Life in Technicolor - II

Life in Technicolor – Part II

By Brandon Palzkill

Clanging, breaking, clamorous bellowing;

the still night silence is shattered,

ripping a girl from her uncertain dreams.

An all too familiar disturbance

echoes down the shadowy hallway…

he’s come back, again.

Night after night, he returns,

after hiding away in a darkened tavern,

in the raucous companionship

of his buddies, Jack, Jose, and Jim.

Full of wild turkey and fiery blood,

he storms through the front door,

eager to blame someone

for all his failings and shortcomings.

Roaring torrents of shouts

ripple through the shivering walls,

the little girl quakes with fear beneath

their savagery.

She peers intently down the hall;

silhouettes flicker

against the yellow aura

radiating from the kitchen.

They dance the terrorizing tango

of the drunken husband

and the defeated wife,

to a symphony of broken glass

and crashing pans.

Heavy footsteps draw nearer,

compelling the girl to cower

beneath her beaten pillows,

pretending to be invisible.

“Please no, please no,” she prays, horrified,

“not tonight… go away,”

and she buries her face

in her mattress;

if she doesn’t see him, he’s not there.

She waits with eyes clenched tightly shut;

seconds pass… minutes;

the anticipation

brings frantic tears streaming down…

nothing;

the stumbling footsteps have

retreated beyond the darkened veil

and unsteady security is restored.

The little girl closes her eyes

and takes a breath,

her wary ears diligently

listening for his return.

She can’t resume her troubled slumber,

but lies there, waiting…

Life in Technicolor - I

Life in Technicolor – Part I

By Brandon Palzkill

A cold, clinical room sits

at the end of a sterile hallway,

within an unremarkable hospital.

Buzzing fluorescent tubes

cast their soft white glow

over a whirlwind of commotion,

as doctors and nurses work diligently

around a struggling woman;

the center of all attention.

Unimaginable pains rend her;

eyes clamped shut in agony,

she heaves and shrieks to the heavens,

until her blinding torture

reaches its ultimate climax;

a virginal cry splits the air.

The woman finally breathes; rests;

lost in delirious euphoria,

gazing at the miracle before her…

the newborn daughter in her arms.

NaNoWriMo: The End of the Beginning

He stood waited for the moon to hit, until the voice had shaken him from the moon’s sway.

“I’mmmm heeeere, Dusssstinnn…” she moaned.

Dustin had looked down to see curtains hanging on one of the walls; it was the first that he had noticed of them. The silk curtains were worn and frayed, and he could see a fragmented view of someone standing behind them. Caution and eagerness waged a war within his heart as he argued with himself as to whether or not he should be so reckless to go to the figure. A voice in his heart told him that he must, while a voice in his head told him that he would be making a costly mistake. His heart won. He walked over to the curtains and gripped the edges of the curtains with his trembling hands. He ripped them open and stopped the sight that awaited him stopped him in his tracks.

A woman stood over by the balustrade, but she was much more than a woman; a goddess, perhaps. She stood confident and tall as she watched the horizon, and while she had her back to him, Dustin knew that she was surely the sort of beautiful that inspired people to write songs and sonnets. Her shoulder length brown hair swept around in a nonexistent breeze. That airless wind had also tugged at her silver gown, which looked like a thin sheet of fog woven into a fabric form, and seemed to radiate an ethereal aura beneath the moon’s rays. He could have stood there and watched her watching the world, and he would have been nothing less than sublimely happy, yet he needed to talk to her, to know why she called for him.

“I’m here,” he whispered breathlessly.

“I was waiting for you,” she replied.

She started turning her head and Dustin’s ears began to ring. He jammed his eyes shut from the discomfort and clapped his hands over his head.

“Dammit,” he groaned.

Dustin wrenched his eyes open and cast a murderous look at his interfering alarm clock. The voice in his head screamed for retribution at having been denied the victory that it so desperately needed. He chucked a pillow across the room and took out the whole of the table that sat the alarm clock. It was a little bit excessive, but it had the desired effect; glorious silence had once again rung through his bedroom and he drifted off to catch a few last winks before he started the day. His mind ran to the last few moments of the dream and he felt cheated once more.

“Every single time,” he moaned into his pillow.

NaNoWriMo, Episode Six: The Continuation Initiative

“Duuuustiiiiiin…” a ghostly female voice called out in the darkness.

