This grew out of a doodle in my notebook and I can't decide if it's worth continuing. Comments are appreciated. Thanks!
The thing in the corner sat and cried. It seemed to be all it was good for. It thought about this and cried some more. Poor thing in the corner.
The room was grey and the window barred. Every day, excepting the ones that were cloudy, the thing watched a single sun beam come in through the tiny high window and travel through the cell. If the thing had known anything at all outside its colorless prison, it would have realized by the expansive path of the sunlight that there could be nothing but horizon all around in all directions. But as it was it did not know this. It knew only the corner, the cold grey stone against its back, the crawling path of the sun around the room, and the monotony of countless days endlessly the same.
The thing didn’t know it, but it was shrinking. Since the day of its creation no nutrients had been added to its critical mass, and it could only self-sustain for so much longer. It grew less lumpish by the day, like a beanbag chair with a tear that leaked its pellets.
And so it can be safely supposed that if nothing had happened the thing would have gone on thinking its sorry thoughts and wasting away in the corner of that barren room in the top of a tower in the middle of a great flat plane, so vast that even the tops of the bordering mountains could not be seen by one standing in the very center. But the world sometimes conspires for excitement…
Jasper ran. She hated them all. And so she ran pell-mell, not looking where she was going, and suddenly the world went weird. Like on cheap downloadable computer games when pop-ups threaten to overtake the system and for a minute everything is jerky and slow. She stopped running and began flailing wildly, fighting through the jello. Her vision blurred and spiraled and merged into a swirling vortex. Then everything went black.
She woke with a start and realized with dismay that she was falling and she couldn’t see a thing. She tried desperately to remember what had happened. There had been a fight, she knew, and she’d stormed out, and ran, and then… A rough scraping of stone against her back interupted her frantic rememberings. Then she landed, quite hard, but seemingly unbroken. The mist cleared from her eyes and she blinked, and looked around her. There wasn’t much to see. An empty square room of grey stone, a high arched window with heavy black bars, through which came a narrow stream of light that illuminated a small red door in the center of the far wall. It was a very curious door, without any kind of handle or keyhole she could see. And then in the opposite corner of the room she saw the Lump. It was a dingy kind of grey, rather like sheets that had been left too long unwashed. Indeed it looked more than anything else like a pile of dirty bed linens. One large wrinkle nearish to the top separated itself from the others to form a large, froglike mouth. Two round black eyes, very large, stared out at her. “Erm, Hello? Lump?” The eyes blinked twice, slowly, but Lump gave no other response. Perhaps it couldn’t. Jasper shrugged in bafflement and turned to examine the door. It remained as it had first appeared, smooth and inscrutible. She gave it a timid push it swung easily open, revealing a narrow spiral of stairs descending into blackness. She crouched and started to squeeze herself through the small opening, then looked back at the lump. She didn’t like to just leave it there. Sighing, she straightened up and went over to it. “Lump? Can you, like, move? I’m leaving now. Would you like to come?” Lump blinked its great eyes slowly three more times. Then, to her great astonishment, a single tear welled up and rolled down its face. Jasper grimaced. She didn’t like it when things cried. She reached out and gingerly patted its head. It was warm. “Lump?” She whispered. It blinked some more. Then suddenly a veritable flood of tears spilled from its eyes and splashed out over the stone floor, soaking Jasper’s sneakers. She jumped back. Then slowly, very slowly, the lump turned its head and beamed at her. She smiled back weakly and backed toward the door. “Come on then.” The lump blinked once more, very solemnly, and then in a slow shuffle followed her across the room.
Down and down they went, and round and round, through endless dark. The walls were close and rough and damp, and the wooden staircase rickety and old. They went slowly through the innards of the ancient tower until quite suddenly the staircase ended. Jasper, who had by this time grown used to descending unstable stairways in the dark put her foot down trustingly and found, too late, that there was nothing there. She pitched forward and found herself for the second time in less than an hour tumbling bewildered through the dark. The Lump tumbled after her and they fell together.
