The Library ( closed)

Subject: The Library ( closed) Fri Mar 04, 2011 5:10 pm

Pennywises inner mind had always been something that represented chaos. An ocean. Filled with wind and storm and death. A drum beat, pushing him towards fate. A representation of his inner madness.The ocean. Something to drown in. Lately however after harnessing the power of his madness, the mask. His inner….sanctuary. Mystery. Had become a strange kind of library. Locked on the top floor. Books that held no meaning. At first when read on the top most floor they were nothing but blank pages. This progressed. Words there. But the moment he read one word the memory of ever reading it would vanish from his mind. Making any sense of it. Impossible. Pages falling constantly from the foor. The place shaped like a dome. Bookshelves running around in a ring. The roof. A sky light, letting in a brief vision of moon light to light up the centre of the ground floor.

He’d been progressing in harnessing the power of his insanity by moving further and further down the floors of the library. Moving through portcullis after portcullis. Each with their own trial. Their own test.As if something. Perhaps himself. Didn’t want him to master this power without trial. Without…difficulty. Each time he moved further down there was an enhancement in his power, but also the words in the books seemed to continue to grow more clear. First nothing then something but something without the power to read. What was it that this place did not want him to read upon the pages of these books. All were different. So what knowledge did they hold. That this place did not want him to know? Was this place truly just a fabrication of his own mind or was it something else? Something more sinister.

Regardless of its origins. When he awakened here once more. He felt. Different. This place. He’d not seen it last since before the building of Gera’Sey. Never had he came to it willingly. Rather. Dragged in his sleep. Or even in his own madness. When he drowned in that unfathomable ocean of time and insanity. Yes, that was the first time he had seen it. Seen the pages that held secrets he was not meant to know. In his hand once more a book, a green scaled leather binding. O the cover there was a golden out laid picture of a man standing outside a house. The man was small. Impossible to distinguish. These pictures after all on the old fashioned books were not meant for any real illustration. But merely to give a brief message about the content of the book itself. None the less. When he looked at that cover he couldn’t help but feel something. A sense of…..sadness. And dread. He lay there in an almost, pitiful state. Legs laid out in a wide arc, back leaning against the wall. His full dress was on, as it was most times in this place. The top hat he’d not worn in so long laid next to him on a pile of books.

He opened the book in his hand, and it seemed almost as if time itself was slowing down for him. The sense of dread increasing. Like before there seemed to be words on the pages. But the words meant little to him….

“ Waiting here today, waiting outside. Felt strangely ghost like, almost as if I was watching from a different place. A different perspective. Could smell the salt water on the air. Fresh fish from the market drifting down. What is it precisely that I wait here for. Its almost a ritual, every morning I come here, wait and look at this old house as if something is telling me, calling me to come. Its not been lived in for years, decades. Maybe longer. The plants now rule this place. Seems that looking it was long ago that nature reclaimed this place from our society. A brief strike back from that mother we cast out with stone and fire. Thorns and bushes covering the slabs of brick work that we laid down. Yet still. Although nature has it. It is still identifiable as what it once was. A shell. A house . But is it a home? ”.

The first page finished he didn’t dare read on. There was something there about the house in those pages that he couldn’t help but feel something for. A greyness. A flash. A vision of what was there. He felt, almost….saw that house that was being described. H almost…knew it. Almost. Like something in the back of his memory that wasn’t quite clicking into place. The wrong piece for the right puzzle. Eyes rolling back into his head, Pennywise couldn’t help but feel the strange drowsiness that had overcame him. A sleep which usually indicated the end of this dream. Of the libraries hold on him. So he relaxed into it. Let himself fall into the pages. Although in this sleep there was nothing. Nothing but the blackness. Much like the ocean of madness itself. It was almost.

Liberating.

Once again. There was that greyness beyond the abyss. It was like watching a rerun from an old show, a damed videotape in grey, the voices of those who talked. Distorted just ever so slightly. The alleyway again. Looking now. Staring down at himself. He moved down to touch, pain stung through his upper arm and he quickly stepped back. The sound of the static burst with that touch. The one sat down. Sat there, looked at him. He remembered doing that. Staring at the wall in that state. How many times had he done it and for how long. Was he…staring at himself all that time. In a sense of disillusion and shock he slowly raised his hand and waved it out in front of him. But those eyes. Didn’t move. Didn’t follow the hand. The head just drooped back down.

