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Brace yourself… possibly my darkest story yet. It’s the story of a modern, female Don Quixote. The main character lives in a world of dreams and Arthurian Romance but is cruelly snatched from her reveries. I suppose if I have to be literary about it, the work is a metaphor for the loss of innocence and the realities of life but in all honesty, I was just depressed. Enjoy, but be warned.
She had grown up in a house filled with books. The walls of almost every room were decorated with a hodgepodge of shelves, grinning with rows of multi-coloured teeth, some lying on their sides, being read from sometime long ago. In the living room and the study, there was a shelf, with a single line of books, encircling the top of the room, just below the ceiling; crowning these rooms with the laurel of literature or perhaps, that of the eccentric collector. But from every shelf the world shone, illumining the beholder, encompassing them with a light denied to so many and sought by too few. Drawing in the open mind, with the enigmas of their pages, hoping to open this mind some more. She would stand bathing in the cool glow of enlightenment, loving the way the book shelves looked, this myriad gleaming cracked spines and beautiful leather and gold bindings and yet she would turn and walk away. To her own bedroom, with its own shelf of books, most of them pristine, still yearning for that first caress, the first bent page or crack in the spine. She would fling herself into the dusty pink bean bag in the corner of the rotting bay window, near to the radiator; she liked the choking heat from the central heating and the creeping draft from the rattling window. This was her favourite place. In the other corner of the bay window, there was a pile of books, perhaps two feet high. These were the books for which she shunned all others; reading and re-reading and then reading some more. These were the books she loved. These were the books she would live. There she sat, hour after hour, winding her way through the labyrinthine quests of the stories. Sometimes she was locked in a castle, ravished by the wicked son of a good king, sometimes, she was won in tourney. Other days she would be of great help to the Knights of the Round Table and on many days, she would fall in love with a single glance. And as she read of these fantastical worlds of days bygone, days long gone, she grew into the fairest maiden anybody had ever had the glorious good fortune to lay their eyes upon. A river of blonde, gushed down her back and past her waist, shimmering opalescent in the sunlight that snuck through the old window panes. Her complexion was of lily white, with rose bud lips and gentle blushes of pink across her exquisite cheeks. She was beautiful and she was eighteen and soon she would embark on an adventure of her own, away from the questing knights and malicious ogres of the kingdoms of somewhere else. Lunette was to go to university.
This month, my story, The Renaissance was included in a free online magazine, Original*. It includes the best stories recently posted to the usenet group, alt.fiction.original.
I’d like to thank Alaric for his hard work producing the magazine and suggest that anybody interested take a look at it… and not just because I’m in it - it’s an impressive showcase of fiction writers.
* To download the PDF, click my link, scroll down the page and click the button marked "free". On the next page, scroll down and enter the "captcha" code and click the button marked "download… " It’s a little complicated but worthwhile!