DanielBenoit
09-12-2009, 02:30 PM
(Oooops, this should be in the short story section, sorry :blush: )
On a cold winters night, or so they put it, when the air was thin and the naked white trees laid exposed to the lamplight, a young man walked out of his apartment and heedlessly but with caution lightly tapped, or probably to other residents stomped, three floors down the subtle wooden stairs.
One must act with care and (though usually at first) extreme caution, for there is always a chance that the material might lose all of the little strength it had and collapse. Imagine, there was always a possibility, to but it blandly, that one’s fall might be fatal. Just think, how would it feel to collapse, still conscious, and with deep bloody splinters and pieces of wood sticking out of your mangled body, those functions which we so easily come to trust, eradicated and destroyed (to again put it blandly), and just think about the dry and feverish feeling of the cold night air seeping into the gashes like liquid (one must not forget that with the factor of the splintered wood), and how the blood would soon dry up and gashes would form. Though of course this is absurd, the fall would definitely kill you, if not that, then definitely the half dozen stabs that will go a foot deep into the chest or other body parts (even the brain, if that is the case, let us hope that it completely kills you immediately), that should certainly kill you within seconds of contact and it should not leave you there to suffer to the point of insanity.
As one walks down stairs of such weakness, one must imagine the noise it probably makes to the other residents, the loud thumping. One would rather not imagine the nuisance that one is making in walking down. But one must admit the innocence of the act, for one is just minding one’s own business and does not mean all of the ruckus. Usually, after carrying out the act a number of times, one does eventually forget this, but once the bottom is reached and the fresh air clears and opens the mind, one does become aware of one’s crime and a surge of guilt must come over, which might, in most cases, fly over once a couple dozen steps are taken, for the mind eventually loses consciousness and becomes too distracted with other things to be conscious of.
But still, one must imagine the nuisance it must make to others. Just think of the dread of a resident, comfortably sitting in his chair reading a newspaper (if it is nighttime, as in this case, than chances are greater of him watching the evening news, and it must also be mentioned that if he is to be reading a book, than there is a high probability that he will not be distracted at all, that is if he is a deep reader and actually appreciates the art of reading, and whose eyes and mind are not wandering off to the television) and then being disturbingly, and even frighteningly, disrupted by such stomping. This noise can create greatly uncomfortable tension and suspense that can be practically unbearable. For the simple sound of this stomping, with its vibrations echoing across the towering landscape of the wood, can create a rather distressing and unsettling sound of an army, marching forward to your door, stopping at the foot of the door, with silence for about a second (the longer the silence the more unsettling it becomes), and then a loud unsuspected knock exceeding all predictions of pitch and volume. What is one to do then? Look into the eyehole and see who it is?
Even without an idea of a suspecting knock to come to your door, one still gets an unsettling feeling of just a willingness to end the unbearable anxiety and leap out of one’s apartment and face the enemy.
But to return to the scenario of the disrupted man who had been reading the evening news, now sitting back in his seat, spine straightened, waiting for whatever was coming to either come or peacefully pass by. Though the reaction could be much different, evoking not terror but annoyance and coming out not to face the stomper not as an enemy but as a miserable little vermin disrupting his evening (and thus evoking terror in the stomper instead). He may either look through the eye hole and watch thinking, “there’s that little bastard again,” or actually come out, stunning the climber so greatly that he practically is knocked down the stairs, yelling “what the hell is all of this noise for?”, or, even worse; coming up to your floor later on in the evening, once too many offences have been committed, and knocking (deliberately) loud and startlingly on one’s door (no silent pause included) thus giving you a slight panic, a panic which began with the awareness of the climbing of stairs until the feet reached the third floor (the neighbors sharing the floor definitely being on vacation) and slowly tap the wooden planks until they reach what you know for certain to be your door and suddenly knock (though if the resident is highly angered, as most are, they will not slowly approach the door but rather aim straight, and without hesitance, for the target). You answer acting like the innocent and unaware absent-minded resident, who despite your honesty is careless.
But once the journey is made and made many times over, it becomes merely a short trip and even a physical disruption of having to make a climb to get to one’s plush and comfy couch on which you can collapse. But there is always the paranoia of climbing up, for in the act of decadence one does not face one’s observers, but when returning to the limited safety of one’s own door, one must face the realization of the pairs of doors staring at you with scorn and contempt at every floor.
Thus stepping down the last step, there was this clear and sudden awareness in the young man’s mind as he walked into the cold winter chill. The setting was perfect. So surreal, so clear, to such an extent that one could just get the perfect feeling of what it is like inside film noir. The moon shone, positioned slightly above the ghostly clouds; how aged, how bony they were, twisting themselves into the dark sky. The young man looked up and saw the tiny specs of light tinkering in the sky, knowing their true enormity he felt a sudden feeling of humility and smallness, as if standing before a mighty god.
