(I could only manage a shot at the house with my crappy phone camera lens.)
A long and dark road to the house at the end of the road…
Let’s pretend the house is called ‘soliteon’.
Without the use of grand words from my end to help you, just try to imagine the most extreme degree of solitude possible for a house. It is totally removed from the township. We stumbled across this piece that appears like a happy firefly in the distant night when our car broke down in “the middle of nowhere”. We trudged towards the dimly lit soliteon naturally hoping to find relief from the dead night. Tropical night, winds were blowing and rain was threatening as the clouds gathered. Some of us were so desperate we were prepared to evict the home owner if push came to shove.
(Who would blame them when humans naturally would more likely cut off a friend if (s)he was an extra weight than allow themselves be dragged down?)
I wonder though what they were thinking. Evict the owner, occupy soliteon till dawn, restore the owner with an apology, and just be off on their way… ? Do they think this is just another fiction?
Truth be told we were just seven strangers to any hermit who might be occupying that house and we weren’t sure (s)he’d take kindly to humans (s)he was living away from. But, a heavy tropical rain in the night of nowhere!?!
Peeking through a window, I, the only writer and most curious in the group, observed the lord of the soliteon who seemed like a
A very normal person as relaxed and comfortable in a house not structurally different from other houses internally.
There was no oddity or paucity of dressing, blank expression or deeply furrowed brows. His hair not a messy mass of twines. There was no beard like that of a wise old goat or long curved fingernails on this vicenarian. He apparently paid attention to pedicure too. And he was not dressed in leopardskin or humanskin.
Shame!
His chair was tilted backwards at a precarious angle as a heavy-duty headset probably boomed steadily into his ears. I wondered what sort of song could be playing there. He seemed totally at ease.
After a while, he’d set the chair down and put his fingers to writing; then he’d talk as if to someone else besides himself. For all I know the house could be a haunted one -not just the typical one with eerily whistling winds and mists crawling from one shadowed corner to the other.
He seemed totally queer and ordinary at the same time.
Oh my word! I could swear I heard another voice. No kidding. The closest person to me also heard it. The voice appeared to come from the sitting room where the soliteon lord was sitting. He’d communicate with the voice, the voice would respond, then he’d write.
The rain screamed closer on us.
I conferred with my colleagues and, in view of the talking voice alone, we decided to knock on the door….
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BACKGROUND: Sometimes, in the dead of the night at my hospital quarters, I’d get up to stroll out, enjoy the midnight plants, animals and weather; and meditate on life and all things sweet and true.
When returning, I’d see my room dimly lit in the dark distant environ and would snicker slightly mockingly at myself, feeling somewhat like the odd soliteon lord in the piece above.
So, I am both the writer and the homeowner characters in the piece.
I Feel Shadows 