“ Still waiting on the beach”

He thought to himself. Remembering the dreams that had accompanied his time in that alleyway. The poison drenched in madness. The despair as the drums were gone. The true lack of purpose that his life had held. “ And who gave you that purpose?”. A voice from beyond the grey. A man standing out of the alleyway. He stood under a light in the street, in his hand a cigarette. Burning in the night. His face though, not hooded was beyond the light. Only his eyes could be seen. And they were strange. Almost. Absorbing.. “ Eyes like mirrors”. He stood there, looking at those eyes but not being drawn in. He didn’t want to be seen through those eyes, didn’t want to see himself through them. He was-” Afraid of what you will see?”. The voice of the man echoed in the night of the grey. The static rising. The clip skipping it would seem. The man, drew out something from his pocket. A handkerchief. The wind picked up…and he let it go. It blew out towards him. A hand shot up from the motionless figure. As the handkerchief moved into the grey. He caught it. Remembrance of this event. Was this a memory or. Something more?

The him, memory. Drew that handkerchief in. Protective of it. “ I don’t think that’s it”. Said the voice from beyond the grey. From the man with mirrors in his eyes. “ Not afraid of what you’ll see”. Penny looked down, and stared at his hand….The static and grey skipped. Becoming…unstable.

“ Afraid of what I won’t see”

Finally. It all began to fall apart. But he could tell from where he was, from where he was falling again. That the man from beyond the grey. Had gave him all but the briefest of nods. Before the film was gone. Leaving him once more in the abyss. Falling through it, in silence. “….What….are these thoughts?….these images?….what….what is this feeling?….”. He drifted there. Alone. Alone with his thoughts. His own inner voices. “ What is it that keeps me here…keeps bringing me here?….why….why are the pages not speaking to me…why can’t I remember….”.. Once again awake. Although this time. The green leather book itself was open. Two pages that were blank before now filled. Filled with an illustration. One page, that house that had been in his mind, filled over with nature, a blank and empty shell. Looking through its windows, upon its cracked surface it was like staring into the eyes of the man from beyond the grey. Haunting. A sense of dread once more encasing him. There was something inside that house. Beyond that window. Perhaps it wasn’t nature that was reclaiming this house. Perhaps it was trying to keep something in by caging this place in weed and thorn.

The other page. Clear even if it was black and white. A man sitting in an alley way. Rain falling all around. In front of him. A woman bent over. Standing in the corner. Where he had been before. The outline of a pair of eyes. In the street. Under the lamp. A figure stood. Staring out of the pages. Staring at him. Below the illustration. A message. A caption.

“ IN THE NIGHT STANDS A MAN. IN HIS EYES I SEE MIRRORS. BUT I FEAR TO LOOK AT WHATS INSIDE”.

The words called to him. But particularly two words. Which in the caption. Were grained. Scratched. Whats Inside. It seemed like less of a statement and more of a question. Once again his eyes moved from the man in the picture. To the illustration of the house. And its window. “Whats inside. Whats inside. Whats inside” . The same sense of dread. And curiosity. He folded the book shut. And laying there behind it. On his lap. The mask. Almost. Calling to him.

So there it was, laying in his hands, the mask that had first appeared on that hill the day in the past. When the sound of the drums had gotten ever louder in his ears. When he feared that he was going to fall back into the madness that usually consumed him. But such was not the case. She'd kept him from falling back into tat madness, from becoming little more than a destructive piece of abituary nonsense upon the scope of Onitoshi. Ever since that day, he had fought the mask. Remembering her pleas with him. Not to wear it. That the mask and the power it brought scared her. It unlocked his inner madness and although with that came incredible power. It also meant giving into those desires that made her unsafe. So he had used it. And trained himself to gain more control over it. But...it was still something he would not use around her. As he lay there he couldn't help but wonder just what she was doing right now, if indeed she would ever see this place in the corner of his mind just as she'd somehow managed to join him on the beach that night when the greyness had taken him. The silence. The answer to her activates would likely be in the office somewhere signing papers and doing the whole boss lady thing. He should have been with her, by her side and protecting her, but for the moment that would not do. He had thing to deal with in Oni toshi. And then well. There was this.

Looking up from the mask that lay in his hands, eyes spread out into the library. He was still here, which meant he wasn't done yet. He had to transcend to the next floor. Moving ever downwards towards the ground floor. A place that seemed almost mystical to him now. Some place that he could lean over the edge and peer down into the reflective stature of the marble. At this height he could probably survive the jump, that was, if this was a reality. There was something about that jump though that made him afraid a primal instinct much like the madness of the mask that told him into would be a bad idea to go ahead with it. A bad idea to move into the jump. So...he'd keep moving ahead. Keep working his way through the gates of his mind. Pain and trials ahead. To read the books. To reach the bottom. To uncover the secrets. As he dropped the book to his side, a pain shot through his arm. A burning pain causing him to rip back the material of his shirt to find out just what was causing this . In his arm he saw in bright orange something was being tattooed, branded there by something causing the heat. The flames. The e bright orange died down and in scarred burned tissue the words of the books caption were burned into his skin. A message, a reminder. He had to wonder if this mark would remain even after he left the library. And then the creeping wonder. Were there more marks to come....and just what was it that was trying to keep those in his head.

