LOST QUARTER BOOKS

Fiction: The Supreme Effect

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Clint

Morning light crept along the horizon, expanding further with each passing moment its domain, revealing the outlines of trees. There was a trail leading through the trees into a meadow, well-worn by the shepherds and the cattle and sheep they brought here to graze. They were absent this early, not yet stirring in their beds miles away. The grass was heavy with moisture and even as the light grew, the air turned misty and a bank of fog settled over the landscape, obscuring the trees and making the trail difficult to pick out.

Four figures emerged from the fog and stood across from each other. No one spoke or moved for a time, all of them staring at each other with a mixture of unease and disdain, bravado and fear. As the fog began to dissipate, an unspoken signal passed between them and two of the men stepped together to stand between the remaining two, bowing formally to each other. The two solitary men backed away from the pair in opposite directions until they were almost lost to each other in the murk.

“Brach wishes to commence?” one of the pair said.

The other nodded, his mouth formed into a thin grimace. They both wore dark robes, similar in cut and design. Their heads were shaved and their faces clean-cut. Their age was indeterminate; they appeared young, but something about their youth was edged with the entropy of years. The only thing to distinguish them was that one had blue eyes and the other brown.

“Hjesch as well,” the one with the blue eyes said.

“Then let us commence,” the brown-eyed second said. “We agree that the duel shall be without assistance? There will be no implements or engines, no familiars, and we, of course, shall remain observers only.”

“Agreed. As Hjesch has chosen the place, Brach can choose the element.”

See the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

In A Fash: A new story will be published there every Thursday.

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Fiction: The Bare Scent

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Clint

Richard shot Matthews once, in the neck, and stood and watched as he crumpled to the floor, his breath coming in gurgles as the blood leaked out of him at a frightening pace. The sound of the shot had startled him. It had been both louder and quieter than he had expected. He stayed watching as Matthews bled out, his eyes blinking rapidly while he tried to speak, thinking only that he had been aiming for the head, not the neck.

Finally he remembered himself and, dropping the gun beside the dying man, he turned on his heels and walked out of the room, down the hallway, to the stairs. He moved at a steady pace, as though he had a purpose and was on his way somewhere, but he encountered no one. It was two flights to the main floor where he exited the stairwell into the hotel lobby and calmly walked out past the bellhops, desk attendants and guests, drawing not a single glance, through the revolving door and out into the glare of the sun.

There were two cabs parked out front and he got into the first one, giving the man an address—the first one that came into his head, a restaurant he had looked up the night before. The cab pulled out into the flow of traffic and Richard sucked in a deep breath, what felt like his first in a long while. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were shaking, and then realized that no, that was an illusion. It was his vision itself that was unsteady. The whole world was vibrating.

See the rest at Circumambient Scenery. A new story will be published there every Thursday.

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Fiction: The Door

Posted on November 26, 2015 by Clint

No one could recall when last the door had been opened. Lifetimes, some said. Centuries, claimed others. There were those in fact who stated, with an air of quiet authority, that it never had been, that it had always remained closed. All agreed that no one alive had opened the door, or had known of anyone who had. All they knew was the stories their parents told, which their parents had told them, back through time where the collective memory became misted and cloudy.

Philosophers would often argue about the door, launching into great disquisitions on their theories surrounding why the door had or had not to have been opened. There were even those who said that the door should be opened, for stories were nothing more than stories, and the true nature of the door could only be discerned by seeing what lay behind it. None of them, of course, volunteered to bear witness to what was beyond that terrible threshold, even those who professed to believe that nothing was there to be found.

Most, though, did not give in to such foolish and idle thinking. The stories told were so uniformly terrible, and all so similar, that there simply had to be some truth to what was said. It could not be otherwise, no matter what some radical thinkers might claim. Most importantly, no one wanted to be the one to discover they were in fact true, for the horrors described were so awful there could be no encountering them without a life being changed irrevocably.

Though no one would dare to so much as approach the door, to say nothing of putting a hand upon the handle, or even pretending to turn it, there came a time when the leading citizens of the day determined that someone needed to be set to watch it, to ensure that no one made the mistake of opening it. Two men were set to the task, both of them considered to be honest and upstanding, the finest among them. One took the daylight hours and one took the night.

