| Courtesy: moviescontinued.wordpress.com |
Today’s
Prompt:
After a long night out, you return to your
house to find that every picture and painting in your house can speak to you.
What do the characters in the artwork and photographs say? Write a conversation
between you and one of them, or a conversation between two of them.
Word Count: 1,118
The
telephone was ringing. Willis groped for the light switches on the wall beside
the jamb and threw a switch.
And
there was light.
He
shut the door and locked it. The phone was still ringing and he hauled his butt
into the sitting room hoping to get it on the second ring. He made it barely,
grabbed the receiver and put it to his ear.
Silence.
Willis knew the hum of a dead line. The caller probably hung up.
He
replaced the receiver then heard something that made him jam it back in his
ears. Nothing from the other side of the receiver.
“That’s a bit odd.” Willis thought
he’d heard caterwauling. He didn’t keep a pet, never cared for them anyway. So
when he heard the shrill of a cat, he thought his caller was back on. He was
wrong, obviously. “It’s all in my head. It’s been a long night.”
However,
that didn’t stop him from trying to catch a late-night news. He picked up the
remote and would have powered on the tube if he had not heard the voices. Willis paused with the remote
still in his hand. He looked like a character from a Sci-Fi flick about to tune
in on the intergalactic frequency.
Whisperings
filled the hush of the room as if the speakers were taking a crack at shutting
him out of their conversations but falling short, nevertheless. Willis twirled
on his heels and made it just in time to see the portrait of Garfield, a bad
painting actually—a gift from his young nephew—talking to a portrait of the cat from Alice in Wonderland.
Willis
lived a big chunk of his life inside fiction stories and movies. A picture on
the wall of his room talking to another picture didn’t put him off him in the
least. He rather found it amusing.
“How can you do that?”
“Do what?” Garfield put a paw to
his mouth. “You can hear us? How come you
can hear us?”
Willis
shrugged. “I don’t know. Cause you’re whispering
too loud?” he suggested.
“Hey! Guys. Wake up. Willis can
hear us.”
Brooks
started gushing. The vowels rose clear, sweet, and bounced off the walls of the
room. Birds chirped against a background of painted sunsets. Winds from painted
prairies whooshed through the apartment. Willis observed as a sprinkle of snow
settled on furniture.
He
heard Jimi Hendrix speak into his mind. ‘Craziness
is like heaven.’ He understood it now; it was perfectly clear and he loved
it.
“This is all so crazy and it is heaven.”
“Turn out the lights,” Garfield
said. “For a chance to see your wildest fantasy.”
“What?”
“The lights. Turn ‘em out. It’s
not every day you see a picture talking. It’s for a reason. Turn out the
lights. ‘It is only the eyes of a child
that fears a painted devil.’” Garfield quoted Shakespeare.
“Yeah, but you guys ain’t
exactly animated anymore than I am. You can do stuff now.”
Nevertheless,
Willis hit the switch and darkness fell on his living room.
He
awoke to a soft tumble of rushing water and the scent of exotic flowers.
“He killed me. Funny, isn’t it,
I trusted the portrait of a cat and got myself murdered.” Willis didn’t know
whether to laugh or cry.
“Follow me.”
Willis
raised his head and found a boy rugged
like someone who spent the best part of his day in the mountains.
“Come with me,” the boy repeated
when Willis didn’t move.
Something
stirred inside Willis and his anxieties melted away. Wonder overwhelmed him. Something
about the boy prodded his curiosity.
Willis had a hunch they’d known each other in another lifetime like the picture
of an unfamiliar person you discovered filed away in an album tagged Family.
“How far is it?” Willis couldn’t
explain for the life of him why he said that. He ought to be yelling somebody get me the hell out of here. Instead,
he was excited about their journey.
“This way. It’s not far at all.
Come.”
Willis
had heard it said many times, the site
took my breath away but never before had the reality of those words hit him
like a one-two punch to the midsection. He saw rocks polished and transparent
like glass; marbles whiter than snow like a specter picked out of a
Michelangelo sculpture. The entire scenery gave a strong impression of an
exotic painting brought to life. Beauty lush and green, light and shade
standing out in deep contrast, music ringing through the air like a voiceover
on a TV ad, gave this magical place depth and meaning that was beyond expression.
“Where is this place? What is this place?”
“You will find out soon enough.”
When
the boy touched Willis’ hand, Willis
felt like he’d been lifted up and away from himself into a realm too
magnificent to be anything else but heaven. One moment the duo were on a path paved
with rocks the next instant, Willis found himself seated on the limb of a
mighty tree. A tree that talked and walked.
Willis
looked into the distance and saw two figures. They could have been boys and
they could have been dwarfs but one thing was certain, their journey had worn
them out and they were intent on ending it as soon as possible.
The
boy who had brought Willis to this
place of wonder sat on a branch beside Willis on the walking, talking tree.
“Does the word Ents strike a chord?” He
asked.
Of
course, it did but its significance at that moment was lost on Willis. He nodded
his answer. He didn’t know how else to respond. He just wanted to be left alone
to take in his fill of the scenery before he went back home if they released
him to return home.
“The figures in the distance,
who are they? How come their journey wears them out yet they would not turn
back? Why is it so important that they finish it?”
The
boy looked into Willis’ eyes and
Willis noted he wasn’t a boy at all.
“I told you I wanted to show you your greatest childhood fantasy and I have.
Off you go, boy.”
That
side of reality had begun to slip away from his grasp when the boy revealed his identity. The great
wizard Gandalf the Grey had given Willis
a quick tour of Middle Earth in the guise of a mountain lad.
The
two figures Willis had glimpsed in the distance were who else but, Frodo and
Samwise.
His
last thought before he dropped through the hole into our side of reality was,
Jimi Hendrix was right; ‘Craziness
is like heaven.’
Eneh Akpan
June
18, 2013
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