Appello
Beneath his shoes, the crispness echoed like calloused vibrations – slow, weary, old.
The wood was hollowed, moaning as he slid across dusted finish, rusted and bent nails. Yellow light bathed the floor in its watery, layered gaze, rising the old imprints of little shoes and bare feet to the surface of consciousness. His comparatively bigger shoes walked next to them, but never in them, even though he couldn't see their existence with his eyes.
The groaning and creaking brought a cacophony of deceased memories to his mind, his own consciousness feeling the dust rising as the sunlight increased its power, revering in the light. He found himself before the milky window, gazing through its blindness to the sun. His stance cast a long, familiar shadow to the opposite wall, arms outreached, hair lightly dancing in the windless air.
With his shadow grew two others - …elongated from the nails hiding under the fading photographs. They took shape of two little people, one with long layered hair, the other with dangerous, poisonous appearing spikes. The one with spikes deviated from his nail, hopping over to the other, who was sitting obediently by the wall.
They carried a silent conversation, only heard in the recess of the taller, now invisible, shadow standing before the sun.
Let's do something fun, poison said, but what was fun? Fun was only objective, an illusionary atmosphere created by surges of emotions that laid dormant in one's blood…but fun, the poisonous one had said, so enticingly, so convincingly of its existence, that fun drew the obedient one off his nail.
Fun brought the two shadows to slide past the dark interiors of the walls, hiding and seeking from the faint golden rays of sun. Fun drew forth laughter, a cacophony of shy giggles and excited exclamations. Implorations of joy begged the tallest shadow to come and join them, but the tallest shadow would not budge unless the poison one came back.
The photographs cracked under the sunlight. Their browning edges grew more yellow as the wood began taking on a primary version of the color. Poison and shy hid in the only place left that was remotely real – the dark shadows of the corners. From these shadows, poison and shy seemed to able to refind their places, not in nails, but in crinkled photo-paper, black and white, oily and spoiled. Dying laughter converged and disappeared altogether as photo-papers breathed. Only the one shadow remained.
He closed his eyes and inhaled. The many photos on the floor creaked back and forth, teetering in the silence. Behind him, his shadow began to rise, peeling off the floor and into the air. It transformed as it ascended, becoming more poisonous as spikes threw from its head and the layers retracted. Black, filmy shoulders spread, the spine lengthened. Transparent hands rose and laid themselves on the living boy's arms, bringing a shudder of coldness but underlying warmth.
Let's do something fun, poison whispered. The living boy closed his eyes and tried to smile. But deep down, even he knew that fun no longer existed so long as the toxic shadow behind him was no longer alive.
But fun was such an illusionary term. Fun could be misperceived so long as the mind could conjure such memories, spark the blood into bubbles of joy and excitement. The shadow behind him attempted to recreate this allusion by whispering huskily in the ear, the translucent hands sliding up and down the long sleeves.
"Don't go," he whispered.
But as soon as the silence heard his soft voice, the shadow slid back, lifelessly, onto the ground. The sun darkened and grew once more to its graying yellow. The wood returned to being empty and desolate. Ryou closed his eyes tightly and controlled a sad sigh.
As the sun became the moon, and the room turned blue, Ryou turned away and walked out. He left the small, dead room of his past-plays. The dust would no longer be disturbed.
He left the graying photographs on the floor.
Hmn, I was trying something new here. Or trying to at least.
I'm totally engrossed wtih Portrait of A Young Man as an Artist. Well, at least with the writing style. It's confusing as heck, but I wanted to try to expand my writing techniques - so wah, poetic prose. This is actually really hard to come up with poetry without saying the same thing over and over again to reinstate the atmosphere.
At any rate, I think this story was about Ryou losing Marik at some point in his life, and in his subconcious - which takes physical form as the old room they used to play in as children, he still tries to ressurect Marik so that he can cope with the loneliness. Although I implied that Marik was dead, I guess it could also be taken that Marik is just not living near Ryou, or something like that. Maybe Marik's in a coma. Either way, Ryou is grieving and this is a poetic narrative of his grievances.
Appello is Latin for "to summon", or at least to the best of my knowledge.