THRILLHOUSE @georgiadrinksbeer - Tumblr Blog

The Man

There wasn’t much to it when the man arrived.

He unloaded his cart as many had before him; his possessions were bound in paper and twine. No-one turned their heads as they passed him by, merely caught him in their peripheral vision. Every week it seemed a new bachelor arrived, and loaded his worldly goods in to that same, plain house. The cart was not his own, and at 3pm the driver climbed atop his bench, whipped his horses, and off he went.

The man was not noteworthy in appearance. Neither ugly nor handsome, he wore a plain grey suit with a plain grey tie. His shoes were grey, and so were his eyes. His greying black hair was combed in an uninteresting way that made him easy to overlook. Those who saw him did not see his face, but merely his silhouette as it dully manoeuvred its boring packages in to the terribly normal house.

Across the road and down the path a way, sat another house. Less normal than the former, it had taken on the character of its inhabitants. Spiralling ferns had been trimmed to precision in the front of the yard, and the large oak tree was hung with children’s toys on ribbons. The window frames were butter yellow, and behind them hung purple damask curtains. Jessica Darling stood in the kitchen of the less normal house, absent-mindedly stirring sugar into her teacup. Her only child, Jonathan, was reading a book – an amazement considering he was only five. The fireplace roared, though the sun blazed unseasonably outside. Jessica smiled at the boy before checking the time.

Mr Darling was late home that day. Jessica was used to this disturbance and it did not affect her.

“Do you need another blanket, little Darling?” she asked the sickly boy. He closed the book, leaving his thumb in the page so as not to lose his place. Shaking his head, he looked into her eyes. Her eyes were distinctive sea-foam green; the exact same shade as his. He smiled a meaningful smile before dropping his head back down and continuing the story. It was a book of fairy tales by the brothers Grimm, bound in leather and matte from the constant changing of hands. Jonathan was pale from a lifelong sickness, and now unable to leave the not-normal house. Jessica stayed with him, keeping a watchful eye on her son and teaching him lessons far more advanced than other boys his age were learning in town, in the schoolhouse that stood about three miles down. He could already count, add, read, write, speak fluent English and even do a little embroidery.

Mr Charles Darling didn’t approve of the boy’s sewing, or of his reading. A labourer from his teen years on, he believed the skills would make his son weak and soft, not unlike his mother, so Charles thought. He attributed them to his inability to grow healthily after the pneumonia. He had been consumed by fear over the boy’s future before giving up on him entirely shortly before his fourth birthday.

The Darlings could only afford such luxuries as they had as a result of the wealth left to Jessica by relatives. Mr Darling despised the use of money he hadn’t earned, and grew in bitterness with each purchase and bill payment. Jessica had come to learn that her husband was unchangeably unhappy, but had since adjusted herself to the fact. It no longer made her weep or worry. She tolerated him as one might a stray cat, or a fox in the garden, but with less affection.

She was quite content with her little world, in her little house, with her little smart boy. She gave nothing but love to her son, who returned it gleefully, and she had long lost the need for anything else. She ignored the dark moments her husband bade she endure. Mr Darling returned as the boy went to bed, around 7 o’clock. He ate the dinner she had prepared for him without speaking, and she began to crochet another blanket for Jonathan.

“What are you doing?” Mr Darling grunted.

“I’m making a new blanket for Jonathan.” Jessica replied airily.

“He has plenty of blankets, you’ll make him soft. Softer.”

“I’m just making one in a different colour.” Jessica sighed, audibly stinting her sentences in the hope that the conversation would end.

“He’s a boy, what need does he have for different colours?”

“He needs blankets to keep warm and I enjoy the crafting. What is the matter with that?”

“The matter,” Mr Darling’s voice rose in volume and lowered in pitch “is that you are making your soft son even softer.”

Jessica ignored the repeated implication that Jonathan was disappointing to Mr Darling, and focussed on her crafting.

“Listen to me!” Mr Darling’s voice grew louder still. Jessica placed the needle on her lap with the wool and pressed her hands together. Staring at the fireplace, she said in her kindest and softest voice:

“No. I shan’t listen to you, Charles. If you aren’t happy with the way we live, then leave. Jonathan will miss you, and for that I let you stay. But let me be quite clear; if you leave, I will not miss you. If you die, I shall not mourn. You are but a spectre in this house.” With a warm smile, she continued with her craft.

