01. Writer
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Sam Moore
02. Theme
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Flow
03. MUSIC INSPIRATION
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Marcus D:
Times Past
04. WRITING
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I still don’t know how it got there. It just appeared that night out of thin air, planting itself against the wall. Tall, dark brown, old. Ticking back and forth. Left, right, left right. Perfect symmetry, counting out loud amidst the otherwise silent room.
I had woken up in the middle of the night from a heavy, dreamless sleep. I wasn’t anxious, or restless, so I’m not sure what it was that stirred me from such a deep slumber. Nonetheless, I was up, and going back to sleep didn’t seem probable. Perhaps diving into a book would lull me back to the dreamworld, I thought. If I’m awake, I might as well spend this extra time wisely.
My paperback was laying face down on the kitchen table, right on the page I’d left it earlier. Some old mystery novel I found used for cheap, all worn out and falling apart like the slightest touch might cause it to crumble. It sat next to a cold, half empty cup of coffee. Maybe something to drink would help wash away the middle-of-the-night grogginess that clung to me. I rinsed out the cup, grabbed a teabag, punched some buttons on the microwave, and waited. Outside the city was asleep. Silent and still, as if the flow of time had abruptly stopped dead in its tracks. The lights were a frozen glow, unmoving and unblinking. No leaves scuttled by in the wind, no stop lights bobbing up and down. For a second I wondered if time was stuck--
--and then the microwave beeped.
I grabbed my cup and my book and walked into the living room. This was when I noticed it--how had I not seen it before when I walked past? A looming grandfather clock, up against the wall, its metal pendulum swinging back and forth behind a case of glass. It was dark brown wood, very nearly black. The clock itself rested on top, above the pendulum in the glass case. It swung back and forth against a velvety black emptiness behind it. Spindles and spires sprouted from the head, like the tops of old castles and towers.
I didn’t own such a clock. I’ve never even seen one like this before in person. Up close, it looked almost fantastical, like it had been plucked from the past and dropped in the present. Why was it here? Certainly someone wouldn’t have broken in and done the opposite of stealing. What other explanations did that leave, then? I had no working theories, nothing that stood up to the laws of logic. All I knew was that it had appeared for one reason or another, and planted itself in my room. In fact, in the dead of night while everything was silent and still, it looked as if it had always been there. Perfectly in place. Like it was exactly where it was supposed to be.
The tchok of the pendulum was almost hypnotizing. Maybe this is what woke me, I thought. This metronomic ticking must have stirred my subconscious, and I only now realized it. I set down my book and tea to take a closer look. Behind the glass was a deep, deep blackness. A thick wall of shadow. But behind that wall was something else. Something in the very, very back...a tiny, glowing speck, like the last ember in a dying fire--a light at the end of a tunnel? This isn’t just a clock, I realized. It’s the entrance into something else. For reasons I once again can’t quite explain, I needed to venture in and see what laid at the end.
I slid open the glass. It opened effortlessly as if it were inviting me in, and I stepped inside, ducking around the swinging pendulum.
I was now standing in what appeared to be a long hallway. A liquid black tunnel leading me...somewhere. It was too dark to tell how wide it was. I reached out, touched walls I couldn’t see with my own invisible hands. Just wide enough on both sides to get through comfortably. I reached up but couldn’t feel a ceiling. My room was still visible behind me, now on the other side of the looking glass, appearing in pieces behind the undulating pendulum. The tchok of its swing was clearer here, like pure splashes on a silent pond. No going back now that I’m inside, I thought. I journeyed forward, and realized my footsteps made no noise as I walked.
Never once did I feel out of place as I walked down this dark hallway, like it was a bad idea or that I should turn around. There was a magnetic pulse to it, pulling me in, deeper and deeper into whatever it held at its core. The appearance of the clock was strange, but inviting all the same. When strangeness seeps through one world and into your own, all you can do is accept its presence and follow its current like a flowing river. In this case I had to obey its own rules and logic, which meant stepping in and accepting the invitation. How could I ignore it? As I traversed further in, the emptiness emptied even further, like I was losing myself, losing my form, melding into its liquid darkness, dissipating into an incorporeal entity hazily floating away…
Lost in thought, I hadn’t even realized I reached the end. I looked back--now, the pendulum and my room were the tiny speck at the other end of that long hallway. The pendulum was now just a distant, barely audible ticking. I had arrived.
