Monday, February 02, 2004

Premise

It shall concern a man and his house. A house, which runs deep underground. Some of it is antiseptic, clean and white and pure in its glossy tiled walls.

Some of it has big windows. Like big eyes. But these eyes do not look out. Light enters, but apologetically at best. And the corners they hesitantly grace contain no shadows anyway. That’s for the underground house. Upstairs, its all hunky-dory.

The ceilings are high, for the most part. At least, upstairs. The man who made them had lofty goals, but went about his work hurriedly, impatient to get it done and get out.

Music might float across the halls. In tune with your footstep, if you were lucky. Or the rhythm might ignore you, rendering your every step jarring and discordant.

Who lives in this house of hope and dream? With walls of fairy-dust floating freely over white, vinyl floor? Our protagonist (lets call him “01” for now) is a writer. No, not a writer. He is an inventor. A creator of. . .constructions (curiosities? Amusements? Petty thrills?) and abject slave to whim. He has built himself a house. In this house, he resides and works.

No, he hasn’t built his house. He’s borrowed it, piece-by-piece, from the minds of other men. It should have been “stolen”, rather than “borrowed”, had he the stomach to admit it.

Anyway, we’ll break him down more later. He’s not alone in his house. He can’t afford its upkeep. He needs to bring people in so that he might afford to change things about once in a while. He needs people for stimulation. But that doesn’t mean he likes it. Or them.

He has one boarder. The boarder is friendly, but the protagonist doesn’t like him. He’s hostile to this alien. And for good reason. The outsider is. . .stupid!

01 resents the intrusion the outsider makes on his life. More importantly, he resents the new stain on his environment. But he also knows that he desperately needs the outsider. More than the outsider suspects. He needs him as a psychological foil.

But, superficially at least, the two of them get along really fucking well. Like a house on fire. *snigger*

There are a couple of other odd people around who pop up from time to time. Almost like ghosts. Often they’re just bits and pieces of people. An arm here and a leg there. Whatever it may be. Traces of memory. Shades of the past. Glimpses of a vague future. Vague glimpses of any future at all.

Anyway, 01 is at work. He’s working on something. What shall it be?

Yes, what indeed?

He’s working on something, but he’s also looking for something. What?

It should have something to do with his house. He is his house.

Lets tell this story through the eyes of the outsider. Or maybe, I can alternate the first-person between the two. That should be fun. Shifting perspectives on the same thing.

What does one do? What does one do when one is simultaneously the inhabitant and the inhabited? How do you translate a being into space and form?

- Ud

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