Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Unicorn Challenge bloghop.
Hosted by jenne and ceayr, it’s really fun to participate, if you are so inclined.
The only limit? No more than two hundred and fifty words in your story. The genesis of which:
Each station had a display of all remaining stops. Brightly LED-authoritative, and of a certain comfort, in a digital 21st C sort of way, they provided the weary traveler assurance the world was organized in a logical and human-sensible manner. The car moved at a velocity that, due to the quality of the engineering, was not discernible, other than the time spent going through stations. On the cusp of one day and the next, we didn’t bother slowing down. In the time it took to glide from one end of the cylinder of light to the next, the display flickered into: Last Stop Taigh Both Fhleisginn
The darkness that followed was of the deepness that awakens the most atavistic lobe of the brain; which, for all of its primitive reasoning, paved the way to becoming an apex predator. Left with fading light fragments, my mind re-assembled them, an over-tired child sitting in an avalanche of favored toys; light-drew-letters/ letters-formed-words/ words-created-a-world: the briefest of messages flared:
Time is not a River. Time is not a stream. The world has no boundaries. Life is but a dream.
Settling back into the seat, my companion smiled randomly and I began to believe that taking the drug he’d offered was something of a mistake.
He turned, facing me, (and our direction of soundless travel); his lips moved without disturbing the air, yet the message was clear and simple:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
About clarkscottroger
(sitting in the back of the theatre, the woman raises her arms at chin level, palms angled slightly and facing each other. She begins clapping before the house lights come on)
We enjoyed your story.
thanks!
Well, Clark, I’m not sure how you came across Taigh Both Fhleisginn, but it certainly adds a layer to your story, which has a sense of mystery and mysticism appropriate to its setting.
Excellent.
actually the key is in your comment… the reference to mysticism (or Led Zeppelin… which ever you prefer) ;p
Well now, I reckon your MC is on a trip, but not necessarily on a subway!
Beautifully written and expressed, your story invites us to join him on this trip.
And learn…
(But I for one will be avoiding the last stop! I echo C. E.’s question.)
PS: I’d go with the final message, but add in Augustine’s ‘love’.
Great story.
as ceayr just brushed up against, the starting point in general was mysticism. Though not the originator of the expression (at least in the form I used) Aleister Crowley (and his merry band of Thelemacs or whatever the multiple noun is), was the specific jumping off point to the locale/destination in the story
btw very cool riff off the ‘Do what thos shall… with the Augustine reference
If it was a mistake, time will tell. As always, an intriguing story.
the edge of the world is, imo, always closer at hand than we realize
Very deep and strange… more than just a train I’m sure.
yeah, I’m thinking that too
“I began to believe that taking the drug he’d offered was something of a mistake.” Ya think?!
Is the “Time is not a river…” a quote from somewhere?
I’m so intrigued by your story. Unsettled, yes, but also intrigued.
Not certain (the quote) I’d like to think I made it up (but hit it with a rhetoric/stylistic grammar hammer to make it look old and therefore possibly from someone cool in the past)
ya know?
that fricken ‘unsettled feeling’. you know that it (the feeling of the hint of the uncanny) is a part of the world of the Outsider (clark in the parlance of a certain personality theory-that-shall-not-speak-its-name)
We all travel along, comfortable in our ‘assurance the world (is) organized in a logical and human-sensible manner’. But your story subverts that impression/belief with the revelation that ‘the world has no boundaries’ and time itself is an illusion. I’m inclined to agree with that, and I believe your traveller is correct about his error in accepting what his strange travelling companion has offered, and his version of ‘the law’.
I really like this one, Clark.
Thank you Margaret!