When Jasper woke she was sprawled in a heap at the base of the tower. She blinked and shook her head and blinked again. All around her was yellow. It took her a minute to realize the yellow was actually dandelions, a sea of them, stretching as far as she could see. She craned her neck and stared up at the top of the tower, wondering how she’d come from being trapped inside it to dumped unceremoniously on the ground at its feet. After a minute she shrugged. Too many incomprehensible things had happened too fast for her to process them all. She glanced around for the lump and found it sitting nearby. She stood up, stretched, and grinned. She had no idea where she was, but at least it was different. “Lump?” she said. “Any idea where to go from here?” It blinked a few times, and for a minute she was afraid it might start crying again, but it simply crinkled up its funny mouth and smiled. Jasper grinned back. “Well then.” She said. “This way looks good.” And off they set, over the endless fields of yellow.
The thing that used to sit in the corner was very happy. Now it had a name. No longer was it “The Thing in the Corner.” It was called Lump. The girl had come and given it a name and led it out into this yellow heaven. It knew it would follow her blindly to the ends of the earth. It smiled and blinked away a tear.
They had been walking for hours. Jasper was beginning to get tired. She remembered Dorothy in the poppy fields and wondered nervously if dandelions had any soporific effects. She didn’t think so, but then you could never be sure. She also found herself wondering if they were edible. A while later she couldn’t afford the luxory of wondering. She sank to the ground and pulled up a plant. She squinted at it, trying to decide which part was most appealing. Or at least the least unappetizing. “What do you think Lump? Leaves, stem, flower, roots?” She had taken to talking to it occaisonally as they plodded along, even though she knew better by now than to expect anything in reply but a slow blink. For lack of anything better, she decided to try the leaves. It seemed faintly cruel to eat the cheerful yellow flowers. She took a bite, and gagged. Bitter. Very bitter. But it was food, she supposed. After a bit her growling stomach won out over her recoiling tongue. She choked down some more leaves until her strength returned. Then she held out a handful to the lump. “Want some? Can’t say I recommend it, but…” Lump blinked earnestly. Jasper shrugged. “Whatever. Maybe lumps don’t need to eat.” But then the lump leaned forward, slowly opened its mouth, and took a bite of dandelion. The flower part. It was the first food it had ever eaten. Lump chewed slowly, as if considering. Then it swallowed audibly and took another. And another. And another. It ate and ate and ate, as if that first flower had unleashed a ravenous hunger. Which, in fact, it had. Jasper watched and smiled. “Silly lump.” Then she yawned a mighty yawn, stretched out on her back and settled down for a nap in the sun.
When she awoke the sun was still shining brightly. She wondered if it ever set here. She had know way of knowing how long she’d slept, but it felt like quite a while. The sun had moved though, so she supposed it would get dark sometime. She realized with a start that in a large circle all around her there was only the green of dandelion stems, no yellow flowers. At the edge of the circle sat Lump, happily munching away. She grinned to see it. “Good, are they?” It saw she was awake and smiled its slow wrinkled smile.
Jasper turned and squinted back at the tower. It had certainly gotten smaller, yet the far craggy mountains seemed to have come no closer. “On we go then.” She thought. “Come Lump!” And she marched off through the dandelions, with the lump ambling chewingly behind.
Darkness came slowly. The dandelions seemed to hold the sun’s rays, or even make their own light. But dusk did fall, blue and grey and purple. Stars appeared overhead, but none she knew. By the time it was quite dark she and Lump had reached the foothills of the mountains. Jasper was too exhausted to notice the surrounding country, she simply sank into relieved sleep. Her last thought that night was to wonder if lumps made good pillows. They did.
Lump lay on its back and gazed in wonderment at the night sky. It had never seen stars before. There were many things it had seen that day that it had never seen before, but stars were the most momentous. Except perhaps for the girl. It didn’t know her name. How could it? But everything good that had happened in its life it owed to her. Her soft black head was pillowed on its stomach. It felt good to be needed.[pre][/pre][/pre][pre][/pre][pre][/pre]
