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Hopeless Tales

Castles in the sky

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I’ve seen the castle a few times now, when the mist rolls in and the last rays of the setting sun catch the headland in just the right way.

There are ruins up on that headland, but I do not think they are the ruins of a castle. Perhaps buildings can dream, and this is the ghost of a memory of something a building once wanted to be. Perhaps it is the dream of a builder who imagined castles in the sky, but lacked the means to build such a thing.

Sometimes I think that the mist itself dreams, or remembers. That’s why there are so often faces, or eyes that seem to do nothing much. They say water remembers things, and mist is only water after all.

I like to go and stand in the mist, and gaze up at the castle that isn’t there. I can feel the mist on my skin when I do that. I like to think that the mist is experiencing my face, and that in the future it will remember me, and reconstruct me out of those dreams.

I do not want to linger as a ghost, trapped here in death as I have been in life. But I would like to be remembered. I want to become as this castle is, something grander than I have been in life. The idea of a person, with this face of mine smoothed into a better appearance by the softness of water droplets.

(Text by Nimue, image by Allison Kotzig.)

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Insidious

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A new piece from Keith Errington!

Insidious

On the isle of Hopeless, Maine
The weather is always insane
There’s never rhyme nor reason
Pointless is the weathervane
It’s insidious and perplexing
At the very least it’s very vexing
But there’s one peculiar thing
Whether autumn, summer, or spring
A dangerous weirdness does persist
The mist, the mist, the mist.

The Hopeless Maine Scientific Society
(Not known particularly for its propriety)
Has studied the phenomenon
Using tests of great variety
Despite their efforts most fastidious
All they can say is, “Well, it’s insidious”
Their experts are dumbfounded
Astounded and confounded
Even Arkwright the anthropologist
The mist the mist the mist.

It’s a certain kind of fog
That smells of soggy dog
Weird faces lurk within the gloom
Too many to catalogue
There are eyes and things that hum
And things that brush your bum
Dark tendrils reaching out
Taking hair and casting about
Like a demented hairstylist
The mist, the mist, the mist.

It affects your mood and makes you sad
Or melancholic or occasionally glad
But there’s no escaping its devilment
Stay out too long and you’ll go mad
It gets in your hair
And your underwear
Always growing
Always glowing
A cloud with a Lovecraftian twist
The mist, the mist, the mist.

When returning from the Inn
After all the medicinal gin
You’d better watch your step
And make sure that you’re within
For if you are outside
When the mist it does betide
You’d better beware
You’d better take care
Especially if you’re pissed
The mist, the mist, the mist.