CoCo's Anthology - by Zid - "Through a Darkened Pane"...

by ziddina 45 Replies latest jw friends

ziddina

Aaaaaaand here is a link to the original thread...
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/social/entertainment/184687/1/Through-a-Darkened-Pane
For newbies, CoCo is one of the great talents on this board. Check out the artwork scattered throughout that thread - and CoCo's stories are delightful, fantastical, scaaaarrry!!!
And great fun!!
But he hasn't finished any of these stories on-board, so I'm going to list a few, and suggest endings or directions in which I'd like to see the story go...
Here goes...
ziddina

The story starts out with an innocent walk thru the neighborhood...
CoCo's post #6805
My frequent walks these last few years about the neighborhood so familiar to me would ordinarily be construed a pleasant enough non-event. A little mild exercise - taken in small doses to keep the joints operating properly - and a keen eye peeled for the ever-changing face of nature have rendered the daily promenade a suitable diversion. Until recently.

I noticed nothing unusual at the beginning; I saunter over the same roads almost without variation, being an inveterate creature of habit. To tell the truth, I cannot pinpoint the exact day I began walking in this particular region of my town, other than the fact that, when I moved here some three years ago, I was too involved with matters more pressing than finding time to exercise. Nevertheless, once in a routine of regular jaunts throughout our peaceful suburb, I really sensed nothing out of the ordinary. No, not until recently.

I'm being stalked. Not in the usual sense. No crazed individual lurks in shadow. No person trails me surreptitiously. The sun is shining and birds are singing. Evil does not happen under such circumstances. Yet, an evil far more sinister than any miserable human could embody and visit upon the unwary soul has seeped into my neighborhood. Slowly. Insidiously. By otherworldly design.

The beauty of my natural surroundings - wherever that might happen to be - has never failed to tug at my heart and stir my imagination. For a certainty there are enchanted castles in the clouds, armies of fabulous creatures inhabiting the forest and crusty woodsmen rafting down a river swollen by heavy, unseasonal rain. A secluded cabin properly placed in this setting would be the perfect touch. Back to the present: I am capable of distinguishing between reality and imagination, however active and fertile that imagination may be.

It's impossible to take in one's surroundings all at once. In addition to observing nature, I revel in the diverse architecture of my neighborhood. Even over a period of time, however, one still misses detail. Yes, there always has been a house on that lot, but I hadn't noticed the awnings over the two windows facing the street. Oh, this home on Robin Way has a brass kick plate affixed to the base of the front door. Was it always there? When did the Johnston's install metal railing on their deck? I didn't notice that the wooden corral railing had been removed ...

And there it was. Why hadn't I seen it before? I've shot a look at that hillside more times than I can count, but I don't remember ever seeing that house on the hill before. It gives all the appearance of rising up from the soil as though it were sown and nurtured there, tended as though it were part and parcel of the wood itself. This acknowledgement of a hillside dwelling should not, of itself, be any cause for undue concern. Of course not. Not till somewhat later, feeling a slight need for change and taking a different stretch of road, did I look out toward another band of foothills and feel a shudder fly up my spine.

There, unmistakable, was the house. I looked and looked again. It couldn't be. I've walked so long, so far. Nothing else about the forested ridge appeared remotely familiar. I was taken aback by the ghostly deadness of the land and forest surrounding the building. As for the defining architecture, the line of the house, the slant of the roof and ... the window.... What was clearly recognizable as a window was not by any means a typical pane of glass. Despite the other readily identifiable characteristics of the house, the window was, eerily so, the distinguishing feature.

Darkly sinister. And peering ...
Peering at me....
ziddina

Hee hee hee hee!!
I feel a bit like the "Cryptkeeper"...
And here's a visual CoCo added...
CoCo's post #6815...
I pull away, turn on my heel and make for home. Escaping the glaring eye of the other, I realize, is only temporary. As I walk the last quarter mile toward home, there is my tormentor, staring me squarely in the face from on high. Twenty minutes earlier the dark entity was perched loftily upon a promontory, ensconced in that deadened wood. As I hasten anxiously homeward, I look only at my feet in order to avoid the persistent draw of the sinister landscape ahead on the ridge.

Upon my porch, I reach with a jerk for my key chain. I fumble as I look about to my right, to my left. Finally ... the latch key poised between thumb and index ... I insert it ... turn the key and knob.... Ultimate relief, at last, as I enter the cool, dark of my abode. As I collapse upon my threadbare wingback, I try to blot out images that began surfacing in my pounding cranium when I was in its leering presence.