He looked down upon the small town. Tiny dark figures steadily moved from place to place, cars plowed their way through the dark with such ease, lighting a limited path in such a dark street. How out of place it is! Nothing could have been more unnatural than the lights and buildings shining in the dark and cold night, it was almost mind boggling. It seemed as if one had fallen asleep during the bright sunny day, with its irritating rays voyeuristically peeking through the window, and had woken up to a black lonely night, got out of bed and peered through the window to see neither the sun (for it had died) nor the nocturnal stillness of color, but a shining object, positioned right in the middle of the night’s symphony, as if misplaced, as if a god had accidently put it there. But this accident, no matter how unnatural, was perfect, and so it was to the young man’s sight as he walked down the hill towards the small but lively town.
But as he drew closer to the lighted city, it was no longer a town nor was he any longer walking down a hill. For what was once a town at the top of the hill on which he looked down upon it, was metamorphosed into a shopping center, still active even during the night, operated by insomniac zombies.
“There’s the lamplight, for which I saw not so long ago at the top of the hill,” the young man silently exclaimed. “See how it makes those trees so bare, exposing their nakedness and pitiful state. Though they never do and never shall receive the pity that they deserve. For what is more pitiful than an old man, nude with his declining physical state exposed for what it is. Maybe this is why the elderly sleep more often and begin to drift off into another world, imagining some perfect young body to replace their once perfect, though now degraded body. Maybe this is why the aged become religious.”
Once he entered the parking lot, he looked down at his feet and saw his shadow looking back at him. He could not have been alone. And yet that shadow seemed to envelop an even greater sense of isolation, its presence drowning his soul more into solitude.
The lights towering above him shown off like movie lights, and calmly exposed him to the outer world, which was nothing. For though it was not empty, it was devoid, fully devoid of humanity, of emptiness, though in a sense making it more empty, but not suffocatingly so, as gigantic bustling cities do. It was an emptiness that sustained the air and made it light, that made the mountains stronger and godlier. It was the pagan naturalistic loom of the forest and valleys which made the air so thin, the mountains more magnanimous, the soft hum of the night, and the seeping sound of winter.
On a cold winters night, or so they put it, when the air was thin and the naked white trees laid exposed to the lamplight, a young man walked out of his apartment and heedlessly but with caution lightly tapped, or probably to other residents stomped, three floors down the subtle wooden stairs.
One must act with care and (though usually at first) extreme caution, for there is always a chance that the material might lose all of the little strength it had and collapse. Imagine, there was always a possibility, to but it blandly, that one’s fall might be fatal. Just think, how would it feel to collapse, still conscious, and with deep bloody splinters and pieces of wood sticking out of your mangled body, those functions which we so easily come to trust, eradicated and destroyed (to again put it blandly), and just think about the dry and feverish feeling of the cold night air seeping into the gashes like liquid (one must not forget that with the factor of the splintered wood), and how the blood would soon dry up and gashes would form. Though of course this is absurd, the fall would definitely kill you, if not that, then definitely the half dozen stabs that will go a foot deep into the chest or other body parts (even the brain, if that is the case, let us hope that it completely kills you immediately), that should certainly kill you within seconds of contact and it should not leave you there to suffer to the point of insanity.
As one walks down stairs of such weakness, one must imagine the noise it probably makes to the other residents, the loud thumping. One would rather not imagine the nuisance that one is making in walking down. But one must admit the innocence of the act, for one is just minding one’s own business and does not mean all of the ruckus. Usually, after carrying out the act a number of times, one does eventually forget this, but once the bottom is reached and the fresh air clears and opens the mind, one does become aware of one’s crime and a surge of guilt must come over, which might, in most cases, fly over once a couple dozen steps are taken, for the mind eventually loses consciousness and becomes too distracted with other things to be conscious of.
But still, one must imagine the nuisance it must make to others. Just think of the dread of a resident, comfortably sitting in his chair reading a newspaper (if it is nighttime, as in this case, than chances are greater of him watching the evening news, and it must also be mentioned that if he is to be reading a book, than there is a high probability that he will not be distracted at all, that is if he is a deep reader and actually appreciates the art of reading, and whose eyes and mind are not wandering off to the television) and then being disturbingly, and even frighteningly, disrupted by such stomping. This noise can create greatly uncomfortable tension and suspense that can be practically unbearable. For the simple sound of this stomping, with its vibrations echoing across the towering landscape of the wood, can create a rather distressing and unsettling sound of an army, marching forward to your door, stopping at the foot of the door, with silence for about a second (the longer the silence the more unsettling it becomes), and then a loud unsuspected knock exceeding all predictions of pitch and volume. What is one to do then? Look into the eyehole and see who it is?