I was in a large, rectangular room. White walls, shiny wooden floor. Pristine. Paintings hung up everywhere, blotting out most of the walls.
A gallery? This is what the clock had wanted to show me?
Dead quiet. The pendulum was no more audible here than my own heartbeat. Not a speck of dust in sight. Dim lights hung overhead, not off but not completely on either, the in-between level of brightness when a place is closed but leaves a couple on anyway for whatever reason. No blotches, smears, nothing, which meant it had obviously been kept up. How strange! And what are these paintings of…?
I decided to look through them clockwise, starting on my left. First, an infant. Wrapped up in a cradle, sleeping soundly. The first batch of paintings were all similar, all featuring this same child. Next, an adolescent. Standing outside a school, entering a favorite cafe, bundled up and waiting for the train to arrive at the station, working their first job. All places I’d been. Could it be? Then--adulthood, arriving home late, pouring over emails, love, loss, falling apart, starting fresh--
“You see now, don’t you?”
The voice cut through my focus. I spun around, and saw a man standing before me.
“Surely you’ve figured it out,” he continued in a rough, weathered voice. He was a short, older man, dressed in a security uniform. More eyebrows than eyes, more mustache than mouth, both the color of dirty snow. A cap matching his uniform rested on his head, and a ring of keys hung at his side. He stood straight with perfect posture, his hands folded behind his back.
“These are photos of me,” I answered.
“Got it in one,” the man said. “Perhaps you’re not as dull as you look!” He coughed up a raspy laugh, equal parts painful and joyful. Where had this man come from? He seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
“What is this place?” I asked.
The man bounced up one time on the heels of his foot and let out a deep breath. “Well, it’s yours, is what it is. That much is obvious now, isn’t it? Look around. Take your time.”
I continued my way around the room clockwise, looking at paintings of different moments of my life. Different chapters. The pendulum ticked away quietly, far away.
“How strange, the flow of time. Like a pulsing river. Some of those moments feel right there, don’t they? But it never stops, does it?”
“I suppose not,” I said.
“And the flow--it only gets stronger and stronger.”
“It certainly feels that way.” I continued making my way around, looking back on moments and memories. The man was not wrong--they felt as chronologically close to me as ever, like I could reach inside and pull them out and relive them all over again. What I wouldn’t give to relive the bright parts, or to undo the dark ones, I thought.
“Seeing all these moments laid out together, it’s...odd.”
“Lotta feelings welling up inside you now, aren’t there? Can’t exactly be helped.”
“No, I guess not. It’s a lot to take in. But you didn’t quite answer my question. Where am I, really?”
The man huffed. His mustache flickered back and forth. “It’s exactly as it seems. A chapter gallery. These are chapters of your life that have come and gone, swept up by the flow. Those chapters were carried off and washed up here. You’re standing right outside the flow.”
“So right now, here, I can’t get swept up in the flow.”
“Got it in one.”
“And you?”
“I’m just the humble caretaker, nothing more. Someone has to watch over this place, right?” He jangled the ring of keys at his side. “Every chapter gallery needs someone to keep it nice and neat. I think I’ve done a fine job, if I do say so myself. Say, you alright there?”
The paintings had stopped, leaving an empty wall. The last frame before the paintings stopped was also blank. Something was stirring inside me, a strange swelling of dread, a rushing wave threatening to inundate me and pull me in.
“All those chapters,” I murmured. “They really don’t seem so long ago. And now they’re gone. And there’s so many of them. So many swept away by the flow.”
