Topic: Staircase Infinities

Morvern · Date: 2009-09-09 09:23 EST

But on Voyage 34 he finally met himself coming down an up-staircase, and the encounter was crushing.

It all starts with a staircase.

A young girl called Kelos in an oversized purple sweater, jeans and dirty pink sandshoes who is walking through a house that just doesn't feel right. It is early morning or late afternoon, the lighting deceiving. Is she in a dream' Or is this happening" Even Kelos cannot say so herself. Whichever is the truth, it does not matter. For in real time and not she is left with a ruined knee, the young woman a walking fractured fairytale. Kelos fell down a flight of stairs and never quite was the same. Sequestered away and forced into seclusion afterwards, which does funny things to a person, Kelos and Morvern are lost, are changed.

There was a case of a child who woke up writing backwards. The child had dreamt of being hit in the head with a ball. So the child was encouraged to have the same dream once again, so that they may write correctly. This method of thinking worked.

Kelos, in her peculiar happenstance, who feels as though she sits at the bottom of the staircase most days, wonders herself of a similar method, wondering if she were to fall down that fateful staircase again, that perhaps she might wake up again, and her knee would be fine and she would not be Morvern Deco, nineteen on Halloween Day, October childe, dressed in her festival colors. That maybe she would not need crutches. That maybe she was never a recluse, living an eccentric life under the watchful eyes of parents, but free to roam.

But what if perhaps it was that freedom that had allowed her to walk straight into that strange mansion in the first place" One strange solely for its being enchanted. Only took the right girl and the right accident at the right time for all to be warped and placed back to front.

So this is the beginning of Kelos' tale. And Morvern's too. The same person perhaps on different sides of the same mirror. October Childe. That would never change. Halloween was her land. But something happened, and she must discover what it was.

There are differences, and in these different lingering possibilities. For where Kelos was good at running, at sports, at maths, Morvern is fanciful, whimsical, and an exceptional painter with an imagination that is boundless, her personality childlike, exuberant, her clothing theatrical, as though everyday were play-pretend. Princess or Ring Master.

While Kelos was just a tomboy in a purple jumper with jeans and dirty pink sneakers. Climbing trees and coming first in track and field. She had never known what Morvern does, yet they share the same pair of eyes.

The possibilities are endless.

Morvern · Date: 2009-09-09 10:28 EST

THE TIME TRAVEL TALE OF JOHN TITOR

Although there is debate over the exact date it started, on November 02, 2000, a person calling themselves Timetravel_0, and later John Titor, started posting on a public forum that he was a time traveler from the year 2036.

One of the first things he did was post pictures of his time machine and its operations manual. As the weeks went by, more and more people began questioning him about why he was here, the physics of time travel and his thoughts about our time. He also posted on other forums including the now non-existent Art Bell site. In his posts John Titor entertained, angered, frightened and even belittled those who engaged him in conversation.

On March 21, 2001, John Titor told us he would be leaving our and returning to 2036. After that, he was never heard from again. Speculation and investigation about who John Titor was and why he was online continues to this day.

Morvern · Date: 2009-09-11 03:16 EST

The Green House

A shattered green pane. Plants overwhelming the ruined net and stakes that once supported mangled and humble rose bushes, families of cicadas. Now it is a hulking house of decay. Green lit and shadow tangled. One will enter the ruin and wonder how to get back out.

Old blood sits on a pane wrought through with a lightning bolt-patterned hairline fracture. The color of rust. A hand through it as Kelos outran one of the Autumn People. Flying Son. Winged Banshee-Boy.

Now Morvern, clueless to this happening, works her way through the infested jungle of the green house. Her hand starts to hurt. A phantom pain.

Incidences like these that take place and confuse the one they call little wonder, little muse, little guide. She may be all these, but most of all, she is little unknown. This to be explained in many ways another time.

Sunlight and moonlight never enter the cracked green house in their natural shade. All becomes an aquarium color, a swamp glow. Virescence haunted. In this light she stands holding her hurting hand, and looks up to find she stands right before the shattered pane. Her own blood stuck there like a tattoo. Memory eluding her. Though her hand throbs.