It all happened so many, many years ago. It was war. It was a world away. The boss said they weren't people. No, not really. They were a threat to our way of life in this, our great country. I was just a kid. What did I know? Sure, they were only peasants, but they were mothers, fathers, brothers ... Why don't their faces just go away! Mom taught me all men are brothers. Always reading and preaching Pearl Buck. My mother would sit up in her grave and shriek if she'd known what I had signed up for. Maybe it was good she died so young. Rest in peace, Mom, rest in peace.
I would hate for her to have to choose between the two of me ...
ziddina

CoCo's post #6825...
When I moved to this new and fresh neighborhood, freed, it was hoped, from all lingering doubts about who I truly was, I immediately sensed that a new leaf was being turned over on my behalf. Not that I had to force myself through the rigors of what my folks called "putting on the new personality," but that some cosmic entity [this is as close as I'll ever get to the deity concept] shuffled through a humungous bushel full of old autumn leaves and, miraculously, found a brand new leaf, turned it over and stamped my name upon it. Well, so to speak. The high-mountain landscape was appealing to this coastal kid, and the architecture of our expansive but extremely well-tended community was second-to-none. I felt on top of the world, like Hilton's full moon rising over Shangri-La, touching each mountain peak in succession, like some celestial lamplighter.
Back to earth, my new leaf and I were ready, willing and able to settle in and get cozy.
CoCo's post #6827
Settled in, physically; cozy, never.
A guy wishes for something higher than himself, with or without his parent's religion or his country's ideals, right or wrong. My mother's books and their faraway places had my spirit soaring to dizzying heights and, conversely, plummeting back to the world's cruel realities, such as experienced by the short-lived, now eternally dead masses of un-pitied humanity. Initially, I did pity the un-mourned living dead, because my imagination supplied their storybook, cardboard character a hero's frame and a saint's heart. There was no obstacle that this refuse of the world could not overcome by dint of their own innate courage or personal conviction that might does not make right. Courage of convictions is scarcely the possession of a so-called superior race. Was all this merely a story in my idealist's head, the inflated head of a hapless dreamer? When I reached my real-life assignment in the asphalt jungle, I believed I would lead these humble people to their cherished goal of emancipation from tyranny.
I didn't. I wanted to forget them.
My new life and bucolic surroundings cannot shut out their cries ...
ziddina

***************************************************************
CoCo's post #6840... At this point, I think CoCo starts a new story line...??
I called him the boss, but it would be more correct to affix this definitive appellation to our leader: The Boss. An upper case distinction with a telling difference. He and his unctuous groupies did the telling ... and writing ... and enforcing, with no little mean persuasion.
The aforementioned peasants and their vile, polluting ways that posed a potential threat to us "pure" ones was so paradoxically a little thing, a most common occurrence among the uneducated masses of impoverished humanity: their artlessness, and, particularly among these gentle island folk, their link to Nature.
It was as though each of the little brown babies was born of the soil's womb itself, teeming with life and vitality and the earth's multiplicity of spirit entities. These newborns, linked to and inextricably intertwined with Mother Earth, matured rapidly from precocious adolescence to a knowing and sage priesthood of healers. Healers of any form of malady, even those of the heart and soul. I was among the few ennobled "benefactors" who refused, albeit in my heart [it was prudent and necessary to keep one's own counsel], to disdain the obvious natural gifts of these dear but maligned pagans.
Where do superior individuals derive validation of their supposed ascendency over those less outwardly advantaged? From their reading and believing their nation's jingoist writers and from their own personal self-appraisal before gilt-edged, rose-colored looking glasses.
***************************************************************
ziddina

CoCo's post #6858 - and I think this segment continues the first story...
I have made repeated attempts to move on with my life since your flagrant decision to plague my every thought, my every move. I cannot move forward. A change of venue, that of diet, even new clothes have afforded me but a frivolous and temporary elevation of spirits. Accordingly, as I am thus paralyzed by a most profound sense of anguish, I lie in bed, starring at a black sky, and pine anew for what little contentment life once offered up. A mellow and simple contentment I owned before your decision to inhabit my home, my body, my spirit. Whenever will you cease following me about? You have gripped me by the nape of my neck and refuse to release me. My begging for mercy from a hunter lioness would prove an endeavor far more certain of success. You are a wily mistress, one whose cruel hold is that of iron. Between the mind's stabs at my heart and your refusal to disappear from my view, I am losing that steely mastery of self that the Boss pounded into my once unquestioning conscience.

In complete control of all that my eyes now behold, you pull me steadily backward into times past. Times that, I thought, were gone and forgotten. Nearly forgotten but for a brief remembrance triggered, in strange and bitter irony, by that most brief recollection of a fleeting joy. Sorrow forces upon me the certainty of her undeniable existence, her penetrating essence. You are she ...

You have stolen my present, sabotaged my future, yet you say nothing....

