt it the first couple of weeks he was there. But as time went on, he started to realise the prudence needed, for most days of the week, his manor was visited by various gentlemen and ladies of the gentry, all as a part of neighbourliness that was common to the country side. Even though they were also living in the modern era, none of them would subscribe to the latest in fashion wear on their visits---they maintained a strong sense of dignity that made Anton glad that he could keep up with the necessity of the dress code and etiquette as helped along by Mr Higgins.
Having descended the grand stairs, Anton made his way to the right and entered the dining room, where Mr Higgins was standing at the ready at the head ofa long table, with the breakfast spread set in front of him at the head of the table. Mr Higgins gave Anton a short bow and motioned him to take his proper place. Once he had sat down, the housekeeper started to turn around to leave, only to be halted once again by Anton.
(Story continues here.)
Friday, 16 May 2014
Clubbing: Part IV
(Story begins here.)
``Okay... but what has this got to do with me?'' Isaac asked.
``What has this got to do with you?'' Moe replied, his eyes wide open in horror. ``What the hell do you mean by `what has this got to do with me'? Dude, the girl who died, you were making your moves all over her, becoming all fucking defensive over her like she's your property or something. Each time another dude tried to dance with her, you were charging in like she's your girlfriend and was this close to literally beating up the dude who tried to come close. She didn't seem as though she minded the attention you were giving her, and everyone there could tell that something was going on between you and her. Hell, even the DJ had to tell remind the bouncer I had around last night to keep an eye out on you in case you went postal and hurt someone.
``I didn't keep track of when the hell you left, or for that matter, when the hell she left. I think most people remember seeing you and her in the club, and then, no one could remember seeing you and her in the club. In other words, Isaac, if you cannot remember what the hell happened, you have basically a CLUB full of people who are willing to testify that you have been at the club with her and developing more than a passing interest. And now that she's been found clubbed, you are going to be suspect number one.''
Isaac heard Moe's words with stoicism. Hangover migraine notwithstanding, he finally understood why Moe thought it expedient to get him to drop by and have a chat with him. A sick feeling was starting to manifest itself within the stomach of Isaac; he felt like he had to throw up.
``So man, Isaac, do you have any fucking idea what happened between the time you were here and when you got back home? If I were you, I'd find out an explanation of some sort, whether or not it is a real one, because right now, nothing is pointing in a good direction for you.''
Isaac looked at Moe. The owner of the Prancing Princess Club was staring intently at him, his eyes full of concern and fear for his friend. It was starting to be clear to Isaac just how grave the situation was. He trembled uncontrollably and felt a swoon coming on. Moe suddenly pulled his drawer open and grabbed a brandy before thrusting it at Isaac.
``Here, have some of this while you think. Now let me tell you more stuff that I know. The cops have found her body, but they haven't found the murder weapon. They had been claiming that the injuries were consistent with being slugged by something large and blunt, and the last I've heard, they were appealling to witnesses to the crime. They haven't come round to me yet, but when they do, they will immediately start for you. So, Isaac,'' Moe continued, slowing down and articulating his words to ensure Isaac could understand completely, ``now that you know the score, I hope you will go back home and look carefully at the things you have and see if you have evidence of any sort that you did the clubbing or not. This is as much as I can help you.''
``Also, you don't have to tell me anything about what you found out. The less I know, the less I can talk to the cops about.''
(Story continues here.
``Okay... but what has this got to do with me?'' Isaac asked.
``What has this got to do with you?'' Moe replied, his eyes wide open in horror. ``What the hell do you mean by `what has this got to do with me'? Dude, the girl who died, you were making your moves all over her, becoming all fucking defensive over her like she's your property or something. Each time another dude tried to dance with her, you were charging in like she's your girlfriend and was this close to literally beating up the dude who tried to come close. She didn't seem as though she minded the attention you were giving her, and everyone there could tell that something was going on between you and her. Hell, even the DJ had to tell remind the bouncer I had around last night to keep an eye out on you in case you went postal and hurt someone.
``I didn't keep track of when the hell you left, or for that matter, when the hell she left. I think most people remember seeing you and her in the club, and then, no one could remember seeing you and her in the club. In other words, Isaac, if you cannot remember what the hell happened, you have basically a CLUB full of people who are willing to testify that you have been at the club with her and developing more than a passing interest. And now that she's been found clubbed, you are going to be suspect number one.''
Isaac heard Moe's words with stoicism. Hangover migraine notwithstanding, he finally understood why Moe thought it expedient to get him to drop by and have a chat with him. A sick feeling was starting to manifest itself within the stomach of Isaac; he felt like he had to throw up.
``So man, Isaac, do you have any fucking idea what happened between the time you were here and when you got back home? If I were you, I'd find out an explanation of some sort, whether or not it is a real one, because right now, nothing is pointing in a good direction for you.''
Isaac looked at Moe. The owner of the Prancing Princess Club was staring intently at him, his eyes full of concern and fear for his friend. It was starting to be clear to Isaac just how grave the situation was. He trembled uncontrollably and felt a swoon coming on. Moe suddenly pulled his drawer open and grabbed a brandy before thrusting it at Isaac.
``Here, have some of this while you think. Now let me tell you more stuff that I know. The cops have found her body, but they haven't found the murder weapon. They had been claiming that the injuries were consistent with being slugged by something large and blunt, and the last I've heard, they were appealling to witnesses to the crime. They haven't come round to me yet, but when they do, they will immediately start for you. So, Isaac,'' Moe continued, slowing down and articulating his words to ensure Isaac could understand completely, ``now that you know the score, I hope you will go back home and look carefully at the things you have and see if you have evidence of any sort that you did the clubbing or not. This is as much as I can help you.''
``Also, you don't have to tell me anything about what you found out. The less I know, the less I can talk to the cops about.''
(Story continues here.
Thursday, 15 May 2014
Magnum Opus
The orchestra moved as one, hitting each note with poise, precision and pertinence. Eustace stood in front, swishing his conductor's baton rhythmically, keeping time while simultaneously cueing the different sections when their part was up. It was a contemporary piece that he had written, and was releasing it upon his orchestra for a dry run. The melodies and harmonies spewing forth were very familiar to him, and they sounded almost like what he had imagined over the past eight months as he was composing it.
It was a nostalgic piece that spanned the eras of music that Eustace had spent his life exploring. From the baroque period, to the Byzantine melodies, to the Indian scales, to the court music of southern China, they were all represented, their influence manifesting themselves under the ambit of a contemporary musical conversation. A modern Fantasia, Eustace would call it himself, but he was just too modest, despite being the doyen of modern orchestra compositions.
Eustace was an old man. Seventy nine going on to eighty. Sprightly. A wealth of musical experiences, having travelled to the far reaches of the world and spending up to a decade in each major region to absorb and learn the music culture there. This piece was, in a sense, his magnum opus. He knew his time was soon to be up, something about the way his wrists clacked where they never before, the way his shoulders loosened, the way his hips clicked in certain angles. The last time he composed anything was nearly five years ago, and he knew it was time for his final piece.
And so, this was born. The musicians were clearly enjoying the technically challenging piece---it catered to their sense of adventure and yet provide that calming effect of something familiar but still new and exciting. It was the final rehearsal before its debut in the evening, and everyone in the orchestra knew about the importance of this piece.
When the final note was held and dimished to soundlessness, Eustace stood there and held his baton out for a little longer, savouring that wonder he beheld. It was indeed a worthy magnum opus and would surely be much welcomed at the concert in the evening.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 15-May-2014 22:07:41)
It was a nostalgic piece that spanned the eras of music that Eustace had spent his life exploring. From the baroque period, to the Byzantine melodies, to the Indian scales, to the court music of southern China, they were all represented, their influence manifesting themselves under the ambit of a contemporary musical conversation. A modern Fantasia, Eustace would call it himself, but he was just too modest, despite being the doyen of modern orchestra compositions.
Eustace was an old man. Seventy nine going on to eighty. Sprightly. A wealth of musical experiences, having travelled to the far reaches of the world and spending up to a decade in each major region to absorb and learn the music culture there. This piece was, in a sense, his magnum opus. He knew his time was soon to be up, something about the way his wrists clacked where they never before, the way his shoulders loosened, the way his hips clicked in certain angles. The last time he composed anything was nearly five years ago, and he knew it was time for his final piece.
And so, this was born. The musicians were clearly enjoying the technically challenging piece---it catered to their sense of adventure and yet provide that calming effect of something familiar but still new and exciting. It was the final rehearsal before its debut in the evening, and everyone in the orchestra knew about the importance of this piece.
