"Attention"
By The Dead Coral
We desire attention, maybe need it. As time passed, I found my existence began fading from the public. My existence withers, fewer concerns, and people became careless. But when there is no attention from the world, when I shower, for example, my thoughts would become dull, and my discipline expectedly runs loose. When this masqueraded observation cut away its connection, our most primitive, realistic instinct comes to replace our hypocrisy. But when this connection healed itself, a radiant figure would present to the world. It improves us, unconsciously crawling back to the elite figure of us. Our movements...words...all pretended to be gentle. I found that I would convert into a different person, inevitably, no matter how dark or what a goner I am before.
David Leopold White is an ordinary writer who lives in the town of Lorricho. It is a place where nothing is hopeful, a place even death and time may die. Any building here carries more than a century's history, mosses have long grown onto the walls and tiles. Callousness to surroundings has always been a convention to the people who live in Lorricho. Every at least native's great-grandfather settled in Lorricho decades ago--only the ones who have despaired their life migrated to Lorricho. This is a place where the plague won't bother, where the rats don't visit. It is a place near the sea, while the mountains wanton growth. The only way to access is by water or a malicious trip. Simply speech, a god-forsaken place. This is a place romanticism detests, if you are beloved of seafood, there is nowhere better than Lorricho. Even the greatest arithmetician is unable to count the number of ships by the Lorricho Seashore. It is a Lorricho routine to people who lives here, they either wake up at four am or never return if they work nonlocal--to the ones who work nonlocal, renting a little sailboat is the only way for them to work on their business...if they still wanted to return. People who live in Lorricho are all defaulted foreign hatred, originally these relics.
David is the youngest son of one of the richest families in Lorricho, his grandfather owns a harbour in Lorricho and the only library in this town. People considered David autistic, unsociable, and a freak, even in Lorricho. Mockeries, when he was young, forced his only interest to be reading. Books are also the only media Lorritians may know about outsiders. Habits since youth constructed him, and his eccentric but iridescent style of stories. He lives lonely, a decent modern hermit. People in town barely see him in a month, but with a few chances he went to the market or some secret meetings that may seem like the cult. Surprisingly, David has quite a large fan community in Lorricho. Book fans, but not him.
Sun falls by the horizon, the moon levitated with elegance. Where David settled was a small Gothic house which almost invisible without much attention. This small Gothic house was inherited from Mr Henry White, David's great-grandfather. Its usage was only for storage until David grew up and lived alone. Settles on a cliff near the sea, where every author may be inspired the most. Walk inside, it is a classical coffee house appearance. A lobby and three rooms in total, a kitchen, a room facing the sea for his work and his bedroom with a bathroom integrated. Light normally dies at one in the morning in his house.
"...Hurricane corrupted the village, only she survived. In coincidence dramatically saved her life and her mind ended with termination, a skull she became." David yawns, another creation published in his hand. "Silence now, beautifully." eleventh in twelfth am. He laid his work on the table and walks into his bedroom. David has a strange talent, what he dreams was never propitious, but vicious kind. The salient difference between him and ordinary people is he lost the ability to oblivion of his dreams. Confusion about reality and fantasies does not happen inconsistently, it at least curses him two times a week. Once, if the mailman did not be granted the great Athena's intelligence, the anvil of death would have struck David, leading to the demise of walking down the cliff.
A dream, as always. People say dreams are based on their imaginations, but David's dreams do not match any conventions. If any sanity touches his morbid, distorted and macabre madness dream, it is miraculous when they have not gone insane. His sights returned to clarity, a wasteland drew before him. A vivid living hell is where he stands. Crackling he heard, sneaking by the figures around him, stealthily, better not to alert the thing. With a further approach, he captured a glimpse of a short little man in the dim. The conflagrated light source is casting the man's shadow on the floor, even the slimmed shadow can tell the man was a dwarf-like creature. He means he sees the shadow has a human appearance. Two tapping feet on the floor, a pair of hands waving in the air, and merely peeks a nose when it turns. In his experience, humanoid beings in his dream are almost all vicious or scheming, exception only occurs at some same traveller as him who pondered into the dream. A lady David has met is from reality somehow, this lady called herself European, which is some country David never read about in their library. She told David Lorricho is a place where their people told tales about as if Lorricho is a mirage. Flashbacks to the past are not cheerful, David knows humanoid beings are not harmful in the short term and they are mostly willing to provide shelter before their boredom comes and decide to cause a scene until travellers obey. Sometimes a night is long enough to forget who you are. They imitate being kind and caring, but a devious soul masquerades inside them. Follow with considering, is the action of risking. Approaching the humanoid being is wise, it secures him before bad omens.
