‘The fall from my horse had fortunately left no evil results; on the contrary it had changed my whole character for the better.
From a lazy young man about town, I had become active, ener-getic, temperate, and above all —oh, above all else—ambitious.
There was only one thing which troubled me, I laughed at my own uneasiness, and yet it troubled me.
During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time, The King in Yellow. I remember after finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on the hearth in the firelight. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroomy where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask.
I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth — a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. When the French Government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged.
It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.’
From ‘The king in yellow‘ by Robert W. Chambers
In terms of good writing the king in yellow is king.
I add these little snippets of my favorite writing just incase I’m able to spread them around.
The sample below is something I wrote that never got a title. But it’s one of my very favorite projects.
I wrote about a hundred thousand words of it. It isn’t quite as messy as my other projects. It’s an actually viable book. It just needs a ton of work editing it would probably take a year or more. And I might need more skill than I currently have to truly finish it.
But it is a book that I will finish someday no matter what. Because I loved it so much that I just need to finish it for my own sake. I have a lot natural drive to finish it. It’s sort of like playing a really good but really frustrating video game. It snatches up all my focus when I work on it and I end getting very invested until I just get to a level I can’t beat and have to give up for a bit.
I wrote most of it shortly after my dad died. Writing it was a great distraction and a great comfort. It kept me moving.
What is this untitled half written book about?
Hmm.
Difficult.
It’s a science fiction I suppose. The science part being that’s it’s about a technology that allows shared dreaming.
The underground of the city gets their hands on it and turns it into a sort of virtual reality type video game.
Due to the dangers of using it it’s highly illegal and therefore getting into play the ‘games’ is very illegal and very hard to get into.
Half the book is the main character attempting to get into the games which is very messy, complicated and very dangerous. Because it involves a lot of testing and secrets and proving loyalty. And a bit of torture and extremely terrifying nightmares.
The other half of the book gets weird. Because once he gets into the games he learns that what’s really happening isn’t shared dreaming. It’s something else that’s a lot more weird sciencey.
What was so fun about working on this project was the main character. He was a pretty bad guy that got totally broken and as he’s getting into the games he starts to get his confidence back and his more evil talents start to resurface.
Part of the reason it was fun to write was because it got to be very unfiltered on darker impulses which is just fun to express.
Oh. And it takes place in 1998 or so, I have written down somewhere, but it’s meant be the year smart phones were first being circulated on a larger scale. I did a bunch of research of the first smart phones.
I was also instructed to wear a red hat.
I did not own a red hat and I was dangerously low on subway money.
And once upon a time I’d been an adept thief.
I spotted a few red-hats on the subway. One was a round sun hat that was a vibrant cherry red on a plump older woman in a flower printed shirt. She was going back and forth from staring out the subway window to looking at her hands as she fiddled with them.
Another was a bejeweled maroon cap. Also warn by an older woman, though she was very thin and waive like, and far more alert. Her-eyes were darting suspiciously to every single passenger, like-she was not one accustomed to taking the subway and felt us all thieves.
And there was a man with a sports hat whose colors happened to be red and white I spotted as I exited the station and emerged into the light of the street. I very much considered stealing this hat.
Especially since the man-had his head buried in one of those new smart phones. He’ d-be far too enamored with protecting that thousand dollar piece-of equipment. I could yank it right-off his-head, run and he’d be too grateful he still had that phone.
Remembering my impulsivity I walked past him and instead strode towards the nearest-store. I had an old white runner’s cap at home.
I did almost steal the red sharpie to color it.
I hovered my hand over it but noticed how old that hand looked and I retracted it. Put it-back in my pocket and instead scrounged through my change to find the dollar fifty it cost.
Then I spent the rest of my afternoon coloring that white hat red. It looked patchy and-odd, and the red came out much darker than I imagined it would, but it still sent the message of being a red hat.
Saturday was two days away.
I felt a strange intermixing of peace and terror on my walk to work at six am the next day.
There was a heavy anxiety in my chest, it felt knotted and heavy and yet, every scent of the city I-caught seemed to elevate my mood for split seconds. I caught whiffs of the tar and the stone, of the wet morning air and the rotting of the fallen leaves.