When the final note was held and dimished to soundlessness, Eustace stood there and held his baton out for a little longer, savouring that wonder he beheld. It was indeed a worthy magnum opus and would surely be much welcomed at the concert in the evening.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 15-May-2014 22:07:41)
Wednesday, 14 May 2014
Blackout
Eurydice blinked a couple of times to see if it changed anything; no change. She stuck her hand out in front of her and tried to bring it close to her face till she could see it; she couldn't see it even when it was a mere centimetre away. Eurydice started panicking.
``Help! Help! I... I think I've gone blind!''
``Eurydice? Is that you?'' A familiar voice shouted from across the room.
``Allen? Where are you? I can't see you!'' Eurydice shouted back in what she thought was the general direction in which the sound come from.
``I have no idea. I think the power tripped in the whole city all at once on a moonless night, which explains this pitch darkness that I have never seen before,'' Allen shouted back as he made his way carefully through the house towards the place where he thought he last heard Eurydice's voice. ``By the way, stay still and shout replies at me periodically---I'm trying to find my way towards you.''
``Oh Allen!'' Eurydice cried out in happiness. ``I'm so glad that it was the power trip instead of me going blind. You know how fearful I am on the glaucoma susceptibility that I have been told since I was young.''
``Yes, yes,'' Allen replied as he corrected his heading using Eurydice's voice. ``I know that you are afraid of that. But this can be a whole lot worse than getting glaucoma though.''
``Why is that so?'' Eurydice shouted back, her mind too shocked to be thinking carefully about the words that Allen said.
``Think about it, Eurydice. The city is powered using nuclear power plants, and there are spare diesel generators that feed into the grid if and when the nuclear power plants reduce in their generation capacity. They do lots of redundancy testing each week. Yet we are facing a city-wide black out that has lasted for nearly thirty minutes. That doesn't sound right to me.''
Eurydice fell silent, her mind starting to crank and process Allen's words now that she was starting to calm down. He had a point---there was no reason for such an extended blackout time; the spare generators should have kicked in within three minutes of a power drop from the nuclear plants and the site engineers should have been troubleshooting the reactors and they should also have brought everything back on line within twenty minutes. That none of those had happened was starting to get worrisome.
``Eurydice dear, are you still there?'' Allen shouted out in a questioning tone. It was hard to triangulate positions in the dark when there was no consistent audial source for echo-location.
``Oh! I'm still here! Sorry I forgot that you need my voice to figure out where I am.''
``It's alright,'' Allen said, his voice a whisper and yet sounding really really close to Eurydice. Without warning Eurydice found her waist wrapped by two powerful hairy arms, and her back was in contact with a familiar torso as her right ear felt playfully nibbled on.
``Oh Allen! You are such a rascal!'' Eurydice said as she giggled sophomorically.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 14-May-2014 23:20:04)
``Help! Help! I... I think I've gone blind!''
``Eurydice? Is that you?'' A familiar voice shouted from across the room.
``Allen? Where are you? I can't see you!'' Eurydice shouted back in what she thought was the general direction in which the sound come from.
``I have no idea. I think the power tripped in the whole city all at once on a moonless night, which explains this pitch darkness that I have never seen before,'' Allen shouted back as he made his way carefully through the house towards the place where he thought he last heard Eurydice's voice. ``By the way, stay still and shout replies at me periodically---I'm trying to find my way towards you.''
``Oh Allen!'' Eurydice cried out in happiness. ``I'm so glad that it was the power trip instead of me going blind. You know how fearful I am on the glaucoma susceptibility that I have been told since I was young.''
``Yes, yes,'' Allen replied as he corrected his heading using Eurydice's voice. ``I know that you are afraid of that. But this can be a whole lot worse than getting glaucoma though.''
``Why is that so?'' Eurydice shouted back, her mind too shocked to be thinking carefully about the words that Allen said.
``Think about it, Eurydice. The city is powered using nuclear power plants, and there are spare diesel generators that feed into the grid if and when the nuclear power plants reduce in their generation capacity. They do lots of redundancy testing each week. Yet we are facing a city-wide black out that has lasted for nearly thirty minutes. That doesn't sound right to me.''
Eurydice fell silent, her mind starting to crank and process Allen's words now that she was starting to calm down. He had a point---there was no reason for such an extended blackout time; the spare generators should have kicked in within three minutes of a power drop from the nuclear plants and the site engineers should have been troubleshooting the reactors and they should also have brought everything back on line within twenty minutes. That none of those had happened was starting to get worrisome.
``Eurydice dear, are you still there?'' Allen shouted out in a questioning tone. It was hard to triangulate positions in the dark when there was no consistent audial source for echo-location.
``Oh! I'm still here! Sorry I forgot that you need my voice to figure out where I am.''
``It's alright,'' Allen said, his voice a whisper and yet sounding really really close to Eurydice. Without warning Eurydice found her waist wrapped by two powerful hairy arms, and her back was in contact with a familiar torso as her right ear felt playfully nibbled on.
``Oh Allen! You are such a rascal!'' Eurydice said as she giggled sophomorically.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 14-May-2014 23:20:04)
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part IV
(Story begins here.)
The rest of the night passed uneventfully, and the morning came along relatively quickly. Anton woke up feeling refreshed and somewhat disoriented, as though he had been trapped in a dream. He sat upright in his bed and looked about him. The sun light streamed through the amply large windows, the beams of light clear against the mildly dusty interior. His memory was hazy, but as he sat there and mulled, bits and pieces of it were re-forming again back in his mind.
Elizabeth.
That one word flashed through his mind, triggering as many synapse junctions as the memory arced through from one end of his brain to the other. The flute playing, the white frock, the long chestnut tresses, the soulful eyes, the melancholy---they were all coming back to him, gathering momentum and flotsam all together to coalesce into a single coherent image of a person. Someone who claimed to have known him from before his current incarnation, someone who pined for him and died for him of a broken heart.
Three sharp raps on the door jarred Anton back from his day dream.
``Master Anton, the hot water is ready for your use. Will you need additional time before using the bath?''
``Ah thank you, Mr Higgins. I will be there shortly,'' Anton replied to his housekeeper as he swung his legs off his bed and stood up, standing in his pajamas.
``Very well Master Anton, I shall take my leave and prepare breakfast in the dining room,'' the housekeeper said, giving a bow and swivelling about face on his feet to leave the room.
``No wait! Hold on Mr Higgins. Does `Elizabeth' ring a bell to you?''
Even before the housekeeper's reply, Anton could see that it was a name that was familiar to the former. The tell-tale signs of a surprised recognition of a name that hadn't been heard was all too obvious---the shoulders were suddenly shrugged, the gait stopped suddenly but quickly before assuming more stable standing position, the slow about turn to face him---they were all there. Mr Higgins was looking curiously at Anton at this point, his eyes querying.
`` `Elizabeth', Master Anton? Have you, by any chance, met the apparition that calls itself by that name, say within the proximity of the grand stairs near to the witching hour?'' Mr Higgins said in a deliberate and controlled manner. Anton observed his housekeeper carefully. Behind the aloof exterior Anton could sense a fierce emotion hiding behind the grey eyes, though if it were fear or anger it was hard to tell. Choosing his words carefully, Anton made his reply.
``It seems you have met her already.''
``Ah, Master Anton, that is not exactly true. I have been a housekeeper here for over fifty years and the apparition had made itself appear very frequently throughout this time, though I haven't had to make an acquaintance with it myself. Previous masters of the house have seen the apparition before you did, and they often told me stories that sounded uncannily alike.
``Master Anton, may I suggest that you defer your questions till after the bath, while you are having breakfast in the dining room? I think it will prove to be a better choice than seeking clarification solely from me right now.''
(Story continues here.)
The rest of the night passed uneventfully, and the morning came along relatively quickly. Anton woke up feeling refreshed and somewhat disoriented, as though he had been trapped in a dream. He sat upright in his bed and looked about him. The sun light streamed through the amply large windows, the beams of light clear against the mildly dusty interior. His memory was hazy, but as he sat there and mulled, bits and pieces of it were re-forming again back in his mind.
Elizabeth.
That one word flashed through his mind, triggering as many synapse junctions as the memory arced through from one end of his brain to the other. The flute playing, the white frock, the long chestnut tresses, the soulful eyes, the melancholy---they were all coming back to him, gathering momentum and flotsam all together to coalesce into a single coherent image of a person. Someone who claimed to have known him from before his current incarnation, someone who pined for him and died for him of a broken heart.
Three sharp raps on the door jarred Anton back from his day dream.
``Master Anton, the hot water is ready for your use. Will you need additional time before using the bath?''
``Ah thank you, Mr Higgins. I will be there shortly,'' Anton replied to his housekeeper as he swung his legs off his bed and stood up, standing in his pajamas.
``Very well Master Anton, I shall take my leave and prepare breakfast in the dining room,'' the housekeeper said, giving a bow and swivelling about face on his feet to leave the room.
``No wait! Hold on Mr Higgins. Does `Elizabeth' ring a bell to you?''
