Nathaniel C. Atkinson
“Tested, tried, and tormented, but yet still mighty, noble, and true” - my aspirations
Nathaniel C. Atkinson
“Tested, tried, and tormented, but yet still mighty, noble, and true” - my aspirations
“Tested, tried, and tormented, but yet still mighty, noble, and true” - my aspirations
“Tested, tried, and tormented, but yet still mighty, noble, and true” - my aspirations
There’s this ghost in the attic, and he’s surprisingly a rather pleasant fellow. He’s helped me find lost things and has talked me through a few rough times as well. Yet there has always been something off putting about it all. Every time he helped me, my hair would turn just a shade redder. Now though my hair is crimson and my eyes burn with fire, and my heart a holds a terrible yearning. I am not who I used to be. I used to be kind, not a bit cruel. Now I am my demons. Now that ghost in the attic is free, that ghost that got me through. And what awesome fate is this, to be free, chained only to this single truth: that there is no ghost, that my hair is not crimson, there’s just me, with a killer in his head. That there’s just me, who learned that taking what I wanted to replace what I lost, that to blame those that hurt me and hurt them back,, were the right things to do. And sometimes… sometimes I hurt them first. I am crimson at heart.
( I might write more, but I don’t think so 🤷♂️ )
I can’t see it working out, This shared love of ours, You told me to make a choice, But I’ve hit some bars…
I don’t want to see you go, To lose what we know, But I don’t want to lose her, Not this time around.
So help me choose what to do, ‘Cause I lost this time, I tried to figure it out, But I’m seeing blind.
Why can’t I just meet someone, A mixture of two, I don’t want to see you go, But I might have to.
I guess for what it’s all worth, I didn’t not fall, But if I must have to choose, I can’t keep it all.
So see you sometime I guess, Though this might kill me, I might fall for you some more, But this just must be.
The feeling was breathtaking; gazing out beyond the sea. The distant waves like silent thunder rolled seamlessly into the ever darkening clouds, whose texture was that of loose swan feathers, their color drained like cold stone. Oh, and the air! The wind that rushed through in over the shoreline only brought in the sounds of lonely gulls and the endlessly crashing waves over the not so distant bar. I could almost feel the refreshing winter sting of the ocean spray were it not for the dew covered car window that separated me from this majestic, old world.
The hills behind us sat hunched ever so low with their long unruly beards like an extension of the sea. A hazy, yet defined sea. I could barely make out the colors of the grass, of the trees, and the water. The hills were a harsh and sage like tone, with the sea a near absolute darkness reflecting the stone cold sky where ever it wasn’t. I could live in this, these winter storms, the ones that were always colder than you remember them being the year before. The ones where when the sun finally broke through those suffocating clouds the land would glisten with the sparkles of the dew drops and the colors would become bright and utterly ethereal. When the sea would stop just at the horizon, when you know that those ships could finally see their way home.
There are a lot of things in life that trouble me, things I have no control over, and some of the things that I do. It was one of those, I suppose, that I’m writing about, the things that I’ve put my characters through…
“Creator?” Asked the boy, “Why did you trap me in a well?”
“To help you learn, to give you a story that could give you cause to grow.” I replied, or, rather I think I did… I’m not sure if was a dream, or a an actual visit from my timid young creation.
“To learn what, creator? Couldn’t you have given me the knowledge with out having to have been stuck in that well? It hurt awfully so.”
“Why to make it matter, matter to you, matter to those that read of you.”
“But it hurt so much, couldn’t you have made it less so?”
“I wanted to, my child, I do wanted to, but the best stories aren’t told through the inexperienced. That said, I did try… I gave you a friend to guide you, a hole to return to, and the strength to get out.”
“That, that was you? Are you the well? The one that talked with me?”
“No- no, not quite… I merely told the well what to say to you, what comfort to give.”
“Why did the thing that you trapped me in wanted to get out?”
“Because not everyone or everything is as it always appears to be, and not everything bad is meant to be bad.”
“How could that be?”
“To grow, there must be something to grow from.”
“… so you made me hurt to grow?”
“I didn’t make you hurt.”
“But you wrote me that way, what do you mean!?”
“I let you be in a situation where you could hurt, so you could choose to grow.”
“Choose to grow? But the Well helped me!”
“Would I be so cruel to let a young boy face the world all alone?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why, isn’t that the point?”
“To not understand?”
“My child, it is to know the joy of learning no matter how painful it might start off being…”
“Joy?”
