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Previous - this entry written on December 27, 2004 at 12:23 am - Next Picture an attic. Not a nice clean wide attic, but one of the old ones. Long, dusty, only one bare bulb and the light from the floor beneath sneaking up through the opening to illuminate the place. Cobwebs lie in ruins, old abandoned ones coating the sloping walls and freshly-spun webs, their creators skulking in cracks and behind beams, span the open spaces. The floor of the attic is plywood and plasterboard, creaking and shifting with each footstep, threatening to send the unwary tumbling down through to the rooms beneath. There are two windows, one at each end of the attic, the panes too dirty to allow vision even if the shutters covering them were thrown open. Silence fills what empty spaces the spiders' webs have not claimed, every sound muffled, the hum of life beyond the walls and sagging, heavy roof absent. From below a hint of music can almost be made out, so faint that the words are lost, even the melody drowned by nothingness and empty, dead air. Heat. Darkness. Silence. The smell of woodrot and dust, drifts of tiny dead insects, the way the air tastes of forgotten moments. It's not hard to see this attic.... just hard to convince yourself to keep seeing it. Harder still to live there, to look around and see nothing but those brick and wood walls, the roofbeams nearly meeting the floor, support pillars scribed with spidery runes of ash and dirt and silvery web. There's more to see up here, of course. There's a bed, the patchwork quilt on it faded and fraying, a hundred shades of old. Carved wooden bedposts, a mattress with half the springs broken, sheets with stains and rips, held together with bits of thread and prayer. There's a desk, books atop it, beside it, under it, only enough clear space on it to hold a sheaf of paper and a few gnawed pens. There's a chest of drawers, one drawer-pull missing, one drawer cracked, a leaf-brown sweater and a bit of ivory silk showing through the jagged opening. A chair, covered with no-longer-wearable garb in place of the absent cushion. A rug on the floor, threadbare, worn nearly through in spots. Boxes... boxes and boxes, some large, some small, stacked along the walls. One box in particular might catch the eye - it sits in the center of the rug, and gleams. The wood is polished, intricate carvings kept dust-free, the few glassy stones set into it shined until they seem to glow. This box alone is locked. The key is knotted on a length of dusty purple velveteen ribbon, worn around a throat, kept out of sight under layers of clothing. Kept safe. Hosted by Diaryland - All Rights Reserved - Image, Layout, and Content copyright Jax Raven - - Do Not Feed The Moose - |
