The Hanging Garden

Creatures kissing in the rain- the sacrifice of pennance. Shapeless in the dark, illuminated once again by the swift touch of my pulsing heartbeats. Up by the branches in the burning forest, a sign empathizes a warning. However, the art of temptation leaves me to be invited by it's very message. IN THE HANGING GARDEN PLEASE DON'T SPEAK it reads. Nobody, as far as I know has ever fallen asleep in this place. The breeze, it's unsettling nature, is enough to keep you awake for over a hundred years. Animals running across, endless nights of purgatory, the swift movement of hair. Bleed your senses dry like the endless summer rain.

Catching haloes on the moon- another past time- and crafting my hands in the shape of an angel's touch. In the heat of the night, I remain building up in a frenzy. The animals scream once more. Walking into our own fantasy world we split up into groups, to find our own object of desire. Our dreams have been violated with the increasing stench of cut-throat discipline. The animals rule the hanging garden.

Fall! Fall! Fall once more! Going into the walls, I jump once more out of time and shape. My body is now in the confines of the crystal black mirror; smeared lipstick and broken cheek bones comes across pleasurable to the animals. But I cannot look. Cover my face as the animals cry.

Creatures are still kissing in the rain, forever shapeless. Their shadows, large and intact from our perversion, have smothered all hope for a second nature which works. In the hanging garden change the past. We can rely on you to make the deed right once more. Wearing furs, masks, and anything they can get their hands on the animals corner us for one last time. Their security is often in the cornerstone of the hanging garden's prestige. There is no freedom here. You might aswell be suicidal if you speak out against the order.

This is the first time I have had the displeasure of falling into the walls. Jumping out of time, in sickness and in health. The sky is swollen black, due to the confessions of our past sins. But I cannot move pass. The resistance has begun. Our hearts have moved. Cover my face as the animals die.

In the hanging garden the song remains. The same repetitive rhythms are like a tribal thumph of misery. It keeps me moving through the bushes of the trees. The trees of woe and joy are now brown and wrecked. They have become a victim of the long-term nihilism caused by the order. The hanging garden isn't the only thing that keeps me in check- it's the idea of equality.

That idea, the whole "freedom of speech" thing, has been waning on for a long time. I love this place; it gives me the impression we are all the same. The hanging garden is like my long lost father.

In the hanging garden I sit underneath the trees of woe. I remain singing the closing seconds of my favourite song. Here I stay, corrupted from memory yet still sane, to ponder at life through the hourglass of love. It is soon to be more than just a garden. It will soon take over as Earth. The years are still passing without pity. The critical strikes by time's rich gifts have kept me awake for quite some time now. I cannot love. But who needs love when you have order?

Here I stay. Here I watch the animals die on repeat. In the hanging garden.

First of all, the writing itself is quite beautiful. Even though you changed it from poetry to prose, it's still very poetic, and it's lovely.

However, plot-wise, it's very, very abstract, and I'm afraid that I was completely lost. I wasn't sure what was happening in the beginning, which is understandable in many cases, but then I didn't gain any more insight as I kept reading. I feel as though some kind of development happened by the end, but I'm not sure what. I think you could alleviate that in part just by fixing the beginning. For one thing, a lot of the sentence you use are actually fragments, which I use left and right, so I'm not saying they're a bad thing at all. But if you want to get meaning across, you should use full sentences. One or two fragments can have a deep impact on a piece, but a paragraph of them is just confusing.

Then, the subject of the first paragraph is confusing, also. You write: "Nobody, as far as I know has ever fallen asleep in this place." Which, okay, that tells me more about the hanging garden, but I kept wondering why anyone would fall asleep. Why is that an issue that needs to be brought up?

To me, this piece reads like a dream, which is really cool. It's like we just get these strange snapshots that aren't necessarily on a linear timeline, just like in a dream, and we're not sure where we are, or what's going on. But like I said, it's too confusing. I get the feeling that the speaker has done something he or she regrets, and is reliving it in some nightmarish dream-scape over and over again, trying to find a solution and failing. But again, I really don't know. I think, to fix that, you could just add more descriptions of what's actually happening. Instead of describing thoughts or ideas, just add some simple action. I think what you've done with the description and the vagueness is cool, but it ultimately needs to be grounded in some kind of clear, simple plot. That said, I'd love to see where you go with this, because I am totally intrigued by what's going on here.

Thank you for your very honest comments. I wrote this pretty much as a contest entry. It is for the Creative Anything contest, where I can make it as realistic or as abstract as possible. Therefore, I have made this piece abstract in terms of plot and of characters.

You see, the point of this short story is to create an ongoing atmosphere of despair. In context, the hanging garden is almost seen as a release from the real world. Nobody speaks nor sleeps in the hanging garden because they simply do not have a right. I feel I have created something with a very deep message.

Take note that in the paragraph when the narrator describes how the hanging garden is a "communist's long lost father". What we have here is an ongoing metaphor. At first, it does seem all fancy and descriptive, but there is a deep message if you read between the lines and take into account his description of the hanging garden: it is a metaphor for communism, whether it be in any countries which used to be communist, still are, or maybe the general idea of communism. That idea is repeated throughout my piece. These people are forced to do everything for the animals.

In a sense, the animals could be the communist leaders/dictators of the past or present, because after all politicians are like cold blooded animals. The animals are the leaders, and the brainwashed become animals, until there is nothing left. No speech, no air, no light and no hope for anyone. When I wrote "cover my face as the animals die", this refers to the ongoing faith in a leader. They don't want it to end, nor shall they wish it to continue. To live in a place of suffering and rule, like the hanging garden, it requires a high level of commitment, perhaps too much of a commitment. The hanging garden, in short, is a tale about sucking up to higher power.

The hanging garden was designed to suck people in, but in the end it only sucks these people out of reality. Man finds solace in the act of sex and lust, instead of finding solace in beauty and of the most sacred thing we could possibly think of. The act of hanging is negative- the act of suicide. A garden is a sacred & beautiful part of nature. Put them together, you get the idea of suicide linked with the idea of nature. The title itself is an oxymoron, a mixture of fear and hope. For this is what finding destruction in beauty is: a garden.

I do kind of see where you are going with this piece, but maybe that's because I literally just watched 1984 and I'm prepared to see everything as a metaphor for communism.
I have a problem with the line that actually draws this parallel:

567ajt wrote:The hanging garden is a communist's long lost father.

To me, communism at its birth was a radical idea; sort of a hippie idea. And even know there are those snooty suburban kids who adopt the ideas of Marxism just to peeve their parents. The point is: the relationship between father and son doesn't strike me as a communist one, if that makes any sense. The only reason I nitpick at this is because in a story like this, every word needs to carry its weight. Especially since it's a contest entry. I would say: comrades, friends, cousins, or some sort of military metaphor would more clearly mark the relationship.
I also have a problem with this sentence

567ajt wrote:Up by the branches in the burning forest, a sign catches my eye, almost a warning.

The underlined phrase makes the sentence too wordy and passive. If you can, have the sign doing something to the main character-- the sign screamed out a warning, it warned me, ect.
Once again, I'm just super-uper nitpicking because this is a beautiful piece and if you just scour it, completely scrutinize every comma and period until it's as clean as it can be, it could definitely win (of course I haven't seen any other entries, but this is pretty fantastic.)
Best of luck to you.