It was a dark and stormy night. Rain pounded down on the grimy glass of the high-vaulted windows like the tired hammers of a hundred chain gangs, doomed to endless toil by the weight of their own crimes. Yet the fat droplets of rain never cleared away the grime, how could they? The windows to that abhorrent estate were ever-open eyes, passages into a soul so black that the night itself recoiled rather than dare venture past the vile glass. The things those windows had seen, the horrors they had witnessed… no rain could clear that grime away. There comes a time, when one has sunk below human, below beast, below abomination, below the touch of something as soft as sin, when taint becomes a sort of comfort- a reminder that there was once something to be tainted. For the blackened edifice of that wretched manor, the grime was that comforting taint. A reminder of a past glory that had passed far beyond accurate recollection. To call that building a home would be a blasphemous mockery, for there was no shelter inside, no hint of comfort left, and nothing left inside worth the description of ‘human’. Yet something still stirred within, an echo from a forgotten age, a fragment of the ancestral memory of man, damned and forgotten by sanity’s merciful forbiddance. Lightning flashed down from heaven, a bright spark that bathed the house in radiance, yet that flash failed to banish the grotesque shadows that clung to the face of the manor like phantom gargoyles. Estate, manor, home… No... Such words pale here. This place was now a fane to a creature from long ago, from beyond our time, an unholy temple to something which cannot be named, described, or understood without breaking the underlying cerebral mechanisms of classification and categorization upon which name, description, and understanding depend. It was antediluvian madness, and it roiled in steady anticipation of its awakening.
Meanwhile, a small yellow canary pecks at a seed in its feeder. It’s incredibly dissatisfying. It’s an old seed. Bad seed. Bad, bad seed. Fresh seeds are good seeds. This is not a fresh seed, thus it is a bad seed- it must be. The canary preens briefly, proud of its logic. Then it remembers there are no good seeds. It chirps in dissatisfaction. The big giant that smells like weird should have put new seeds out like a way long time ago. There was an appropriately sized grandfather clock in the canary’s golden cage, but close inspection many years ago had revealed it to be a peculiar sort of house, and utterly incapable of telling time. Frustrating. The rest of golden cage was suitably well equipped: cuttlebone, seed tray, three nesting perches of gnarled wood, water tray, and a glass bathtub, but supplies were running dangerously low. If something doesn’t happen soon, the canary might be forced to eat an old seed, and that would be… unthinkable. The sheer effort needed to comprehend that atrocity briefly stuns the canary, causing it to let out a warbling chirp and flutter in place. It had to do something, as sure as its name was… was… was… Oh dear. The effort of comprehending the terror of eating an old seed seems to have punted the Canary’s old name right out of its tiny brain.
What was its name again?
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Topic: [Suggestion Game] You Are a Terrified Canary Rogue Named Frederick (Read 1589 times)