Even before the housekeeper's reply, Anton could see that it was a name that was familiar to the former. The tell-tale signs of a surprised recognition of a name that hadn't been heard was all too obvious---the shoulders were suddenly shrugged, the gait stopped suddenly but quickly before assuming more stable standing position, the slow about turn to face him---they were all there. Mr Higgins was looking curiously at Anton at this point, his eyes querying.
`` `Elizabeth', Master Anton? Have you, by any chance, met the apparition that calls itself by that name, say within the proximity of the grand stairs near to the witching hour?'' Mr Higgins said in a deliberate and controlled manner. Anton observed his housekeeper carefully. Behind the aloof exterior Anton could sense a fierce emotion hiding behind the grey eyes, though if it were fear or anger it was hard to tell. Choosing his words carefully, Anton made his reply.
``It seems you have met her already.''
``Ah, Master Anton, that is not exactly true. I have been a housekeeper here for over fifty years and the apparition had made itself appear very frequently throughout this time, though I haven't had to make an acquaintance with it myself. Previous masters of the house have seen the apparition before you did, and they often told me stories that sounded uncannily alike.
``Master Anton, may I suggest that you defer your questions till after the bath, while you are having breakfast in the dining room? I think it will prove to be a better choice than seeking clarification solely from me right now.''
(Story continues here.)
Monday, 12 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part III
(Story begins here.)
Elizabeth looked away from Anton and held her flute low. Her shoulders started to quiver as though she were sobbing. Anton was at a loss of what to do. On the one hand, he felt as though he should go forth and comfort her, yet on the other hand, the notion of comforting a spirit came to his mind as being somewhat incongruous and even somewhat impossible. Besides, even thought Elizabeth had been rather amiable thus far, there was no telling how she might react when he approached her even closer. Anton had heard of stories, rumours actually, of how female spirits began being all friendly before suddenly turning vindictive and causing all sorts of havoc after that.
As Elizabeth continued sobbing, a few more thoughts passed through Anton's mind. According to her, he was some kind of avatar for a lover who had left her at the altar, a very convincing reason to remain as a spirit even after the incident to be all vengeful about it. But she hadn't shown any form of aggression thus far, and seemed quite pitiful. In the end, his sense of chivalry overtook any precautions he had and Anton got up from the step he was sitting on and made his way slowly down.
``I... I don't know what to say or do. Please don't be so sad. Is there anything I can help you with?'' Anton said, his heart in his mouth as he made his way to within six feet of Elizabeth. From that proximity, he could clearly see that she was translucent, with a form yet formless, a mist that was more solid than a regular mist. Her shoulders stopped shaking and Elizabeth turned back round to face Anton again. He was half expecting to see a hideous alteration to her lovely face, but was pleasantly surprised to find no change whatsoever.
``You seem... surprised, Anton. Why is that so?''
``Um... to tell you the truth, I was half-expecting you to turn nasty and attack me the moment you turn around to look at me again,'' Anton said sheepishly.
``Your forthrightness is appreciated, Anton. But, I am not a vengeful spirit,'' Elizabeth replied earnestly, her eyes looking as soulful as a mist can ever be. ``As I have said, you are Anton. Not completely my Anton, but still a part of the old Anton I loved. Love. The good parts of the old Anton. I never knew why the old Anton left me at the altar that way. Perhaps there was a bad side I never knew, a secret that he never shared. But in you, I see the parts of the Anton that I love. You are the man I have waited all my life.''
``Ah,'' Anton said, his courage increasing seeing as to how he hadn't been maimed by Elizabeth yet, ``but what does what you say mean? Suppose that I am the man you have waited for all your life. What shall we do then?''
``I... I don't know,'' Elizabeth answered miserably. ``I think... I think I might have lost a lot of my memories that night when I died of a broken heart. I know that Anton will come back, and I knew that I will wait for him all my life. But I cannot remember what happens after that! It has been too long, too long... I feel bad that I cannot remember.''
``There, there,'' Anton said as he tried to pat Elizabeth on her back. It didn't quite work out well, since Elizabeth wasn't corporeal, but it had its effect. Elizabeth calmed down and started looking at Anton, as though waiting for answers.
``Well,'' Anton began, ``how about this. If you don't mind, I can come meet you every night like this and we can just sit and talk about whatever you want or like. Maybe that can help you remember what it is you have to do once you have waited for your Anton to arrive. Will that be fine with you, Elizabeth?''
``You called my name!'' Elizabeth cried out in delight. ``And the way you called me, it felt the same as when my Anton called me back in the day. Oh joy! Of course I will be fine to meet up with you every night like this! Perhaps we may find out more about us that way!'' She embraced Anton warmly.
Anton could feel the goosebumps on his skin, but it was more of a tingly sensation instead of outright fear. Being hugged by a spirit was not a thing that he was expecting, and once he got over the strange notion, he found that it wasn't as bad as it was. He awkwardly threw his hands out of him to wrap around Elizabeth's incorporeal body, and could swear that he felt something as he gently tightened his arms to form a hug.
The two of them held that position for quite a while before Elizabeth stepped back reluctantly.
``I must go now, Anton. But I will be back tomorrow night. You will be here to meet me, right Anton?''
``Yes Elizabeth. I promise you that I will be here,'' Anton replied solemnly.
``Farewell for now then, my dear Anton, and we will meet again tomorrow!'' Elizabeth curtsied and walked away from the grand stairs towards the side exit. As she walked off, Anton could see her feet lifting out of the emptiness and falling back down, fading away ever so gently the closer she got to the exit. When she reached the door, she finally faded away completely, and Anton could immediately feel that her presence was gone.
For a moment, Anton stood at the bottom of the grand stairs mulling over what had just transpired. As the clock rang its customary twelve strokes, Anton finally realised just how late it was, and quickly made his way back to the bedroom on the second floor, making a mental note to consult his housekeeper on the events that he had witnessed.
(Story continues here.)
Elizabeth looked away from Anton and held her flute low. Her shoulders started to quiver as though she were sobbing. Anton was at a loss of what to do. On the one hand, he felt as though he should go forth and comfort her, yet on the other hand, the notion of comforting a spirit came to his mind as being somewhat incongruous and even somewhat impossible. Besides, even thought Elizabeth had been rather amiable thus far, there was no telling how she might react when he approached her even closer. Anton had heard of stories, rumours actually, of how female spirits began being all friendly before suddenly turning vindictive and causing all sorts of havoc after that.
As Elizabeth continued sobbing, a few more thoughts passed through Anton's mind. According to her, he was some kind of avatar for a lover who had left her at the altar, a very convincing reason to remain as a spirit even after the incident to be all vengeful about it. But she hadn't shown any form of aggression thus far, and seemed quite pitiful. In the end, his sense of chivalry overtook any precautions he had and Anton got up from the step he was sitting on and made his way slowly down.
``I... I don't know what to say or do. Please don't be so sad. Is there anything I can help you with?'' Anton said, his heart in his mouth as he made his way to within six feet of Elizabeth. From that proximity, he could clearly see that she was translucent, with a form yet formless, a mist that was more solid than a regular mist. Her shoulders stopped shaking and Elizabeth turned back round to face Anton again. He was half expecting to see a hideous alteration to her lovely face, but was pleasantly surprised to find no change whatsoever.
``You seem... surprised, Anton. Why is that so?''
``Um... to tell you the truth, I was half-expecting you to turn nasty and attack me the moment you turn around to look at me again,'' Anton said sheepishly.
``Your forthrightness is appreciated, Anton. But, I am not a vengeful spirit,'' Elizabeth replied earnestly, her eyes looking as soulful as a mist can ever be. ``As I have said, you are Anton. Not completely my Anton, but still a part of the old Anton I loved. Love. The good parts of the old Anton. I never knew why the old Anton left me at the altar that way. Perhaps there was a bad side I never knew, a secret that he never shared. But in you, I see the parts of the Anton that I love. You are the man I have waited all my life.''
``Ah,'' Anton said, his courage increasing seeing as to how he hadn't been maimed by Elizabeth yet, ``but what does what you say mean? Suppose that I am the man you have waited for all your life. What shall we do then?''
``I... I don't know,'' Elizabeth answered miserably. ``I think... I think I might have lost a lot of my memories that night when I died of a broken heart. I know that Anton will come back, and I knew that I will wait for him all my life. But I cannot remember what happens after that! It has been too long, too long... I feel bad that I cannot remember.''
``There, there,'' Anton said as he tried to pat Elizabeth on her back. It didn't quite work out well, since Elizabeth wasn't corporeal, but it had its effect. Elizabeth calmed down and started looking at Anton, as though waiting for answers.
``Well,'' Anton began, ``how about this. If you don't mind, I can come meet you every night like this and we can just sit and talk about whatever you want or like. Maybe that can help you remember what it is you have to do once you have waited for your Anton to arrive. Will that be fine with you, Elizabeth?''
