Chapter 2 - Eli Elison's Tales of Talerin

Chapter 2 

Eli Elison’s Tales of Talerin

 

 

H

ere I am, at the top of my game, and Daniel sloping down to give speed to his dungeon desires. I have the orb. I’m feeling empowered and have got a leg up on the competition. None today can boast of having what I got. None today, even Daniel the reigning leader, has such big energies moving through him.

I carry the orb with me; it doesn’t leave my side. And because of that special command I have over it, I feel a quick burst of pride in all my dealings.

“Hello, Mom,” I may say. But she doesn’t know of the orb, nor that I have it; and such a grandiose secret truly gives one the edge toward a more positive outlook. Sand rubs my side; yet it worries me not, for I know that I am much more than rubbing sand. I’m above the glib recital of “I shot you”, as Daniel would want to say. “I won.” So he’d go. And to that--“Ha!” I would just brush it off. You may have won, yes, but I’ve got a mystery in my hands that pales your classless struggles, my friend.

I’ve gotten free from Daniel for the time being. I could lock myself in either of two bathrooms, or the guest bedroom, and spend the time to learn more about the orb’s secrets. Out of range I’d be, from him, or anyone who would happen upon me in too crude a manner.

As it is, however, I’m headed upstairs to put a message in with my father. Up the stairs, I’m in the hallway.

Down the hallway, I’m at the door.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Yeah,” comes the starving voice inside.

“It’s me, Dad. Can I come in?”

I get no answer, but seconds later the impressive figure of my father pulls a hand back with a doorknob in it, opening to the world this burnt-out hall of dreams. Here I am at his dusky crematorium, where all thoughts go to be exhausted and die.

His special interest for months on end has been with the ongoing series The Tales of Talerin, which gets publication every week in the Sunday edition of the Blue Haven Breeze. I don’t care for it much myself; but you’ll never find a more ardent reader than in one Daniel Smelding. The kid is in constants cahoots with the series. You hear a snippet in the air, and he near s***s himself from some impulsive need to spew everything he knows about it. I sit back at these times and wait as wave after wave passes over me.

We differ from each other, from father to son. I don’t know where he got his gigantism. I’m tall. He’s sending birds away from the gusts he blows in walking, from the chesty charisma he exudes in talking. He thrusts his height up even higher owing to a rampant mushroom afro which, meticulously, he stirs to life every waking morning. I do say “waking”, as sometimes it’s debatable whether a day out of bed or sweet dreams within is the better option for him. The choice today has been with the former. Lucky for us.

He bends his eyes out of the darkness, his square-rimmed glasses caked with moisture. A single desk lamp is all that illuminates this sleepy bender in which he is constantly befuddled.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Son. Do I take it from that towel in your hand and accumulation of sand on your ankles that you’ve been to the beach? What were the weather conditions, and was there anything notable said? I’m all ears!”

“The sky swam with watery light.”

“Yes.”

“The waves fell to snappy reminiscences.”

“Yes!”

“Daniel said he regrets not chasing a love affair with Cindy Smithers, and found it promising that their last names began so much alike. I said she smelled like pickles. He had no counter.”

“A sound report. Come in!” He corrals me in by the shoulder, and takes me into a blustering long speech. My thoughts turn as I poke around the room, taking quaint notice of all the old writing equipment.

“Well, Gabe, we both knew this day would come. The fruit of creativity has been dropped in my lap, and now it’s gone. We’re coming up on tale fifty. The tension runs over.”

“What’re you trying to say, Dad?” I look over his typewriter: empty. It shows dust where his resting palms prints haven’t dabbed it off. At least wipe your machine off, I think.

This is the final stop among his methods. On this behemoth frozen machine he finalizes his written material to send to the newspaper. I had always wondered why he did so; I mean, taking the extra step. Then one day I saw what came out of his furious hand. The scrawl was something hardly recognizable as writing. Some deep encoded message surely lay beneath the incredible tablature. 

“What I’m saying is, this could be the end of the Talerin series.”

I turn with a gasp. He’s satisfied to see me disconcerted.

“Yep. Take it in. Isn’t it devastating to your very beliefs? Haven’t we thought, you and I, this zany adventure would never end? But think back. When was there ever a storyteller with endless capacity for story-telling? Not I, said the fly. I know, when I touch my quill--”

Here I have to stop. He said quill, and he meant that word to describe a quill. Original psychology flows through this man’s veins. What wasn’t there originally, but is the product of mere innovation, he discredits as being straight off unworthy of posterity. He dips his quill in ink, fastens it to the stiff parchment (I don’t know where he gets it), and comes out with such lurid fancies of the mind I can’t seem to buck it. A unique gift he has for telling fiction in superb hyper-realism. The man should have a desk next to the divine creator.

