The Strange Sky and Other Stories

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Adrassil
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Joined: Fri May 06, 2011 11:34 pm
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The Strange Sky and Other Stories

#1 Post by Adrassil »

Woops! Only just realised now like the dumbass I am that this forum was for only High Elf stories. Oh well, will double down and continue to post here. This will be a thread for my miscellaneous short stories I've written over the years mostly horror, the 1st being The Strange Sky, a story I wrote for my creative writing course back in 2015 to practice "Magical Realism." Based on a real event that I witnessed twice in my childhood. What reminded me of this story was playing Disco Elysium which sorta has a Magical Realism vibe to it despite taking place in another world.

Enjoy!

The Strange Sky
THE YELLOW LEMON TREE
Last edited by Adrassil on Tue Dec 14, 2021 8:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
My short story Of An Asur living in the land of Bretonnia:

[url]http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=35367&p=714658#p714658[/url]
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Adrassil
Posts: 176
Joined: Fri May 06, 2011 11:34 pm
Location: New Zealand
Contact:

The Strange Sky

#2 Post by Adrassil »

The Strange Sky by Benjamin Agar

Always will I remember the night the stars first moved.

I was twelve years old. I was jumping on the trampoline at my friend's house when I looked up and stopped bouncing.

'What's wrong, Matt?' my friend said, and I pointed.

Three stars moved through the blackness in undecipherable patterns, zipping and swinging up and down and around and around with incredible speed.

'What the hell?' He said, and I almost died in relief. The relief I wasn't going insane.

We stood and watched in awe for a few minutes.

My friend broke the silence, 'I think we should go inside.'

The fear in my friend's voice filled me, and we fled indoors.

When safe, my friend turned to me and said, 'aliens? You think it's aliens? It's got to be aliens.'

'I don't know.'

He looked at me like I said the most confusing sentence in existence.


I slept over, and the next morning, everything seemed normal. The strange stars weren't mentioned on the news or anywhere. We tried to forget.

But the next night, it happened again, except there were dozens, still spinning and weaving. This time others saw it too. Within half an hour, it was on the News, Youtube and Facebook. It was seen all over the southern hemisphere. My friend and his family sat and talked out their theories. I said nothing; all their ideas had merit. Especially his dad-who suggested it could be carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or something.

The next day I went back to my home in Lyall Bay. It was nearing the end of the holidays, and I wasn't looking forward to going back to school.

It wasn't long before my parents started arguing over the stars. My mother believed it was a sign from her god. My dad said it was meteors. It was my dad who turned to me and asked, 'what do you think it is, buddy?'

I shrugged, and my parents began arguing again.

I was scared stiff. I didn't know what the hell was going on and what people were going to do.

I hoped the stars would stop, that everything would go back to normal.

It didn't. That night I looked out of my bedroom window, and even more, stars were moving. I couldn't sleep. My stomach all twisted into sickening knots.

The next day on Facebook and Twitter, they said not even astronomers could find out why.

By the time I was back at school, all the stars were moving. It was tense in my class. My teacher tried to act as if all was normal, but we could see her hands were shaking.

During lunchtime, all the kids gathered and speculated.

I sat, silently listening while eating my sandwich, when one of the kids turned to me asked, 'what do you think, Matt?'

I shrugged, 'I don't know.'

The boy frowned, 'what do you mean you don't know?'

I looked at him, taken aback by his hostility.

'All that you guys said could be true,' I said. 'I just don't know.'

'Hey, honey!' said my mum when I got home that day, then she saw me and her jaw dropped. 'What happened to your eye?'

'I got in a fight.'

'What? Why!'

'I don't know,' I'd said, though I did know.

She got a pack of ice for my eye, and she hugged and kissed me over and over.

On the news were riots. Everywhere from America to Singapore. Riots that caused millions of dollars of damage and were far from finished. They never said why they were rioting, but it was obvious why.

My mum and dad argued again, but I tuned them out. Fear clutched my heart so hard it hurt. I hoped someone, somewhere, would find a plausible explanation, or people would overcome their fear. Then after that, we saw in our suburb, a fight broke out between Christians and Muslims. Whose god was responsible and why? My mum convinced herself it was her god, but she'd said before that it was a sign of his love, now it was a sign of the apocalypse.

I became the kid at school who 'didn't know.' The other kids mocked me, and I'd get into fights all the time, most of which I came out the worst off. I was short and slight, and sometimes I'd get beaten on by more than one kid. It got so bad that my mum pulled me from school to be homeschooled.

In all honesty, I would have rathered to stay in school. My mother's mind had started to deteriorate, she was on medication for schizophrenia, but it no longer seemed to help. I hated being around her.

I hated everything. I hated walking down the street; every few metres, someone held up a sign saying 'the end is near!' Or 'god is going to punish us!' Or aliens or whatever, and/or they rambled incoherently. The pain in my chest never seemed to go away.

I hated watching the news; it got worse every day. Wars broke out in Europe. Asia and the Middle East. Buddhists fought Muslims. Jews fought Christians. Catholics fought Protestants, and they all fought amongst themselves.

Fights broke out all over New Zealand, too. Riots in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and almost every town and suburb.

After weeks and weeks of this: one night, my mother snapped, lost it. I was in my room when it happened. My parents were downstairs, in the kitchen, but I heard it.

