(This is just what i have written so far) !PART OF SEBASTIAN WALLOWAY!

A Chapter by Brianna

In front of me shadows snaked over the grimy cobblestone streets. I peered around the old, rusty dumpster, hoping not to scrape myself on the lunk of metal and get chipped paint embedded in my skin. Above and a little to the front of me, torchlight flooded the alley and flames flickered and danced. Faintly, I heard the soft clickety-clack of hooves trotting down the road. The moonlight streamed, flowed, and hummed like the most fluid of rivers; all liquid silver and deadly, for when the moon came, night fell, and the boogies arose. Crouched behind the flaking dumpster, my mind swirled to those stories of terror and fright; those of Cooger and Dark and Hyde and all other twisted creatures that thrive in the night. Formed by the wild depths of my imagination and all the world’s trickeries, monsters came up and out, from tree and cobblestone, to iron hinge and tin can. Soon, that horse’s trot became the sharp bangs of gunshot. The breeze that blew by was no longer whistling, it was shrieking. I swore the world grew up all the devil’s creatures in that moment, but more likely it was me. Mind and madness come hand in hand, and the world is the perfect stage. “All the world’s a stage”, as William Shakespeare put it. The world: a stage for liberty, greed, madness, and beauty, all put into one giant air pocket in one giant universe. At times, per say, it seems the world was doomed to madness. There are so many people out roaming the streets with imagination running wild in that big ol’ brain o’ ours. My mind tripped, whirled, back and forth, til’ my mind was just a jumbled up heap of nonsense. Monsters. Psh. Nonsense. Briefly, I stole a glance around the dumpster. Nothing. Absolutely normal. Trees not quite ready for winter, winter not quite ready for trees, and yet the world seemed fine. The creaking door hinge to the pub was lightly swinging in the breeze not too far off, and the faint tick of horse hooves was back. I urged myself up and onto my feet ready to head back into town. Leading the homeless life isn’t the greatest. Always accused of going mad, being mad I am. Sometimes, I do wonder myself if there is more truth to that statement than I would like to consider. My name is Sebastian Walloway, and I am crazy. And around here, crazy means trouble.

Walking down the eerie street, the cobblestones threatened to move out from under me, to let the slime, grime, and wet filth lap at my shoes and tickle my ankles. I gazed forward, letting my eyes drift over house and tree, to finally rest upon the great expanse of sky. Twinkling like lanterns and sparkling like the finest gems, the stars speckled the sky like a light dusting of snow after Halloween. They were here one minute and gone the next. Proof that the stars are living, thriving balls of fury, rage, and hunger. Burning and eating, eating and burning, they live on. Not quite beneficial to us, but comforting still. As I gaze up at the stars, I think how they live, eating, devouring space. Alone, yet not alone. For someone is always watching them, observing them, wondering how they came into existence as well as the rest of us I suppose. The mystery of life is all around us. We are a part of it, here but not quite sure how. The light the stars give off make up for all the eating and devouring, burning and destroying. Now, the light given by the stars, prove a gift to me, one I am very grateful for. Because without the stars, the world would be a very dark, cold place. Only God knows how it would be different. The light, faint and silvery, guides me down the road. I never know where I’m going, only where I’ve been. One could follow my path if they followed the shadows. I keep to them, staying out of the towns-folks way. When a man is a madman, it proves to be safer, therefore, I made rule number one: stick to the shadows and do not draw attention. With the help of this rule, I remain invisible to the world that cannot handle me. The swirling, twirling thoughts of my brain go off in tangents that no other man seems to understand. Not knowing can be worse than the ugly truth to them, so they deny me, damn me, mark a big red X on my mind, body, and soul. So I follow. I follow the twisted masses of black fog, misty-eyed from precipitation, snaking my way along the road. Always in perfect sync with the dark of the world. Never stepping in the light, only stepping upon darkness upon darkness, and no matter how hard the light may try to touch me, I jump, skip, and scramble away to avoid it. For when the light touches me, or I touch it, I am no longer hidden within my shadowy bubble, where life is blurred and tainted. When the light touches me, I am unveiled, displayed, and vulnerable to the atrocities of this world, and to the harsh words of a mindless soul. Stepping forward, I hear a squeal, and see a flash of mouse disturbed by me, the fleeting of a few stray birds disturbed by the mouse, and the scuttle of a beetle disturbed by the birds. Intense, a few shivers run down my spine and level me unsettled. Disturbed myself, I walk on until I reach the pub, where voices leaked from and moonshine reeked from. The pub’s exterior was made of stained wood, all jagged and rough. Plenty o’ splinters to be got from the swinging door and window pane. Staring at the sign that read: “GREYMAN’S HEAP, THE ONLY PLACE WHERE A MAN CAN SPEND ALL HIS DAY, GROW HIS BEARD GREY, AND PASS OUT ON HAY!” I thought then glanced through the window pane and saw men and women emitting brown fog and belching leftovers. They chittered and chattered about the latest rumor and waved and wafted their hands through the smokey air in hand gestures. Swiveling my head back to the sign, I saw it swinging in the breeze and swaying to the beat of the world. Drifting on the voices of trees and the banter of ‘coons, it twisted and doubled and folded in on itself. Averting my sight-hungry gaze from the spot I stole another glance at the folk within the GREYMAN’S HEAP.