The rest of what he said I lost. I already have enough to go by. I insert a droll comment which I think fits the bill.

“I hate to see you go. And you know Daniel’s gonna die. Maybe you could publish them in a suite…an independent volume.”

“No, they’ve served their purpose. We had a good haul--I believe a readership of nine hundred and twenty, to be exact.”

“You don’t have any ideas for this next issue?

“I told you”--shaking his head--“I’m a blank, factory’s closed. At this rate, there’ll be no fifty. I’ll have to end it ingloriously at tale forty-nine.”

“Stomps at Sunset. A good one.”

“Yeah, but no finale. Something’s gotta be done which will send the series off with a bang. I want to see wings of rapture choking up every throat as they try not to look ahead. I’ve thought of adding a little incendiary smoker device that fizzles out just as they cut to the last word--inserted in each newspaper. They’d be left paralyzed from there on to their deathbeds by a tidal wave of joy and tingling emotion. If several suicide cases aren’t reported by the end of the next week, I’ll enact my own sensational farewell off the high pier of this bright blue city.”

All this roily speech only to elicit a soft assurance from me.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

He slumps in dejection, falling off-center with a huge lunge from his torso. I catch him, and he’s pleased to feel my partnership in his trying time of need.

By the way…

“Mom wants help with dinner,” I say, and the offbeat words shake him to strength. The old girl he married is waiting for him downstairs. He’d forgotten this other side of life, where actual human beings must save away for rainy days and cook meals and pay their bills. This alternate reality gives him freedom from the captive place where he is in his tale.

“All right… I guess I can leave my work behind for a while. Do you know what we’re having?”

“I don’t know…meat. She said you’re the man for the job!”--slapping his back.

“Let’s fire up the grill!”

My father bumps the doorframe on his way out, and spirals against the hallway wall, getting back his feet. I hear a pounding down the stairwell, and wonder that he must’ve thought of himself for the tale Stomps at Sunset, about a rouge giant eating up the local livestock to feed his supper. But this is unfair to call out the one giant, as I think all giants have a predisposition for roguishness.

He’s gone, and I’m left alone in his dream theater. The place has a certain charm to it. All pieces are still. There’s craftsmanship in the placement of the desk before the window, an ethereal quality in the daylight drying up thinly to night.

I investigate the blank page upon which a full heated struggle has been waged but to no avail. The quill isn’t obligated by any ink upon its tip. Once that move is made, whoever did it had best have something to write, or else where’s the ink to go? It can’t be restocked.

I don’t think.

Four people make up a busy household. My parents are two, and Daniel and myself the last. We may count the dog, as well, who gravitates toward the house but may not leave the backyard. Poor animal wretch. Flea bag outsider. I wonder why the dog species is continually made to look so mean, I say uncouth. Who knows what a dog does when not supervised. Maybe it’s all a ploy to gain our easy sympathy. Why, perhaps on a shady afternoon, they’re quite a hip crowd to watch, taking tea in our lawn chairs and reciting poetry to straying beatnik cats and squirrels on fences.

A peculiar thought, but something to look into…

We are each segmented, we five in total, in what personally is assigned to us. My parents are downstairs laboring away to make dinner. Daniel is possibly far along on his salty quest for superiority. I picture him drawing up full-scale maps and placing red X’s over wide-ranging parabolic curves--perfecting a corrosive battle plan. What will I have to face when I descend to that computer lair? Only he knows. I ought to think up some defense before I get down there.

A soundless beckon rings in my ears. I’m intrigued to go sit at my father’s desk while he’s away, not to mess anything up. In admiration I sit myself down, in humility I take marvel at his crafted workspace. As he’s done so many times before, so do I now follow the custom of preparing for a long sit. What goes through his head? Is there a thought process? Maybe, maybe not. Irregardless, there’s a routine, which must be done in strict order. So light and trivial, yet every time the same.

Here I am, acting as him. Let’s try on his shoes.

I arrange the paper in front of me. But first--I’m slipping already--I must fix the lighting. Two inches over, the shade a little down, and my lamp is fitted proportionally to my surroundings. It’s night now, irrevocably. A localized yellow light invests my workspace.

My spirit is in it. I get it.

I clear the sides of clutter, reset my page, and now the austere selection of my writing implement. But first, the ink jar! Unscrew the cap; find a place for the cap. Now for the quill. I go to pick it up, and notice…an inscription on the side.

What has gone before shall pass again

I read it out loud.

An incensed delirium shakes me. A racing tremor sweeps my hand to the empty sheet. The quill makes contact--

I write.