"What happened?"

There was only the cry of a nightbird. The thousand delicate rustles of her dress as she trembled and looked around, scared.

Morvern · Date: 2009-09-16 02:14 EST

Mystery Of The Motorcyle Fan Killed By Train

Police hoping to solve the mystery of a motorcyle fan killed by a train in Cornwall last month have issued an image of the victim.

Officers are still to identify the body they found near to the defunct Marazion railway station on August 15 at 8.50pm.

The victim is described as between 30 and 45 years old, 5ft 8in tall, of a thin to medium build, with grey hair and blue or green eyes.

He was wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and black Belstaff motorcycle gloves.

He was also dressed in beige trousers, dark brown desert-style boots and, unusually for the time of year, he was wearing three tops underneath his jacket.

In his rucksack, police found a Duracell torch, a Casio LCD portable TV and radio, and a pair of sunglasses.

The bag also contained a plastic cheque-sized wallet which contained an old ?1 note, an unwritten postcard of New York, a multi-tool and a small key.

The man also had a gold Bucherer watch with a black face and black leather strap.

A copy of the Motorcycle News magazine, dated August 12, was found nearby.

The station closed in the 1960s and only an abandoned station building surrounded by weeds and grass remains.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cornwall/8248383.stm

Morvern · Date: 2009-09-26 09:08 EST

Building the treehouse was not as elaborate as some may have thought, even the carpenter herself. It was just a house in a funny location, that was all, because the skies had to be watched, the clouds listened to and the tree and cloud monsters observed. She moved along the rickety floorboards of the lofted house to gaze across the green rustling distance with a close eye. The house swayed with the wind, the ship sails canvased around the outside whipping like giant cocoons, whalesize. The rope ladders squirming like snakes.

Morvern walked around the little cabinets and tables and bookcase and lit the small candles, blowing them out one at a time straight away, so that the air was suffused with the scent of wishes. She smiled and sat down, in her Halloween colors, and began work on her new range of kites, made in animal replica. She liked making tiger kites the most because the pattern was so pretty.

Down below, sat a pink cadillac. Raphael's gift to her. It was their car. Their getaway. One day they would fly though, one day.

In quiet times like this, it was good. She liked it most when she did not encounter skin prickling premonitions of places and people and feelings. Sensations of a stranger, some other girl who looked like her, with a different name. It was a momentary awareness, and Mor put it down to her whimsy.

Morvern · Date: 2009-11-04 17:52 EST

Silent glass moments. Staring through a snowdome prism with its inherent rainbows stretching, like her own arms, shimmered with water and glitter, fingers clenching onto his shoulders. His face as tiny snow fell through the orb like minutes and eternities refracted between. Behind her, undressing her of clothing and fear. Yes, my love. Yes. He was her companion. Only. And she his October Girl. His Halloween childe. Alone on a hill knees to her chest she rocked and watched the stars and the moon and felt the infinity of smallness that came with being so far away, like the eye of a needle through the multitudes of hours. Glinting and pricking the sky. My love. Yes. I am waiting.

Morvern · Date: 2009-11-05 18:15 EST

Anthems for living. The grass at night. Listen close. The autumnal chorus'. They play on well after midnight. The Glen came alive and she was there to witness, to pay attention.

Morvern · Date: 2009-11-11 23:38 EST

Tomfrey, her first boyfriend ever, the one she held hands with in the mass of tall trees and beetle-bug hyms, wrote prose about his Morvern and her mystery. How he could never know it all because sometimes in reflections she was not the one he stood beside. He felt that one might disappear for good and so sought to record details about his fascination. So someone could remember when he did not, this special pink haired girl.

An excerpt in a passage reads:

A few teeth are crooked like tombstones, her skin white satin to the touch and reminding of coffin lining, hair an intrigue of pink in whirls like the dizzy antic of her laughter and spree of fun. She is boundless in everything and enthusiasm is hers to court. The sun saves itself for her smile. She tried to kill herself and I found her hanging from the branch and I never quite understood how such a bright and effervescent fey girl would or could enact such a plot. But all the funereality of her at times made sense. I cut her down and kissed her until blue lips went red.