He walked through the corridor of this floor for some time before finally coming to the portcullis that would lead him down to the next level. On its surface there was a single strange marking emblazoned in a circle. The marking was not familiar to him but then very little of the strange runic marks that inhabited Onitoshi and in cases the buildings of Gera'Sey were foreign to his senses. Yet he felt that, this being his mind ( at least in his opinion that he should at least know the mark . Near the gate there was a fallen pile of books much like before, The book that drew his eye however was one that was of a similar design to the last book he read. The only difference this time was the colour of the scaled leather on the front. This book was a deep crimson red dye, one that was only slightly lighter than the colour of freshly spilled blood. The illustration on the cover was also similar but the changes on it became more apart as here drew closer to the book. He took it in his hands, feeling the coldness of the leather through the gloves on his hand. It was almost as if he were feeling the corpse of the animal this leather had been skinned and tanned from. The illustrations difference was that the house in the cover seemed slightly more worn than the one that had been in the original book. And it wasn’t simply down to the age of the book this one looked of similar age to the one that he had opened before on this level. The difference was small. But enough for the paranoid man to notice. With shakily hands Pennywise moved forward to the binding, and pulled it open to the contents page.

Trembling, no idea why. But then very little made sense Much like before there wasn't much actually listed on the content page just the black and white illustration that appeared on the front cover. A repeat. Or was it. That was a question. On closer inspection it wasn't a perfect copy, there were some discrepancies in the details of the window. Cracks that weren’t there. On the front illustration. Another page turned. This time. Words. But the words were few and far between. At least...at first. One word stuck in his mind however that seemed to be that little stone that dislodged the dam.

"Fire"

Burn it......burn it all to the ground and leave nothing but ashes......pride....honour.....they mean less than nothing in this world of ghosts and translucent guests. Our story begins with a mirror image of its end, both are in the same box. Labled Pandora. We first met in the forest, yes. That one. On a day when one could not think they could reach any lower. Back then I was a hunter. Most men in my village decided that they would take the route if becoming soldiers, mercenaries. But I had neither the strength nor the stomach for such a career path. What I did have though was cunning. I was an effective trapper. And a competent archer. I was by no means the best at my trade, but I had a good name in my village. All down to one day when one of my poisons that I use whilst hunting deer to tip my arrows, found its way into the wine of a local diplomat. You have to understand that, life for me was what would likely be considered in stories of old as a boring one, certainly nothing to write a great play for. And this jump from relatively normal to infamous assassin a bit more than I could handle.

I was in the forest, hiding. It we the place where I had spent most of my days in non hiding so, logically it seemed the best place to go when I was. I knew the place like the ask of my hand. And evading the authorities in such a place was not what one would consider difficult. Still the idea of those blades shining in the glimmering sun light gave me nightmares, and for the most part in the first few days I was beginning to get sloppy over lack of sleep. Infamy wasn't really what you'd call the great life, I knew eventually I'd have to try and make it to one of the further outlying lands where they weren’t currently looking for me, but that wasn't going to happen so long as the main roads were guarded. All I could hope to do was avoid them until either pride or lack thereof caused them to decide that I'd been killed by some animal in the woods and stop the hunt. At first I was rather shocked when the first of these events happened. A lady in the woods. She looked like a hunter too. And a damned good one. I was watching her I think, trying to determine whether or not she was part of the hunting party that was sent out after me. A blood hound if you will. Sometimes the bastards did that. Turns out she was a better hunter than I'd imagined. After taking a deer from n a great distance. She courtly called out to me. Commenting on her own shot.

This began between us the first of many conversations. Neither of us revealed our names to the other. But we would meet in the same clearing the same time every week and discuss those small things that make life. As far as she seemed to be aware, I was nothing but another hunter in the woods who just happened to hunt at the same time as her. She told me that she lived in a remote clearing nearby. She had no real contact with the villages and mostly just took what she required from the forest. I cited a similar story, however did not digress the location of my housing, partly because I did not wish to admit my current cave dwelling existence. And partly (mostly) because I did not want her to discover that I was in fact an outlaw. Admittedly I should have told her from the start, perhaps she would have understood that much. That, as a fellow hunter. She would know how easy it was for someone to access poisons used. But for now. I couldn’t risk losing the only true friendly human contact I had.

Word Count: 3263
Total Word Count: 3263
Trained:
Masque of Madness ( honed> mastered)
Televocals ( novice> trained)
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