Fiction Fragment 2
Here's the second installment of the story I guess I'm working on. As with the first installment, suggestions and comments of any nature are more than welcome. Since I have only a little more of an idea what's going on or where it will go from here than you do, you potentially hold a lot of power over its direction.
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We circled it, looking for a break in the pattern of stacked and staggered rectangles that might lead us to an idea of its origins or purpose. Finding none, we tried to climb a neighboring tree to try to see its top-- as it was surrounded by thick forest, we could only view it from close, which kept us from seeing how it terminated. Was it an obelisk, a funerary monument for the industrial giant of a lost civilization? Or would we find a statue, a triumphant emperor seated on his steed, made immortal and immobile for his heroic achievement in expanding the empire to this remotest of outposts? Or would we find at its summit the thing that in those moments of wonder seemed the least likely of all: nothing whatsoever? But as anyone who has ever tried to climb a birch knows already, the futility of the idea became immediately apparent. There were simply no branches low enough to reach and strong enough to support a man.
The sun was by now well behind the trees and light was beginning to fade. Reluctantly, we moved on from the enigma. We found a clearing nearby, and immediately erected our tent while the lingering daylight still accommodated.
To the north, behind the dark green curtain of the thick wood out of which we had just come, the darkly aged brick of our monument was just visible. We were glad, in the way one might be glad that a black widow is still visible. There was the irrational and unspoken notion among us that while we held it in our vision it would remain a very inexplicable stack of bricks, but that as soon as it was lost from view, anything at all might happen. Visions of midnight masonic rituals or pagan sacrifices danced in our heads. In the low-grade delirium of that evening, it felt like the monolith might move closer to us under cloak of darkness, might tip itself over and crush us in our tent, or might vanish without a trace. Somehow, the last possibility was the most disconcerting.
Still, though, we were glad when it was finally obscured behind the growing gloom. There was nothing comforting about our find, as there might have been about tire tracks or electrical wires. It was man-made, but the men who made it had long since left, apparently, and there was something grotesque in its remaining.
The sun was by now well behind the trees and light was beginning to fade. Reluctantly, we moved on from the enigma. We found a clearing nearby, and immediately erected our tent while the lingering daylight still accommodated.
To the north, behind the dark green curtain of the thick wood out of which we had just come, the darkly aged brick of our monument was just visible. We were glad, in the way one might be glad that a black widow is still visible. There was the irrational and unspoken notion among us that while we held it in our vision it would remain a very inexplicable stack of bricks, but that as soon as it was lost from view, anything at all might happen. Visions of midnight masonic rituals or pagan sacrifices danced in our heads. In the low-grade delirium of that evening, it felt like the monolith might move closer to us under cloak of darkness, might tip itself over and crush us in our tent, or might vanish without a trace. Somehow, the last possibility was the most disconcerting.
Still, though, we were glad when it was finally obscured behind the growing gloom. There was nothing comforting about our find, as there might have been about tire tracks or electrical wires. It was man-made, but the men who made it had long since left, apparently, and there was something grotesque in its remaining.
posted by Matthew at 10:38 AM
2 Comments:
This IS a mystery. Being dark makes me think of something wierd and sinister happening - something with a shock factor. But since you referenced that I think the find could be more benign, and opening up a world of possibilities.
RKG
I found myself remembering the "The Horse and His Boy", where he sat at the edge of the desert waiting in the night for his companions to come and the roar of the lion came instead. Your brick monstrosity gives me that sense of erie expectation and foreboding of an unknown source. I am curious about who the "we" consists of-one person, two, maybe more and will they all fit in the tent, separate sleeping bags of course? Will we ever know what adventure brought them to this place and time? Only an additional fragment will tell.
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