Cyclones twisted like yarn, strung over the faded horizon with a handful of frayed pathways and drawn out roads which cross and tangle without noticing each other.

Four wheels arranged in a flat square, a bicycle mirrored upside-down above, drive a fifth wheel that circles them in a great hoop. It whistles and chirrups as it is pedalled through the wastes, a whirligig on its side like a cyclops’ coin, wandering the dry regions. Socotra trees spread bristling parasols, and a camera jams on a lantern when the animals step from the wallpaper, and begin the hunt in the upstairs parlour.

With a trumpet throat the mammal sirens for those on the roads to make way for the wandering train, veiled and shadowed in bristling dust and fractal spires.

2023/01/20 #DailyWrittenOOM

Instead of a moderately spacious building, as it appears on the outside, the door opens on a small antechamber of grey stonework. Across from the glossy glass outer door is a square arch, scored with possibly symbolic markings, which are so old one can no longer tell if they were put there originally or were the work of vandals.

On the walls on each side is a bracket holding an anciently burnt out torch. A smoke-stained painting is hung on each bracket, not by a cord, but by smashing the bracket through the painting where would be the nose of the portraited gentleman.

Beyond the arch inwards a narrow stone stairway screws sharply out of sight and downwards, into a prickling mass of suspiciously mobile and turbid shadow.

The light from outside the building does not make it many inches in from the outer threshold, before it dies and turns grey as the stone it falls on.

2023/01/19 #DailyWrittenOOM

This is a place in the world called “Tomebook”.

//patrick-lauser.itch.io/tomebook