em onty
10-13-2010, 07:24 PM
What follows is the opening segment of a possible short story. I'd like to hear if it captures anyone's imagination, if it should be restructured or if needs to be substantially rewritten. Cheers.
Y
13th October, 2010;
Hellish thick, and the observations of the killer
by EM Onty
Y
His father had died last week, though that in itself was hardly unfortunate or tragic for an ill gentleman of seventy five. That he'd died at the hands of an unknown killer, and quite obviously a human one rather than one of his mysterious diseases, could hardly be said to change the degree of unfortunateness or tragicness. It did, however, bring to his, the son's, attention the misfortune of his own situation.
Since the police had left two days ago he'd set himself up in his father's prime study. A great appreciator of studies, his father. He'd collected them so that, like the various chairs within each study, there was one for every academic purpose he could conceive of. The study inhabited dictated the thrust of the evening's work, the chair sat upon dictated the sub-thrust of the moment. The house, its immediate locale, the locale's relationship with the rest of the county and the county's relationship with the rest of England must have dictated something too. A great appreciator of place and space, his father. Right now the prime study, where his father used to lay down the research on which to build an article, monologue or review, was dictating the thrust of his imagination and mounting terror through the medium of a series of his father's notes on the family predicament. These notes were scattered across the length, breadth and depth of the room; he found them tucked between pages and contained within discettes, unconscionably disorganised considering the gravity of the subject matter and the immediacy of the danger.
They, the notes, the media to which they were attached with such callous casualness, the room and the entire house had an air about them that quite unnerved him. It was one of oppressive complexity, rather like a network of caves, apparently without limits but lacking a route back to the surface. He felt he could explore the meaning of them but not escape alive with any conclusion. He wondered how his father had felt. After all, he'd built them all, word by word, stone by stone. The mind had found and the hands had constructed. The very architecture of the house had been found, or so his father had claimed. It had been cleaved from the design of some ancient Indus Valley city, he'd said, complete and self contained. Once dressed up in a certain kind of pleasant external blandness beloved of the rural English, it had been rerooted amongst the fields of their village, like an old oak moved to a new home. Externally, decent and English. Internally, indecently strange.
His mind was dwelling on these details of environment to avoid the details of the death and, more importantly, the situation which had lead to the death. In one sense it was simple; his father had either unearthed or been instrumental in triggering a vicious feud between two secretive agencies and, in so doing, had landed the family in the midst of it. But he could see no further into it, so disorderly and bewilderingly dense were the notes left for him. Well, left at any rate. He suspected that, come the end, the old man hadn't the energy or composure to consider the family that would survive him. If anything was made clear by the notes it was that his father had known for days that someone was coming, but had not known how to stop them.
He'd been first on the scene---twelve hours after it had happened the police had later said. He'd walked through the orderly labyrinth that was the house with the same feeling of uncomfortable expectation he'd always had whenever his father was not by his side. The very walls seemed suggestive of intrigue and pregnant with knowledge. The floors positively sizzled with untold secrets bubbling up within them. He'd gone at first to the kitchen---cold, bare, yet homely in its simplicity. Then to the Window Room, as he'd insisted on calling it as a child until the name had stuck---still warm with the last of the evening's sun, cluttered from a week's worth of his father's invariably disordered mornings. Then to the prime study---grand, expansive, also cluttered, though here with the detritus of academia rather than life. Finally, and by now made very aware of something by the number of doors evidently once locked but eventually forced, he'd gone to the cartographic study---a small stone box who's roof was lost amongst the rafters at the very top of the house. This door had not been forced but was ajar. Inside the light was dim, even for the time of evening. It barely illuminated the shelves built into all four walls and stuffed thick with bundles of unbound paper, or the stone floor completely empty but for the two chairs and small wooden table, or the portable transistor radio on the table. A faint hiss filled the room. He'd gone over and turned the radio up---it was untuned. White noise flowed around him as he looked up at the window some thirty feet up the wall. The body was silhouetted against the glass, its arms and legs pinned to the corners of the frame.