I continue on until the cobblestones turn into dust path and town turns into wood. Walking along, I spot a fox hound, then a wolf. I keep pace with them, and they pad along next to me. Then, I realize, they seem to be watching me, following me, or me watching and following them. Both the fox hounds, wolves, and I all bound together. Silently, it seems we formed a relationship. When I step, they step, and when they inhale, I inhale. Softly, slowly, we exhale together, and I continue my march. A parade made of a single man. A fox hound. And a wolf.

There was a woman. I thought that maybe I could talk to her, there was something about her. She would probably take one glance at my gray-withered face, leathery skin, and sunken in chest and up and walk away without a second thought. You see, age is a kind of, sort of, funny thing. Either you are young or old. But you can either be young in the eyes and old in the flesh, or old in the eyes and young in the flesh. The eyes tell a lot of a person, their depth, their greed, their desires, and their sorrows. Sometimes eyes had a mind of their own, deceiving you and showing what must never be shown by you or seen by others. Being a madman, maybe sometimes my eyes show a sane person underneath, or maybe to those who think I’m sane witness a flickering image of my insanity. Nowadays, people can’t handle that. They can only handle fact, and when there is opposition to that fact they override it and make it fact. Then it’s all over and you are said madman or said sane man. But hidden deep within her eyes, I saw a clear, faltering image. Her eyes were the bottomless depths of the ocean, and under that were the shelves she built to hide what lie within her. For a brief moment, I saw past the vast ocean, through the shelves of rock, to the burning core within her. I saw the live, twisting, turning, swirling magma of her soul. It burned so bright; I figured any man could see. Mesmerized, I was. Until a short second later, she was shut off again. All cold, depths of ocean, and shelves made of red diamond. The hardest stuff in the universe and impossible to see through. By her steely gaze, I could tell that glimpse of her that I witnessed was nothing but a mistake. She turned her gaze from me for a brief moment, and then returned it. She said to me, “Nothing. Don’t Stare. You saw nothing.” The next instant she was gone, swallowed whole by a sea of people. I stood there, briefly wondering where all of the people came from so suddenly. Within those few impossible seconds, I believe that, maybe, a madman wasn’t so mad after all. For who could, truly, resist the beauty of a princess and deny her of your full attention. There was one thing for certain. No, make that two, or three. One, the princess knew more than she was letting on, two, she did funny things to a madman, and three, there was no way I was sharing our secret moment with anyone. It would be dangerous, dangerous like the life of pi and those paintings by Dali. A tiger eats gun eats man or a man eats gun eats tiger, either way, it’s a rough world out there, and sometimes, it just sucks.

As I continue on, I ponder the reasons for the woman’s words. I wonder what, exactly, her words meant and what it was that she was so desperately attempting to void from existence. I thought to myself that her words were fairly odd, even though I did catch a glimpse of something there. It couldn’t have been something that my mind just conjured up. Nope. Not at all. Not a chance. Well, I guess I couldn’t say that I’m 100% positive, only due to my “insanity”. I attempt to put a halt to my thoughts, not particularly all of my thoughts, but just the ones centered on the woman. Because any time that any man spends pondering a woman’s actions or words can be dangerous. As these thoughts may lead to other dangerous thoughts until all your mind can focus on is some lace and panties. Not that I would particularly know about how those things work, sex, I mean. Due to being a madman, it’s kind of unknown territory; A place to never wander because if sane man found out about certain “happenings”, I would surely be hunted. And not the friendly kind of hunt with pitchforks and torches. Daily, the men scour the area for scum like me with less than a reason to kill. More commonly do they hunt for people like me, than do they gallivant around with women whom they should not.

After getting some rest behind Ol’Rusty, a dumpster behind which I frequently spend my nights, I headed to the GREYMAN’S HEAP. Once the old, rickety sign was in view, I started to head past it to rest under the old, vintage-looking window pane. Usually I could catch a few stray sentences of gossip which seemed to have defied their owner’s orders to keep it on the down-low. But today, the gossip wasn’t just a few stray strands that got whisked away by the wind and it wasn’t due to a few of the merchant’s failed attempts at speaking quietly. The gossip was booming. Here and there, I heard voices. I could barely keep all of them separated in my mind, let alone separate them; the external voices, from my own internal ones. The first few words I caught were “Madam Merriewhether”, “convicted”, and “shame”. At this point, I couldn’t help but let my thoughts travel back to the gorgeous, mysterious woman I had seen. Out of curiosity, I secretly nudged myself closer and closer to the door throughout the day in an attempt to gain more knowledge on this woman, so-called “Madam Merriewhether”. As I had predicted, due to the increased levels of gossip, it never seized once throughout the day. Not all of the gossip was about the Madam, though most of it was. Some people only talked briefly about it, while others spoke of it often. It seemed to me, that all of this fuss over a single woman was insane, but I was sure if I asked someone to agree with me, they would say that I was the only thing insane here.

As I continued to think and fret about the mysterious woman, the GREYMAN’S HEAP closed. Time seemed to pass all too quickly for my corrupted and unhinged mind. Her words: “Nothing, you saw nothing” never seized to flit and flurry about; her words twisted and tumbled and mingled with my other stray thoughts like cat and dog and mouse. I wondered if her words were about me seeing through her or simply seeing her. Sometimes, I think deep so I see deep, whereas others do not.

I found out a few weeks later that Madam Merriewhether is a wanted woman.

© 2014 Brianna

Author's Note

Please do not worry or fret over grammatical problems. I have not edited this and am just looking for some opinions. I write in a strange style... but I hope you enjoy!