The Seasonal Challenge
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanJust under a fortnight until Christmas and time, I think, for the traditional horror or ghost story. Last year, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pax_draconis issued a challenge for a ghost story in 500 words or less. This year I have decided to do the same, just to try and stir a few languid pools of creativity.
Cross posted to and from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
just_writing.
Every morning.
Every night.
At the wash stand; the blue bowl and matching water jug, sluicing the night’s sleep or the day’s grime away. Peering listlessly in the mottled convex mirror with red, care-worn eyes.
Day after day, year after year.
The distorted reflection of a distorted face: grey now, lined with age and eyes yellowed and dimming.
The trees bud, green, bloom and shed. The sun blazes, pales, peers and peeps through the grimy window. The moon twists the shadows, sharpens the darkness and silvers the bed.
Day in, day out.
Year after year.
So many years.
Where there were trees out there in the avenue, now there is a building. Tall, grey, brick, steel and glass; the shadows are longer, the days greyer, the wind harsher and the dust thicker. There is a cobweb on the handle of the jug, there is a chip in the bowl and the foxing around the mirror has moved and joined around the edges. Now it is like a tunnel into another world; dimmer but still distorted. Out of reach.
I well remember the family: the young child, then the little brother. The nursery then the guest room and all the time the table with the water jug, the bowl and the convex mirror.
In time children grew. Mother moved in as they moved out. The routine continued, the water sluicing from the jug to the bowl.
The joy, the tears, the hope the grief; the passage of time, the minutes, hours, days, months and years of a life.
No-one comes now, though the jug and bowl remain. No-one stands twice a day and blocks the view and my too-slowly slowly dimming vision is unhindered as I watch the varnish darken, the cracks spread and the colours fade in the tunnel that is the convex mirror behind the jug and the bowl across the room.
I watch and I wait in the room with no visitors, remembering what was, wondering what shall be and hoping what may.
The trees bud, green, bloom and shed. The sun blazes, pales, peers and peeps through the grimy window. The moon twists the shadows, sharpens the darkness and silvers the bed.
The dust deepens, the cobwebs spread and the shadows loom; I cannot shut my eyes and I cannot call out. The very colours leech into endless purgatory and still the face darker now, more distant, recedes into the darkening depths. But the eyes, once bright, now yellow; still stare: unable to look away. For there I am in the convex mirror, distorted and dark at the very end of a lengthening tunnel.
By some chance clear, crisp and legible, reflected back across the room from the convex mirror on the stand behind the jug, behind the bowl, though everything else fades and distorts, it retains an eerie clarity. Painted in delicate white, discreetly on my pocket – backwards to my eyes, but I have had the leisure to read it many times:
"Basil Hallward, 1890"
pax_draconis issued a challenge for a ghost story in 500 words or less. This year I have decided to do the same, just to try and stir a few languid pools of creativity.Cross posted to and from
just_writing.Every morning.
Every night.
At the wash stand; the blue bowl and matching water jug, sluicing the night’s sleep or the day’s grime away. Peering listlessly in the mottled convex mirror with red, care-worn eyes.
Day after day, year after year.
The distorted reflection of a distorted face: grey now, lined with age and eyes yellowed and dimming.
The trees bud, green, bloom and shed. The sun blazes, pales, peers and peeps through the grimy window. The moon twists the shadows, sharpens the darkness and silvers the bed.
Day in, day out.
Year after year.
So many years.
Where there were trees out there in the avenue, now there is a building. Tall, grey, brick, steel and glass; the shadows are longer, the days greyer, the wind harsher and the dust thicker. There is a cobweb on the handle of the jug, there is a chip in the bowl and the foxing around the mirror has moved and joined around the edges. Now it is like a tunnel into another world; dimmer but still distorted. Out of reach.
I well remember the family: the young child, then the little brother. The nursery then the guest room and all the time the table with the water jug, the bowl and the convex mirror.
In time children grew. Mother moved in as they moved out. The routine continued, the water sluicing from the jug to the bowl.
The joy, the tears, the hope the grief; the passage of time, the minutes, hours, days, months and years of a life.
No-one comes now, though the jug and bowl remain. No-one stands twice a day and blocks the view and my too-slowly slowly dimming vision is unhindered as I watch the varnish darken, the cracks spread and the colours fade in the tunnel that is the convex mirror behind the jug and the bowl across the room.
I watch and I wait in the room with no visitors, remembering what was, wondering what shall be and hoping what may.
The trees bud, green, bloom and shed. The sun blazes, pales, peers and peeps through the grimy window. The moon twists the shadows, sharpens the darkness and silvers the bed.
The dust deepens, the cobwebs spread and the shadows loom; I cannot shut my eyes and I cannot call out. The very colours leech into endless purgatory and still the face darker now, more distant, recedes into the darkening depths. But the eyes, once bright, now yellow; still stare: unable to look away. For there I am in the convex mirror, distorted and dark at the very end of a lengthening tunnel.
By some chance clear, crisp and legible, reflected back across the room from the convex mirror on the stand behind the jug, behind the bowl, though everything else fades and distorts, it retains an eerie clarity. Painted in delicate white, discreetly on my pocket – backwards to my eyes, but I have had the leisure to read it many times:
"Basil Hallward, 1890"
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