When the police had come and taken the body down the room had been filled with fuzzy, distant conversation as the radio station came back into focus. It always had gotten bad reception, the cartographic study.
Y
13th October, 2010;
Hellish thick, and the observations of the killer
by EM Onty
Y
His father had died last week, though that in itself was hardly unfortunate or tragic for an ill gentleman of seventy five. That he'd died at the hands of an unknown killer, and quite obviously a human one rather than one of his mysterious diseases, could hardly be said to change the degree of unfortunateness or tragicness. It did, however, bring to his, the son's, attention the misfortune of his own situation.
Since the police had left two days ago he'd set himself up in his father's prime study. A great appreciator of studies, his father. He'd collected them so that, like the various chairs within each study, there was one for every academic purpose he could conceive of. The study inhabited dictated the thrust of the evening's work, the chair sat upon dictated the sub-thrust of the moment. The house, its immediate locale, the locale's relationship with the rest of the county and the county's relationship with the rest of England must have dictated something too. A great appreciator of place and space, his father. Right now the prime study, where his father used to lay down the research on which to build an article, monologue or review, was dictating the thrust of his imagination and mounting terror through the medium of a series of his father's notes on the family predicament. These notes were scattered across the length, breadth and depth of the room; he found them tucked between pages and contained within discettes, unconscionably disorganised considering the gravity of the subject matter and the immediacy of the danger.
They, the notes, the media to which they were attached with such callous casualness, the room and the entire house had an air about them that quite unnerved him. It was one of oppressive complexity, rather like a network of caves, apparently without limits but lacking a route back to the surface. He felt he could explore the meaning of them but not escape alive with any conclusion. He wondered how his father had felt. After all, he'd built them all, word by word, stone by stone. The mind had found and the hands had constructed. The very architecture of the house had been found, or so his father had claimed. It had been cleaved from the design of some ancient Indus Valley city, he'd said, complete and self contained. Once dressed up in a certain kind of pleasant external blandness beloved of the rural English, it had been rerooted amongst the fields of their village, like an old oak moved to a new home. Externally, decent and English. Internally, indecently strange.
His mind was dwelling on these details of environment to avoid the details of the death and, more importantly, the situation which had lead to the death. In one sense it was simple; his father had either unearthed or been instrumental in triggering a vicious feud between two secretive agencies and, in so doing, had landed the family in the midst of it. But he could see no further into it, so disorderly and bewilderingly dense were the notes left for him. Well, left at any rate. He suspected that, come the end, the old man hadn't the energy or composure to consider the family that would survive him. If anything was made clear by the notes it was that his father had known for days that someone was coming, but had not known how to stop them.
He'd been first on the scene---twelve hours after it had happened the police had later said. He'd walked through the orderly labyrinth that was the house with the same feeling of uncomfortable expectation he'd always had whenever his father was not by his side. The very walls seemed suggestive of intrigue and pregnant with knowledge. The floors positively sizzled with untold secrets bubbling up within them. He'd gone at first to the kitchen---cold, bare, yet homely in its simplicity. Then to the Window Room, as he'd insisted on calling it as a child until the name had stuck---still warm with the last of the evening's sun, cluttered from a week's worth of his father's invariably disordered mornings. Then to the prime study---grand, expansive, also cluttered, though here with the detritus of academia rather than life. Finally, and by now made very aware of something by the number of doors evidently once locked but eventually forced, he'd gone to the cartographic study---a small stone box who's roof was lost amongst the rafters at the very top of the house. This door had not been forced but was ajar. Inside the light was dim, even for the time of evening. It barely illuminated the shelves built into all four walls and stuffed thick with bundles of unbound paper, or the stone floor completely empty but for the two chairs and small wooden table, or the portable transistor radio on the table. A faint hiss filled the room. He'd gone over and turned the radio up---it was untuned. White noise flowed around him as he looked up at the window some thirty feet up the wall. The body was silhouetted against the glass, its arms and legs pinned to the corners of the frame.
When the police had come and taken the body down the room had been filled with fuzzy, distant conversation as the radio station came back into focus. It always had gotten bad reception, the cartographic study.