Light broke the sky and in the crisp air Joel inhaled: heralding a new day. Vivid hues of oranges and yellow streamed through the sparse clouds. Joel looked up and down and shifted across the access way to the hillside crib which he was tending. Sun-paled brick stared blankly at him as he turned to regard vacantly. The ferns and foliage surrounding the way and crib rustled as the breeze which Joel had anticipated swept in, briskly at first, but in these parts that breeze could easily become a gale. With clouds like those, Joel judged, the weather could turn at a moment’s notice. As Joel returned to crib, he was proven correct as the wind picked up. It proved treacherous when he made it inside, slamming the door behind him.
Joel pondered what to do now he was inside and the weather had turned inhospitable outside. Inside, the room was jib boarded and tastefully painted a soft dun, loosely mimicking the bricked exterior. Interior decorations were sparse as they tended to be in these parts, except for two relatively intricately patterned vases which stood flanking the small lounge and inky purple architraves. Together they brought a home-décor look that provoked the anxiety associated with knocking over delicate and valuable vases, and the relief of whatever happening outside was securely isolated from the events which would unfold inside.
The only catch was Joel now had to find something to occupy his time. He didn’t believe in doing house work for the sake of house work, and the thought of inspecting the vases made him nervous. Going outside was thoroughly off the cards as he could hear, and there were no cards to speak of – let alone a playing partner. Joel turned his attention to the sparse bookshelf.
We meet again, he intoned.
The problem was that whoever had stocked the bookshelf had never heard of light reading.
Joel inspected the self. It was of a deeply veined wood with which the rich browns matched the dun wall and respective architrave.
The contours of the wood held Joel’s interest for a while. He imagined what a majestic tree it must have once been, and how each dark line represented a year in that tree’s lifetime. He thought of the ancient trees in the valley which he had explored on a day when the weather was much more conducive to being outside.
Joel listened to the muted howl of the wind through the well-insulated walls and imagined immense wind beings. This lead to further thought of vast ocean beings and the ancient trees. The two which would – sadly, in his mind – never meet.
Black water of the ocean beings flooded Joel’s mind. Inky black. Blacker than black. So black it crushed the senses into nothing recognisable; and inside that sensory void something was there. Something vast and unimaginably old. Something to which the concepts of light and colour and warmth and home-décor were as foreign to it as its world was to Joel. Joel shuddered and there was the wood, neatly polished with its deep waves running through it. He stared at it for a little while longer, but it no longer spoke to him. Now it was just a boring slab of wood made into a bookshelf.
The contents of which: Joel decided he would consider that later, as all the tomes he had previously inspected were dense and mentally draining. In Joel’s current state of contemplating vast entities, the words may even prove psychologically devastating. So, Joel turned his attention to the pert table in the centre of the room, and floor.
The carpet underfoot was thick and felt rather alive underfoot, for Joel had had the common decency to remove his shoes when he had entered, after the shock of the door slamming had left him. His shoes were perched on a tiny shelf beside the mat. There were other small items laying around, tucked up beside the walls: a branch was a trophy of a previous wander, as well as a small pile of rocks.
The table was much more fruitful in its contents: a bowl of fruit, and a small pile of out-of-date smutty local magazines. The title of the top magazine was Glass and Salad and there was a picture of a cat licking itself. Joel picked it up and underneath there was another of a rabbit holding a firearm. He flicked through. There were several articles complaining about the local weather and deep political intrigue of which Joel cared very little for. Another article, after the cross word exclusively of hard to pronounce geological terms, was of fishnets with detailed instructional pictures. Joel lay the publication open there and his hand drifted to the fruit bowl where in it would encounter the incredibly difficult task of selecting a fruit.
Joel’s knowledge of fruit now was limited. So, in his mind they boiled down to: the red one, the yellow one, and the spikey one. Upon further investigation, there was also the orange one buried deep within the bowl. Selecting a fruit was very taxing, but eventually he settled on the orange one. His brain finally settled down and he recalled the name of the fruit, which he had known all along, but distracted, it had mysteriously evaded him.
Joel decided to close this issue of Glass and Salad, which he concluèd would make better kindling than reading material. He began the laborious task of peeling the tangerine without making a mess. He would need his energy reserves for the long stay ahead, and a tangy tangerine would provide just that for the next hour or so. Aftwards he might venture out and try the spikey fruit.
Sweet tangerine juice filled Joel’s mouth. He was contemplating going for a walk when the wind died down. However, that seemed unwise upon further inspection; the wind could pick up as easily as it could die off and being caught in a strong gust with no shelter in sight did not sound pleasant in the slightest. Leaving the tangerine skin on the table Joel go up and migrated into hall.