“Why yes, a thing you would know unless you’ve faced pain.”
“So if I didn’t hurt I would be happy?”
“Yes, dear boy, you wouldn’t know happiness.”
“Well, now that sounds cruel. I think I would rather know happiness than know everything, I think.”
“You think? Why then! I do say, that you’ll make an astonishing young man.” Was the last thing I remember saying to him. After which a bright light, and he was gone, leaving me to ponder his questions, and the answers I gave him… was I as honest as I could have been? Did I mean the things I told him, or was I secretly cruel, and lost inside? No matter though, I guess. That’s the joy of being imperfect: I get to find out.
O, the night! It’s restless slumber! As here alone, Watch I dying embers!
Quick! Forget! Your raging forges, They call, taunting, Enticing bright sources!
I, now lost, Have seen new a star, My mind, tethered, By this red moon of ours!
Save! Run free! Away from her view! Embers now cold, Their light, a faded dream!
How careless! Am I, for looking! With out no thought, For not looking away!
O, red moon! Where still are the stars?! My hope, left weak, Yearning for those embers.
O, too far! They left me to you! To die alone, O, careless are the stars!
As the last of the Majesty’s line ships slowly inched forward across the battle bathed sea, the smell of the burning tar and its victims wafted over the side of the ship in an almost tangible sense, making the crew’s eyes water, and their throats weak with bile. So they stood there, adding to muffled movements and suppressed whispers, with even the often silent creak of the ship’s bow now echoing through the mist. So in suspense you lean forward, the early morning few dampening everything you touch, your hair hanging down, you hear the Lieutenant whisper to the Captain, “What are we waiting for, Sir? We have already sunk the last of the Spanish ships? Haven’t we, Sir?”
In a hushed, and scarred voice the captain replies, “We’ve but barely begun this battle, for this only is sure, when there is spilled Spanish blood, the Lady Elizabeth is not far behind…”
You mind races. Could this be true? She’s a myth, a relic, a ship lost to words of men! Your heart beats like a brigade of battle drums, and you see the captains old, worn hands grip the main stays even tighter as he leans into mist, “Aye.” He said at last, “She is an old tale… but not any less true because of it… look there.”
At his command you follow the trajectory of his finger out past the ships railing, and you see, to your terror, the pitch black silhouette of a line ship so vast, it’s like has never before been seen. It had 6 masts and was at its widest, the length of your ship. Then everything froze, the waves, the fog, the sounds, everything except that ship was stopped in time. But not everyone… the captain, as you tried focusing on him with out being able to shift your eyes, had about him a faint golden aura, and he was reaching for his scabbard.
The second he had in his hands a free sword the spell broke. You could breath, you could see, you could hear.
You could hear the sounds of a spell, an ancient spell, almost being chanted from the depths. And then you realize something, from those legends long ago, of a rogue sea elf. A man who through chance or choice, was whispered about, in every single historic event since the dawn of the Irish people.
It can’t be, you thought, but you knew, with out a doubt, that for some reason you wouldn’t lose this battle, even against the famed Lady Elizabeth.
The captain then turned to you, and with a smile, quoted what was said to him before the death of the serpent witch, “It’s not fear I smell, but future.” And with that the ships made contact.
All I could think about was the rough texture beneath my fingers. That grainy, almost porous clay surface of grey matter. A substance infused with proteins, and nutrients, but with no flavor other than that of a flat, metallic sensation.
I’m so sick of this: the war. Not only for the deaths, but for the geographical consequences of it as well. With most of our natural food sources depleted or extinct, the government in their last act, before it disbanded and became the Homelance Alliance, was that of ensuring our food,
So he I am, again. In my head hating the memory of it. The white plasticky paper that I had to take the grey matter out of in pieces. The light faucet warm on my hands as I held the matter to it, letting the light clean it as best as possible before I continued on with its journey.
This particular memory, I made beef with it. After the HA started governing what was left of America as it used private militarized organizations to fend off the foreign invaders, they came out with flavor packets. We still didn’t have any other reliable sources of food, but finally we could taste something, anything, other than the dirt in the air.
Anyway, as I held the matter, I tore off pieces about half the size of a marble, and placing it inside a metal pan, did so until a fair sized pile had emerged. After which, I had placed the pan under the stove, and let it cook. Just enough for the outsides to be firm yet sticky. I mushed the ‘meat’ together once it had cooked and in this process added the flavor. There isn’t much that one can do with grey matter. Yes it sounds like that one term for tissue that makes up the brain, but that’s what it was, wasn’t it?
