Candle

candle

match struck, then a burst of flame, 

will this candle chase why away? 

a riddle at night, now 

a morning mystery, 

I see how this ends

in week disarray. 

when you are west, east is far; 

moving north, the south I'm missing 

disappears. winter: warmth removes, 

summer sun's no closer. 

flicker, please, vanilla star -
wish this distance near.

dreams just tiny highways

ideas our little cars

drive with me awhile.
wind rustles your beautiful 

hair, touches your lovely

grey-sky eyes I'll never see

voice your love

songs, the radio plays 

hand me your heart-

felt emotions. I'll listen, listen

as we are one

distant dream.

NaNoWriMo

Entrance the Doctor

“Doctor!”

The doctor was not sleeping; he never slept these days. But waking? That was another trial entirely, and he felt his days. And his nights were plagued with dreams.

“Doctor!” the voice shouted again, banging loudly against the front door.

                Who could it be at this hour of the morning? The doctor grumbled and rolled into a sitting position. And where was his butler?

                “Who’s there?”

                “Simon Temple,” the voice called. “There’s an emergency at the central dome. You’ve been summoned!”

                Simon Temple? Who was that? That new guy in town, was it? What was he being summoned for – how could he help in an emergency? What time was it?

                “I’ll be right down,” the doctor called, groaning and rubbing at his eyes. He picked up a slice of the tree-fruit he’d left at his bedside, cure for aching limbs. Though his limbs did not ache, he felt they should, and took the necessary precautions. Age thrived more in his head than his flesh.

                If they needed a doctor, then the prophetic utterance had held true. A murder then, two.  

                Lighting a candle in the saucer near his bedside, the doctor slipped on his slippers. Shadows danced against the wall in the flickering flame, turning ghoulish simple shapes, and inane items into nightmares.

A perfect garden with a poisoned pool; an unblemished faun dying, suddenly, from some uncaught sickness; an eternal lush field, flower-full and yellow-green with luxurious grasses, suddenly bursting into flame, a volcanic maw opening and gorging on the meadow.

The stuff of dreams danced along the walls in sinister shadows, and the doctor sat motionless as a mouse struck by the screeching owl, muscles deaf to motion.

“Doctor? Are you coming?”

                “I’ll be there shortly. Run on ahead and let them know I’ll be coming. I need to collect a few things first.”

                The doctor rummaged through his closet, picking out his whites and surgeon’s mask. 

This is actually a passage that I'm not writing. So it won't actually be in the story. 

Douglas Despot and Whimsical Wednesdays

A preeminent being exists, forthwith dubbed Douglas. Douglas is a totalitarian, and his schemes likely spurned Machiavelli into a Faustian bargain ultimately producing that keen edged rubbish of despotic devilry: The Prince. Contrasted with such disreputable fellows as Mr. Hyde, or Dr. Frankenstein, or even Count Dracula, well, Douglas is found several levels beneath these monstrosities in Dante's infernal recollection, deeper even than Judas. Monster is too saintly a description for his ilk.
He's the son of Cain, and the anger of old is ever within him. He sits within, the fiery sanguine glow of the walls is dim, and grotesque shadows dance along the walls. The shadows are specters of something too awful for contemplation, an impossible savagery of chaos, and they match not the strange creatures apportioned along the walls in steel cages.  And these creatures, too, might melt the courage from the bravest of man.  Claws and protruding spines; rotting and jagged toothsome creatures with countless eyes and caustic saliva dripping from their mouths; obscene colors that assaulted the eyes: sulfur, blood-red, acid-green, void-black; and sitting over it all was Douglas, hands steepled beneath his chin, just watching as I exited the hallway into the mangled menagerie.
My heart quailed there, though my sins gave me strength I knew not.



Well, that declined quickly into a gruesome illustration. And such a beautiful evening produced this? I assure myself, no such darkness curtails my peace on this fine day. It was not sunny, not quite, though sun often graced our splendid sky. Beams of sunlight sent shafts of angular light between the clouds, dark, soaked cotton swabs of the sky.  I read, I played, I rested, I planned, and little schemed was not left undone today. Accomplishment soon gets its just reward: sleep. I'm swaddled with glee, and still Douglas and the nightmarish chamber was wrought. Happy Wednesday. I should sleep before anything even more dastardly is produced.

Sacred Inviolable

12.5%: a notable distance traveled, and many tracks and tricks remaining. Every railroad rut yields another, in a plodding towards eternity. What travails have I consigned my weeks to? Is this slippery justice? Lines were crossed, the sacred inviolable. This is penance for a milked crime, a trail of tears in illicit motions.  It is a grotesquerie I've harbored overlong.

The doctor has long exerted his influence over my transgressions, pressuring the infested, self-inflicted wound. Bitterly, a desperate penance has driven me into quietude, a beggary for concealment of iniquities long forgot.  Only he, the conniving doctor, knew my grievances, and I bought his silence dearly. In my great manse, in the rolling, wilderness hillsides of Scotland, a monstrous basement laboratory was carved into the bedrock, an elaborate, secret catacombs.  I doled out for the construction, as per the Doctor's every desire, and the honeycombing burrowed 'neath my home unseen, unknown. I stared away as they drilled, ashamed as I was of my own illicit behavior.

And the drilling stopped, one day, and life continued.

Then the screaming began.  I ignored it as best I could, the hellish wails beneath each inch of my estate.  What devilry was this? But I suspected my sin unpaid, and allowed the Doctor his work. It was the cruelest of purgatories. My servants disappeared, unsettled, for who can bear such nightmarish shrieks? Six months, I lived within that house torn asunder by devilry beneath.  Seven months I could take no more.
Within the center of the house sat a room like a disease, a monster at the heart of the earth. It was a dank room, musty, claustrophobic, and pitch. Dead center in the room, a tiny swivel-trapdoor opened into the complex beneath the manse. I'd never set foot here, not even in the room itself.
I rolled the stone trapdoor back, and a sulfuric smog rose into the room.  Lowering myself down, the smell strengthened, and an additional odor chafed at the edge of my nostrils, something organic, ghastly, and long dead. A dim light pulsated from the corridor beyond, casting a sickly glow. A low, ugly growl filled the basement dark, eerie and bestial.
What devilry was borne in this hellish place?