before the storms hit

 

Side Street Mystery/Best Sellers Sheets & pages

It had been a busy day at the bookshop; lately they had been getting quite a lot of traffic because of something someone said on TikTok (mystery bookshop owner’s deaths) and what with Halloween around the corner ….

“I say we go with it,” Sheila had said raising an arched brow at the sudden addition of shoppers that walked through the shop’s antique double doors all with hiking backpacks 

And this was the sort of town where strange stories are glorified 

So Sheila picked one store window and Faun another and they decorated gruesomely using horror fiction books the store conveniently always carried. H. P. Loveceaft, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker ….but they might have got carried away with the extra special effects to bring the books to life

“Surprise! Fake blood!” Sheila pulled out of her giant handbag 

So the bookstore was busy and so was the street with curious onlookers hanging around.

“We really have caused a commotion,” Sheila remarked, looking natural and beautiful as a trans Elvira as she peered out the shop window, “look— they’re taking a group selfie in front of the store with two of them faking they’re dead!”

“Oh that recent news story,” Faun rolled her eyes and felt fed up about it, “they just want to sensationalize to get views and will stoop at making up stories ….”

Sheila turned from the window knowing this was a touchy subject. What with Grant …. and suspicions surrounding him

****

And it was later back st her place— the Victorian lavender grey house with the now slightly less overgrown front garden and her place behind it —when she thought she heard someone at the door. It was the middle of the night and she was in bed having a disturbing dream. A knock. 

Or was it in her dream?

And heading down the stairs she went through to the kitchen to look out the kitchen door window. But no. No one there.

Yet she heard it again. A knocking. 

But it was coming from upstairs she now realized. Faun went back up the stairs back to her bedroom and now heard it again. 

She smiled. Sat on the edge of the bed and knocked back. 

She heard through the wall,

“are you awake?”

“Well now I am!” she said back through the wall 

And for whatever reason her phone alerted a message as a text came from Grant:

<<come over>>

<<Im half asleep>> she replied 

<<bring your own pillow>>

***

he didn’t bother to put the light on but he did move over on his bed for her 

“Took you long enough,” he said but he opened his blanket to let her under and into the warmth of his bed cave 

“How long have you been back?” Faun asked but then forgot the question because whatever she’d arrived in was adeptly removed and tossed onto the floor and at the same time his mouth everywhere, demanding, kissing her 

And not a whoof out of King Leopold 

1001 shades of violet; dreamcatcher

For the vaguest moment it seemed all rational thought had left the building. Or was it just the residual hangover? 

There was this feeling as though none of this was really real. 

Like it wasn’t really happening. Like those dreams where things happen out of sequence or in the locations make no sense. Suspend belief. Just go with it.

So it must be an elaborate dream— and those shots ….shots? hadn’t they done them? He looked so good standing there looking at her in that way, he looked different. Not like how he looked when he was a student …. 

Not a student ….what gave it away? The facial scruff ….

“Diandra ….” his expression was impossible to read but he moved closer to her but stopped himself and half laughed, “guess you’re not ready to get your things at the hotel?”

He could very well have been speaking Swahili for all she knew what he was talking about 

And he moved a bit closer still,

“maybe that’s because all your clothes are back there—haven’t we done this before?” Greg moved closer still until he had reached the bed where she was now sat up looking at him, just the vaguest modest awareness to lift the sheet across her already exposed nakedness 

But it’s a dream right ….? Like her losing her job and Imogene’s wedding ….

wait thst was ….that part was real …. And Greg? —he looked so good standing there looking at her in that way he always did on the playground when they’d meet sometimes by chance there and her still inebriated mind told herself: this was not really happening 

“How funny,” Diandra said in reply and reached for the edge of his shirt to pull him closer 

“What are you doing?” he said as he pretended to lose his balance and fell on top of her 

“I thought you’d never ….” she said undoing his trousers 

And it was the feel of him in her hands that awoke Diandra to the realization thst this was definitely not a dream 

Xxinzæe lė Gheillră~the Majique Realm

Introduction

Xxinzæe lė Gheillră~the Majique Realm, the works of Winifred Brook Ashbridge, had been the only source of sanity keeping her going these last several years while working at the commissioner’s estate. The long retired commissioner Alex Westmoreland, from by gone years. He was a native from the sleepy little farmland town of Henderson; not anctually a town really; but outside of other town-like places, Ingleside and Barclay, Maryland—on the border of Marydel (the border town between Maryland and Delaware marked by a gas station with a store inside and four roads intersection with a traffic light on the corner of the church where huge bucks liked to surprise drivers).

Alex Westmoreland, how best to look upon the now former employer? An ornery, scrappy man whom Daphne had had the ‘pleasure’ of serving as grounds keeper? And whatever other extra tasks the demented bigot demanded with barks and expletives…. Some biting angry adjectives sprang to her mind as those questions loomed 

“Now now,” Daphne said aloud to the dusty room, “do not speak ill of the dead.”

The estate was being donated to Alex Westmoreland’s Amish friends, which, in Daphne’s mind was the one endearing detail she could think of about her former employer. The only twist was, Alex Westmoreland had not bothered to leave her with any provisions should something have happened to him during her ‘indentured servitude’ to him. 

Alex Westmoreland had not planned on checking out. His hunting trip and the three day camp out had not been recommended by his doctor. 

