More of the story. i still need to reread it and proofread -_-
Two.
Roses.
The hours of day wound slowly down as they always did. But in the deep chambers of the house, the change was barely noticed by the fading light of the sun. With the curtains always drawn, or the blinds all but shut, Elliot had eradicated the outside world from himself. What did he need them for anymore? He was past his prime, past the exciting years of life. Now he was no more to anyone than a nuisance, a tiring soul reaching faster into fatigue. Will was always telling him that he should get out more. That there was still something left for him in the world, but what did he know? He was still a boy. Elliot could remember when he once thought like that. He used to be one of those men who are always looking toward horizons. One day he would learn. Elliot was past sixty by a few years, not too old by many a standard, but old enough to feel it. Old enough for it to count for him. Old enough for him to know where life was headed now. His bones were drying and cold, he was not blest with the best genes when it came to aging. He could feel his joints maddeningly as if they were always seeking attention from him.
No, he wanted nothing from the outside world. He told time by the grandfather clock, it had never let him down. Its solemn ticking guided him by the hand. Faithful as anything in this world could be. But where did the hours go? How to spend them well?
Maybe today he would paint a picture, he would think in the morning. But by the next hour he would discourage himself, reasoning that he didn’t want to add another to his growing collection of canvases gathering dust in the basement. Maybe he could visit with Fitzgerald, or Salinger, or Horston, or one of the others. More often than not he would choose to delve into the dusty spines. He had a fair collection of those too.
Or maybe even Frost. Oh, to delve into Frost was always a treat. He tried to save those for frigid nights. For winter evenings when the wind was too cold and the shutters upstairs knocked back and forth, sounding like knuckles rapping on the window longing to come in from the cold, to sit by the fire on the hearth rug beside him.
The visit from the specter of his past had set a ripple through his brain. He wound his way through the stacks turning over covers, sifting through dust and draped cloth. By the time the clock was striking seven in the evening, he had made his way into one of the many back rooms of the first floor. It was full of odd bits and clutter, as the vast majority of the other rooms were, but there were far more shelves of binders here, binders that had been shoved away for one reason or another. Maybe for safe keeping, maybe because they bore bad recollections. You couldn’t tell by their spines. Most were blank, staring innocently back at him but trying desperately to lure him in.
He’d felt a peculiar sensation upon entering though, a soft push as if his memory were trying to tell him that he would find what he was looking for in here. Whatever it was. And so he made his way more slowly around the room, eyeing everything and straining to recall what some of them were. A light blue and gray ornate pitcher sat on one shelf, a history painted into its face. A single crack had wound its way up the side, arching in sharp lines around an intricately drawn crest. On another shelf, a hand-crafted brown clay vase lay on its side, its surface faded and rough. The soft illumination of the light fixture overhead cast shadows of the objects along the shelves, along the blank spines. His own shadow folded over behind him, reaching up the wall.
He walked to one corner of the room and drew his finger gingerly across the spines of a collection hard-bound photo albums, picking up the dust onto his skin. He lingered on a couple. Pulled some out. But always replaced them in the same spot.
Some held things that were not his. Some were the records of his mother, who was an accountant before he was born. She always kept the files she worked with for the office that employed her. It was a precaution, she always said, so she would have proof in the case of an audit. He couldn’t make sense of the numbers, the many columns that lined the pages, or his mother’s untidily quick scrawl. It didn’t help that the pages were worn and yellowed, unnaturally dry and frail. They seemed to want to cling to as much of the moisture from his hands as they could, making his skin chalky and pale in no time.
After long last, when it had finally grown darker outside than in the house, he opened a photo album that sat just right in the crook of his arm. There was no title in the display glass of the front cover, yet he knew right away that this was indeed it. And he wondered what took him so long to realize this.
Elliot pulled the cover back carefully, sliding over to stand beneath the simple lamp standing solemn in the corner. The photos grinned up at him with their teeth born. They guided him through a mist of memory, asking him why he’d taken so long to visit. He paused at each picture, letting them sink over him. It was amazing how sometimes you forgot them, sometimes you couldn’t quite place some of the faces, or where exactly you were, or why you were there in the first place. Sometimes it came back to you in a trickling stream, filling you slowly from the bottom up, or it came as a wave hitting you full in the face.
These were pictures he’d collected as a young man, encroaching on the edges of adulthood. On his countenance were a few lines etched of knowledge and experience, but mostly he was smooth, naïve, so expectant. His eyes lingered on a scene with his friends at what appeared to be a bowling alley. River County Bowl. They were laughing, he remembered those faces well…Richard Baker. Anthony Hall. And Justin Grey. Faces that should’ve been around forever.
Another made him pause again. He was staring at a yellow sky, just before sunset. The clouds framing the air in a warm pallet of dying light. The grassy hills rolled off into a faded horizon. Large green trees stood from the ground as proud statues, their arms reaching for the lithe sun. And all around were roses, thousands of rose plants. He could still feel their petals beneath his fingers, the way the water would stick to them in the crisp air of the morning. He stared for a long while at the roses and the sky.