Tomfrey was struck by lightning and killed two nights after writing his love profession. The letter was recovered by his grieving mother and sent to Kelos who claimed she did not know a Tomfrey.

Morvern · Date: 2009-11-15 00:41 EST

The ballroom was grand and she spun and spun, streamers flitterfluttering on her rainbow crutches. Hoping not to chance on a fall as high heels navigated her through the crowd. Silver dress to match silver eyes. Silver was the color of her hope. She curtsied and blew a kiss, "Merci" and giggled behind the back of a naked hand, white fingers held up like a pristine fan. She whispered into a friend's ear, "I think I remember my name!"

She awakes in her ballgown later and later in the toss and turns of her blankets. And she could not remember.

It had been ages that felt lost that she could not charm back to her mind. Memories in the gallery of the mind are so precious, so so. Little darlings, miming experience back to us. yes! You Were Here!

Sighing, she mellowed and pouted and fell back onto her pillow, pink dreads fanning a rosy pool to halo her face as she stared at the ceiling. Why did she feel she remembered more about others than her very own self?

Morvern · Date: 2009-11-15 17:55 EST

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan's men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

Watercolors ran down the drain, pounding hot water ridding her glitter dusted skin of all sheen until it was only pink with heat. She grabbed a towel and stepped out of the glass enclosure dripping. The room was sweating with steam and passed over and beside like low low clouds. "I can't hear you? she said to the jungle room as she stepped out in the fog of the bathroom, barefoot along the carpet, smile spread wide in acceptance of the pretty foliage of the room and all its greenery and the expectance of the boy she loved. He was not there.

She pulled on one of his shirts and dried herself down to sit on the edge of the island of sheets that was the bed and stared at it. She didn't want to paint, to visit the tree house, to decorate her eyelids and chest and knees with sparkles. Like a mourner, or one fasting, she was stripped. Even the rose and the fuchsia of her hair seemed less bright. The dreads limp and wilted. It just wasn't the same.

Outside the bright pink cadillac sat empty and the window glass reflected her sad repose on the patchwork sheets she had sewn. She hadn't meant to miss him. To become so acquainted. Absence really did do things to a heart. Fondness growing like the vine after so much rain. The room was her home and had been for a little while, but Raphy not close maybe she should vacate. Step out of the jungle and head back to her house in the hills with her parents and the endless rooms, the costumes and cupboards and hiding places. Where she wouldn't feel so terribly sad.

When you kiss someone, after, you are never the same.

Reciting, she sang to herself.. "I shut my eyes and the world drops dead I think I made you up inside my head."

Morvern · Date: 2009-11-18 00:22 EST

Glitter skin covered in lace up gown. Toy rings sparkled on her fingers. Ones from the candy machine. Laughter echoed from her room as she rolled onto her stomach, flipping through the pages of an old 70's comic. Elvis played on the record player. Lights looped and swirled from the lava lamp and coloured strobes. It was getting late but she was not tired at all. The tree house swayed in the leaves. It sounded like a raging tidal place. The pages of the comic roared in her hands. She flickered through the story. From end to middle and back again. Her favorite parts. She remembered that she had forgotten. That her own story was a broken chord. She still sung. But the missing piece was important, as anything lost is to the whole. Falling into wondering, Mor rolled back onto her spine and tossed the paper book aside. She wanted to sail away. But then she could not watch the clouds and the trees and sew her kites and fly around town in a bright pink cadillac with the love.

She sat up and looked to the large mirror that stood there. Arming herself with a pot of rainbow glitter dust and a paintbrush, she waltzed the bristles along her nose and cheeks and brows. Warpaint. She grabbed her purple plastic raincoat. Pulled on her matching gumboots and crawled down the rope ladders to go sploshing out into the muddy grass of the adventure world of the forest.

Morvern · Date: 2009-11-19 23:22 EST

The halls spanned a distance that feet knew only too-well and many of these hallway journeys had been at the detour of her favorite rooms. The doors swung open and each room had a new vantage, was a playground of silhouettes and shapes to hide within, beneath, it was a carnival-like wonderwalk and she often lost hours and hours in the span of her own merriment.