It is a little old man, performing a dance with a levitating flame. He sees David and a brief confusion appeared, then changed to auspicious kind. "How pleasure," The old man sighed, "another dreamer finally rose on the horizon!" Curios David felt, wondering what man could say such a thing. "Oh! Suspicious indeed, I introduce you to the Great Merlin! Who is me, the greatest wizard was considered English or Tapctian! They never knew I was from Lorricho as well, a decent Lorritian as you are." A quick speculation happens in David, the old man who dances is the legend. The wizard who prophesied the yet future, the fall of Atlantis and the rise of five new continents. Then disappeared when David's great-grandfather was born, becoming a myth and always undiscovered history. "Yes, I was a legend. An antediluvian relic creation of gods above aeons ago. I never had a family, but attention from ordinaries when they developed wisdom. Odd isn't it? Living beings always care about nobility of power, and miracles to them. Even powerful beings just showed a piece of their ability, ordinaries would just praise and wished to become servants. But they do not care about what we feel, our callousness to their will. They only desired how can they use the mighty of extraordinary beings like me, like us. After I got tired of those unstopping conquerors, I retired and took a few of my most sedulous and loyal believers of my to a wasteland. And named it Lorricho. Then I felt bored and walked into the void, fell into a long sleep. You know what is the talent I appreciated you? Your illusions to dreams of ours, down to distorted rebellions, up to the beyond alive and death's gods." Compelling message Merlin divulged, the fact of Lorricho and David's odd talent. David is not credulous, but Merlin's words are persuasive and absolute. "Great Merlin you are, my pleasure. I reckon you summoned my conscious to you. I memorised your knowledge, what task is given? The cluttered mind with an organised theme of dreams is the pattern, what journey is destined for vague attention? Cults to gods are foolish, my physics wriggling to the edge of life. Despite it remains a natural deduction." David's figure steps fogging, and the spirit slowly wanes back to reality. "Five continents mattered by your writings, a dream to you, exist in another realm parallel to Lorricho. Solid attention, with more wills, shall grant. A poetic said languishes the barrier between orders and dreams. It descends daily and indubitably comes to the day they cross like the sky and the ocean. Xenophobic Lorritians are stuck in that same quintessence when I let them interlaced with illusions. A poem fulfils the film."
3:07 am. David's feet touch the ground. He arduously carried his exhausted body groped to the table in the dark. A poem must proceed, he starts chasing inks onto the paper.
Attention
David Leopold White
Early the dreary dream,
a peculiar muse struck us,
Pale hands move in vigilance,
Crawls back to the deck of their belonging.
The utopian boy sails to the horizon,
Corrupted hearts redeem their soul in remorse.
A secluded land with hope no longer forgives,
their hate for mildness,
That gently time reverses black and white,
Equivocal wishes they vanish in chaos,
and the optimistic waffles into dim.
A poem seals the deal, with a dramatic death let it appeals to the attention of the world. Mr White held his notebook tight in his chest, determined, ran to the cliff where if he fall could land in the centre of the town. With a last reminisce to the past, David Leopold White jumped off of the cliff with that note in his hand.
Around eight am in the morning, a woman saw a corpse shockingly, a distorted body which seemed to die because of falling. She did not hesitate to report to the police station nearby. They soon came. A detective saw a notebook the corpse was holding, what thing deserved so much even death may not separate? Pulled it out with the question, a poem shown before him. "What is this? It is not English! There are no towers nearby, how did this man die by falling? But it does look like the Lorritish spoken in tales."
Then he threw it into a trashcan next to him.
A shade in the alley speaks.
Merlin, the mailman, and David's great-grandfather. David died in Lorricho, a corpse that speaks Lorritish appeared in England.
Then the man picked up the notebook from the trashcan, and vanished into the void.