He froze and looked up ahead. Then he looked down the staircase. Finding no one, he looked over the balustrade for a possible hint at the voice’s location.

“Duuuuustiiiiiiin…”

It was definitely coming from up the stairs. It seemed to be drifting in from the topmost door, which already sat ajar, and seemed to be waiting for his arrival. It was such a bad idea; he was sure of it. Even so, the voice called him once more, and his legs knew that she needed to be answered, even if his brain still needed convincing; he continued on up the stairs. Soon, he was running. The voice rang out for a fourth time and it was like a magnet, drawing him closer and closer. He passed several more doors and made countless circles around the staircase, but he kept going until he had finally reached the top.

A shiver of anticipation shook through him, making the hair on his neck stand up and he found himself needing to take a calming breath before he walked through the door. He pushed it completely open with his violently shaking hand and startled by what awaited him. The room appeared to have been the grand sleeping chambers of a castle or a palace. While it might once have been stately and luxuriant, it had become a worn out ruin, decayed and destroyed by the long, steady march of time. The walls were the ceiling was completely gone and the walls had collapsed in several spots. The candle fixtures that clung to what remained of the walls had been eaten and deformed by rust and all the paintings were faded and torn.

There were no candles to light the room, but none were needed. The moon’s blue glow had completely washed over the room and when Dustin really looked to the sky, he received another shock. There was no sky; only the moon, itself. He walked over to where a window would have stood and looked out to find that the moon had gone on as far as the horizon. He might have thought it to be infinite, had he not caught the tiniest sliver of nighttime between the moon and the earth. It was more unsettling to him, by far, than the outer space room had been. With every minute that he kept his eyes fixed on the lunar surface, he had expected it to come crashing down on his head.

NaNoWriMo the Fifth...

This time, he made no disgruntled comments about rude the occupants of that room had been to him, nor did he immediately wander ahead, driven by an unexplainable sense of impending doom. Instead, he continued to lie sprawled out on the steps, staring up at the moon peering through the skylight and wondering if that, too, was about to get sucked through a giant celestial maelstrom of death. After the moon had sat in its place for a sufficient amount of time, he had decided that it was there to stay. He allowed for another minute to properly collect himself and then he soldiered on, in his exploration of the insane building.

He felt like he had been walking up the spiraling staircase for hours, before another door had finally presented itself. Behind it, Dustin could hear growling, followed closely by some sort of groaning. He was certain that it had been some sort of animal and it sounded like it could have been in pain. Two thoughts immediately ran through his head; he could open it and potentially have his face eaten by whatever lurked on the other side, or he could open it up and aid a wounded and suffering creature; the idea of leaving the door closed, however, had not begun to circulate through his mind.

He eased the door open and peeked through. Two towering creatures, covered in shaggy, matted white fur, were in what seemed to be a barn, locked in each other’s vice like grips as they tussled around as though locked in mortal combat. One creature threw the other into a pile of hay and climbed on top of it while the other creature, clearly struggling, clawed at the dominating creature’s back. Dustin knew that they were yetis, though he had no idea why he knew that, but he was amazed by the savagery, with which, these two yetis bit and clawed into each other. As he watched the top yeti flip the bottom yeti over, he knew that the bottom one would surely be the loser in this battle. It was clearly indicative by the pounding that the top yeti was giving to-

“Oh my god!” a horrified Dustin abruptly exclaimed.

The moment that comprehension had dawned on him, he wanted more than anything to be somewhere else. The yetis were both surprised by the sudden outburst and the one on the bottom immediately squirmed onto its knees and tried to hide itself behind the other.

“Don’t come in here, you sick bastard,” the irate male yeti roared.

“Eww! Quit lookin’ at me, you perv!” shrieked the embarrassed female yeti from behind him.

“Oh… wow… I am so… wow… sorry, I mean… wow…” a flustered Dustin sputtered, grasping for the door handle.

As he pulled the door shut, Dustin could have sworn that the male yeti had flashed him a brief grin and had given him a subtle thumbs up. That had been the last straw. It was more than enough to convince him that turning around and going back downstairs was course of action. He had been crazy to think that climbing the stairs was a good idea and he had been downright idiotic to open any of the doors. He shook his head, as though trying to shake the stupid out of it, and started marching back down, though he had only taken three steps when it happened.