Not ever knowing about the stance of the war, the alliance would just send out flyers and posters requesting more and more volunteers, but we never saw any of the them after 7 years from the fall of the American Government. We learned to rely on the crates of grey matter that would somehow magically appear in the towns stores. We hated, yet craved for the next shipment, becoming a salve to our unseen Alliance. M But of what I can remember from the matter, is that it was somehow almost wet to the touch the course, yet how matter what you did with it, your mouth was always drier than it was before. And that texture didn’t always go away though sometimes it did. When it wasn’t like sandpaper to your tongue it was like clay. And the flavors only helped some, and those eventually stopped showing up. There was a single meat flavor, carrots, potatoes, corn, and bean flavored packets. Each an over stated phenomena with hardly any effect.
Now though, I do not need for it. That grey matter. For things are not as they once where, and I for one, am now an old man. A man who every time he takes a bite of food, is taken back in surprise by how much flavor it contained, and how peaceful it is to eat.
‘This, this is isn’t right’ thought John to himself as he looked at the pages. He might not know exactly what it was, but the large type face letters on the cover of the sketchbook brought horror to his face. He scanned it meticulously and sure enough it read, “property of Homeland Security.” He groaned, he thought it was over. He thought he had escaped the maze of events but there it was, staring right at him, the book he fought so hard to destroy.
‘A copy?’ He wondered. ‘It has to be, the foreigners book was set aflame off the coast of London. But there it is all the same.’
So John picked the book up and was about to toss it in the already burning fire place when he realized he didn’t know where he was, and that the page next to the coordinates was no longer empty. He didn’t remember anything being there before, but as he looked it changed from the blurry outlines of a paragraph into a well detailed portrait of John’s brother, Samuel Leer, a missing person for 13 months.
Amazed he looked closer, and sure enough it changed again, but instead of becoming another pictures, it just faded into the page.
“Well that can’t be” he said to himself, in almost a mutter sort of way, “It wasn’t supposed to be a magic book… there’s no such thing…”
“Oh, but there is agent Leer” echoed inside his mind, reminding him of the forced surgery and the new micro chip the government had out inside his head.
“At least, I’m inside your head. You see, we can make you see things, bot just view what you see.. recall old memories, and implement them in the world around you.”
John shook, the voice sounded like Aura’s, the person who had double crossed him in the first place.
“You see, once you destroyed the book, we had nothing, well, not until we managed to capture you.” She toyed. “And seeing as you’ve been the only person who can read that very distinct Latin dialect, we recalled the book into your world, too see what you would think as you read it. You thought we needed the book, no we just needed the translation, we’ve had those coordinates for years, we just, didn’t quite know they were coordinates, so thank you, John. You’ve been quite a bit of help.”
—
John looked around again and noticed the light were only dimmed. In fact, everything was dialed down. The colors were washed, and the carp new but frayed. Something was wrong, or already he thought something was wrong. Things seemed just a little… off. He tried the door. Locked. He tried the dresser, only the first drawer opened, and inside, a single note with four numbers: 6780. He didn’t recognize them. He looked around, and saw a book on the shelves. It almost looked like the other other ones, but this one’s binding was just a tad bit glossier. Kind of like matted plastic polyester mix. He’s used one of these before, so he wasn’t shocked when the book had a key hole on the top. Hollow.
“Great.” He thought, ‘they have the location and now I’m stuck in an escape room. Why?’
“Because we don’t want you escaping, at least not yet.” Was the only reply he got from the chip. But after a few hours, he still had no idea.
However, he had managed to find the key, which was inside the alarm clock. The four numbers apparently had to be imputed into it, even though it want an actual time. ‘Maybe a part of a date?’ He wondered? Anyway, the book opened up, in where he found a single diamond ring, but this clue, this clue he recognized. This diamond was red in the middle, set on a simple iron band… his grandmothers ring. Not her wedding ring, but the secret one she told him if as a boy. The ring he was looking for. The ring with the only laser imprinted biometric scan drive ever, and the only way into the grand vault. The vault at South Mc’Asters Bank in New York.
He’d only seen the ring a couple of times as a kid, but it went missing when his grandmother passed away. And that’s when it hit him. They weren’t trying to play with him, or even get the translation of the coordinates, there was something else… something he couldn’t let himself think