``You called my name!'' Elizabeth cried out in delight. ``And the way you called me, it felt the same as when my Anton called me back in the day. Oh joy! Of course I will be fine to meet up with you every night like this! Perhaps we may find out more about us that way!'' She embraced Anton warmly.
Anton could feel the goosebumps on his skin, but it was more of a tingly sensation instead of outright fear. Being hugged by a spirit was not a thing that he was expecting, and once he got over the strange notion, he found that it wasn't as bad as it was. He awkwardly threw his hands out of him to wrap around Elizabeth's incorporeal body, and could swear that he felt something as he gently tightened his arms to form a hug.
The two of them held that position for quite a while before Elizabeth stepped back reluctantly.
``I must go now, Anton. But I will be back tomorrow night. You will be here to meet me, right Anton?''
``Yes Elizabeth. I promise you that I will be here,'' Anton replied solemnly.
``Farewell for now then, my dear Anton, and we will meet again tomorrow!'' Elizabeth curtsied and walked away from the grand stairs towards the side exit. As she walked off, Anton could see her feet lifting out of the emptiness and falling back down, fading away ever so gently the closer she got to the exit. When she reached the door, she finally faded away completely, and Anton could immediately feel that her presence was gone.
For a moment, Anton stood at the bottom of the grand stairs mulling over what had just transpired. As the clock rang its customary twelve strokes, Anton finally realised just how late it was, and quickly made his way back to the bedroom on the second floor, making a mental note to consult his housekeeper on the events that he had witnessed.
(Story continues here.)
Sunday, 11 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part II
(Story begins here.)
Elizabeth looked on at Anton, first seeing his delight before observing his sudden change in demeanour.
``Wait! Don't be afraid! I guess you've found out my secret.''
Anton held back his scream. Curiosity overcame his initial shock, here was a spirit or ghost who was actively trying to allay his fears and converse with him. Surely there was something more? Clearing his throat and steadying his nerves, Anton replied Elizabeth.
``Well, yes. I think you did wake me. I have no idea what you are or who you are, but the fact that you are levitating isn't really helping my nerves at all. Who may you be then? Also, will you harm me in the way... your kind are known to?''
Elizabeth smiled, her radiance obvious even through the near translucence of her entire being, her white frock hanging on her comfortably.
``To answer you, Anton, no.''
``You know my name!''
``Of course I do, Anton. You have been the man I have been waiting for all my life,'' Elizabeth said, before suddenly blushing and realising the faux pas. ``Well, even beyond my life. As you have no doubt guessed, I am more of a spirit than a ghost.''
``Do I... know you? Why would you be waiting all my life for... me, of all people?'' Anton said as he walked slowly towards the grand staircase, his eyes never leaving Elizabeth.
Elizabeth blushed again.
``I'm so sorry Anton, I have been waiting for this day for so long that when I finally see you, I've forgotten myself! I am Elizabeth. I used to live in this house that you are now the master of.
``During my time, you and I were supposed to be married, but on the day at the altar, you didn't show up. I cried the whole night and... died of a broken heart.''
``I'm... sorry?'' Anton said, confusedly, as he sat on the steps.
Elizabeth held on to her flute and started walking towards Anton.
``I was a flute player before I died. Most played the piano back in my time, but I was one of the few who chose a different instrument to learn. I find the sound of a silver flute divine, and you did too. You said that was what drew you to me.'' Elizabeth paused and sighed.
``But that was a different Anton, Anton. You are Anton, a part of the old Anton whom I had waited for at the altar is somehow in you, but you and he are not the same. Besides,'' she sighed once again, ``there's the problem of me now being a spirit.''
Anton looked at her in surprise as her smiling face turned melancholous all over again.
(Story continues here.)
Elizabeth looked on at Anton, first seeing his delight before observing his sudden change in demeanour.
``Wait! Don't be afraid! I guess you've found out my secret.''
Anton held back his scream. Curiosity overcame his initial shock, here was a spirit or ghost who was actively trying to allay his fears and converse with him. Surely there was something more? Clearing his throat and steadying his nerves, Anton replied Elizabeth.
``Well, yes. I think you did wake me. I have no idea what you are or who you are, but the fact that you are levitating isn't really helping my nerves at all. Who may you be then? Also, will you harm me in the way... your kind are known to?''
Elizabeth smiled, her radiance obvious even through the near translucence of her entire being, her white frock hanging on her comfortably.
``To answer you, Anton, no.''
``You know my name!''
``Of course I do, Anton. You have been the man I have been waiting for all my life,'' Elizabeth said, before suddenly blushing and realising the faux pas. ``Well, even beyond my life. As you have no doubt guessed, I am more of a spirit than a ghost.''
``Do I... know you? Why would you be waiting all my life for... me, of all people?'' Anton said as he walked slowly towards the grand staircase, his eyes never leaving Elizabeth.
Elizabeth blushed again.
``I'm so sorry Anton, I have been waiting for this day for so long that when I finally see you, I've forgotten myself! I am Elizabeth. I used to live in this house that you are now the master of.
``During my time, you and I were supposed to be married, but on the day at the altar, you didn't show up. I cried the whole night and... died of a broken heart.''
``I'm... sorry?'' Anton said, confusedly, as he sat on the steps.
Elizabeth held on to her flute and started walking towards Anton.
``I was a flute player before I died. Most played the piano back in my time, but I was one of the few who chose a different instrument to learn. I find the sound of a silver flute divine, and you did too. You said that was what drew you to me.'' Elizabeth paused and sighed.
``But that was a different Anton, Anton. You are Anton, a part of the old Anton whom I had waited for at the altar is somehow in you, but you and he are not the same. Besides,'' she sighed once again, ``there's the problem of me now being a spirit.''
Anton looked at her in surprise as her smiling face turned melancholous all over again.
(Story continues here.)
Saturday, 10 May 2014
Elizabeth: Part I
Melancholy was written all over Elizabeth's face as she strode down the grand stairs of the house. Standing at the foot of the grand stairs, she pulled out her flute and started playing a haunting tune from Requiem. The sad whistful tune permeated through the household, and woke up Anton who was sleeping in the bedroom upstairs.
Waking with a start, he sat upright. He swore that he had heard a flute playing in the darkness, but it was not something that he had believed to be possible. There were only three people in the house, he, the housekeeper and his wife, and none of them played any musical instruments, let alone the flute. Sensing something amiss, he swung his legs out of the bed and on to the floor as quietly as he could and tip-toed his way out of the room, opening the door slowly and closing it behind him.
The corridor was slightly better lit than his room, with the quiet gas lamps glowing in the dark. The sweet sad tune was still played, and the music gave Anton goosebumps upon his skin. He made his way along the corridor until it reached the part which had a rail which overlooked the main atrium. He inched closer to steal a peek, and saw the willowy form of Elizabeth at the bottom of the grand stairs, playing away on the flute, a melancholous look upon his face that was revealed when her long tresses were blown back by an unseen and unfelt wind.
Anton could not believe his eyes. He had no idea who that person was, and more importantly, why she was playing a flute at that time of the night at that place. Seeing that she was alone, his courage came on strongly and he boldly walked across the corridor to the top of the grand stair.
``Who are you and why are you playing the flute at this time of the night?'' Anton asked, directing his question straight at Elizabeth.
The tune stopped, and Elizabeth put the flute down, turning to look up at Anton, her long tresses flying as she turned her head to face him.
``Oh, I'm sorry. Did I wake you?''
Anton was struck by the beauty of Elizabeth. Her features were soft, like that of a lady of nobility from the colonial era. Her eyes shone brightly as she looked at Anton directly. He was about to smile and reply her when he noticed that she was a good eight inches above the ground, where nothing else other than the floor could be seen.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 10-May-2014 13:43:18)
(Story continues here.)
Waking with a start, he sat upright. He swore that he had heard a flute playing in the darkness, but it was not something that he had believed to be possible. There were only three people in the house, he, the housekeeper and his wife, and none of them played any musical instruments, let alone the flute. Sensing something amiss, he swung his legs out of the bed and on to the floor as quietly as he could and tip-toed his way out of the room, opening the door slowly and closing it behind him.
The corridor was slightly better lit than his room, with the quiet gas lamps glowing in the dark. The sweet sad tune was still played, and the music gave Anton goosebumps upon his skin. He made his way along the corridor until it reached the part which had a rail which overlooked the main atrium. He inched closer to steal a peek, and saw the willowy form of Elizabeth at the bottom of the grand stairs, playing away on the flute, a melancholous look upon his face that was revealed when her long tresses were blown back by an unseen and unfelt wind.
Anton could not believe his eyes. He had no idea who that person was, and more importantly, why she was playing a flute at that time of the night at that place. Seeing that she was alone, his courage came on strongly and he boldly walked across the corridor to the top of the grand stair.