Even without an idea of a suspecting knock to come to your door, one still gets an unsettling feeling of just a willingness to end the unbearable anxiety and leap out of one’s apartment and face the enemy.
But to return to the scenario of the disrupted man who had been reading the evening news, now sitting back in his seat, spine straightened, waiting for whatever was coming to either come or peacefully pass by. Though the reaction could be much different, evoking not terror but annoyance and coming out not to face the stomper not as an enemy but as a miserable little vermin disrupting his evening (and thus evoking terror in the stomper instead). He may either look through the eye hole and watch thinking, “there’s that little bastard again,” or actually come out, stunning the climber so greatly that he practically is knocked down the stairs, yelling “what the hell is all of this noise for?”, or, even worse; coming up to your floor later on in the evening, once too many offences have been committed, and knocking (deliberately) loud and startlingly on one’s door (no silent pause included) thus giving you a slight panic, a panic which began with the awareness of the climbing of stairs until the feet reached the third floor (the neighbors sharing the floor definitely being on vacation) and slowly tap the wooden planks until they reach what you know for certain to be your door and suddenly knock (though if the resident is highly angered, as most are, they will not slowly approach the door but rather aim straight, and without hesitance, for the target). You answer acting like the innocent and unaware absent-minded resident, who despite your honesty is careless.
But once the journey is made and made many times over, it becomes merely a short trip and even a physical disruption of having to make a climb to get to one’s plush and comfy couch on which you can collapse. But there is always the paranoia of climbing up, for in the act of decadence one does not face one’s observers, but when returning to the limited safety of one’s own door, one must face the realization of the pairs of doors staring at you with scorn and contempt at every floor.
Thus stepping down the last step, there was this clear and sudden awareness in the young man’s mind as he walked into the cold winter chill. The setting was perfect. So surreal, so clear, to such an extent that one could just get the perfect feeling of what it is like inside film noir. The moon shone, positioned slightly above the ghostly clouds; how aged, how bony they were, twisting themselves into the dark sky. The young man looked up and saw the tiny specs of light tinkering in the sky, knowing their true enormity he felt a sudden feeling of humility and smallness, as if standing before a mighty god.
He looked down upon the small town. Tiny dark figures steadily moved from place to place, cars plowed their way through the dark with such ease, lighting a limited path in such a dark street. How out of place it is! Nothing could have been more unnatural than the lights and buildings shining in the dark and cold night, it was almost mind boggling. It seemed as if one had fallen asleep during the bright sunny day, with its irritating rays voyeuristically peeking through the window, and had woken up to a black lonely night, got out of bed and peered through the window to see neither the sun (for it had died) nor the nocturnal stillness of color, but a shining object, positioned right in the middle of the night’s symphony, as if misplaced, as if a god had accidently put it there. But this accident, no matter how unnatural, was perfect, and so it was to the young man’s sight as he walked down the hill towards the small but lively town.
But as he drew closer to the lighted city, it was no longer a town nor was he any longer walking down a hill. For what was once a town at the top of the hill on which he looked down upon it, was metamorphosed into a shopping center, still active even during the night, operated by insomniac zombies.
“There’s the lamplight, for which I saw not so long ago at the top of the hill,” the young man silently exclaimed. “See how it makes those trees so bare, exposing their nakedness and pitiful state. Though they never do and never shall receive the pity that they deserve. For what is more pitiful than an old man, nude with his declining physical state exposed for what it is. Maybe this is why the elderly sleep more often and begin to drift off into another world, imagining some perfect young body to replace their once perfect, though now degraded body. Maybe this is why the aged become religious.”
Once he entered the parking lot, he looked down at his feet and saw his shadow looking back at him. He could not have been alone. And yet that shadow seemed to envelop an even greater sense of isolation, its presence drowning his soul more into solitude.
The lights towering above him shown off like movie lights, and calmly exposed him to the outer world, which was nothing. For though it was not empty, it was devoid, fully devoid of humanity, of emptiness, though in a sense making it more empty, but not suffocatingly so, as gigantic bustling cities do. It was an emptiness that sustained the air and made it light, that made the mountains stronger and godlier. It was the pagan naturalistic loom of the forest and valleys which made the air so thin, the mountains more magnanimous, the soft hum of the night, and the seeping sound of winter.