She had returned to the house in October and she returned with gusto! Eager to see the new things or the old things in a new way. Absence put much between the reach of hands and the style of memory, she observed from behind corners all the days gone by and how she had changed, fingers still held out, and only the depth of the long way ahead before her. Reeeaaaaaaccccchhhhh. Nothing there but the sudden fullness of an empty heart. She felt she could not move the same. Morvern was not as she had been.

She sat up in a scream. The room echoed not with laughter but with her shrill voice. Teeth chattered like piano keys tattled by ghostfingers and she heard the still born sound of her own fear as it deadened in her chest. Heart raced and slowing. Rosy hair clinging to her neck and cheeks in sweat. She glittered with worry.

Morvern · Date: 2009-11-23 07:22 EST

Falling into the yard and the bushes and the tangles of grass and the hopeless leafless branches, running in the natural fenceline with too much wine. It coated her belly and mind and trembled both like saucers and uncertainty can go so long and get so strong. Twirl and another fall. Through the hues of wasting afternoon.

The biggest tree rose before her. Martine. She climbed the proud bark with her furling, uncurling and amber sap bleeding heart. Up, up, up, up, up to the very top, the Crows Nest, to watch the seas of leaves. Ahoy! But so very drunk. The house rose higher yet with its great, crumbling turrets. More castle than manor. More fortress than "home." It was why she preferred the insect buzz and twitter of the treetops. The tree house. The jungle room. The green places. Hide! Duck! There came a giant dragonfly. Bizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The tree swayed and Mor sighed, swaying with it. The plastic wineglass falling into the dessicated earth below with its beds of leaves, blankets of which she would curl into for the night, to carry souvenirs of to real bed with the next morning. Empty, her hand recoiled to find a rest in the elbow of a twig, the rest of her a hammock lounge above the garden.

The world never stopped being interesting to her. All was alright, there.

Comfort kissed and she smiled as the dogs howled in the streets. As the bells tolled and chimed and the world fell to sleep and so many dreamed at once. That made it alright. That made her single breaths whisper petunia glee. Shy, quiet laughter that sounded like the rustle of the night secrets.

Morvern · Date: 2009-11-25 00:32 EST

Glass rained over her. At first to twirl thinking it a sudden shower then cowering in horror. The shatter the sound of a breaking heart. Perfect surprise painted her white face. Who was breaking?

She crept out from under broken window and its shrieks of sadness. The sky answered with nothing. Tangerine and noir the skirts that swirled as she hopped and hobbled towards the door of the tea store looking for the sight of proof. Muffled voices above and her footsteps below as stiletto crushes more of the dead pane.

Her hair frosted in what looked like timestopped raindrops. Alone with a mug of chilli chocolate she spent the dawn pulling shards from dreads. Bewildered. The rain of glass reminding of the crying stars, the supernova explosions, all those dead suns and their lonely, well traveled lights coming home to our eyes.

Morvern · Date: 2010-11-09 22:25 EST

Nearly a year since subtractions and fractions and fractures. Counting her luck on five fingers, trying to breathe where she does not belong.

She had cut off most of her hair, no more twists and turns of rose, it was black as black gets, pitch trimmed to an unruly bob. No more glitter or paint or kites or plants. Just a girl in an oversized purple sweater, jeans and fading sunset sandshoes. Silver eyes cannot hide the october girl, halloween childe. She was there all along. Is there.

Mor headed up around the playfield to the lonesome swingset and fell onto the peeling light blue paint and began to test her wings. Higher. Higher. Until it seemed her knees brushed the clouds. She stayed until the sirens of cicada's were so cloud she could not hear her own thoughts.

Where was the scarred stranger" Where was the jungle room kid" Where was home to be now that she could no longer pass into it through a tree?