Charles shook, incredulous. His hands grew cold as the blood rushed from them and every other of his extremities to his face. Red with rage, Jessica thought he looked rather like a wild tomato. One tiny corner of her mouth flickered sadly downward, just for a moment. There had been a time when she had loved the stranger that stood before her, scarlet faced and gasping for words. His moods had sent her into panic attacks; she had run around after him like a doting nursemaid. But since the birth of Jonathan, she had found a peaceful clarity. She had decided that the man whom had terrified, tormented, beaten her and raped her no longer deserved to hold any effect on her. She had been overcome with a sense of strength and freedom. Not only did she no longer love the man that tried to terrify her in to submission; she was also no longer victim to him. She didn’t love him, and she didn’t hate him. She wasn’t afraid of him, or wary of him. Day to day, she merely tolerated him for the sake of her son – a son whom Charles did not love. Most remarkable of all, since Jonathan’s birth, Charles had not hit her when he was around. He had looked as though he would several times, he had even threatened to. But his skin hadn’t touched hers for a second in Jonathan’s presence. She was protected. She could stand for his night time visits a little more with this in mind.

Picking up her needle and continuing with the blanket, she began to hum a song she had been practising earlier that day on the piano. Charles was still trembling over her, arched in some manner she had presumed was supposed to be fearsome, but she no longer accounted for his presence.

In the farthest room from the drawing room where his parents remained hostile and silent, Jonathan lay under a hand stitched quilt, sleeping in a large four poster bed that made his sickly frame look even smaller. Through the veiled window, the street had dropped to below freezing and was as clear as crystal. Ice cold nothingness separated the world below from the celestial constellations above. The man stood squarely in his front garden, smoking standard tobacco from his very ordinary pipe. His grey eyes grew moist against the still cold as he stared upward toward the thousand tiny white lights in the sky.

There was a movement in the distance. He turned serenely, almost sadly, to the source, and spotted a small, sickly looking boy in the window of the house opposite his. The man squinted. The boy was clutching a book in one hand, whilst the other waved slowly at him.

Jonathan had noticed the man arrive, carrying his unpolished trunks of his belongings. He’d felt his movements across the street as he sat reading next to his mother. He liked the man’s face. And so, as the man looked up and caught his eye, he waved. He waved, and he smiled.

Quickly, the man tapped the contents of his pipe to the floor and fled inside the house, turning all the lamps as he went. Jonathan continued to smile knowingly, and climbed in to bed.

There was a dull thud. Another followed, then another. Dawn had broken, but the small hamlet lay sleepy and still. It was a grey, unremarkable day in March, and a soft dewy coating spread over the fields and houses. Jonathan shivered slightly, still in his pyjamas, with one of his mother’s crocheted blankets draped haphazardly around his shoulders. He heard no movement inside the house, but knocked a fourth time. Without so much as a hint of a sound, the door opened quite suddenly. Jonathan strained his eyes but saw nothing in the confines of the house; only darkness, and a very plain face, atop a very plain man, in very plain pyjamas.

“Hello,” the boy smiled confidently up at the man, revealing his missing front tooth. Startled, the man took in the sickly, skinny thing in front of him, with the uncombed dirty-blonde hair like soft fluff, sleep still in his eyes. After a moment, he returned the greeting with a nod, and stared at him inquisitively.

“I know who you are.” Jonathan continued, smiling. “I knew you would come. You’re a little late, though.”

Remaining silent, the man sank to his knees and looked into the eyes of the child. Cocking his head and raising an eyebrow, he drew breath as if to speak.

“It’s okay, I know you can’t. Don’t worry; no-one else has spotted you. The cloak’s working perfectly. It’s just me.” “Do they know?” croaked a remarkably deep voice from the unremarkable man, who nodded towards the house opposite. It was as though he hadn’t spoken in years, and his vocal chords were only now remembering how to do it. It was Jonathan’s turn to remain silent. He shook his head and smiled.

“My father is an unreceptive. He’ll go, eventually. But Mother…there will come a time when she should know. Do you need help?”

The man had not come across one this young before. He’d seen children at meetings, certainly, back when they were a regular occurrence, before he had been ousted. But he had not met one as young, nor as competent as this. He was a natural.

As though he had read his mind, Jonathan stated “I’m a Fated.”

The man wobbled on his knees, struck, even with his previous suspicions, by the weight of this statement. The Fated were so few, even in their circles.

“As are you,” Jonathan continued in the same serene way.

“Not anymore,” the man coughed away an eternity of silence.

“You can’t remove the title any more than I can,” Jonathan said, a little more sternly. “You are a Fated, even if your Coven betrays you.”

