So I am writing a book. And it's coming along quite nicely.
It's not necessarily in line with most Surrealist writing in that the language isn't extremely poetic. It's plot is simple: a 16 year-old girl is beckoned into a strange place by a talking dressing-gown. After passing through a doorway in a washing line she finds herself in the Place. My various creations are a naked but genderless 'person' with a rosebush for a head; a living signpost that eats people and his twin brother who is made of flies; a live rocking horse named Penny Cheval; purple smoke; a poet with a corkscrew nose; hallucinogenic lemonade which induces visions of flying ice cubes.
This is the first chapter, called "Dressing-Gown and Washing Line".
All the strange things began one day at the height of summer. The sky was not completely spotless; there was the odd cloud here and there floating on the coolest of breezes. The air was comfortably humid.
On the lawn behind her house Anna was sprawled lazily on the grass in the shade of the oak tree that grew there. The sunlight was dappled in a golden patchwork by the leaves, and its warmth brought a smile to Anna’s face as she listened to a wood pigeon cooing nearby and the drone of bees. “If only this calm would last forever,” she thought. Her parents had gone off to the beach for the day but she had been perfectly happy to stay home. She loved the stillness it gave her.
A lone car rattled by on a nearby road.
The breeze picked up slightly, causing the thistles in the neighbouring field to shake loose their thistledown and send them drifting through the hazy air above Anna’s head, swirling around her. She had abandoned trying to read her book a while ago; now it lay beside her, a daisy chain resting on the cover. She wondered if she was dreaming. She was not.
She sat up suddenly, her attention caught by something she had glimpsed in the field next door. Peering through the large gap in the hedgerow, she was surprised to find it was a tall, red dressing-gown floating through the thistledown and wildflowers. There were no wires that held it up, no body wearing it; it just floated. And it was heading her way.
Unable to decide whether she should be frightened or not, Anna waited until the Dressing-Gown had glided up over the hedge to her. It looked at her then though it had no eyes, and she could even hear it breathing though it had no mouth or windpipe.
“Follow me, please,” the Dressing-Gown said politely.
“Why should I?” Anna asked.
“Because you should, that’s why.”
“Where should I follow you to?”
“Elsewhere.”
“What do you mean, ‘elsewhere’?”
“Elsewhere, of course!” the Gown cried. “Not here but somewhere else.”
And then the Dressing-Gown turned and was floating off again, a trail of butterflies in its wake. Intrigued, Anna followed. The Dressing-Gown led her to the washing line. On that particular day Anna’s mother had hung up all the thick, white bed sheets and pillowcases; they billowed gracefully in the breeze. The Dressing-Gown muttered something and the wind suddenly opened up a doorway within the midst of the sheets themselves. It passed then through the door in the washing line, and when Anna followed she found herself in a long corridor whose walls and floor and ceiling were made of white bed sheets. The Gown was already far off in the distance so Anna set off straight away.
In the corridor she seemed unable to run at normal speed; sometimes everything moved at a snail pace; other times she ran like a cheetah. Once or twice she even felt that she was running backwards or upside-down. After a while she felt sure she had been turned inside-out, and looking behind her she saw the corridor was distorted as if viewed in a fun house mirror. In fact it was a fun house mirror, an enormous one that was following her down the corridor; she saw her blurred self within it. “If that mirror goes any faster I’ll be crushed!” she thought. She glided faster down the corridor of billowing linen.
Up ahead the Dressing-Gown beckoned her further with its sleeve, crying: “You’re losing the way! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
Then the linen corridor slowly fell apart around Anna, the bed sheets falling down into crumpled piles. And the Dressing-Gown was gone.I'm actually really nervous about what people would think of it when I've finished it. I would post the second chapter but I'd take up too much room and I wouldn't want to spoil it all. I'm illustrating this story as well, with collage. Feedback! Feedback! I'll understand if you don't think that highly of it.
AND THE BUTTERFLIES BEGAN TO SING.......
by Twisted-Mirror » Tue Aug 04, 2009 7:28 pm 