I felt like a pendulum, gaining momentum from the nostalgic smells of the city in fall and swinging upward, only for the gravity of my terror to weigh me back down.
There was the familiar fall chill of the morning. I’d walked this city so many times at this time of year and it felt like an old part of me was awakening, while a new part of me wanted to-keep it sleeping
Saturday was a bright day. Rare for that time of year. The park was thick with large trees.I sat on the bench I d- been asked to sit on at precisely the right time, I put on my patchy red cap and I waited.
It was by my judge about fifteen minutes before I was approached by a young skinny lad dressed in a dark hoody and jeans. He didn’t greet me or look at me he only took a seat on my-bench.
“Three eyed Devil fifty three?” I asked.
“Sage Heart?” He asked. It’d been the name of my email. Sageheart6 to be exact. I turned to him to smile and held out my hand to the lad, he shook it with a limp hand and dropped it almost instantly, retuming his hands to his pockets and his gaze back to the park in front of us.
“You’re pretty old.” He said. “No offense. Just you are. Are you a cop?”
“If I were a cop. I wouldn’t tell you. But, I’m very far from a cop. I’m actually a felon.”
“Really? Feel like a cop would say that. But what did you do?”
“I was not imprisoned for what I did.” I replied.
“Then what were you in prison for?”1
“Technically, receiving stolen goods.” I said.
“Okay. What’d you really do then?”
→ I smiled to myself. But I think my bitter satisfaction showed on my face. The kid calmed his fidgeting in his jean pockets and angled more towards me in interest. “What I really did, is work for a very corrupt company and was important enough in it to be punished. I got three years. Thanks in part to…” I trailed off. Suddenly I became acutely aware of the danger I was putting myself in. I hadn’t even fully completed my parole and prison was not a place I wished to return to. “We used the same technology.”
He took his hands out of his pockets to brush his-lanky hair out of his face. “We’ll think it over. ” He stood
→ “Should I reach you by email?” I asked. “I’m limited when it comes to access to the-internet “
→ In response thirdeyedev153 handed me a card. “Call in two days.” Then he pulled his hood tighter over his head, once again shoved his hands into his jean pockets and strolled off.
I did not stroll off so quickly.
I-stayed a momeut on that park bench, feeling the slight breeze of autumn but what otherwise felt like a summer day in the speckled shade of an elm tree.
→ I contemplated an odd sense of relief and peace that I knew would be short lived.-Watching a man jog around the path with his mutt of a dog and a woman stop to let her toddler-pick at a few of the leaves that had started to fall
I felt free for the first time since my release from prison and in that freedom felt a rising ambition and a rising terror that I hadn’t changed and what awaited me was a harsher punishment than I’d yet received in-life.
But I still pocketed that card very carefully in the back corner of my coat that had a zipper before I put it out of my mind.
I walked the long way back to the subway. Round the full of the park, then veered into a collection of young locust trees lining the path to the crosswalk back to the Parc Des Buttes: subway station.
The crosswalk had been newly installed. Apparent by the freshly painted white lines and the dark copper color of street lamps.
The entire city was largely biased to pedestrians and made the roads a complicated mess-of narrow one way streets and frequent crosswalks.
The new of the park fell away quickly however to the old of the Parc des buttes subway station and the decades of grime on the stairs.
The subway looked no dirtier than it had five years ago, or ten years ago, or twenty:
Perhaps there was a state of clean it could never achieve no matter how well it was washed. Or perhaps, there was a level of dirty that simply could never be cleaned.
Sixty four cents was left on my subway card after I scanned it. On a Saturday the subway was-busy and I had to stand in the corner, I’d gotten very thin and was able to fit nicely between: two young ladies that took no notice of me.
There I let my mind wander back along the last few months. Back to when I’d come out of my depression enough to go visit Neil.
No one had ever liked Neil.
I especially hadn’t liked Neil. He was smarter than me, of course I never consciousl acknowledged such a thing. But I knew it to be true in that private, devilish smile of his that let-us all know we’d said something very stupid without knowing what it was.
I thought of that smile as I-knocked on his door and prepared to beg like a dog for the tiniest crumble of a bone.
Jess lanai 