The Walls - my entry for @mctiller's 24 hour short story competion

This is my entry for @mctiller's 24 hour short story competition which can be found at https://steemit.com/twentyfourhourshortstory/@mctiller/writers-win-5-steem-twenty-four-hour-short-story-contest-for-july-24a-lonely-man-develops-the-ability-to-see-through-walls. Barely got this done in time! :D Phew!

THE WALLS

Jerome had spent so many hours in the recliner that it had memorized his shape. It was too comfortable, he thought, the burnished black leather too sleek and soft, the way it cradled him so knowing and possessive that a part of him wanted to wrench away. Innumerable times he’d settled into its embrace clutching a book.
His wife Sarah had been killed thirty-eight years prior in a plane crash. He’d never remarried or dated again, the pain of that loss too deep and gutting for him to even try to move beyond it. His three children, Sally, Margaret, and Terrance, who’d been nine, five, and three respectively when their mother was killed, had all grown up and moved out of state. They didn’t keep in touch and he didn’t blame them. He knew that he’d been an abysmal father. He’d been too angry and heartsick himself to reach out to them,.powerless to plug the gaping wound her death left in all their lives.

He’d never been the sort to make friends easily. The friends he thought that he and Sarah shared had apparently only been her friends, for they stopped coming around after she died. And those few friends he possessed had all moved away over the years, or become too absorbed in their own lives to keep in touch. He was alone in the world, and every day he felt the insult and the rasp of that acutely.

But he still enjoyed reading. He’d been a voracious reader all his life. When he was buried in a book he could forget all of his failings and regrets. A good book could even dull the agony of Sarah’s death, if only for a short while. And he could lose himself in almost anything! He’d enjoyed many classic literary works, but no moreso than the countless page-turners he’d read, from romance novels to horror and fantasy and science-fiction stories to works of historical fiction. He loved nonfiction as well, loved any piece of writing that could carry him beyond his own sad world. There was something sacramental in cracking open a new book, a sense of falling past his pain into an alternate reality.

He’d chosen the apartment because of the grand bookshelves in the front room. And he’d crammed those to capacity, the books wedged in so tight that drawing one out again felt like a game of tug of war! And thousands more were strewn in every room, some piled in tottering stacks that scraped the ceilings. Their faintly fusty smell was comforting to him, a whisper of the endless worlds and possibilities that they promised.

It was a sweltering day, the sky choked with clouds so thick the blazing sun could scarcely be descried through them. That muted glow bathed the entire city in an amber twilight – equal parts gray and red and gold.

Jerome noticed that twilight the instant he awoke. Spilling through the drapes, it painted everything in such strange and vibrant hues he felt like he’d been awoken in some other room. Though he usually liked to lie in bed awhile, he got right up that morning and gazed out the window, saw the heavy clouds and the faintest intimation of the sun blazing behind them, its shine dimmed to a sultry glow like the light from a dying bulb. He wandered room to room, remarking how everything looked bathed in that luminance.

Jerome sat down to breakfast. But he found he had little appetite. He switched on the TV to watch the morning news,. But hardly heard a word of it. Finally he retired to the living room to read.

A plastic grocery bag, stuffed full of old paperbacks, rested beside the recliner. With a sigh he lowered himself into the chair, switched on the adjacent lamp, and reached into the bag.

His first pick was an old western novel titled Sunstone Justice. The cover depicted two cowboys and an Indian. They stood talking along a lonely, dusty street, while an ominous figure, shown mostly in silhouette, approached them from behind.

He flipped it open and began to read.

But something was wrong. The excitement he usually felt when starting a new book was missing altogether. The words on the page seemed remote and unimportant to him, like some tired and tedious arithmetic. Each paragraph he read seemed to push him away instead of drawing him in.

After struggling through three pages, he decided he just didn’t like the book. He couldn’t have specified why he disliked it. The writing seemed solid, the characters colorful, if somewhat stereotypical. It simply hadn’t drawn him in. He set it inside and reached into the sack again.

The next book he pulled out was a period romance called Wishful Thinking. On the cover two attractive women in period dresses whispered and laughed together while a handsome, dark-haired gentleman stood several paces off, watching with a smile. Jerome flipped back the careworn cover and dived in.

And again, the words repelled him. He had an even harder time getting into this story, found it difficult to even make it past the opening paragraph. The words themselves, the very printing on the page seemed to push him away. He read the opening sentence again and again, his gaze tripping over the words like a drunk man stumbling up a flight of stairs. The words didn’t seem to work together, as if some trickster had jumbled them. After struggling for several minutes, he set that book aside as well.

When he reached for a third, the thought of trying yet again repelled him, triggered in him an aversion so intense it bordered on disgust. He imagined the words pushing him back again, and he withdrew his hand from the bag without a book.

