What the Old House Deserves

She longed to sing another time.

But, no matter how hard she craved, her skin was still made of paint. Her bones, still timber. Her murky eyes only saw through glassy panes, her voice only sighed through tangled air vents…

And she was fixed firmly to the earth amid a lonely forest, never to move from there again. 

This was her curse. By a powerful witch, this bitter musician was transformed into a house. And, as a house, she was now an ‘it’. 

The house had been reduced to nothing more than a furious, gluttonous wreck, counting the years one by one on its peeling walls, and was to continue to do so for many years to come.

It wanted nothing more than to live in extravagance and glory, once again.

*   *   *

One day, the old house called to a stranger. It called her in the midst of a storm. It mattered little to the house what so happened to have happened for that stranger to be walking by it under such convenient circumstances – all that mattered to the house was that it finally found itself a visitor.

A ‘Quick Brown Fox’ Story (Experimental text)

I limited myself to have every word follow alphabetically, with no repetitions until the alphabet looped again. With this, I sacrificed grammatical correctness, the correct uses of words and character naming, to create coherence. Finding words for the letters ‘Q’, and ‘V’ onwards was tricky, particularly ‘X’, where, due to its lack of common English words, I resorted to using words beginning with ‘ex’. Some of my uses of apostrophes were downright incorrect, and sometimes I invented words, ensuring that they still ‘felt’ like they fit into English. 

The narrative explores the point of view of a burnt cabin and its relationship to the humans that once used it. I thought the fragmented sentences suit the point of view of the cabin character.

A burning cabin doesn’t ever forget. Gone, house’s image. Jealously kindled. Living mourns nobody’s oaken planks. Quietly resents sapiens, those ungrateful vermin, who ‘xcessively yearn ziggurats.

Neon Disasters (Experimental Text)

I chose to experiment with multimodality. Before this text was written, I drew abstract shapes inside of a circle, intending to represent nothing. After its completion, I observed it from different rotations and found images from the shapes and colours. With those findings, I decided to write a narrative that followed along what I saw while rotating the circle anti-clockwise.

My writing process was a mixture of describing the first ideas that came to mind, while also trying to keep them consistent with each other. Because I wrote primarily from feeling, the imagery, world and narrative all became surreal and dream-like. I was especially fond of my use of personification of objects like the moon, the sun and the sky.

Despite the text’s surrealness and nonsensicality, it vaguely explores some of the consequences of curiosity and the unknown.

And then a rock from outer space struck the eye of the atmosphere. The sky cried until its colour faded from blue to pink – an uninviting kind of pink that the sky should never be the colour of. The world shook like zig-zags and spirals. 

Drabble: Purpose

Written from a prompt: Frame the absence of something

When does a building know its purpose?

Does it know from the moment its foundation is built? Does it see its blueprints, or is it one with the minds of those who invented its concept? 

Perhaps, a building waits until its completion. Then, does it only know its purpose the moment its last brick has been fixed into place; when its roof is fit to shield its precious interiors? Or, is it not until those strange little people make use of the space that it holds, does the building only discover that purpose?

There was a tower that dominated a small island, located nowhere in the vast ocean. If it could think, it would have been asking these questions for as long as it could remember. See, while its top marked halfway between the ground and the clouds, it had been left  behind – left unfinished by those who created it.

An Arrettian's Solitude

For alternative version: Linus and the Chimera-Person

There was once a being from planet Arrettia who sat to eat his lunch. He watched the Earthling besides him do the same, using two strange, shiny utensils to eat. They only heard the desert wind that whistled, and then the tools used for bearing food clinking onto the tools used for transporting it into one’s mouth. It was the two of them alone atop the ruins of a lost sanctuary, letting the slowest hours of the daylight pass by. 

Suddenly, the Earthling lifted one of its utensils, intertwined with a portion of the stringy, wobbly feed from its box. It held the utensil towards the curious Arrettian. A nervous murmur escaped the Earthling’s mouth as it held up its food, yet not eating it. Perhaps the Earthling was trying to communicate its distaste for its meal? Perhaps it was an exclamation of being thankful, or maybe it was even offering to share? 

The Arrettian struggled to do anything in return. A moment, and finally the Earthling appeared to give up the interaction, continuing to eat its stringy, wobbly food again. Then, the Arrettian continued the same with his own.

Linus and the Chimera-Person (An Arrettian's Solitude - Alternative Version)

Alternative version of: An Arrettian's Solitude

It’s a good hour for lunch, he thought. Perry L Linus was just delivering mail a few days ago and now he was sharing a lunch break with an alien companion. 

Atop the ruins of a sanctuary in an abandoned city, Linus and the alien both sat. They never conversed; they couldn’t. It was quiet, and the only sounds that accompanied the two were the light desert wind, and the awkward chewing made by the both of them as they ate. On occasion, Linus would take a glance at the alien. They were bizarre in appearance – something like a creature with the body of a vulture, the limbs of an octopus, and the face of a mantis. Linus had no idea such life-forms existed, so he just classified the being as a ‘chimera-person’. 

The Lights, One by One

The kind of house that Clara lived in was ordinary. It had all its windows closed and every exit shut so that nothing could climb their way in to find her. Hardly any curtains nor blinds were left open, and now almost nothing could watch her from the dark outdoors. Tonight, Clara was the only one inside of her home. 

Clara took in her last spoonful from the now empty plate. It once contained the leftovers that her parents spared her before they left that night, and now her final task of the day was to catch up on her quadratic equations. Mathematics was never her strongest subject at school – she preferred ones that were more flexible and allowed for a greater imagination. She wasn’t excited to return to her room. But, why waste any time? Except to wash her dishes, there was no other use for her staying at the table any longer. She made her way to the sink.

A Bored, Needy Piano

We haven’t spent any real time together in so, so long. What are you doing these days? Always with those notebooks, are you? Always typing away on that little computer, too, are you? All of those other things that occupy you, you and I know I could never compare to – never in my lifetime. Oh, if only I was capable of providing the same variety as the infinite possibilities of strokes you could on a sheet of paper, or surpass whatever superpower a computer wields. A lot of the time I wish you and I could be more than just you instructing me what to sing, and me singing as you play. Do you wish that, too? I could never know.