Raphael · Date: 2011-03-29 21:06 EST

The tiny hand was warm in his, like the first blade of green after a devastating winter, a gulp of fresh air after too long inside, a cool glass of water after hours in the scorching sun and for that very moment, all was right in the scarred boy's world. Their walk to the jungleroom could have taken an eternity for all he knew but in all honesty he couldn't have cared. He was so swept up in her, the wonderful scent of her hair as it swayed slightly, the way her mouth ticked into that staggering smile, the gentle motion of her body as she took each soft step was like watching waves crash in late fall. So serene but with the hint of something cataclysmic beneath the surface. The way she moved was nearly enough to bring his scars to surface and then evaporate. The Autumn Girl and the Scarred Boy were like oil and water, an emulsion that caused his very still heart to stir and thrum within his chest. Even if only for a moment, the feeling was intense and fingers tightened around hers and squeezed delicately. He was so unused to what she could elicit from him, physically, mentally and emotionally. Where a marble man had been just the night before he felt almost like he could live and die, and had she asked it of him he'd have done either easily. With every delicate heaving of her chest, as another breath passed through her pink lips, his life began and ended. Over and over she returned him to halcyon days long since passed, extending light into the darkest reaches of himself.

He'd have walked straight into the door to their room had she not stopped his beautiful distraction. When her motions ceased at the door it was as if he snapped out of a bittersweet and stunning dream. Shifting this way and that getting acclimated to where he was. As she stood still he found even the slightest of nuances and took a moment to soak them up. The way her skin flushed at the cheeks and her ears and how she had the faintest of lines around her mouth credited to infectious laughter and brilliant smiles.

One would assume that Raphael had lost touch with reality, but she was the only certainty that he could ever put any faith in. Slender fingers wrapped around that cool doorknob with his free hand, the unfeeling metal almost painful compared to the warmth occupying his other hand. The door would be held open for his Halloween girl and when she had entered, he, so as not to be let go, would slip inside silently right behind her. The scent of wet soil and flowers would greet them upon entry to the jungleroom. He had taken care of each and every plant with such careful care and persistence in her absence. Allowing even a single leaf to wilt would be an insult to his October girl. The bed was hugged tightly by a sea of burnt orange sheets, chestnut blankets and sunflower yellow and black pillows, no matter where she was, it was always early October in their bed.

Your sweet moon beam The smell of you in every single dream I dream I knew when we collided You're the one I have decided Who's one of my kind

Raphael · Date: 2011-04-18 16:04 EST

The androgynous one was seemingly less so today as he was propped on the bar top, shirtless and working over a pale orange piece of paper. In his time alone there he had worked his way down the bar leaving a blanket of paper cranes behind him. Each one was a different color and size, but each color was a variation of red, orange, black, or yellow. Someone was certainly missing his autumn girl and it showed with the delicate precision he took with each and every single crane. The tiniest could fit on a finger tip and the biggest was about the size of a basketball. For as far back as history was written the oriental had said those who could fold a thousand paper cranes would be granted a single wish. His was a flash of Halloween and crisp leafs, with a hint of summer surrendering to the fall. Deep and rich forest floor with undertones of fading moss and chilled pond water.

The scarred boy finished the crane carefully positioning the neck to arch delicately upwards and the tail tugged taunt before setting it down and taking up another square of paper. Humming the gentle noises one would expect from a brook rushing too quickly, crimson eyes covered partially by heavy and concentrating lids, hands only straying from the sheet of paper long enough to shove his hair behind his ears with scarred fingertips before another gentle fold rendered the paper into something else all together.

Hours of this passed before he had finally finished the last of a thousand cranes, a wish whispered through his mind as slender legs carried the scarred boy to the stairs. Not once turning to look back at his work before he was gone to the jungleroom. She would come back again, of this he was certain, and he had nothing but a world of time to wait for her.

To see you when I wake up Is a gift I didn't think could be real. To know that you feel the same as I do Is a three-fold, Utopian dream. You do something to me that I can't explain. So would I be out of line if I said "I miss you?" I see your picture. I smell your skin on The empty pillow next to mine. You have only been gone ten days, But already I'm wasting away. I know I'll see you again Whether far or soon. But I need you to know that I care, And I miss you.