The kitchen was directly opposite the lounge and two bedrooms were at either end. Joel was already fed up with the house’s layout and imagined an enormous winding tower filled with ominous suits of armour that became animated when no one was looking and plenty of cushions on every floor, because, he reasoned, towers tend to be made of hard stone and people would want somewhere soft to sit down at regular intervals. Also, Joel added, his tower would be thickly carpeted and be either insulated or the weather would be consistently mild where it was.
In winter (because even though the weather would be consistently mild, to be a good tower there must be a good winter), the tower would stand as a bacon against the snowy armies on a bleak white and grey canvas. Arthen luminated by fires in a world on the verge of snowy collapse.
As Joel opened the door to the kitchen. The tower radiated outwards as the hoards in the snow drifts closed in. Hope was still in his eyes, iridescent. The ice melted away, not into water but into nothingness. As Joel stepped, triumph fading, onto the cool tiles of the kitchen.
Patterns. On the floor, fanning outward and inward. Locking and interlocking. Simple and geometrical. Joel looked upwards and began to fossick on the counter, for… food maybe or a beverage. Joel wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for, but he assumed that he would know when he found it.
Something you’re looking for is always in the last place you look, Joel hazily remembered. He had been rummaging through a cupboard and was holding a container filled with rolled oats. This will do.
With a mouth filled with dry oats and chewing it like a goat chews its cud, Joel returned to the lounge through the hallway. He added small details to the brickwork of his imaginary tower and confronted the bookcase once again. Waves washed overhead; the wood was speaking to him. And his mouth was awfully dry now. So, Joel returned through to the kitchen and back to the bookcase, again. Each time Joel stepped through the hallway, he had added additional detail to his tower, which was currently an ocean ruin.
Speaking of oceans, Joel thought, I will probably select a dense tome from this bookshelf when I confront its wretched contents. Vile contents bound within a papery tomb. To be unbound within my brain. Wreaking havoc or occupying a small space within a small lobe of my brain. This will not happen if I stall, Joel finished.
And indeed, he stalled.
Joel spent a good part of the morning and early afternoon avoiding the contents of the bookshelf. He idled around. He systematically inspected his trophies. He ate a spikey fruit and more rolled oats. He imagined his tower as a haunted sandcastle and he did not stand near the vases.
Eventually, out of pure boredom, Joel picked a book off the bookcase, without looking at its title, and sat down beside the table. He perceived at the book in his hands and wondered how it had come to be there.
Fate, he said mystically.
After reading a small portion of the contents, it was evening: Joel could tell because he could see through the window. When Joel closed the curtains he felt fiercely hungry.
In the kitchen, Joel made a salad with feta cheese.
He read some more, and then went to sleep.
In his bedroom, asleep, Joel had some really crazy dreams. There was a maze and something powerful. Also, there was carpet, and the carpet had something to do with the maze. And everything felt a subtle texture. After that, the dreams got very mixed up and trying to describe them anymore would be futile without inventing a new language.
Joel’s Return
Daylight broke through the open curtain and collided onto Joel’s furrowed sleep-wracked face. His eyes blinked furiously, trying to make sense of the sensory slap-in-the-face.
Joel’s thoughts were a sepulchre of the fantastic moored on a bleak mindscape of realised horror and desolation from that night’s dreams. And his thoughts were rapidly fading into void as the new day beckoned him into the land of the awake. They were fading, and memory would be for not long.
Joel cared naught for the fading maze and sky. His mind was filled with the psychic agony on his return. Returning. He cleared a little space for anything. Sun was too bright.
Now he was in the kitchen drinking a glass of water. Now he was in the study where he had been reading the book from the previous evening. The words seemed to crawl and that made his skin crawl.
The front door swung open and Joel left the house.
Examine the House
Joel examined the house. The stones which comprised the immediate exterior were of a soft middle grey, smooth of feel and look. Hints of colour and sun-fade gave the dim, stoic grey character. More than hints in fact: the stone appeared grey at a glance, but colour swirled throughout.
Stepping along the moss choked pavement of the way and spinning around, Joel could see the red-orange-brown tiles of the roof like scaled fish.
He could see the vibrant green masses of foliage and fern flanking the place, the green all the way up and down the path, and on the hillside of the house extending to the bank of the hill.
A black bird hopped along the path, surveying its environment with what could be mistaken for a plucky demeanour. Another flew over from an oval leafed bush and landed on the roof, and sort-of scrunched up itself. Then, extended its neck to look around, it unscrunched.
A Kererū
The kererū weighed down a branch of a rhododendron.
Looking for a snack, Joel thinks.
The kererū takes flight, wings audibly flapping through the air.