“I betrayed them.” The man spat “It was I who did the unspeakable, I whom regretted nothing. I was forced from my Coven. But for a short spell I felt what the Fated never dare feel, yet what we are capable of feeling ten-fold. You couldn’t possibly understand.” His voice was gaining strength now.

“You fell in love. I told you, I knew you were coming. I know this.”

“I’m used to being the only one with the sight.” The man grumbled.

“You are not, nor have you ever been, the only one with this gift, this beautiful burden. Many have come before you, Gabriel.”

Of course, Jonathan possessed the second sight. He was a Fated, and as such it would be second nature. But it had been a number of years since anyone had spoken the man’s name, a number more since anyone had said it with such a warmth and kindness.

“Come in,” Gabriel began.

“They’re stirring, I must get back.”

“You still act as their child, with your power?”

“I am unwell. My physical powers are not strong enough yet to heal myself. They may never be. I may die at the hand of human mortality. Or my father may kill me, yet. But Mother loves me, she cares for me. She will not abandon me, nor I her.”

The child said all of this with such ease, almost nonchalance, that it did not cause Gabriel discomfort. He accepted the news, as Jonathan clearly already had.

Jessica opened the curtains in her son’s room, letting in the foggy light of the early spring morning. She walked unsteadily, as though she had recently taken a fall. Jonathan, of course, knew that Mr Darling had been in her room that night, forcibly taking what he thought was rightfully his. Anger rose inside him like bile as he remembered the vision that had haunted his dreams, waking him before dawn. The result of this was that he was awake in time to greet Gabriel before either of his parents awoke from their tormented slumber.

He raised his palm and sent a wave of energy in her direction, healing her bruised hip and shoulder at once, and giving her a burst of the fierceness she had developed since Jonathan’s birth. He noticed her frown slightly before smirking.

“I’ve done your porridge,” she sang – his spell had worked perfectly, as always.

“Thank you, he smiled, relieving himself of his bed and heading to the book shelf to choose his reading for the day. He loved reading, and would scan his eyes over anything he could get his hands on. But with his mother watching him all day and his father’s lack of interest in anything other than hard graft, it was very hard to obtain new books. It was for this reason that he chose to read The Pickwick Papers for the 14th time. He picked up the heavy book and accompanied his mother down to the kitchen. She had long since gotten over the shock of his advanced reading level at such a young age.

After breakfast, the two of them settled in their usual chairs for their day of reading and crochet by the fire, whilst Mr Darling skulked, unnoticed and unwanted, out of the house.

“Did you see the new neighbour?” Jessica asked airily. The page Jonathan had just begun to turn fluttered lightly back down.

“No,” he said, curiously. “What new neighbour?”

“I didn’t see him; I just noticed footprints in the path to his house. No lights on though. I didn’t see a carriage or anything. He must have been very quiet; I didn’t even hear a horse.” She hooked a loop of wool and continued to crochet.

“I didn’t see anything, either.” He said, breathing a sigh of half-relief, half-disappointment. He didn’t want Gabriel to be discovered – he’d had more than enough drama already – but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it would be nice to share his secret with his mother, his only real friend. He wasn’t well enough to leave and find a Coven, though he was powerful enough to seek one. Perhaps even lead it before long.

After five weeks of living in his magically disguised house, Gabriel was happier than he had been in a long time. The house was not directly hidden; that would have been too suspect. The cloaking spell Gabriel had chosen was such that it was clearly visible in peoples peripheral vision; they knew he was there and instantly presumed him uninteresting. They left him alone, and he liked it that way, but for Jonathan.

Jessica had been delighted to find that, upon reaching his sixth birthday, Jonathan had awoken revitalised, and had consented eagerly to a supervised walk through the nearby streets. She had caught him once or twice, smiling politely at the dull house down the way.

“I do wish that new neighbour would brighten the place up a bit,” she said thoughtfully during a particularly sunny walk. “He must be a bachelor. The place needs a woman’s touch, I fear.” Jonathan smiled curiously back at her.

“He might not want a woman’s touch,” he said. Jessica frowned, but when she looked up, the lawn in front of the dull house appeared to have brightened slightly. It looked greener and neater. Jonathan’s positivity had that effect on things, she mused, and smiled warmly at her son.

Jonathan had been visiting Gabriel almost daily. He had eventually conceded to enter the house, and seemed all the stronger for having done so.

“The Fated’s powers are always stronger in the presence of each other,” Gabriel explained as he poured iced tea in to two strange purple glasses. The inside of Gabriel’s house could not have been more different to its exterior. Clearly hiding was boring him, for he had painted murals on every inch of every wall. Purple starry skies stretched across the ceiling; mountains and caves were etched into the hall; he had even carved a thousand tiny butterflies into the mahogany bannister. His artistic skill was quite something. It made the child in Jonathan roar with excitement.

