Prose

Whilst it paineth me greatly to put pen to paper, I feel it my bounden duty to do so, if for no other reason than to serve a clarion call of warning to my brethren, compatriots and fellow worldlings.  Indeed it would be most remiss of me if I were to shirk the clear moral task of informing my cohabitors and orbic kin of the great perille that looms darkly over the innocence of their sleeping lives, dreaming fast, as they do, in the rustic hundreds of the Great Shyre of West Kirnowe.  
  I ask not for your belief, neither your indulgence – I ask only that you weigh my words each by each, and weigh them well – for what I have to relate is a thynge both singular and perplexing;  a thynge meant not for the chubby ears of a succulent and well-tempered Humanity.   
  On the shady and misty evening of January the 11th, 1911, I’d tottered down the ancient and lichenous alley, as of yore, for to buy a flask of butter-milk from the pantiled merchant-house down by the sea-slopping flatfish harbour in that gabled and time-honoured towne of New Lynsmouth, skittering rain spattering my mottled flaxen cloak as the freshe wind stirred the darkened swirling waves of a black and deep-swirling sea-mor. 

 
  Ahh but who are we to choose our fates, upon this blue-green cloudy world, this honeysuckle marbled glistening globe of aery orbs and bronzen gods?  So let lute and lyre sound and winged feet trip light upon this flickering stage; for fast falls the curtain upon our dance…  
 
Having at length traced my twisting way back through the guttural and labyrinthine alley-ways of  the centuried and crumbling sea-port, I stumbled exhausted through the portal of my own humble cotting and swooned upon the Damascus divan. Aslumber I stirred not, yet still I became conscious of being awalk down the dusty roads of summer in a far-famed realm a-foreign.  Forging forth through fields of copper shivering leaves and tremulous buds, the horizon shimmering in nostalgic sepia heat-haze,  I loomed sunwards over dry dusty hills of summer. I 
voyaged undreampt depths of rural idyll and trod the clods of ox-ploughed fields rolling and tumbling to seas dark and twinkling, my shoes mere shillings spilling shear silver trails o’er dewy railroad rails as dark boats sailed.  I lurched, and swaying drifted forth, alive, alose and aloom.  Tracks of trees marked my route scattering forth shoots and ground-swelling roots of flavoured woods.  Cinamon breezes blew, played and fluttered, bringing mutterings from the glittering black seas upon which zephyr played and zographos prayed.  Stretching out my sun-drenched 
hand to grasp the sky in raptured amazing gasp I caught at cotton clouds.  Vapourous shrouds that flittered and skittered through the lightning brittle sky, unraveling into breath.  Such were the chimeras that vaulted like viridian grasshoppers through the rustling corncrakes of my drowzy top as I lay aslumber drifting.  And when I awoke, it was to a knowledge 
of a thing vast, dizzying and beyond.  Again I wandered those time-pocked lanes of that West Country Seaboard towne, dripping with myre, fog and rain – always the spattering shattering rain that swirled in from western deeps.  The rotting dwellings lurched and leaned over lanes greened with mossy stones trod once by bright-buckled shoes.  The black beams of a 
half-timbered heap leaped up out of the gloom – a light glimmered in a room, yellow, sputtering of tallow and crone’s monotonous muttering.  Carriages rattled away down the cobbled distance bearing nobles away as humble fisher-folk hauled half-caulked and archaic barques up slips, keel-alleys and slime-dripping slopes.  At the crazed conjunction of Iron-Foundary Way and Orchard Street lurked the eldritch dwelling on gambreled peaks and misty grey-green bubbled panes of leaded glass.  It was there dwelled the scholar, that paragon of obscure research and terrible forbidden lore who was to cast such a shadow on the towne with the influence that emanated forth from that centuried and worm-ridden house that tottered above the ditch on that terrible corner, deep in the heart of the ancient ghetto that crawled down the hill towards the fell 
and foul taverns of the towne.     And yet, on first espial, the house was not so very terrible to behold.  It’s aspect even held a certain faded majesty, as if  it were dreaming away its latter days, musing upon the bygone eras, the harvests of forgotten golden corn, of many a net-load of silver sparkling pilchards hauled aboard and brought safely back to shore in days gone to yore.  Slumbering and drowzing on its medieval plot, bristling with nettles and weeds, aprey to howling moggies and scuttling 
slitherers, it shivered out many a frosty winter’s day, waiting 
philosophically and most stoically for the kindness of the sun’s rays to give forth the generous splendour of warmth, like an old man seeking to warm his bones before a bright hearth-blaze in a good inn of cheer and humour.  Yes, dear reader, the old house seemed benignant enough to begin, but t’was not to remain so for long.

(To be continued...)

The Journal of Elias Gillpington is published as it is written, in 
chapters, which are to be found in the archives of the collage-journal ‘The Caterpillar’.   Publication started in January 2011 and continues fairly regularly.  Part 2 can be found at:  

http://www.yecaterpillar.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/caterpillar-23-glossolaliafanzine.html