You only stare at me ... through your darkened pane....
ziddina

CoCo's post #6861...
I try to forget remembrance past, admittedly futile but always worth one more try. I hit the sheets and tell myself, "This time it's going to work. I will sleep ... I will myself to sleep...."
I awake around 2:00 a.m., soaked to the bone. Still some residual fever from the flu, I guess. Dazed, I struggle in slow motion to free myself from a twisted, sodden sheet, grab my lump of a sweat-stained pillow and set feet to floor. Maybe I'll find a little relief sleeping standing up. Clearly, I'm not thinking clearly ...
Stumbling through the debris of many days' inattention to my studio's general health, I pick my way blearily to the airless open window and pose momentarily at the sash. The yellowed, tattered wisps of some ancient lace curtain hang limp and motionless, framing in a view I've come to hate:
CoCo's post #6867...
The green, naive whelp, the inveterate idealist ... me, myself, I.
Forty years ago, there I was, pounding the pavement of the asphalt jungle, searching for any who would listen to the Formula, the only true creed: compliments of the Boss Himself. My much older, wiser and jaded shell of spent humanity gazes downward through an opened pane of filthy glass. I eye with menace my youthful, scrubbed ruddiness and earnestness. Though dressed in somewhat worn hand-me-down threads, my tattered saintliness won over not a few souls. Little did I then realize that the inherent naturalness of youthful persuasion had been reeled in, unhooked and shoved into the creel of rigid and uncompromising uniformity. Unwittingly, I had been selling my own soul while in the process of winning over the souls of trusting men, women, children ...
From my enlightened vantage point I look back in time, I look down at my beautiful, young manhood. From a darkened pane I see my reflection and despise what I have become ...
CoCo's post #6868
Strangely, a cool sense of tranquility washes over me as I come out of my reverie, my black reminiscence ...
The vision of my youthful ideals embodied in vaporous shadow on the pavement below has evaporated. Gone for the moment but sure to return as an untold want ... a want, a wish for explanation why it all went so wrong. Yet, wrong by whose interpretation? I learn to shut it out, shut out the noise in the head called irrational thought, excessive thinking that leads only to depression, if not, eventually, to insanity.
I pull away from the window, shut it tight against the chilly predawn air, and forget my dark reflection. It's only a phantom, scarcely the real me. I throw on some duds lying in a tumble at the foot of my bed and don my black cap, drawing it down tight at my ears. Out the entrance to my studio I lunge, not bothering to lock up. Why take the silly but usual precautions at this juncture in my over-dull life? A walk in the moonlight will do me good. I will see my inner turmoil in a new light, the softly suffused illumination della bella luna. The black shadow of the walking dead, cast upon the asphalt by the gracious moon, will be my companion ...
Chilled to the bone, I couldn't care less.
I tread slowly, reverentially, my way over to the frosty view above that patiently awaits me. Full, round and gleaming is beauty supernal: my exquisite, my lovely Moon. I wish to touch her but am overwhelmed by giant sentinels whose barren arms stretch with desperate longing toward her. For all their height, those statuesque trees are no more able to caress her silvery face than I. The eternal, unrequited pining for what is enthroned on high.
I seek something, someone on high to tell me who I am and where I am going, but it is a thankless and lonely quest. The lunar queen has no spoken answer, perhaps, yet her presence comforts me as none other can.
ziddina