Daphne turned back to her phone to study her favorite source of escape— the internet website dedicated to the magic world of W B Ashbridge, the late renowned author known for the famous literary sci/fi tales from the 1920’s and whose cult following was of a particular select few. There were sorcerers and mystical prophesies with complex riddles connected with cultural legends in the world of Xxinzæe lė Gheillră~ the magic Realm 

Even as this was really not a good use of her time, Daphne knew, instead, she should be using all her time on finding where she was going to live now that her employer had suddenly and unexpectedly met his death on his last hunting trip. Of course there were still details to take care of, her own relinquishing of paperwork and keys to the property’s new owners, rather awkward changing of hands as mediator between the Amish and the electrical transmitted information that needed to be relayed to them at times. But soon, even this small task would be defunct once everything was processed. 

Daphne had reached out to relatives asking if they knew anywhere she might stay while she looked for her next situation. While they were all encouraging, nobody had any useful resources. It was hard to think positive after several days of searches and stooping even to the National Craige’s List for every state and random searches for anything…. there was nothing that seemed lucrative never mind legit or safe so panic was starting to build for Daphne on ideas of where to go. 

This was why the escape to the magic realm had become her ‘go to’ as it helped her to forget her anxiety; every day she would spend hours signing onto the website and involving herself in a puzzle, an article or an ‘adventure maze’, it helped get her mind off her problems and focus her mind on other things. 

Admittedly, recently, she had been spending perhaps too much time on the site. Sometimes writing pages long comments on things posted because she often noticed errors in things that were posted. It’s not that she pretended or wanted to be an expert on W B Ashbridge, it was more that she wanted to make sure what was being posted was accurate about her personal role model heroine. She’d been a fan of the literature since she had first heard of the works as a teen, long after the author had lived, of course, but this did not keep the life of the person vibrantly alive in Daphne’s young thoughts growing up. 

Today she desperately needed the safety the feeling of visiting the site gave her, with its familiar maps and its familiar characters to explore and discuss or what morals came from the adventures to explore —anything to get her mind off of the misery of fruitless clicks on webpages to find a place to go and a means. 

But no!!!

      —oh dear! 

What’s happened?!?! 

When she reaches the website a terrible message comes up: WEBsite indefinitely down!!!!

“Oh what the …..” at which point Daphne stood up and stared at her phone, “no no no no no!!!!” 

It seemed the news was so upsetting she had to pace several times as this hits her. 

And logic does not guide her when she decided trying the site via a laptop hoping that it might give her a better reality. 

“NO!!!!” She shouts in horror at her laptop screen

An Amish voice from another room at this point is heard from below and shouting up asks if she’s ok

“Uhhh—just fine—just a mammoth spider ….” and sunk back into the chair she had just jumped out of

Without much thought, more automatically, she opened her emails but without bothering to look. She only stared vacantly at nothing out the window. Or rather she stared at a herd of deer peacefully eating grass without fear of being hunted.

Daphne stared at them a long while with this very thought and a vague sense of freedom 

Had she looked at her screen with the emails, she’d have seen an email from the Winifred Brook Ashbridge foundation…. asking her for help.

But she didn’t look at the screen and shut the laptop, her mind rebounding to anxiety over options for her circumstances. It would not be until later, after other emails piled up on top of that one and —hours of packing up dusty belongings of Alex Westmoreland before it would even occur to her to check her emails.

That would not happen until much later and late that night 

safe harbor

Existentialism it seems is the underlying obsession of my Celf but the actual secret it hides is the thread it hangs from for why it does strive and that is….the need for acceptance but only once actually understood for the whole of the Celf 

Symbols become the most reliable language but not the letters kind— more the archetypes created within the individual inner stage with the marked tabs from whence they germinated; the experiences they were born from 

No words ever say what is happening inside 

the very nature of an artist is individual 

I am stuck upon this thought. Within the context of the sense of the conflict of what that statement means. 

and broken fingers. and dyslexic words that are nonsense acrobatic symbols that dance in three dimensions off the screens and paper.

where to put thoughts. In the light? To be defined and misunderstood; to volunteer the self as target?

that is simply illogical and a terrible waste of silent years in search of ….purpose 

Can you imagine a camouflage artist? Can you imagine camouflage art? Like Magic Eye with the secret codes hidden ….?

I met a six foot seven man once who liked to paint miniatures and asked of my art— as one over a foot and a half smaller than him I paint huge mural sized art 

it is somewhat funny but I mean my point seems that I am demonstrating that my need for self expression seems to be a clear need to …. be seen —in a huge way but also only on my own terms. I can stand behind a six foot canvas and hide with no problem and whatever the mural shows is enough to tell the universe that I exist 

with broken fingers and dyslexic literacy a chasm and sound proof walls dull the voiced screams, choked with tears never shared and fast suppressed once recognized and categorized 

Nothing to see here, 

           but lift the veil and there ….

 where shall we put our worlds?—perhaps we just need a spot in some tucked away unassuming place we can imagine to be all we need to let the celves come out 

I want to make a magic world 

think of Middle Earth

Today I think about how it was the need of it to write of “Middle Earth” for J RR Tolkien

I dwell upon the visual landscape of his world then 

Do not mistake my silence for complacency. It is just pragmatic to not throw away energy. Throw away in such as it starts to feel like the quest for the holy grail. Or some crusaders’ lost dream. 

And here like Orlando, I step away from the maddening crowd and 

     think of Middle Earth

I think, what might have been on his mind:

       “Middle ….. somewhere safely far from here. A place not like but similar in some ways to earth. Some magical place to command. Some place to vomit out the horrors of my nightmares. Let them rage with fierce violence assuaged by some renewed hope of heroic justice and let us hope —let us hope ….together —through magic —that will deliver all back to the faith that the greater good will out for kindness not greed nor supremacy” 

With a back to World War I and facing another ….gas masks and trenches on the landscape and there germinates Orcs and Ents