All of it.

'You are the devil!' my mum screamed. 'You did this!'

'Selina! I'm not the devil! You aren't well, please!'

'You lie! You're the devil! You did this! You did this! Devil! Begone! Begone, Devil! Leave my son and me alone!'

'Selina, please calm down....'

There was a pause.

'Selina...put down the knife.'

Then came a blood churning scream followed by a crash. The crashing and smashing and cries hurt my ears. I hid under my bed.

The screaming and banging climbed the stairs; it passed my room and up into the attic. Then the bang of a slamming door.

I was wailing; tears poured down my face when a voice softly called.

'Buddy? Buddy?'

It was my dad. Somehow he managed to disarm my mum, carried her upstairs then locked her in the attic. We tried to call the police, but they were too busy.

My mum's incoherent screaming kept us and half the neighbourhood awake.

We tried to put her into a mental ward, but they were full.

I cried myself to sleep every night. I missed my mum; I wished everything would go back to normal. I even prayed despite having inherited my father's atheistic ideals. But god never answered me, or he doesn't exist because the stars still moved, unaffected by the chaos they caused.

My dad stopped going to work. We rarely left the house except for food.

We lost television, we lost power, the telephone and last, running water. We lost all communication with the outside world.

We adapted and, for a year, survived. We still fed my mother, who still screamed from the attic. Eventually, the people of our community made a collective; we joined to survive as one. We were at peace, almost happy. We almost forgot the fear.

Then the bomb fell.

We don't know why or how, but it happened in the middle of the day. The mushroom cloud erupted in the north. It was miles away, but it shook my bones so hard that for a week, every movement was agony. It was only by sheer willpower I got through.

My father and many others had travelled north in search of food only a few days before the explosion. They never came back.

With my dad gone, what remained of the community looked after my mum as best we could. But her constant screaming and cursing caused so much strife. I was forced to grow up. When I was fifteen, I had the appearance and demeanour of a thirty-year-old. When my mum died, it was almost a relief; I feel horrible writing that but, it did. Two years of being locked in the attic deteriorated her body as badly as her mind. I hated having to keep her up there, but what else could we do?

Despite our struggle, despite the pain and the hardship, for eighteen years, I carried on. I survived. I even found love. My wife and I had a daughter, and we have another child on the way.

Selina is six now, and today when walking home from gathering water, she asked.

'Dad, why do the stars move?'

I froze and turned to her. Extreme fear erupted through me.

'I don't know,' I stammered. 'But, I know they once didn't.'

She gaped, 'what? Really?'

'Yes, really.'

'Why did they start moving?'

'I don't know,' I said through clenched teeth. 'But maybe one day we'll know.'

She pouted in distinct disappointment.

Then we started on again, and a thought occurred to me. A thought which made me start writing this: What would happen, if generations from now, the stars suddenly stopped?
My short story Of An Asur living in the land of Bretonnia:

[url]http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=35367&p=714658#p714658[/url]
User avatar
Adrassil
Posts: 176
Joined: Fri May 06, 2011 11:34 pm
Location: New Zealand
Contact:

THE YELLOW LEMON TREE

#3 Post by Adrassil »

IMAGINE, A MAN LOST. ALL HE CAN SEE IS A YELLOW LEMON TREE. AND IT ISN'T JUST THE LEMONS THAT ARE YELLOW BUT THE TREE IN ITS ENTIRETY IT BULGES. IT WRITHES LIKE A BLOATED MORASS OF BLOOD AND INTESTINES, FLOWING, ALWAYS FLOWING LIKE SOME SICK PARODY OF A RIVER BUT NEVER IN ANY CONSISTENT DIRECTION, UP, DOWN, AROUND AND AROUND GRAVITY KEEPS THE MAN ON HIS FEET, BUT THE YELLOW LEMON TREES VERY MAKINGS DENY ALL OF REALITY AS EASILY AS A MAN TAKES A BREATH.

THE LOST MAN HAS BEEN LOST, FOR HE HAS NO IDEA HOW LONG, DAYS? WEEKS? MONTHS? MILLENNIA? HE SHRIEKS AT THE YELLOW LEMON TREE, BEGGING TO UNDERSTAND WHERE AND WHAT THIS IS, BUT THE YELLOW LEMON TREE ONLY REPLIES WITH ITS WRITHING BULK. THE MAN WOULD TRY TO TURN AWAY ONLY TO FIND THE YELLOW LEMON TREE IS THERE IN HIS WAY AGAIN.

ONCE EVER SO. OFTEN SPECTRES WOULD WALK BY, MERE AFTER IMAGES IN THE CORNER OF THE LOST MAN'S EYE. SOMETIMES THE SPECTRES ARE A PAIR; SOMETIMES, THEY ARE IN THE DOZENS. THE LIST. MAN WOULD CRY OUT AT THEM, BUT THEY WOULDN'T HEAR HIM ALL THE SPECTRES WOULD TALK ABOUT IS THE BLUE, BLUE SKY. BUT ALL THE LOST MAN CAN SEE IS JUST ANOTHER YELLOW LEMON TREE.

AND THE VOID.
My short story Of An Asur living in the land of Bretonnia:

[url]http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=35367&p=714658#p714658[/url]
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