CoCo's post #6885...
I want the warmth of hearth and home. It is natural.
The house that draws my heart and mind away from all reasonable and natural desire, however, is desolate of any ember that might be kindled into a passionate flame. From yet so far a distance my imagination conjures up interior walls blackened by the oily soot of poorly trimmed kerosene lamps and a dank, poorly drafted fireplace whose tepid fires never quite took. The windows, likewise, are years and years gone unwashed. The now opaque panes distort through their dried-on grime views from within, visions from without. Paneled ceilings, somber and bleak, drip decades-worth of filthy webs downward toward stalagmite accumulations of swirling debris that reach upward, grasping tentatively, from warped and gaping oaken planks.
A grand and spiraling staircase takes center stage but startles me as its wide and toothless grin reflects the loss of many a baluster. It dares me any further approach. I draw back instinctively yet am morbidly fascinated by what is gently swaying in shadow ...
In the dark, at the top of the stairs....
CoCo's post #6893...
My arrest of attention upon movement upstairs was abruptly diverted by the slamming shut of the huge entry door, that accomplished with a huge sucking sound and consequent evacuation of a heavy, fetid atmosphere. More unsettled by my own annoyance at the rude interruption of the unfolding of delicious terror than I was by actual fright, I spun round and stopped dead, face-to-face with a most unexpected sight ...
CoCo's post #6900...
My arrest of attention upon movement upstairs was abruptly diverted by the slamming shut of the huge entry door, that accomplished with a huge sucking sound and consequent evacuation of a heavy, fetid atmosphere. More unsettled by my own annoyance at the rude interruption of the unfolding of delicious terror than I was by actual fright, I spun round and stopped dead, face-to-face with a most unexpected sight ...
What could have been only a hasty delivery by an unseen courier - so much of my account seems fraught with the unknowable, the invisible - was my scarcely determined assessment of a large wooden container's sudden arrival, landed squarely at the entrance. I saw the downward, lazy swirl of dust coming to rest whence it came, having been excited and cast upward from the box's crash to the floor's thick cushion of dust. My approach toward the mysterious carton was, needless to say, accomplished with the utmost caution, and not a little trepidation as my thoughts cast backward to the tale of Pandora. However dim the light stealing through the long unwashed glass proved to be, I was, nevertheless, able to read the name of the addressee ... Elizabeth Vincent, my long-departed mother. Any vestige of fear clutching at my heart gave way to an insatiable curiosity to discover what ill lay in wait for me from within the steep, rectangular walls of pine. In my mother's stead, I deemed it entirely suitable to take possession of her property.
Locating a crowbar amongst a heap of tools and diverse household paraphernalia in the kitchen, I hastened back to the box and began unfastening the several nails holding the broad lid in place. After a number of unsuccessful attempts to slide the tapered end of the bar between the tight seam between cover and box, I finally penetrated the seeming hermetic seal that, ironically, appeared to wish absolute denial of entry therein. The usual loud and protracted squawk of nails letting go their tenacious hold on wood did not disappoint for all its raucous clamor.
I worked my way around the carton - some three-foot-square was the lid - and at last had released each nail's fast hold to the box proper and set to pull off and lower the lid to the floor. Though I had figured the box to be pine for its light coloring and presence of characteristic knots, yet the top was exceedingly heavy. I managed it down by tugging at one corner, drawing it bit-by-bit toward me, then, likewise, the opposing end.
As I let out a sigh of relief over the unusual expenditure of time and effort, I let the lid drop, barely missing my feet.
(there... that's more like it...)
compound complex

What a pleasant surprise, Ziddy, my first day back with my own iMac and high speed internet!
Three months sans computer, I've attempted [unsuccessfully] to comb through stacks of hardcopy MSS in order to make some sense of 5 years of writing. Not caring to write a book but "publish" online at my favorite haunt, JWN, I've truly missed my wee-hours foray into tall-tale telling.
My insertion of what you termed a change in story line was my drift into recollections [free writing] of "The Boss" [the Society] and my years as an American missionary chez the goodhearted denizens of the Caribbean whom we recruited.
Better off left alone...?
Thanks, dear lady!
Love,
CoCo
ziddina

Yer welcome, CoCo - and a great big thank-you for sharing your wonderful writings with us!! I hope all of your fans find this anthology! [AND that you send some off to a publisher - hint, hint... ]
And now, back to the fray...
CoCo's post #6902...
I understood them to say my dialogue was inept, I was deplorably weak in delineating character, knew nothing about plot-structure, couldn't interpret history adequately and, generally speaking, would be well advised to turn to other means of livelihood. I'd worked hard on those books for [six] years without any noticeable reward or acclaim; and their reception and sales were discouraging in the extreme so much so that I was broke and on the verge of abandoning the course I'd charted for myself [six] years before.
CoCo's post #6903...
Astonished, incredulous, aroused emotionally.
Words, even when taken to the superlative level by that four letter word, cannot adequately describe my trembling, choked-by-sobs self. The capacious container was resting place to a multitude of books that had been lovingly and carefully arranged in a deep cushion of excelsior. Though this bevy of books had the evident look of relative antiquity about them, there was not the characteristic odor of must and damp so prevalent among cemeteries of long-forgotten books.
I reached with the utmost reverence for the volume that had caught my attention and won my affection as a mere lad: Arundel, by Kenneth Roberts. Knowing nothing then about the historicity of the American colonies' various accounts (some, I have since learned, are disputed as to accuracy), I was taken by N.C. Wyeth's cover art of Indians and settlers canoeing the swelling waters of the Dead River ... the Arundel River ... the Kennebec ... la Riviere du Loup? I cannot recall, but the deep blue waters tipped by creamy white caps, the crisp, colorful off-shore autumn foliage, the looming, inscrutable blue hill, have long since inhabited my imagination.
Once out of my memory-stirred reverie, I began slowly turning pages, traveling digitally the maps depicting the moves of Colonel Benedict Arnold and his men, the Prologue by Steven Nason (the story's protagonist). On page ten I caught sight of Steven's loving tribute to his mother, Sarah. Why my careful though somewhat random perusal took in that particular account, I've no clue - there was simply too much to take in, given my excitement and agitated sense of deja-vu. Nevertheless, the words were fitting, as I could have said the same about Elizabeth Vincent, my mother.
Steven thanked God for his mother's education ...

CoCo's Anthology - by Zid - "Through a Darkened Pane"...

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