Friday, March 05, 2010

The House of Gate-crashed Dreams


Patience awoke every morning to the warmth of a clean day; a day to be climbed the better to view.

Were it not for the ghosts Patience would have left the house to its very slow decay.
As it stood she felt compelled to attempt those repairs that she felt she might most be able to secure.

With inept hammer and recycled nails she battled the porch roof, winter wind and gap-tooth lifted; where the ghosts of the night sky glimmered, unmarred by light, lamenting their loss to progress. The tiles themselves were troublesome and uncooperative; the ghosts of a baby’s cries in the night.

With bent screwdriver and rough-hewn wedges Patience re-hung the hanging door, thereby restoring some privacy to both the empty hall, whose silence was often marred by the battles between the ghosts of sword hands severed and the spectres threadbare sun umbrellas, and the moody sitting room whose tattered and under-stuffed armchair was occupied by the ghost of a father’s laugh, echoing in the afternoon.

The treacherous staircase was decayed by the spirit of an arrow that had found no heart and nightly ascended by the ghost of a life impaled by love. Here Patience hammered planks recycled from the nearby sawmill, (itself haunted by the ghost of a night spent in enforced and heart-broke solitude).

By candlelight gleaned from the ghosts of warmer days, Patience darned and mended bedclothes and blankets to warm the dreams of lovers lost in time; the rooms haunted yet by the ever-fainter composite odour of their life together

And while Patience slept on a bed of lost dreams, house watched hushed as the ghost of unfulfilled romance planted a tender kiss on her lips when only a cheek had been offered.

Inspired by Alan Moore's portrayal of the Sarah Winchester story in Swamp Thing No.45


Tales for the attention deficit reader

8 comments:

the walking man said...

The older the home the more the ghosts living within it.

Yodood said...

While fishing for its tell-tale tail the dream fell in and got wet.

Tom said...

which comes first, the picture or the tale? just wonderin'

Garth said...

Walking Man: The older the ghosts, the less house to live in ;]

Yodood: piscean :)

Tom: Usually: tale first then go searching for picture that fits.

Yodood said...

It's Piscean to have wet dreams?

as e. e. cummings wrote of his goldfish,
"oh
wet
pet"

Harlequin said...

the image and the tale are well matched, Patience being the necessary ingredient for performances of many kinds

I like how you have also matched the lumber, hammer and nails tasks with other tasks of equal vigor

nicely done

JeffScape said...

House of dreams? Or a dreaming house?

This is a beautiful piece.

Garth said...

Yodood: It's human :]

Harlequin: It's taken me years to remember to concentrate on the job at hand rather than the completed work.

JeffScape: Perhaps this was seeded from Siouxie's Kiss in a Dreamhouse, perhaps.

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