For several minutes he sat motionless, stunned and at a loss for what to do. Even in those gutting months after Sarah’s death, he’d been able to find some solace in reading. He wondered then if he was having a stroke. But that didn’t seem likely. His thoughts were clear, his reasoning sound. It wasn’t that he couldn’t read the words. He simply couldn’t bring himself to focus on them. He sat back in the chair and heaved a troubled sigh

As Jerome looked anxiously about something caught his eye.

Beyond the many stacks of books, he noticed a strange shape, unlike anything he’d ever seen before. Its contours were unruly and chaotic. And yet they drew his eye, as if some pattern lurked within the disarray. For several seconds Jerome wasn’t even sure what he was looking at. Then he realized: it was the wall! The apartment was packed so full of books that the walls were only visible in patches. Here was one such patch. Just a little section of wall.

And yet, bathed in the strange light streaming through the windows, it jumped out at him. Exquisite textures seemed to erupt from its surface. The incidental way the paint had dried against the drywall and the countless specks of dust that had settled over the paint, became a tumultuous calligraphy, a sea of contiguous patterns, with one exquisite tracery flowing into the next.

He thrust up from the chair and ventured closer. As he drew near, the roiling patterns snapped into focus and he realized that the designs weren’t merely ornamental. They were characters in a script.

And though the script wasn’t in English, he could read it! This literacy felt innate, as if he’d known that language his entire life, so natural and instinctive that he hardly even paused to question it. His rheumy old eyes sparkled in the amber twilight as he read.

Countless times over the years he’d opened a new book, and the words printed inside had drawn him in. This was no different. As he read the strange calligraphy, the wall that it was scrawled upon sloughed away and he found himself gazing in on a new scene.

He saw a young woman. She was unremarkable in appearance, neither homely nor handsome, but her expression frightened him. Her mouth was twisted in a kind of grimace, her pursed lips crimped at the corners into something like a smile. But her stare was dull and lifeless.

She was in a bathroom, standing on a stool. A thin leather belt depended from the ceiling, where it had been knotted tight around the fixture. The hoop itself was looped around her throat. She was about to hang herself. Her mouth quivered but her gaze was unblinking and steady as she mustered the resolve to take that final step.

His hands flew out to stay her. But of course she wasn’t really there. Frightened but unable to look away, Jerome read on.

Beyond her right shoulder was a medicine cabinet. Despite the tragedy about to unfold in front of him, his gaze kept jumping to it, and after a few puzzled moments he realized why. It looked exactly like his own medicine cabinet, right down to the smallest particulars.

When his landlady first showed him the apartment, she’d told him all the cabinets and shelving in the compound had been hand-made by a single artisan, a talented young carpenter who’d gone on later to carve cornices and beadwork in cathedrals and courthouses an other stately buildings. She’d said it proudly, and Jerome had agreed. Indeed the ornate bookshelves were what decided him on moving in!

This medicine cabinet was identical in style to his own in nearly every respect, unmistakably the work of that same artisan. Jerome then understood: he wasn’t gazing in on some random scene. He was looking into the adjacent apartment. He was seeing through the wall.

He didn’t recognize her. But he hardly knew any of his neighbors. The complex was laid out in such a way that residents rarely encountered each other. He didn’t know but he feared for her, dreaded what she was about to do as dearly as if it had been someone he loved.

He considered running to her apartment and banging on the door. But he knew that by the time he got there she might already be swinging and kicking out her last. Instead he pounded on the wall. And saw, as his fist collided with the surface, that even those impacts were a part of the calligraphy, the way the light danced across the shuddering drywall seamlessly interwoven in the script. He pounded hard, knowing she wouldn’t hear him otherwise, and in the same instant he bellowed “Stop!”

The woman heard him. He saw her give a start, and feared for an instant she would slip off the chair. She teetered precariously for several seconds, her gaze now bright with surprise and fear.

For what seemed an eternity, she teetered on the brink. And then, to his supreme relief, she settled back onto her heels. With trembling hands removed the makeshift noose from around her neck. Shakily she stepped down from the stool.

Jerome uttered a sigh, almost a sob, of relief, and looked away. The instant he stopped reading the script, the wall solidified again. But he could still see the text, and knew that he could peel the illusion back again if he so chose.

Casting about he saw the writing all around him, an entire cosmos of calligraphy scrawled on every surface.

His gaze happened on the bag of unread books again. Later on he would discover that he’d lost his appetite for them. Each time he tried to read one the words would tangle on the page and push him back.

But he would also find that he could still read that superscript. And it was everywhere, written along every surface, an entire universe of poetry and winding prose, a boundless window into a neverending world of beauty and sorrow and joy.

That night found him moving the stacks of books to the center of each room, so he could better see the walls.

SOURCE

Thanks for reading! :D