Silk Road forums
Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: Fermain on February 19, 2013, 05:13 pm
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run:
run:
run:
A word that is always best to heed, though for whatever reason it causes the legs to seize up and sees you glued to the rotten deck of a broken schooner.
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Thunderclap of an old man’s lightning gun. He takes stock, peering over the crest of the hill, to readjust his aim back towards my young friend, William.
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The scrambling boy is now practically falling through empty space, the void punctuated occasionally by shattering slate. Once again I compel my legs to move, but I remain.
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Narrowly dodging the volley, my brave chum jumps under the cover of an empty and overturned oil drum. A last shot rings off it’s metal side, and clouded eyes turn, maligned, in my direction.
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Still stood atop a citadel of damp and moulded staves, is a dry sot, lame and sober in the face of patent and overt danger. Ringing with tinnitus, the silence of armistice is as disarming to punished ears as the maelstrom that started it.
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Taking advantage of the pause, we engage in parley. Angry cries are disguised by a heavy vernacular, a sodden lilt made all the more indecipherable by many years lacking in practice.
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Are we invaders in a foreign land, encroaching on the sacred soil of another man? Or a shocking sight, a foul tasting reminder of what has been left behind? Has the concept of youth passed out of use here? The dividing line that snakes throughout our land, and our lives.
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Blurred by a whirlwind cultural amnesia, has this old man forgotten what it means for purpose to be purpose in itself, rather than the shroud of ulterior ends? Does our naivety die here, and resurrect when we step back onto the mainland?
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Ramblings fall further out of comprehension, as do beads of liquid that stream from well used tear ducts and freeze. More is said in clouds of white breath, lifted above to play in eddies. They are indistinguishable, until they fade into the ether, never again seen by eyes, old or young, but remembered.
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The expert instruction, issued through fragments of visual code and outputted in the facial gestures of a friend-turned-hero finally unlock me from my paralysis, and I am free to do as he wills. Moving slowly first towards that oil drum and then the old man, now at arms length, we stand before him.
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Jaw quivering pathetically, and sick with nervous energy, I complete my half of our silent conspiracy. I reach up to him with all my strength while William attempts to wrench that heavy weapon from a brittle but tightly clenched fist. Trying to resist our throes the poor man loses footing and bowls backwards onto rocks below.
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Transfixed by the figure, now reeling, I pull my eyes up and struggle with a hollow feeling that is pouring boundlessly into every corner of my being.
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The small hand on my shoulder is known but not felt. Blue eyes too, there are hundreds of pebbles on the island. His soft words of sorrow are as much for me as they are for the beaten seashore.
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Sweet, keep it up man.
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Unable to bear any more, I exit left to the sound of rasping breath. Autumn wind channels white vapour to meet a vacant sea. And vacantly I pad with head down, along a track. Between breaking slate footsteps I hear a thunderclap.
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Closing in now, the dark is closing in on me. It presses on all sides, peering at a lone figure and chides him as he continues to walk upwards on his spiral path. It would be impossible to say if the house that lies atop that rugged and jarring outcrop is home to any sort of answer, or not.
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At times I hear the wailing call of dear William, pierced with anguish and filling the rocky concaves so that the boy has a thousand voices. Each time it comes, like the panning arc of some terrible lighthouse, I am poised to return to him, but even though I yearn for his company, the night now has total control of me.
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From the summit I see the scene in it’s entirety. A rotten schooner with glued deck below a shale slope for a falling boy. Hardened ridge for the resting of a gun-barrel. Past the oil drum is a place for wrestling and wresting weaponry off of the elderly, a space for tumbling, an executioners block, and after much fumbling with catches, the light of a rifle shot.
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Far beyond is an emptiness once marked by the light at the very top of father’s mast. He once stopped here, promising my return, but has passed.
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you do make some good points
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I regard the rather dilapidated building, a modest Scilly shack of sorts, with walls of grey stone and crumbling mortar. At it’s front stands a wooden door with deep splits running along it’s length, and it’s width. Each leads to, or I should say, emanates from, the house’s first treasure. A fine brass knocker in the shape of a thistle, tarnished and beaten but still hard to grasp and prickly.
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Force enough from my first tentative knock to push open the door, which has been left unlocked. My eyes widen in surprise and to better draw in a scene of such impossibility, cupboards open and empty, dry logs piled high underneath each sill, so that wood chips spill onto the panelled floor right up to a blinking computer terminal. Four white words seal my fate: “Hello William, you’re late.”
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The many wires and switches bewitch me. Their logic figured a thousand times by boys far smarter than I, but the words that scrawl the screen at my behest are simple. A crawling dictum from the dead man, to his successor. Successive instructions for a specific order of personal eternity, that list forever.
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As I engage the infernal program, all colour around me fades. Time slows to black and white terminal days. The biting cold rests its teeth, and my consciousness sinks from its former level, to one beneath. I become defined by the syntax of his mind, that drowns out even the knocking of the brass thistle behind me.
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Isaac and Ishmael finish their last dance, parting the crowd in applause, and of course, I am bound to stand with them. Head whirling with the dervishes that spin onto stage, and ears ringing with the rhythm of her earlier words, sage advice that, were it not for the many hundreds around me, would allow me to lose myself to rage and destroy the many pages that I have written for her.
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I back out of the auditorium, contorting myself so that I conform with the general yawn of an early morning cityscape. Scraping up the last of my self restraint, I turn to face the rising sun and pace through twisting alleyways to hasten my retreat.
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Banks of lively electric things now keep me company. Their whirs and clicks form a low symphony, that simpers above the constant knock of a brass thistle timpani. It’s score lies all around on every surface, scribbled fragments of code, that goad me to abandon their original purpose, in search of earthly things that are worthless.
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Thats it for now