``Who are you and why are you playing the flute at this time of the night?'' Anton asked, directing his question straight at Elizabeth.
The tune stopped, and Elizabeth put the flute down, turning to look up at Anton, her long tresses flying as she turned her head to face him.
``Oh, I'm sorry. Did I wake you?''
Anton was struck by the beauty of Elizabeth. Her features were soft, like that of a lady of nobility from the colonial era. Her eyes shone brightly as she looked at Anton directly. He was about to smile and reply her when he noticed that she was a good eight inches above the ground, where nothing else other than the floor could be seen.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 10-May-2014 13:43:18)
(Story continues here.)
Friday, 9 May 2014
Trees of Fear
``No no no no no no no no no...!''
``Why? It's just a harmless thing!'' Julian replied in exasperation.
``No! It is NOT a harmless thing,'' Ida shrieked uncontrollably. ``That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard!''
``Look, it's just a walk in the park! How can it be disgusting? Are you seriously off your rocker?''
``It's the trees,'' Ida replied quietly.
``The trees?'' Julian said quizzically. He thought back of the times that they had walked, hand-in-hand, through the city on their dates. Those were blissful moments, the times they had spent in the city. But they had both graduated and thought it was time to take their relationship and lives to a new level, and had moved to the suburbs.
``But you see trees on TV every day! And when we were still in the city, you walked past them too! What's that got to do with walking in the park?''
``The trees on TV aren't real,'' Ida started replying, her face covered in sweat from the anxiety. ``Aand the trees in the city were, well, small. But the park has really large trees, and those scare the hell out of me.''
Julian stared at Ida with a raised eyebrow, his classic are-you-fucking-serious look. Ida looked at him for a bit before staring at her feet, sheepishly as she twiddled her fingers.
``I cannot believe this crap,'' Julian muttered under his breath. ``You're telling me that you have a phobia of trees?''
``Dendrophobia. It is diagnosed. I'm not making this up, Julian. You have to believe me.'' Her voice was pleading as she gripped Julian's right hand with both of hers. He glanced down and saw that her hands were turning white from the strong grip, and her petite veins were showing through her skin. It was clear that the mere mention of trees was triggering anxiety within her.
His disbelief melted away when he looked into her wide fearful eyes which had brimmed in tears. He felt a strong sense of pity and an inexplicable feeling of sadness. Without a word, he shook off her hands and hugged her tightly, pressing her against his chest as closely as he could.
``Alright then Ida, we'll not go to the park.''
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 09-May-2014 21:42:32)
``Why? It's just a harmless thing!'' Julian replied in exasperation.
``No! It is NOT a harmless thing,'' Ida shrieked uncontrollably. ``That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard!''
``Look, it's just a walk in the park! How can it be disgusting? Are you seriously off your rocker?''
``It's the trees,'' Ida replied quietly.
``The trees?'' Julian said quizzically. He thought back of the times that they had walked, hand-in-hand, through the city on their dates. Those were blissful moments, the times they had spent in the city. But they had both graduated and thought it was time to take their relationship and lives to a new level, and had moved to the suburbs.
``But you see trees on TV every day! And when we were still in the city, you walked past them too! What's that got to do with walking in the park?''
``The trees on TV aren't real,'' Ida started replying, her face covered in sweat from the anxiety. ``Aand the trees in the city were, well, small. But the park has really large trees, and those scare the hell out of me.''
Julian stared at Ida with a raised eyebrow, his classic are-you-fucking-serious look. Ida looked at him for a bit before staring at her feet, sheepishly as she twiddled her fingers.
``I cannot believe this crap,'' Julian muttered under his breath. ``You're telling me that you have a phobia of trees?''
``Dendrophobia. It is diagnosed. I'm not making this up, Julian. You have to believe me.'' Her voice was pleading as she gripped Julian's right hand with both of hers. He glanced down and saw that her hands were turning white from the strong grip, and her petite veins were showing through her skin. It was clear that the mere mention of trees was triggering anxiety within her.
His disbelief melted away when he looked into her wide fearful eyes which had brimmed in tears. He felt a strong sense of pity and an inexplicable feeling of sadness. Without a word, he shook off her hands and hugged her tightly, pressing her against his chest as closely as he could.
``Alright then Ida, we'll not go to the park.''
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 09-May-2014 21:42:32)
Thursday, 8 May 2014
Much Left Unsaid
It was night. Our intrepid office worker had just finished yet another gruelling day at work, reading memos, studying Gantt charts, putting together Powerpoint slides for the big management meeting that is happening the next day. He rubs his eyes, glazed over from staring non-stop at the twenty-four-inch display that sits at the corner of his five-by-five cubicle, one of two hundred that was located on the same floor. About him, one hundred and ninety-nine others were also doing the same as he was, and when the floor clock chimed in at eight o'clock, one could almost hear a collective sigh of relief that the work day has finally, undoubtedly, ended. The official time for the end of the work day was, of course, at five o'clock, but one would be insane to leave at that time on the dot.
Rumour has it that the last time someone actually tried to exercise her rights to leave on time, she never came back, not even to pick up her stuff. The flimsy cabinets and drawers were opened up by maintenance the next day, and everything that was in it was unceremoniously dumped into one of three copier paper boxes. Someone who was there claimed that there were distinct sounds of broken ceramic among the thuds, but since no one could really remember who that someone was, everyone thought it apocryphal at best, though no one had doubts about the plausibility of what was claimed to have transpired.
Our intrepid office worker stood up, and hurriedly packed his things into the satchel that he brought each day to the office without fail. The computer screen was locked and switched off, and he yanked the imperceptible thumb drive next to it and shoved it quickly into his shirt pocket. There were one or two more slides that he needed to add, but would do so from the comfort of his home. Around him were the shuffling of one hundred ninety-nine other faceless office workers. There was only a small window of thirty minutes for them to clear out of the office before the automated doors locked up, thus stranding the unlucky souls that didn't make it out.
Another rumour had floated that someone was once stuck in between floors on the staircase when that happened. When the next day began, he was not to be found at his desk. It was only later that evening when they were filing out of the office that someone found his body lying at a landing of the stairwell. Everyone said it was because of a lack of oxygen since the staircase was not ventilated much, if at all. And since there were strong doors on the stairs between floors, they further limited whatever air there was to be had. The doors were usually open, but when the time was up, they closed and locked up, just like all the other doors. Again, no one really knew the person who found that poor soul, but since no one really knows anyone, there was no loss. Except for that dead guy.
The sound of two hundred office workers stampeding the elevator lobby was a sight to behold. The office space was on the twentieth floor of the building, and thankfully for everyone who was there, they were on the top floor and were the only ones who were still in the office at that time. All the other companies on all the other floors have left a long time ago. Their unfortunate luck came from the fact that each elevator car that came up could easily be filled to the brim with their kind and be brought straight to the ground floor without having to stop at any point.
Of course, there were only three elevators, each with a capacity of roughly eight people. This meant that on a good day, a total of eight waves could make it from the top floor down to the first. But most of the time, it took more than that---elevator cars were not fully filled because of bags being in the way, or the more likely scenario where one of the elevator cars was ``under maintenance'' and therefore unavailable. So a sizeable number of workers would try their luck on the stairs, especially when there is only fifteen minutes left on the clock.
Even though the office was on the twentieth storey, in actual fact, they were actually nearer twenty four storeys up. Four of the floors were void floors containing massive amounts of concrete that was used to support the building. Someone said that it had to do with the ``spinal'' architecture of the building it self, where a central over-sized high-compressive strength ``spine'' acted as the primary (and only) pillar, with the floors extending out like leaves or flower petals. To prevent the building from canting, four floors were built to be ultra rigid to provide additional support for the exterior skin of the building. Each floor was around three and a half metres in height, which meant that one had to walk through three rotations worth of stairs just to climb one floor. Multiplying that out meant that those who tried their luck with the stairs had to contend with spiralling themselves seventy-two full rotations without stopping before reaching the ground floor.
Thankfully though, our intrepid office worker did not have to resort to such insanity. He managed to squeeze on board the first elevator car, and within five minutes was happily out of the building and heading home, only to return the next day for yet another dose of this.
Rumour has it that the last time someone actually tried to exercise her rights to leave on time, she never came back, not even to pick up her stuff. The flimsy cabinets and drawers were opened up by maintenance the next day, and everything that was in it was unceremoniously dumped into one of three copier paper boxes. Someone who was there claimed that there were distinct sounds of broken ceramic among the thuds, but since no one could really remember who that someone was, everyone thought it apocryphal at best, though no one had doubts about the plausibility of what was claimed to have transpired.