And the next. Here was the photo he was looking for. Elliot slid his fingers into the transparent plastic cover, sliding the glossed paper from its sheath. He exhaled sharply despite himself, letting the wind chase itself from him. In the photo, he was standing, still a young man with full brown hair and dark eyes and calm smile on his face, and beside him…those brilliant green spectacles. Those green, green eyes. Ivan stared up at him just as he stood frozen in Elliot’s memory. He was wearing a denim jacket, his hands were spread across low wall he leaned against, casual as ever. He looked as though he’d just been laughing, happiness etched into the dimples on his face. What he’d been laughing at, Elliot would hardly remember, but it didn’t matter.
“There you are, Ivan.” He said softly in the gathering darkness. “There you are.”The light changed.It was barely a flicker, a blink. But it was there.
Elliot looked up, silently and quickly replacing the photo in its sleeve. He looked out at the room around him. All was still as it had been before. He could’ve been imagining it. He must’ve been imagining it.
He shook his head, blinking away his paranoia. No, it was just the tiredness in his mind, the shock of the days events. It was late, and he was not one to stay up into the night.
As if on cue, the grandfather clock began to strike the ninth hour of the evening. Its calls reverberated through the house, sinking through the walls and filling every nook and cranny.
Nine o’ clock, he should be getting ready for bed now, he liked to have some quiet time with his thoughts or his books (as if he didn’t get enough of that) so that he would be asleep before nine thirty. Setting the photo album on the ground, Elliot made his way from the room, lighting the lights and shutting them off behind him. He made his way around the piles, the towers, the curtain covered furniture. He made his way through the dining room, the living room, and to the foot of the stairs.
The light of the stairwell cast shortened shadows down on him from its perch in the raised ceiling above. A barrier between the light and the darkness carved a path in the open doorway into the living room, dividing the visible from the invisible. Elliot stared for a moment into the black, his eyes straining, but for what he did not know. There was only silence…and the soft ticking of the clock.
Movement. He was sure of it this time. It rustled behind him, streaking across the floor between the piles. Enshrouded in darkness. Elliot turned quickly, watching a sheet of paper, an unread bit of mail perhaps, drift down from atop the table. Then there was nothing again.
No. He thought to himself. They would not come tonight.
“No.” He said aloud, as if the simple uttered word could lure them away. His ears ringing for any sound besides the steady ticking as he climbed the stairs unto the second floor. But for safe measure, he locked every lock on his bedroom door that night.Meh. It messed up my indenting.
Roses.
The hours of day wound slowly down as they always did. But in the deep chambers of the house, the change was barely noticed by the fading light of the sun. With the curtains always drawn, or the blinds all but shut, Elliot had eradicated the outside world from himself. What did he need them for anymore? He was past his prime, past the exciting years of life. Now he was no more to anyone than a nuisance, a tiring soul reaching faster into fatigue. Will was always telling him that he should get out more. That there was still something left for him in the world, but what did he know? He was still a boy. Elliot could remember when he once thought like that. He used to be one of those men who are always looking toward horizons. One day he would learn. Elliot was past sixty by a few years, not too old by many a standard, but old enough to feel it. Old enough for it to count for him. Old enough for him to know where life was headed now. His bones were drying and cold, he was not blest with the best genes when it came to aging. He could feel his joints maddeningly as if they were always seeking attention from him.
No, he wanted nothing from the outside world. He told time by the grandfather clock, it had never let him down. Its solemn ticking guided him by the hand. Faithful as anything in this world could be. But where did the hours go? How to spend them well?
Maybe today he would paint a picture, he would think in the morning. But by the next hour he would discourage himself, reasoning that he didn’t want to add another to his growing collection of canvases gathering dust in the basement. Maybe he could visit with Fitzgerald, or Salinger, or Horston, or one of the others. More often than not he would choose to delve into the dusty spines. He had a fair collection of those too.
Or maybe even Frost. Oh, to delve into Frost was always a treat. He tried to save those for frigid nights. For winter evenings when the wind was too cold and the shutters upstairs knocked back and forth, sounding like knuckles rapping on the window longing to come in from the cold, to sit by the fire on the hearth rug beside him.
The visit from the specter of his past had set a ripple through his brain. He wound his way through the stacks turning over covers, sifting through dust and draped cloth. By the time the clock was striking seven in the evening, he had made his way into one of the many back rooms of the first floor. It was full of odd bits and clutter, as the vast majority of the other rooms were, but there were far more shelves of binders here, binders that had been shoved away for one reason or another. Maybe for safe keeping, maybe because they bore bad recollections. You couldn’t tell by their spines. Most were blank, staring innocently back at him but trying desperately to lure him in.