The man pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, let out a grainy mmhmm between the cigarette in his lips to acknowledge he was listening while he fumbled for his lighter. “Don’t mind, do ya?” he asked as he lit. I continued staring into that blank frame, wondering what would go in it. He shrugged and blew out a cloud of dirty smoke.
“Yeah, they’re gone, those chapters,” he said. “But not really. They’re still here, aren’t they? They still happened. Swept away, but washed up here. The good, the bad, and, outnumbering them both, the somewhere-in-between. Nobody can take those away from you.”
“Still. It seems...sad, somehow.”
“Can’t think of it like that,” he said as he pocketed his pack. “Not sad, just is. The flow is wholly indifferent towards everything it touches. Besides, still a lot of blank space on that wall isn’t there?”
“And what’s this? This blank frame here, where the chapters end?”
The man exhaled, long, as if he had been holding his breath. “Ah, that. Well, that’s now.”
“Now?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Gotta explain everything, don’t I? Well, why do you think you’re here? The next frame needs a chapter. That’s you. This you. Swept away by the flow, you washed up here. You were drawn in, weren’t you? Like it was pulling you in? You’re the next chapter. The flow continues, and a new chapter will start. Those are the dots, all nice and connected for you in plain view.”
I reached up towards the blank frame, wondering if it would feel real if I touched it, then pictured my fingers melding into the canvas, unable to pull them out, as it absorbed me bit by bit. I recoiled at the thought. “You’re telling me--this me--is going in that blank frame?”
The man must have picked up on the worry in my voice. His brow furrowed like descending storm clouds. “Well, don’t sound so worked up about it! It’s the nature of the flow, isn’t it? Who are you to stand against it, like a heavy stone that refuses to be carried downstream? We’re all just pebbles against such a force. And that’s fine. Can’t change the way things work. You can only react to it. You’ll be alright, y’will.”
I was already backing away towards the black hallway that led me here. “But...it doesn’t seem fair...it’s not fair. Even you don’t think so, do you?”
The man huffed. “Doesn’t matter what I think. Or you, for that matter. Go on--take a look. Go back the way you came, see if I’m wrong.”
I was gone before he finished, his words floating behind me. I sped through the thick, palpable darkness, back towards the pendulum. I don’t care about the flow, or chapters, or any of that--I’m getting out, I thought. I was moving quickly, clumsily, stumbled, caught myself on a wall I couldn’t see. My palm ached as it slapped against it and kept me from collapsing. The tchok was getting closer--I could see it--how long is this hallway, anyway? Louder. Piercing. Time seems different here. Malleable. Liquid. I can’t tell if it’s flowing in multiple directions or none at all. But--the entrance--close enough to see through now! The pendulum was doing its dance. I could see inside my room. The glass was still slid open--I’m close! Only a few feet away before--
--a figure walked into view, into my room, in front of the grandfather clock I entered through, and I froze. They looked in, quizzically. I stared back from the darkness. For a moment, all was still. Then, I watched myself close the case, trapping me on this side of the glass, and walk back out of view.
“I thought you said that I couldn’t get swept up by the flow here,” I said.
“And I wasn’t fibbin’,” the man said, sitting in a chair in the corner, smoking. “You can’t be swept up here. The flow doesn’t reach this place. But you already were swept up, out there. And now, here, this chapter is done.”
“I think I understand now. This chapter is done, but that means a new one is about to start. I think I saw that, on the other side of the glass.”
“Got it in one.” For a brief moment it almost looked like a smile had cracked behind his bushy, curtain-like mustache.
“Then...I accept that.”
“Well, good!” The man stood rose from his chair. “Not like you had much of a choice though, did you? You’re a pebble against the flow, remember? Still, it’s a good thing all the same. About time you reached a sensible conclusion.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now, the flow goes somewhere else.”
I stared into the blank canvas. My vision got lost in the emptiness but behind it, I could almost see bits and pieces of...something else. Like staring straight through a clear lake to the bottom. Glimpses into whatever was on the other side. Possibilities, I thought.
“I think y’know what you have to do next,” the man said.
I reached up, touching the blank canvas, as my fingers melded into it.