Our intrepid office worker stood up, and hurriedly packed his things into the satchel that he brought each day to the office without fail. The computer screen was locked and switched off, and he yanked the imperceptible thumb drive next to it and shoved it quickly into his shirt pocket. There were one or two more slides that he needed to add, but would do so from the comfort of his home. Around him were the shuffling of one hundred ninety-nine other faceless office workers. There was only a small window of thirty minutes for them to clear out of the office before the automated doors locked up, thus stranding the unlucky souls that didn't make it out.
Another rumour had floated that someone was once stuck in between floors on the staircase when that happened. When the next day began, he was not to be found at his desk. It was only later that evening when they were filing out of the office that someone found his body lying at a landing of the stairwell. Everyone said it was because of a lack of oxygen since the staircase was not ventilated much, if at all. And since there were strong doors on the stairs between floors, they further limited whatever air there was to be had. The doors were usually open, but when the time was up, they closed and locked up, just like all the other doors. Again, no one really knew the person who found that poor soul, but since no one really knows anyone, there was no loss. Except for that dead guy.
The sound of two hundred office workers stampeding the elevator lobby was a sight to behold. The office space was on the twentieth floor of the building, and thankfully for everyone who was there, they were on the top floor and were the only ones who were still in the office at that time. All the other companies on all the other floors have left a long time ago. Their unfortunate luck came from the fact that each elevator car that came up could easily be filled to the brim with their kind and be brought straight to the ground floor without having to stop at any point.
Of course, there were only three elevators, each with a capacity of roughly eight people. This meant that on a good day, a total of eight waves could make it from the top floor down to the first. But most of the time, it took more than that---elevator cars were not fully filled because of bags being in the way, or the more likely scenario where one of the elevator cars was ``under maintenance'' and therefore unavailable. So a sizeable number of workers would try their luck on the stairs, especially when there is only fifteen minutes left on the clock.
Even though the office was on the twentieth storey, in actual fact, they were actually nearer twenty four storeys up. Four of the floors were void floors containing massive amounts of concrete that was used to support the building. Someone said that it had to do with the ``spinal'' architecture of the building it self, where a central over-sized high-compressive strength ``spine'' acted as the primary (and only) pillar, with the floors extending out like leaves or flower petals. To prevent the building from canting, four floors were built to be ultra rigid to provide additional support for the exterior skin of the building. Each floor was around three and a half metres in height, which meant that one had to walk through three rotations worth of stairs just to climb one floor. Multiplying that out meant that those who tried their luck with the stairs had to contend with spiralling themselves seventy-two full rotations without stopping before reaching the ground floor.
Thankfully though, our intrepid office worker did not have to resort to such insanity. He managed to squeeze on board the first elevator car, and within five minutes was happily out of the building and heading home, only to return the next day for yet another dose of this.
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
Clubbing: Part III
(Story begins here.)
``Jesus... what took you so long? Did you see any cops coming after you?'' Moe asked quickly as his eyes darted about before closing the heavy club doors behind both of them. Isaac didn't answer immediately, he was taken aback at how the club looked like during the day when it was open only for book-keeping and other business-related work like a thorough cleaning of the entire club from top to bottom. The bright fluorescent lights overhead provided the harsh light of reality over the place that Isaac was sure signified the paradise of fantasy just the night before. It also dawned upon him that he was still hungover and the bright fluorescent lights were triggering a severe case of photophobia.
``Owww Moe... must you keep these bright lights on?''
``Bright lights? Oh damn, you're hungover from last night? Shit man, I didn't realise you were THAT gone. Come on, let's talk in my office. It's quieter and has a place for you to sit that is out of the way of the guys I have to clean and tidy up the place. Isaac followed Moe closely as the latter led the way to the back office behind the DJ's podium, all the while averting his eyes from the lights with an arm or two ahead attempting to provide extra shielding. Moe pulled out a key from his pocket and unlocked his door quietly before allowing Isaac to stumble through and collapse on a pillowed chair.
The blinds in the office were let down, and they were definitely of a sturdier quality than the one's that he had at home, since they blocked out the sunlight in a more effective manner. Moe switched on the desk lamp, and it's orange-yellow glow provided just enough illumination in the room to make it easy to see while not keeping it bright enough to hurt the eye or the brain.
Moe pulled up a chair in front of his work desk and set it in front of Isaac such the the back rest was facing Isaac. Moe sat himself on the chair, resting his chin on his arms which rested on the back of the chair and looked hard at Isaac.
``You have no idea what you did last night?''
``For the last time Moe, yes! I have no idea what I did last night. Can you now please tell me what happened that made you hurry me to get my ass out here to you in spite of my hangover?''
``Isaac, a girl was found dead. Someone saw her leave the club.''
``Dead?'' Isaac said, his blood frozen.
``Yes. Clubbed to death.''
(Story continues here.
``Jesus... what took you so long? Did you see any cops coming after you?'' Moe asked quickly as his eyes darted about before closing the heavy club doors behind both of them. Isaac didn't answer immediately, he was taken aback at how the club looked like during the day when it was open only for book-keeping and other business-related work like a thorough cleaning of the entire club from top to bottom. The bright fluorescent lights overhead provided the harsh light of reality over the place that Isaac was sure signified the paradise of fantasy just the night before. It also dawned upon him that he was still hungover and the bright fluorescent lights were triggering a severe case of photophobia.
``Owww Moe... must you keep these bright lights on?''
``Bright lights? Oh damn, you're hungover from last night? Shit man, I didn't realise you were THAT gone. Come on, let's talk in my office. It's quieter and has a place for you to sit that is out of the way of the guys I have to clean and tidy up the place. Isaac followed Moe closely as the latter led the way to the back office behind the DJ's podium, all the while averting his eyes from the lights with an arm or two ahead attempting to provide extra shielding. Moe pulled out a key from his pocket and unlocked his door quietly before allowing Isaac to stumble through and collapse on a pillowed chair.
The blinds in the office were let down, and they were definitely of a sturdier quality than the one's that he had at home, since they blocked out the sunlight in a more effective manner. Moe switched on the desk lamp, and it's orange-yellow glow provided just enough illumination in the room to make it easy to see while not keeping it bright enough to hurt the eye or the brain.
Moe pulled up a chair in front of his work desk and set it in front of Isaac such the the back rest was facing Isaac. Moe sat himself on the chair, resting his chin on his arms which rested on the back of the chair and looked hard at Isaac.
``You have no idea what you did last night?''
``For the last time Moe, yes! I have no idea what I did last night. Can you now please tell me what happened that made you hurry me to get my ass out here to you in spite of my hangover?''
``Isaac, a girl was found dead. Someone saw her leave the club.''
``Dead?'' Isaac said, his blood frozen.
``Yes. Clubbed to death.''
(Story continues here.
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Yulia
The early morning light acts as a contrivance to all who must pass through its way, and it is only those who are on the verge of exit of the stage of life that will see each new instance of the morning light as something to look forward to as opposed to the kind of interruption to what was likely to have been a restful slumber of sorts. Yulia opened her eyes against the strong morning sun and rubbed it severally with balled fists, the dryness of the night manifesting itself in the form of the tearless eyes. As each fist made a rotation, a kaleidoscope of induced colouration on her retinas greeted her. Feeling the smarting sensation giving way to the awkard comfort of tearing, Yulia released her hands from her eyes and sat up, looking about her.
The hospital room was as neat and tidy as it possibly could, with the two rows of bed lining along each wall of the standalone single-storey building. Curtains were drawn, and the full force of the early morning light cast beams of unrestrained brightness through the east-facing windows. The room wasn't at full capacity; only six of the total of twelve beds were occupied. Every occupied one had its own equivalent of Yulia, a young girl who was there because of one ailment or another.
In Yulia's case, it was a broken femur. She could hardly remember how exactly she was afflicted by it, but for the things that she did remember, she wished she could forget. Her father and mother were fleeing from Crimea after the Russian troops had taken over the region declaring it a part of the the Russian sovereign soil. Both her parents were staunch supporters of the government in Kiev and knew that had they stayed, their lives and eventually Yulia's would be forfeit, given the rapidly deteriorating levels of tolerance of those who did not speak the Russian language. They made it through Crimea up north, escaping towards Kiev, en route through Kherson. But Russian sympathisers had started catching up to them, and there was a need to take a risky east-ward diversion along the Dnieper river to get to Kiev where they had relatives there. They had been travelling for days, and Yulia did not really pay much attention. All she could remember after that was that her parents were involved in some kind of scuffle with armed men, there were some violent confrontations, and the next thing she knew, she found herself in the hospital thus.
She had no idea where her parents were, or even what hospital she was in, or who was the kind soul, should that person be kind, who brought her to the hospital to have her injury looked at. All she knew, was that she wanted to go home.