He’d felt a peculiar sensation upon entering though, a soft push as if his memory were trying to tell him that he would find what he was looking for in here. Whatever it was. And so he made his way more slowly around the room, eyeing everything and straining to recall what some of them were. A light blue and gray ornate pitcher sat on one shelf, a history painted into its face. A single crack had wound its way up the side, arching in sharp lines around an intricately drawn crest. On another shelf, a hand-crafted brown clay vase lay on its side, its surface faded and rough. The soft illumination of the light fixture overhead cast shadows of the objects along the shelves, along the blank spines. His own shadow folded over behind him, reaching up the wall.
He walked to one corner of the room and drew his finger gingerly across the spines of a collection hard-bound photo albums, picking up the dust onto his skin. He lingered on a couple. Pulled some out. But always replaced them in the same spot.
Some held things that were not his. Some were the records of his mother, who was an accountant before he was born. She always kept the files she worked with for the office that employed her. It was a precaution, she always said, so she would have proof in the case of an audit. He couldn’t make sense of the numbers, the many columns that lined the pages, or his mother’s untidily quick scrawl. It didn’t help that the pages were worn and yellowed, unnaturally dry and frail. They seemed to want to cling to as much of the moisture from his hands as they could, making his skin chalky and pale in no time.
After long last, when it had finally grown darker outside than in the house, he opened a photo album that sat just right in the crook of his arm. There was no title in the display glass of the front cover, yet he knew right away that this was indeed it. And he wondered what took him so long to realize this.
Elliot pulled the cover back carefully, sliding over to stand beneath the simple lamp standing solemn in the corner. The photos grinned up at him with their teeth born. They guided him through a mist of memory, asking him why he’d taken so long to visit. He paused at each picture, letting them sink over him. It was amazing how sometimes you forgot them, sometimes you couldn’t quite place some of the faces, or where exactly you were, or why you were there in the first place. Sometimes it came back to you in a trickling stream, filling you slowly from the bottom up, or it came as a wave hitting you full in the face.
These were pictures he’d collected as a young man, encroaching on the edges of adulthood. On his countenance were a few lines etched of knowledge and experience, but mostly he was smooth, naïve, so expectant. His eyes lingered on a scene with his friends at what appeared to be a bowling alley. River County Bowl. They were laughing, he remembered those faces well…Richard Baker. Anthony Hall. And Justin Grey. Faces that should’ve been around forever.
Another made him pause again. He was staring at a yellow sky, just before sunset. The clouds framing the air in a warm pallet of dying light. The grassy hills rolled off into a faded horizon. Large green trees stood from the ground as proud statues, their arms reaching for the lithe sun. And all around were roses, thousands of rose plants. He could still feel their petals beneath his fingers, the way the water would stick to them in the crisp air of the morning. He stared for a long while at the roses and the sky.
And the next. Here was the photo he was looking for. Elliot slid his fingers into the transparent plastic cover, sliding the glossed paper from its sheath. He exhaled sharply despite himself, letting the wind chase itself from him. In the photo, he was standing, still a young man with full brown hair and dark eyes and calm smile on his face, and beside him…those brilliant green spectacles. Those green, green eyes. Ivan stared up at him just as he stood frozen in Elliot’s memory. He was wearing a denim jacket, his hands were spread across low wall he leaned against, casual as ever. He looked as though he’d just been laughing, happiness etched into the dimples on his face. What he’d been laughing at, Elliot would hardly remember, but it didn’t matter.
“There you are, Ivan.” He said softly in the gathering darkness. “There you are.”The light changed.It was barely a flicker, a blink. But it was there.
Elliot looked up, silently and quickly replacing the photo in its sleeve. He looked out at the room around him. All was still as it had been before. He could’ve been imagining it. He must’ve been imagining it.
He shook his head, blinking away his paranoia. No, it was just the tiredness in his mind, the shock of the days events. It was late, and he was not one to stay up into the night.
As if on cue, the grandfather clock began to strike the ninth hour of the evening. Its calls reverberated through the house, sinking through the walls and filling every nook and cranny.
Nine o’ clock, he should be getting ready for bed now, he liked to have some quiet time with his thoughts or his books (as if he didn’t get enough of that) so that he would be asleep before nine thirty. Setting the photo album on the ground, Elliot made his way from the room, lighting the lights and shutting them off behind him. He made his way around the piles, the towers, the curtain covered furniture. He made his way through the dining room, the living room, and to the foot of the stairs.
The light of the stairwell cast shortened shadows down on him from its perch in the raised ceiling above. A barrier between the light and the darkness carved a path in the open doorway into the living room, dividing the visible from the invisible. Elliot stared for a moment into the black, his eyes straining, but for what he did not know. There was only silence…and the soft ticking of the clock.
Movement. He was sure of it this time. It rustled behind him, streaking across the floor between the piles. Enshrouded in darkness. Elliot turned quickly, watching a sheet of paper, an unread bit of mail perhaps, drift down from atop the table. Then there was nothing again.
No. He thought to himself. They would not come tonight.
“No.” He said aloud, as if the simple uttered word could lure them away. His ears ringing for any sound besides the steady ticking as he climbed the stairs unto the second floor. But for safe measure, he locked every lock on his bedroom door that night.Meh. It messed up my indenting.