See the rest at Circumambient Scenery. A new story will be published there every Thursday.

Fiction: Last Night

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Clint

Another long night of keeping watch without a fire. I can smell olives on the trees. There is noise all around: the stirrings of a breeze, a restless unseen creature, or something more sinister? The air feels like a coming squall. The moon has disappeared above and I am left with only the stars till morning.

The roads are dangerous. Life is dangerous, after a time, when all the consequences from things done and choices made begin to make themselves known.

I can just make out your form through the darkness. I long to lie beside you, to press up against you and feel the contours of your body. It has been months since we had such luxury, every moment of passion has been a stolen one. A few minutes here as we rest out of sight of the road, or a few minutes there as we trade off the watch, one of us still filled with the sleep, the other driven to frenzy by boredom.

It is such an empty life now, it is hard not to feel despair, especially in these bleak moments when the darkness is my only companion. When did life become so absent of anything but survival, our days all the same, repeating themselves one after the other? I cannot recall. Every choice seemed beyond doubt, essential to our beings. Now I can hardly recall them. They seem barely to matter.

The world has just gone to fire. All of us tearing at each other in a frenzy, until nothing remains but the bones.

See the rest at Circumambient Scenery

Image: Van Gogh’s The Olive Trees

Fiction: Sketches at the Inquisition

Posted on November 12, 2015 by Clint

The Monster was born, far from the vast and glowing Metropolis, in the Hills where only the odd light flickered in the distance, beacons for the weary traveller, too long tossed about by the tempests of the road. According to reports, he had no hair upon his head, and his ears were jagged, almost reptilian, and close to the skull. A single eye glared out savagely from his forehead, slightly off-center, and his expression seemed to rest in something resembling a tortured grimace.

Upon hearing of this occurrence that suggested so many tantalizing questions for one who had read Cuvier and Lamark, the Inquisitor decided to make his way to the Hills to discover where the Monster lived. Up until his leaving the Inquisitor had led an uneventful, somewhat distinguished, career running a cabinet in one of the deeply boweled buildings at the academy. His main innovation had been the slight modification of Cuvier’s structural classifications of some fauna. As he had noted in a talk given at one of the academy’s annual open air plenary sessions, this suggested some interesting new directions for analysis, as well as some slight revision to several species’ classification. He also held monthly tutorials, for any who wished to attend, on the art of anatomical drawing, following the von Soemmerring method.

But nothing in his career to that point had suggested a man with the curiosity or bravery—some would say foolhardiness—to set out on such a long and uncertain journey. The Hills were wild lands, a violent jungle of tangled and twisted things, where the weather seemed always to threaten and the inhabitants lived life to the bone. And the story of the Monster was just that, no more than a tale. To risk a respectable, if modest, career for a mere rumor seemed to many the height of madness.

The Inquisitor drew up detailed plans for the studies he wished to conduct in the Hills. This was by necessity, of course, for the academy grant forms demanded a specific accounting of the expenses he would incur, in order to determine the extent of funding he would receive. In brief, he aspired to conduct a complete botanical survey of the far reaches of the Hills, utilizing modern and rational techniques that had not been available to previous explorers. The Monster, so central in his thoughts about the project, went unmentioned in his various prospectuses.

See the rest of the story at Circumambient Scenery

Image Credit: University of Liverpool Faculty of Health and Life Science

Fiction: The Return

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Clint

The hole was covered by a large and somewhat thick piece of styrofoam, like those used to protect electronics, that had gone yellow from the sun and was beginning to disintegrate. He had not come out for a very long time and, as such, was unaware of the state of its decay. The hole itself seemed to be somewhat decomposed, and—if it were possible—even smaller than when he had entered. But that was not surprising, for it had been so long since he had even strayed above to assure himself it was still intact.

It was when he saw that the last of his oranges had gone moldy that he grew fed up and decided to leave. How he had even lasted as long as he had was somewhat of a miracle. The days had been tedium upon tedium, with little to do but wait and nothing really to wait for. Long ago he had said there would be a sign, a signal, that would call him forth, but he had since forgotten what it was.

The moldy oranges—though they had begun to taste bitter long before—were sign enough, he determined. Time enough had been spent here, time enough indeed. The world beckoned him.

See the rest of the story at Circumambient Scenery