They played cards, they drank lemonade, they shared books, and they discussed what Jonathan would do if and when he recovered from an illness that they both had accepted may well kill him before the year was out. His mind was stronger but he remained frail; his childlike body showed no signs of growing. They both accepted that at this point, it was most likely Gabriel’s magical presence that was keeping him alive. The magic they both held was enough to hold him in the realm of the living, but they didn’t address it. They merely discussed what he might do if he were to survive.

One night, whilst Mr and Mrs Darling slept in separate beds after another brutal struggle that Jonathan had forced himself to ignore – after casting a subtle spell of arthritis on his father in the hope that it would soften his future blows – the man and the boy sat in the garden of the magically cloaked house. The sky was clear as summer approached, and they each sat under one of Mrs Darling’s crocheted blankets, sipping hot tea. They had been discussing the constellations, and the meanings that mere mortals unknowingly attributed them.

“What happened to Jeremy, in the end?” Jonathan asked, interrupting Gabriel’s hoarse laughter at the idea of “Orion’s Belt” being a genuinely accepted name for something far more important. He stopped mid-chuckle and looked taken aback.

“Surely you know?” He spat, a little more bitterly than he had meant to.

“You’ve hidden it really rather well.”

“He was only a Changeling; he didn’t have the respect I had. They didn’t just oust him.” Gabriel choked on his words and took a swig of tea, wincing as though it were sour.

“They killed him?”

“They didn’t want to dirty themselves by spilling magical blood.” His lip curled.

“They revealed him?” Jonathan’s voice softened.

“We didn’t even know they knew about us. It turned out his sister had seen us together, and stayed to watch the whole sordid thing,” He put his cup down a little too hard, and the base chipped. “She told the Elders. The mortal community were having a festival of sorts. Something with games and prizes in the street, I don’t really understand it. But they were out in force. They forced him in to the crowd and attacked him. He transformed into a dove. He was going to fly away and be free; he’d always said he wanted to. But the Fated Elder – the only one in the Country, I’m told – he changed him back. The mortals were abhorred. They caught him. They put him on trial.”

“They burned him.” Jonathan finished the story for Gabriel, who was weeping.

“It was my fault. I shouldn’t have led him astray. I knew better, I knew what our laws prohibited.”

“Love is the most powerful of our laws. Many forget this, it seems.”

“How is it you know so much at so young? The laws didn’t reveal themselves in me until –“

“Your fifteenth birthday, I know. I can’t explain it. It just is.”

The two friends stayed on the lawn until the sun began to tint the horizon a dusky orange. Gabriel turned to say goodbye to his young friend, only to see that he was already gone. He retired to the dining room – there was still a mural he had yet to finish.

There was a terrible crash. Jonathan’s stomach lurched; his father had not reacted well to the arthritis.

“Why won’t you HELP ME?” a scream echoed through the halls.

“Because I don’t want to,” Jessica said coolly to her husband, who was frozen in place in his bed, unable to move. This wasn’t like her. Jonathan had made her strong, but not cold and unfeeling. This was his father after all. He slipped into the room, silent and unnoticed.

“YOU EVIL WITCH, YOU DID THIS, YOU DID THIS!” The corners of Jessica’s mouth turned.

“Of course I didn’t, you fool. I made a vow not to hurt you, and unlike you I stuck to it. I’d be a fool to break such a potent promise.”

“I know it was you,” Mr Darling snarled. His entire face was creased in fury, but the rest of his body remained motionless, like a man-shaped stone propped upon the bed, his arms by his sides and his legs stiffly locked together.

“Maybe Jonathan has had enough of your violence? Maybe Jonathan did this?” Jessica suggested.

“Don’t make me laugh! He hasn’t power enough to feed himself! Anyway, I never touched the boy, you saw to that!”

“You touched her.” Jonathan whispered, his finger tracing the lock on the door. Until that moment neither of them had spotted them.

“Oh my brave boy!” Jessica gasped, cradling him in her arms.

“Mother?”

“It was you, wasn’t it? I could sense it of you, but I always thought…not until you were older…”

“I don’t understand“

“Oh darling, I kept it secret, of course I did, I couldn’t have you knowing if you turned out not to have the sight.”

“But I’m – I could have seen…” Jonathan was unsure how his sight, as a Fated, could have been blocked by anyone so very close to him. He waved a hand over his father, releasing him from the stern grip his spell had taken.