The hospital room was as neat and tidy as it possibly could, with the two rows of bed lining along each wall of the standalone single-storey building. Curtains were drawn, and the full force of the early morning light cast beams of unrestrained brightness through the east-facing windows. The room wasn't at full capacity; only six of the total of twelve beds were occupied. Every occupied one had its own equivalent of Yulia, a young girl who was there because of one ailment or another.
In Yulia's case, it was a broken femur. She could hardly remember how exactly she was afflicted by it, but for the things that she did remember, she wished she could forget. Her father and mother were fleeing from Crimea after the Russian troops had taken over the region declaring it a part of the the Russian sovereign soil. Both her parents were staunch supporters of the government in Kiev and knew that had they stayed, their lives and eventually Yulia's would be forfeit, given the rapidly deteriorating levels of tolerance of those who did not speak the Russian language. They made it through Crimea up north, escaping towards Kiev, en route through Kherson. But Russian sympathisers had started catching up to them, and there was a need to take a risky east-ward diversion along the Dnieper river to get to Kiev where they had relatives there. They had been travelling for days, and Yulia did not really pay much attention. All she could remember after that was that her parents were involved in some kind of scuffle with armed men, there were some violent confrontations, and the next thing she knew, she found herself in the hospital thus.
She had no idea where her parents were, or even what hospital she was in, or who was the kind soul, should that person be kind, who brought her to the hospital to have her injury looked at. All she knew, was that she wanted to go home.
Monday, 5 May 2014
Caldera Lake Mistake
Wai-ling lay there, calm and quiet. Surrounding her were friends and what was left of her little family. Her little brother was sobbing quietly to himself on one side of the coffin while her husband stood stoically on the other side, trying to instill a sense of gravity to her two little children who were old enough to know something sombre was going on yet weren't old enough to realise what exactly had gone wrong.
Laid atop her casket was the framed photograph of a glorious caldera lake taken from the top of a hitherto inaccessible extinct volcano in Indonesia. This photograph, and this alone, was the reason why Wai-ling was lying in state instead of enjoying her time with her family.
It all started about two months ago. Wai-ling was a professional photographer specialising in taking landscape photographs. Based in Singapore, she made frequent trips to the nearby south-east asian countries to take commissioned photographs of their natural scenery and historical sites. Among the more common countries that she would visit were the Philippines and Indonesia for their distinctive volcanoes.
Wai-ling loved volcanoes. There was something exciting about them, perhaps the entire primeval force that humanity hasn't actually managed to tame, despite spending years of study in seismology. Storms could be mitigated through careful cloud seeding, earthquakes were nullified with stringent building codes, but volcanoes were never controlled---everyone still had to evacuate whenever a volcano had been predicted to be erupting.
National Geographic had approached her about the caldera. They had known about it for years, having done aerial surveys of the region, but they never really had any means of getting there to get a good photograph. The locals treated the caldera as a sacred place, and would therefore actively hinder anyone who tried to ask them for guides up the spot, and the edges of the caldera were high enough that it made a helicopter dropping risky. The approach had to be by land, and Wai-ling was among the foremost who were familiar with the types of terrain that the Indonesian islands would bring up. She had heard of the caldera lake and how beautiful it was, and had always wanted to make a trip out there just for the chance to take a photograph of it, and mostly because no one had actually taken any before.
But it was a tragedy. She managed to hike her way up there based on the topographical maps she had on Indonesia, and take the photographs she wanted. What she didn't count on was a hidden hydrogen sulphide bubble. She was ready to leave when she accidentally caused that bubble to explode, releasing enough hydrogen sulphide to asphyxiate and poison her. It would be a month later when the locals were visiting the caldera to offer their monthly offerings to the mountain gods that the found her body and gear. They knew who she was, and took her back down the caldera lake and arranged for her body to be reclaimed by her husband and family.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 07-May-2014 01:00:49)
Laid atop her casket was the framed photograph of a glorious caldera lake taken from the top of a hitherto inaccessible extinct volcano in Indonesia. This photograph, and this alone, was the reason why Wai-ling was lying in state instead of enjoying her time with her family.
It all started about two months ago. Wai-ling was a professional photographer specialising in taking landscape photographs. Based in Singapore, she made frequent trips to the nearby south-east asian countries to take commissioned photographs of their natural scenery and historical sites. Among the more common countries that she would visit were the Philippines and Indonesia for their distinctive volcanoes.
Wai-ling loved volcanoes. There was something exciting about them, perhaps the entire primeval force that humanity hasn't actually managed to tame, despite spending years of study in seismology. Storms could be mitigated through careful cloud seeding, earthquakes were nullified with stringent building codes, but volcanoes were never controlled---everyone still had to evacuate whenever a volcano had been predicted to be erupting.
National Geographic had approached her about the caldera. They had known about it for years, having done aerial surveys of the region, but they never really had any means of getting there to get a good photograph. The locals treated the caldera as a sacred place, and would therefore actively hinder anyone who tried to ask them for guides up the spot, and the edges of the caldera were high enough that it made a helicopter dropping risky. The approach had to be by land, and Wai-ling was among the foremost who were familiar with the types of terrain that the Indonesian islands would bring up. She had heard of the caldera lake and how beautiful it was, and had always wanted to make a trip out there just for the chance to take a photograph of it, and mostly because no one had actually taken any before.
But it was a tragedy. She managed to hike her way up there based on the topographical maps she had on Indonesia, and take the photographs she wanted. What she didn't count on was a hidden hydrogen sulphide bubble. She was ready to leave when she accidentally caused that bubble to explode, releasing enough hydrogen sulphide to asphyxiate and poison her. It would be a month later when the locals were visiting the caldera to offer their monthly offerings to the mountain gods that the found her body and gear. They knew who she was, and took her back down the caldera lake and arranged for her body to be reclaimed by her husband and family.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 07-May-2014 01:00:49)
Sunday, 4 May 2014
Carjack
Lucas looked about him furtively. The carpark was quiet, deserted actually, and this was among a few of the cars that were parked at this deck. It was little wonder---that deck was the second deck above all the season parking lots, and was therefore used mostly by visitors and acted as the overflow area for the season ticket holders. But that suited him fine. It was less suspicious to be near a car among three or four than to be found near a single solitary vehicle all on its own.
Seeing no one nearby and making sure that there were no surveillance cameras (for some reason those were targetted only at the walkways, which meant that Lucas just had to walk through the car barriers to avoid being seen), he quickly pulled out a jammer from his pocket and switched it to detection mode. The device quietly displayed the power spectrum of the current radio frequencies and Lucas slowly tuned it along to discover the call back frequency of the key fob for the car. There was a quiet flashing of the red light on the device when the appropriate frequency was found. Delighted, Lucas quickly pressed the ``deactivate'' button. A series of silent pulses were sent along the carrier frequency and the next thing he knew, the car had responded as though a normal key fob had been used.
Smiling to himself, Lucas quickly removed his cap and shirt, swapping them out for another T-shirt from within his backpack. Then, removing the new cover backpack, he stuffed everything else into it, including the original backpack. That was his way of defeating the surveillance system.
He got into the car and looked at the dashboard. It was as he had expected, an ignition button system as opposed to a key-based one. It was starting to get easy and for once Lucas was glad of the prevalence of new technology for cars---they made his work so much easier once the initial technological costs were paid for.
He pressed the ignition button, and the engine woke up with a roar. Lucas smiled to himself again. He closed the door to the driver's seat and put on his seat belt before taxi-ing the car out of the lot and across the deck and down the ramps to the exit.
Yet another haul for him.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 07-May-2014 00:46:53)
Seeing no one nearby and making sure that there were no surveillance cameras (for some reason those were targetted only at the walkways, which meant that Lucas just had to walk through the car barriers to avoid being seen), he quickly pulled out a jammer from his pocket and switched it to detection mode. The device quietly displayed the power spectrum of the current radio frequencies and Lucas slowly tuned it along to discover the call back frequency of the key fob for the car. There was a quiet flashing of the red light on the device when the appropriate frequency was found. Delighted, Lucas quickly pressed the ``deactivate'' button. A series of silent pulses were sent along the carrier frequency and the next thing he knew, the car had responded as though a normal key fob had been used.
Smiling to himself, Lucas quickly removed his cap and shirt, swapping them out for another T-shirt from within his backpack. Then, removing the new cover backpack, he stuffed everything else into it, including the original backpack. That was his way of defeating the surveillance system.
He got into the car and looked at the dashboard. It was as he had expected, an ignition button system as opposed to a key-based one. It was starting to get easy and for once Lucas was glad of the prevalence of new technology for cars---they made his work so much easier once the initial technological costs were paid for.
He pressed the ignition button, and the engine woke up with a roar. Lucas smiled to himself again. He closed the door to the driver's seat and put on his seat belt before taxi-ing the car out of the lot and across the deck and down the ramps to the exit.
