alistairmather

greetings once again from the cancerous depths of my poisoned mind. i know its a day early, but i am trapped here for shift number two of the day and i felt the need to do something worthwhile on company time... so here it is.

welcome to this weeks electro-textual installment in the continuing Adventures of Hunter Cartwright. this week, we catch our first glimpse of that most magnificent of heros and one of his most trusted, and toothsome, comrades.

Four

Black. The empty black eye of a gun bore giving way to the metallic black sheen of the gun itself. A million miles away from that black, unblinking eye, I can vaguely make out delicate white fingers. Fingers whose tiny oval nails are painted a deep shade of blue.
I hesitantly move my eyes from that one, baleful black eye and look up into the two most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.
They are at first glance green. The green of a dewed field on a perfect spring morning. The glinting green of an emerald held in the last failing rays of dusk. As I watch they seem to catch and change the light, wandering from brilliant green to glowing yellow, while browns, and blues, and grays dance at the edges of reflective black pupils.
Slowly, other details start to seep in around the hypnotic pull of those eyes. Skin as white and as unblemished as costliest ivory. A tiny delicate ear, slight drifting strands of dark hair curling around it. Hair, cut short, seeming now to be black, now brown, now darkest red, always looking as if it has been frozen in the moment of a sharp breeze. Small, thin lips the softest shade of pink, now pursed tight in concentration. A nose, slightly broad, but the perfect size and shape for the soft, round face it rests upon.
And those brilliant, enthralling eyes from which I cannot pull my own gaze for more than a moment.
I fall in love immediately.
If you so much as blink I will blow whatever passes for your brains all over the fucking road.
For a long moment this does not even register. It is said in such a conversational tone. The tone of someone who is absolutely certain of them self. Someone who fears nothing and has never felt the need to make an idle threat. Someone who just happens to be the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.
I continue to gape in awe and incomprehension. I am suddenly struck by how I must appear to her: clothes torn and covered in blood and bile and filth, face pale, eyes wild, bits of gore spattered over an ashen complexion, jowls quivering with fear and adrenaline. A filthy, overweight boy on his knees, eyes still red with tears, chin still sticky with vomit.
I must look a horror to this angel.
Now, she says with a voice that is throaty and low and perfect, I am going to ask you some simple questions. Move nothing but your mouth when you answer. If you move anything aside from your mouth, I will shoot you. If I do not like the answers you give me, I will shoot you. If I just feel like it, I will shoot you.
She stares at me, never a single moment of doubt in those hypnotic eyes. I am still entranced, still in shock, still sure I am dead. I could not consciously move if I wanted to.
The moment stretches out. I realize that I am still trembling uncontrollably, the occasional errant tear still leaks from my eyes. I am moving, shaking, twitching to the crazed rhythm of over taxed muscles and shot nerves. I am absolutely certain she is going to pull that trigger if I cant get control of myself, but I have no idea how.
As I struggle futilely for control, I am struck by how stupid it is to have just survived the past few, what is it seconds? minutes? it feels like days, only to die now. What was the point of being spared one death only to immediately fall to another? Its like the punch line to one of those horrid jokes I never really understood back in my boarding school days: whats red and stiff and wrinkled and makes grown women scream?
Crib death infants.
For the second time today, I give up and resign myself to death.
I am still trembling, still trapped by those haunting eyes, when she asks her first question, Who are you?
Shock and relief hit me like a splash of cold water. I was so sure the next sound I would hear, should I have lived long enough to hear anything, would be the report of a gun, that I am unable to answer her. I just stare, a distant part of me noting that I have stopped trembling, ceased the whiney little sobbing in the back of my throat, am now in fact both still and silent. For a moment, the world is still and silent with me, and then I notice the slightest of contractions in her pupils, the tiniest of movements at the corner of her eyes, and my mouth opens quickly to answer her.
Warren Derleth, if I dont miss my guess.
The voice is not mine. It is rich and charismatic. The voice of a man who is used to speaking to large crowds, for whom holding a conversation with one is no different then discoursing with an entire room. An educated, sophisticated, and well known voice.
I look to the top of the stairs and see him standing there on the landing, outlined by the light pouring through the broken door. The master of the house. The man whom I was sent here this night to meet.
Professor Hunter Cartwright.


Authors note: i don't know how storytelling works for other people, but for me it can be a very long process. most of my stories start with a single image/notion that haunts the back of my mind. over time, i catch more glimpses of characters, scenes, contraptions, over hear an occasional conversation, come to learn bits and pieces of the world and characters that will inhabit the story. i add and polish bits and pieces during this stage, learn or find names, begin to recognize characters and their roles, understand a little of what and who they are. then one day, i sit down and find that there are words for what is happening. to be honest, i have no real idea (just hints and clues right now) where the story is going till it appears as words before me.

with that in mind, The Adventures of Hunter Cartwright have been kicking around in my head for sometime now. it started as an image of a red haired man in formal dress and aviator's goggles firing a pair of pistols into a mechanical object, and a name. from there i learned of the world and characters that inhabited that place. in most of my writing, the hardest part is finding names. a name is what will identify and complete any character, make them a real thing and not just an errant thought, give them true life in essence. for the first time, this was not the case. instead the names were the easiest part for me, whereas the hardest became learning about my main female chaarcter.

i knew bits and pieces of who she was: a name, a voice, a personality who's conversations i had been eavesdropping on, but i could only catch the most tenuous of images of her. i knew she had that classic sultry look of the twenties and thirties, and that it was combined with this almost child like innocence, but i just could not pin it down in my head, and most assuredly not on paper.

and then one day, a new set showed up on this website and i found myself looking into the face of Stacia Brennar. it is my full intention (once i figure out how to get the silly testimonial option to work that is) to offer my sincerest gratitude to the young woman who gave Stacia her appearance, and thank her for being that tenuous blend that fit her flitting images so well. if i have done my job well, some reader out there should easily be able to determine the true face of Ms Brennar.

good luck.