A dark, fantastical tale that is intended to unfold a paragraph, or thereabouts, at a time.
16 Feb 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
The Gate of Candles, its bulk and thousand spicules of unquiet wax-fire, beetling grim. A great onyx protrusion overhanging the unfolding settlement. Past the way-markers and shrines, low abodes of polished salt and pepper granite and thick-curtain...
13 Feb 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
Here also are the innumerable roadside shrines erected unto forgotten and well remembered gods alike, of the deep, lower pathways. Their stony conclaves ever thirsty for a little blood, a scantle of meat or brass, or the longing whisper of a passing...
13 Feb 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
Their path blends into another well maintained way set with a pale and silty stone which gleams in the murky under-light. Here abreast the road, distempering plinths and eerie way-markers take shape from out the ragged edge of unending twilight. Of...
11 Feb 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
Umin’s blood churns with the sound of sea-froth in his ears. And from his breast a long familiar heaviness, unhitches and falls away. The Gate of Candles… With ghostly suddenness, his uncanny companion is there, leaning like a half-propped puppet...
10 Feb 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
Elsewhere and otherwhiles... The sulfurousness of innumerable small coal-fires prick at Umin’s nose. And the muted mingle of, as yet, unintelligible speech and reserved bustle rise up to greet the unlikely pair, as they descend the grainy pathway in...
26 Jan 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
When vistas were broad and high, and the city was plumping and youthful. Before much of what he knew sank beneath the mass of its own artifice. Ragged now is this region of reaching teeth, tired and leaning and grey. With an old wistfulness he move...
25 Jan 2021 1 minute read 1 comment Jay Lonnquist
He lingers a little while. Mulling a mingle of uncertainties. A placid shade between the candle-fires of human desire that overrun the hanging tenements at his back, and the moldy gloom that roils darkly ahead. It is lifting now, this gloom. Ther...
24 Jan 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
For a vanishing moment he considers why his disciple asks this uncharacteristic thing, but lets it pass. "Remember, when the blazes begin, the proprietress and her wards are to be protected. They are sacred…". An ampoule of some dark stuff appears in...
22 Jan 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
Shrouded in the moment of blindness that lingers for every living eye in those spaces where rapid progress from out the lantern-fire and into dark, is made. After a while the expected personage appears as a swath of rich-dark silks. Barefoot and asp...
19 Jan 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
He hastens his pace but a little. Passing apprehensive of coal-smouldering desire on the sudden leaping into fire. What it might make of him at a very unfortuitous moment. There on the unmapped borders of the pleasure concourse he slips into stilln...