Yet another haul for him.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 07-May-2014 00:46:53)
Saturday, 3 May 2014
Ticket
It started out like any ordinary day at the line to the booth that sold the tickets to the home game for the local football club. It wasn't supposed to be anything spectacular or anything, just a regular line to a regular booth for a regular ticket for a regular football game by a regular football club.
The ticketing booth hadn't opened yet -- it opened at ten -- so the fifty or so people who were there were just lining up quietly, some having their coffee and doughnuts, others reading the newspaper that they had brought out with them, while the more tech-savvy ones were checking out things on their smart phones.
That restive period did not last long though. Across the street where the booth was, a small group of people had started to gather. First in twos and threes, then in fives and tens, till the originally innocuous group had swollen to nearly two hundred people. The road wasn't that wide, and that throng of people was quickly noticed by the original ones who were in the queue. Most didn't really see an issue per se, or rather, it was wholly possible that they had ignored the development given that they were lost in their world while waiting for something as banal as the opening of a ticketing booth.
What happened next was quite unthinkable.
Without any provocation, the two hundred strong crowd charged the line en masse, wielding the old newspaper club, a contraption made by rolling two widespread newspapers tightly before folding it into half, and started to hit at everyone who was in the line or didn't hold any of the makeshift weapon. Those who had been paying attention to the increasing crowd managed to sneak off before the assault fell upon them; they were the lucky ones. In less than a minute, the queuers were badly battered by the attack. Many suffered some form of head injury, with bleeding noses and mild concussion being the norm, but they will not find out about the concussion till the aftermath.
Once the lined up people realised what was going on, they started fighting back. Newspapers were thrown, phones were used as primitive battering rocks, hot coffee thrown all about like a chemical weapon, good old fisticuffs were thrown here and there. The assaulting crew suffered some damage, but what was the defenceless crowd of less than fifty mean to a throng of two hundred?
Some of the escapees had the sense to call in the police once their own safety was assured, and it was likely due to the efforts of them that the situation did not escalate to more than what it already had. The police charged in from the police station that was about a block away. Armed with truncheons, they entered the fray mercilessly, attacking anyone that did anything more than raise their arms in defense. Those who tried to run away were quickly rounded up by the supplementary force encircling the melee.
In the end, there was no ticket to be bought.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 06-May-2014 02:45:42)
The ticketing booth hadn't opened yet -- it opened at ten -- so the fifty or so people who were there were just lining up quietly, some having their coffee and doughnuts, others reading the newspaper that they had brought out with them, while the more tech-savvy ones were checking out things on their smart phones.
That restive period did not last long though. Across the street where the booth was, a small group of people had started to gather. First in twos and threes, then in fives and tens, till the originally innocuous group had swollen to nearly two hundred people. The road wasn't that wide, and that throng of people was quickly noticed by the original ones who were in the queue. Most didn't really see an issue per se, or rather, it was wholly possible that they had ignored the development given that they were lost in their world while waiting for something as banal as the opening of a ticketing booth.
What happened next was quite unthinkable.
Without any provocation, the two hundred strong crowd charged the line en masse, wielding the old newspaper club, a contraption made by rolling two widespread newspapers tightly before folding it into half, and started to hit at everyone who was in the line or didn't hold any of the makeshift weapon. Those who had been paying attention to the increasing crowd managed to sneak off before the assault fell upon them; they were the lucky ones. In less than a minute, the queuers were badly battered by the attack. Many suffered some form of head injury, with bleeding noses and mild concussion being the norm, but they will not find out about the concussion till the aftermath.
Once the lined up people realised what was going on, they started fighting back. Newspapers were thrown, phones were used as primitive battering rocks, hot coffee thrown all about like a chemical weapon, good old fisticuffs were thrown here and there. The assaulting crew suffered some damage, but what was the defenceless crowd of less than fifty mean to a throng of two hundred?
Some of the escapees had the sense to call in the police once their own safety was assured, and it was likely due to the efforts of them that the situation did not escalate to more than what it already had. The police charged in from the police station that was about a block away. Armed with truncheons, they entered the fray mercilessly, attacking anyone that did anything more than raise their arms in defense. Those who tried to run away were quickly rounded up by the supplementary force encircling the melee.
In the end, there was no ticket to be bought.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 06-May-2014 02:45:42)
Friday, 2 May 2014
Ivan
``Who the HELL did this?'' Ivan bellowed, shocking everyone who happened to be in the gym. It was a fearful sight. Ivan weighed a good three hundred pounds, most of it was in the form of muscles, coupled with his bushy eyebrows and beard and reflective balding head, he was like a giant who stepped on burning coals with his bear foot.
Those who were no where near where Ivan was quietly went back to twhatever they were doing. This included the free weights exercising people or the step-meter or even the stationary cyclists. There was no real need to get involved with Ivan when he was upset like this. The last time someone who was trying to be nice and placate Ivan had been shouted and assaulted verbally, which nearly came to blows before that person's girlfriend came in to drag him out, preying upon Ivan's only weakness of never voluntarily hitting a girl.
Ivan glared at the two gym rats closest to him. One was working on the bench press machine, while the other was working on some of the extension machines for the arms.
``Which of you TWO took away the key to the weight setting? Was it you Harold, or was it you, Leroy?'' Ivan's terrible eyes glared at one man and then the other in turn.
``Ivan, chill the fuck down,'' Leroy said sitting up from the benchpress machine. ``Just look around for it. Perhaps it fell out and landed somewhere.''
``Did you think I was stupid enough to not try?'' Bellowed Ivan. ``Own up already!''
Harold stood away from the extension machines and stood directly in front of Ivan. There was an uncontrollable tension that electrified the air in the gym. For some reason, everyone who was within eyeshot of the pair felt that something terrible was about to happen.
Ivan took a step backward involuntarily before gathering his wits and shouted straight at Harold ``Was it you, you jackass?''
Harold did not flinch. He stood there and looked straight up at Ivan before saying ``Ivan, no one likes your stupid shenanigans. Just find the stupid key and then get on with your training. If you can't find it, just talk to the attendant and they'll do something for you. Stop being such a cry baby.''
``CRY BABY?! You DARE call me a cry baby?! I will fucking end you!'' Ivan roared before slamming a fist in the direction of Harold.
The next thing he knew, Ivan found himself lying on his back in tremendous pain, staring at the ceiling.
``Don't move, I think you hit your back hard. And by the way, I suspect you have a dislocated wrist. You should have taken my advice and just be quiet about it,'' Harold said before walking to the attendant's counter to inform him of what had happened and to suggest getting an ambulance for Ivan. All about him the other gym rats were initially stunned, not believing what they had witnessed, before clapping in unison over someone who stood up against the bully of the gym.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 05-May-2014 21:29:39)
Those who were no where near where Ivan was quietly went back to twhatever they were doing. This included the free weights exercising people or the step-meter or even the stationary cyclists. There was no real need to get involved with Ivan when he was upset like this. The last time someone who was trying to be nice and placate Ivan had been shouted and assaulted verbally, which nearly came to blows before that person's girlfriend came in to drag him out, preying upon Ivan's only weakness of never voluntarily hitting a girl.
Ivan glared at the two gym rats closest to him. One was working on the bench press machine, while the other was working on some of the extension machines for the arms.
``Which of you TWO took away the key to the weight setting? Was it you Harold, or was it you, Leroy?'' Ivan's terrible eyes glared at one man and then the other in turn.
``Ivan, chill the fuck down,'' Leroy said sitting up from the benchpress machine. ``Just look around for it. Perhaps it fell out and landed somewhere.''
``Did you think I was stupid enough to not try?'' Bellowed Ivan. ``Own up already!''
Harold stood away from the extension machines and stood directly in front of Ivan. There was an uncontrollable tension that electrified the air in the gym. For some reason, everyone who was within eyeshot of the pair felt that something terrible was about to happen.
Ivan took a step backward involuntarily before gathering his wits and shouted straight at Harold ``Was it you, you jackass?''
Harold did not flinch. He stood there and looked straight up at Ivan before saying ``Ivan, no one likes your stupid shenanigans. Just find the stupid key and then get on with your training. If you can't find it, just talk to the attendant and they'll do something for you. Stop being such a cry baby.''
``CRY BABY?! You DARE call me a cry baby?! I will fucking end you!'' Ivan roared before slamming a fist in the direction of Harold.
The next thing he knew, Ivan found himself lying on his back in tremendous pain, staring at the ceiling.
``Don't move, I think you hit your back hard. And by the way, I suspect you have a dislocated wrist. You should have taken my advice and just be quiet about it,'' Harold said before walking to the attendant's counter to inform him of what had happened and to suggest getting an ambulance for Ivan. All about him the other gym rats were initially stunned, not believing what they had witnessed, before clapping in unison over someone who stood up against the bully of the gym.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 05-May-2014 21:29:39)
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