• The Lonely House
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In dark, cramped crawlspace, at the bottom of an eerie and rickety manor house, did and did not lie a tired old man. For he wasn’t a man by our definition, he had no skin, and no blood flowing through his veins. His wit was his tendons, his jollity was his mouth. And the wet grey matter from which all of us derive our intellect and curiosity, to him was instead a small, dense fist sized ball of dreams. For he was no ordinary man, he was the imagined man. The house that contained the imagined man was built on a foundation of stone in an old town two hours out of another smaller town in Montana. Dark foreboding windows that have not glowed with light for many years stood watching a rolling green countryside field, with a single winding road twisting down and out of sight behind the hill on which the decrepit manor was built. No one knew why the house was built, or who lived in it, for such memories had fallen from the public eye. And all that was left to testify to it’s creation was a single smoothed tombstone in the back of a long rotted garden, with the imposing initials, “J.E.”. Wafting streams of content and fulfillment, pulled from the ether by the being of the imagined man, wove through the house. They wound round old clocks, and slithered through rotting banisters, and caressed the crackling paint of failing supports. But though they touched the woodwork and the fabric, not a single spark of ghostly flame ever licked the imagined man. Because despite all that he was, and all that he could be, happiness, fullness, those were not within reach of the imagined man. The specter dutifully brooded in that crawlspace in that rickety manor house on that old green hill upon which sat the worn tombstone which eternally stated, “J.E.”. He knew the world of pleasure, and of friendship, and of camaraderie, was no longer his. His was a world of a purpose met, and a thankless job complete. There would be no wreathes, no mourners for his demise. For all the adventures that abided within his fantastic mind, for all the tales of pirates and lost treasure, of heroic returns to cheering familiar faces, of accomplishment and honor, there was no longer an audience. Faces guffawing in marvel, fragile tiny hands holding aloft a hemp gown as if it were the golden fleece of the Argonauts, eyes wide with wonder, and minds bursting with love, and joy, and dreams of the future. All were gone, all long since buried and turned to dust. All that remains is the shadow of a thought, the imaginary man. And to this day, there he lies in that old house. His mind still full of wonder, the magic of infinite possibility at his finger tips. And lips that still feebly whisper, in a far and ancient voice, an eternal mantra. “Farewell to Jessica Erinhart, oh marvelous J.E.”
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