Fishsplosion!

[koilungfish]

4/1/07 - Six Weeks Ago
            Six weeks ago, the sky was blue.
            Six weeks ago, the hillock he stood atop had been green with springy summer grass. It had been spangled with yellow-hearted daisies, cowslips blushing amongst the vervain, saw-toothed dandelions and clover, and that peculiar out-of-place buddleia rioting in the absence of care. Now the hillside was bare of everything but drab tussock-grass, dry soil and dark stones splattered with lichen.
            Six weeks ago, the mountains on the other side of the lake had been green with heather. They were not purple now, but grey-flanked and heavy with scree. Their raw backs humped darkly against the dour, fish-belly sky. The valley had rung with the coughing of grouse, interjected with the bark of an indignant dog-fox. Now it was silent, save for the stone-root-deep rumble of the factory on the shore.
            Six weeks ago, the factory was not there.
            Six weeks ago, the shore was mud, alive with sand-fleas and rag-worms and snails and anything that would eat them. Little birds with ringed necks had pattered across the sandbanks and upended the stones. The birds were not there. The shore was shingle.
            Six weeks ago he had stood on this hillock and watched as the factory arrived, herky-jerky, piece-by-piece. First one wall slid into view, a hard-edged slice of shadow, then another, grey despite the summer sunlight. Outbuildings faded into the foreground, out of the tumble of shades that themselves had faded out of the bushes and stones on which the factory had arrived. A wall had sidled up out of the confusion, sneaking in as if it had always been there, as if his eyes had somehow missed it at first glance.
            He had stood and watched, somewhere between astonishment and fear, as the great central building blotted together. Pale stones on the slope behind had spread out like ink in water, a pallid soft blotch that bloated into off-white walls. He'd blinked and rubbed his eyes, and stared as the walls resolved like a fish surfacing through dim waters, as the blur of wall became grey brickwork.
            The dark-tiled roof sank out of the background, and he'd looked up at it, and looked up again, for those three tall pale chimneys with their black, thick-lipped mouths, had arrived quite without him noticing them at all.
            Even then, six weeks ago, the chimneys were already humming as they hummed now. They gave out no smoke, no steam, no smell, just a steady heavy haze of heat, as if monstrous furnaces burned below. The heat-haze turned the mountain beyond into a shimmer of shadow, and through it, when he squinted, he thought he could almost see a movement not of the heat, not of the air, nor of the mountain. Something stirred in the heat, restlessly, on the edge of seeing - beyond the air and darkness, where the walls came from.
            In six weeks' time the lake had blacked like silver tarnishing. The low silent wind ruffled the surface, chopping silver edges out of the blackish, brackish surface, ruffling the feathers of the black swans.
            Six weeks ago, those swans were white.            

Comments

[navigatorsghost.livejournal.com]

...oh. Yie. You're getting back up to speed there, not to mention apparently paying homage to Ligotti. *shivers* I like!

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

Yes, Ligotti did kinda wander across my mind at one point, even if I wasn't trying to impersonate him. Not sure what caused the shiver, really.

[lunatron.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of Impressionism.

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

... actually, yes, it kinda is that.

[sapphirebreeze.livejournal.com]

Interesting imagery. Very creepy. I do like it, though.

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

What's interesting? What's creepy? Why do you like it?

:: is in feedback junkie mode, apparently::

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

It's interesting (in a good way) how it's, at the surface, a commentary on what industrialisation does to nature (one which the imagery of the blackened sea and swans really drives home, for that matter), yet the factory is described almost as if it was an organic/sentient being that grew there, or "sneaked up" on that place. Gives it a surrealist touch.

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

Yes ... it's half "Industrialisation is bad, okay?" and half "Building appears from nowhere; world changes colour, WTF?". Perhaps I *have* been reading too much Ligotti.

[navigatorsghost.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough I didn't really notice the implied value judgement/moral, just enjoyed the creepy side of it. Then again, like I said, I grew up in an area where mid-to-heavy industry was the norm; and I love that kind of landscape, so maybe the punchline was rather lost on me...

(Also, it's amazing what you find growing in industrial complexes, btw. If you think nature can't find a way, you've never seen rosebay willowherb. ^_^)

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

The "moral" wasn't really intentional, it just kind of came with the idea. Still, if the thing had an effect, it's done more than most writing exercises achieve :: shrug::

I have seen rosebay willowherb. There's plenty of it in the back yard.

[navigatorsghost.livejournal.com]

*nodnods*

Doesn't surprise me. ^_^ It loves disturbed ground, wasteland and gravel. Strange bloody plant that it is...

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

It liked Boots's window, or the spot just outside it, anyhow. Perhaps it's attracted to biscuit crumbs.

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

*giggles* Could be.

[apprentice-lurk.livejournal.com]

I still think it's apt that all of a sudden there was this mountain of fluffplant outside my window. ^_^ Must've been where I used to throw out any spare water - I've grown biscuitivorous plants!

The repetition doesn't seem to flow as easily as it does in 'The Hemlock King', presumably because there's just less writing between each'six weeks ago', but I agree that the imagery is all subtly-taking-over-ish and the kind of infiltrating, not-quite-unnoticed scary that really manages to creep me out. *nodnods*

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

Well, if *anyone* were to find a fluffplant outside their room ... just as long as you don't start growing ducks.

Well, that was vaguely the idea behind it, so I guess it works.