The next few seconds seemed to stretch over hours. In reality, it was around 15 seconds until all but Jonathan lay dead on the floor.

Charles Darling, on being released from his spell, saw red. The lies his wife had told him in their early marriage rang in his head. Discovering her “Coven”, the money they had from ill-gotten “magic”. The boy that couldn’t be his son, that was ill despite her power, and she wouldn’t help him. She wanted to keep him to herself. He resented her power, certainly, but rather more resented that she wouldn’t use it to help the child he had loved so much. And he had loved her, too, a long time ago. When he thought she was his.

He smashed the oil lamp on the floor. Flames engulfed the room. Grabbing a shard of glass from the wreckage, he immediately slit Jessica’s throat. Jonathan felt his power dip as he fell to his knees beside his mother’s still-warm corpse. With another swipe, Mr Darling made for his son, hate and jealousy spitting from his eyes like the crackling fire surrounding them. He wanted him dead; he wanted them both dead, and the nightmare of this hateful magic to cease.

A mirage stepped between them. A half-invisible man; he couldn’t stare directly at him. He had felt a disturbance; he had rushed over to help. The shard stiffened in Mr Darling’s hand as it struck somewhere in the blurry form. Suddenly, Gabriel was whole and visible between the two remaining Darlings, clutching a wound in his chest, blood seeping between his fingers. He waved a blood-soaked palm towards Mr Darling, who crumpled to the floor, dead in an instant.

Gabriel wept, and looked to Jonathan.

“Thank you,” Jonathan choked.

“And you, my friend.” He replied, before he, too, gasped his final breath.

From blood and flame, Jonathan rose weakly. There was not magic enough to cure his feeble frame. Not anymore. It hadn’t been just Gabriel keeping him alive. His mother’s magic had always been near. She had governed him, protected him. And now he had no-one. He attempted to revive his mother and his friend, with his palms raised and trembling. His power was too weak. It was fading, still. He sat on the bed as the smoke surrounded him. Desperate to keep hidden a world he had never truly joined, he summoned every ounce of strength he had. With a gust of wind, the house, the bodies, the fire and the boy were gone. The ordinary house had vanished, too, and all that remained on the small stretch of street was a tree adorned with ribbons and toys, and a ragged ruin from a forgotten wall, upon which was painted a mural of a dove, flying free across a purple starry sky.

#short story #not that short #story #writing #magic #fiction #gay #lgbt #coven #witch #power #beat #abuse #illness #Georgia #wrote #i wrote a thing #read this #gabriel #darling

Write it down before you lose it forever

The following takes place in a world where everyone lives in a maze of cloud beds accessible by a plethora of wooden ladders. A group of medical students are scoffing and howling with laughter in the cloud below mine, mocking the faux medical approach in an episode of some hospital drama or another. Carrying a gin and tonic down my ladder, I try not to let them see my lofty snort of derision. As I reach the bottom rung, I slip, and land on a glass of juice that Lex is drinking on his cloud. He notices my leftover derision and instantly perceives it as animosity, instinctively acting defensive as a result. I offer him the ice cubes from my g&t to replace the spilt quantity of juice. He accepts. I am rearranging myself from the fall when he opens the cage in which he is keeping his pet mouse. The mouse has a name but I don't quite catch it, as it is hurtling toward the exit of the cage at a frightening speed. I neglect to mention my fear of mice, and neatly shut the cage door. His hand meets mine in an act that silently says "this is his home, not yours, don't touch his fucking cage." Taken aback, I communicate my fear of the animal and am asked to leave in riposte. I climb to the bottom of the cloud maze, where I reach a gate. Behind the gate lies my kitchen, and two cats. The mouse with the unknown name has followed me, and waits on the other side of the gate. My cats, being the creature's natural predator, lunge toward the thing. They are in a frenzy at the sight of the helpless mouse, which no longer instils fear in me any more than would a cotton bud. I frantically pull the cats away, thinking of my stand-offish friend's furry pal. They pounce and lunge and I find that as soon as I have moved one animal, the other one is back to clambering at the metal gate. My leg twitches. My arm follows. Suddenly all of my limbs are twitching and twisting as if possessed by nerves on the point of combustion. My leg twitches in real life, which is enough to jerk me awake. I am in bed. My phone makes a chiming noise. I groan to see that I have left my phone on 'loud' and Beth has messaged me at 4.30am. The dream is fading quickly but I feel the urge to write it down before it is completely gone.

#Dream #cloud #bed #gin #imagine #imagination #strange dream #strange dreams #mice #sleep #insomnia #weird #madness #dreams #odd #ladders #old friends #cats

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