Entry the First: The Quineresk

Hello.

My name is Dan. This blog is the world of my words. I hope you find it worthwhile.

For my first submission, I'd like to introduce a story that is the union of my most vivid childhood memory and a fairy tale creature a friend invented. My friend and I collaborate quite a bit, and the more I thought about the creature, the more I needed to connect it to a human experience. I hope you like it.

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The Quineresk

The drapes hung listlessly behind him, the light falling thick and repugnant like some noxious vapor seeping through the dirty panorama of the living room window. His eyes searched the street with a happy blind expectancy, their faith and excitement shining sad reflections off the glass.

The carpet sculpted rococo into the skin of his knees, and the dust that floated glinting in the faded evening splendor swirled their testament to his lack of movement. And as his mother screamed at his father through a telephone, her voice drifting from the kitchen, down the hallway, and through the drapes, he didn’t hear her words concerning lies and broken promises. He was safe between the cloth and glass, secure against the damnable bitterness of life.

He would wait a bit longer. His father had said he would come.

So he would.

His mother tucked him in that night, while his eyes were open and dry. She whispered an apology when she bent over him, and hissed her hate on her way out the door. The boy confused the two until his numb mind made them the same. The fan on his bedroom ceiling swung its oscillating lullaby. His eyes stayed open for a long time, and though they were still dry when he fell asleep, he woke with them wet.

His skin became a glorious transparency. His heart evaporated under the heat of an earthly hell, adjuring a plain white desire towards a returned disregard.

And of all God’s creatures. Of all that crept on the earth and under the earth, he was by far the most terrible.

He was the Unloved.

He was the Quineresk.