(no subject)
I wrote a story instead of studying today! YAAAY! This is dedicated to Benjamin, who gave me a very nice journal to write in.
I hope you all like it!
It was a moonless night. The dark was deep and penetrating and consuming. The icy, raspy wind hissed as it sucked stray cats and rusting, decaying piles of God-knows-whats out of the alleyways into some great mouth. The night was so dense that even the thieves and murderers stayed at home, covers pulled up and clutched about their chins, in fear that something from even darker shadows than they would find them.
Children crawled into their parents' beds, shivering with the relief of finding a haven from the dangers of the night. Parents, waking with their children in their arms, and finding thmselves at the lips of an unquenchable vastness, suddenly wished that they too had parents to climb in with. Old Marty, the town drunk, woke up from where he had passed out, on the curb by O'Shealleh's pub. But he couldn't much tell the difference between the black of this consciousness and the black of dreamless sleep, and, figuring himself still passed out, he shrugged, took another sip of whiskey from the bottle at his elbow, and went back to sleep. Just then, the clock struck twelve, booming sounds resonating in the chests of all the sleeping villagers.
From a crate hidden down a grimy passage between the pub and Molly Adam's boardinghouse, a scritching, scratching noise came. An alleycat meowed indignantly, then haughtily scurried off to find a new place to escape the night. Just then, a grubby little form half-crawled, half-tumbled from the box.
Doopy got to his feet, his knees making creaking, popping noises as he stood. He yawned and stretched his arms above his head before realizing he couldn't see a darned thing. He fished around in his crate, carefully feeling among the wooden spools and dried beans and sweet-stinking apple core from the day before. He found his little stump of a tallow candle and a match among his plethora of treasures.
Striking the match against the nearest brick, he was shocked at how lonely and strong the tiny flame seemed against the backdrop of purest night. Then he lit the candle and, his over-large boots making pattering flaps against the cobbles, trotted down the street and on his way, a bubble of light in a vast sea of darkness.
Soon he was joined by other little forms, darting out of corners and crevices of the town that you and I probably wouldn't even see by daytime. Like little imps, they seemingly darted out of the woodwork, and joined Doopy on his way through town. Some, like him, clutched candles in their little fists. Other, too, came along following those holding lights, too eager to mooch off other's light than to waste a candle stub of thier own.
Sideways Jones winked at Doopy as they went along, holding the six-year-old hand of his charming sister, Number Two. She clutched affectionately at her ragdoll, named not all narcisstically 'Number Three'. Togethe they ran along, the band of boys and girls, some shorter, some taller, and all in varying levels of stink and dirt. They scrambled over Mr. Hoolan's gates, skirted around Widow St. Agne's vegetable garden (they weren't such bad children after all), poked through the boxwood hedges at the edge of town, and crept on tiptoe into the abyss of forest beyond.
Even if they had had no candlelight, they could've trekked this last bit blindly; the brains in their feet knew the way well to the clearing, knowing where each cold-hearted root heaved itself out of the cold, rich earth, where each prickly shrub lurked.
They soon reached the gap in the trees. A very tall figure stood in the middle, holding a candle of his own. He didn't look the least bit surprised to see the crowed of his peers suddenly materialize around him. He knew that they would come. All he needed was one of them to hear that he wanted a meeting, and he could rest assured the all the others would know of it within the hour.
The very tall boy was named Spruce. He was the leader, in a way, of the odd two-score collection of hoodlums, urchins, and general street trash that surrounded him. He would've called them his family, but never having had one, he couldn't really say what that kind of relationship entailed. So he didn't call them anything. They all understood, anyway.
Spruce was one of those ageless creatures that seems caught forever in the blissful spot of time between childhood and maturity; he was blessed with the glee to develop marvelously wicked plans for the children, and even more blessed with the sense not to carry half of them out. And the others worshipped him for it. Although none of them had families, they seemed to place Spruce in a different class. The older children would tell tall tales to the younger ones of Spruce, saying he was never born, but simply popped out of the cobblestones one day, just as bright and spritely as ever to be seen. The younger ones believed it wholeheartedly, and the older ones began to entertain the idea themselves-- not that they'd ever admit it.
Spruce, like many of the children, might've been very good-looking if raised in a proper home. But he was now the rag-taggiest of the rag-tag bunch...
MORE TO COME