Eccentric Flower:199907/Hecate continues to taunt me

I am making this Hecate story my personal vendetta. I have never been this frustrated by a piece of fiction, never. I will not be satisfied until it comes out the way I want.

That's not meant to imply that my six efforts so far have been atrocious. For example, I hope I didn't lead you to think that I felt yesterday's excerpt was bad - it could have been turned into a very nice story, but it's not the story I want. One of the problems is that I'm not sure what the story I want is exactly. I'll keep trying until I get it.

Meanwhile you get the benefit of another fragment to read. I wrote about 2500 words tonight, until I realized just now (half past midnight) that I really shouldn't make the story more than about 4000 words long and if I kept at this pace I would have a lot more than that. Furthermore it seemed like the person speaking in the fragment below is carrying too much of the narrative burden. The protagonist of the story should be the woman who owns the manor (the same woman who told the previous excerpt), not the woman exploring it.

Just as last time I omitted some introductory material which explained some things (i.e. the references to the protagonist's hair), here you won't understand some details about the house and the invisible servant who inhabits it ... but that's okay, you'll get the idea. Oh, and this fragment breaks off quite abruptly - you've been warned.

If you're thoroughly sick of reading story fragments by now, don't despair. In a moment I'm going to post another entry with all of the commentary I didn't post this weekend because I was busy writing about Hecate's Curse.

I knew it was superstitious country, but I didn't know the full truth of it until that bed and breakfast last night. I told them where I was going and I swear they were ready to throw me out the door right then. Oh, I heard some stories last night. I asked them if they'd be so good as to hold my bags, but they way they nodded, my things'll be divided up among the village girls by now. Well, I hope they have some young men to admire how they look in their new designer knockoffs. I may not pass through there again even if I do come back.

I'm just surprised there's really a house here, under all this forest. The trees have taken over; some are growing through the roof. Or did someone go a little nuts and build a house that accomodated the trees?

The front doors are huge; ten feet of heavy wood, crossbeams, doors like the front gate of a castle. I knock. My knock is pitiful. It doesn't even resound against all that wood. I don't think anyone's in there anyway. I pull on one of the large wooden handles, and to my surprise the door opens easily. It doesn't even creak. Doors in horror movies are supposed to creak.

I look ahead down a dark corridor, very forbidding, except that even as I look, lights are coming on along its length. Electric? No. I can't see yet, but they glow in a pale green way. I step a few feet into the hall, and I feel something brush past me, a light touch. The door closes quietly.

All things are possible, I remind myself. I walk on, slowly, letting my eyes adjust. Then I gasp. The light source is statues, human statues, lifesize. They are hollow and their surface is transparent, glass or something else. Inside them the green fire burns; they are completely filled with it. Their glassy skin diffuses and softens it.

They all look - not happy, exactly. Ecstatic, like they're in the middle of something that's pushing their pleasure buttons too much for their brains to process. I touch one of them - a female figure. I touch her on the chest, below the breasts, where the point of her sternum would be.

I got a bad electric shock once. It was fun. A rush as your heart is accelerated without your permission, a feeling of something warm flowing into your body, the way your skin tingles so hard it hurts.

I was sitting on my ass in the hallway, putting the pieces together and wondering if the tip of my finger was burned - it wasn't - and why was I still alive? I didn't even see the spark. Part of my brain wanted to do it again.

If I hugged one - well. Maybe later.

After three or four of the green statues, the hall opened into a huge room. I could barely see the ceiling. In each corner of the room a tree grew - yes - roots in the floor, branches in the ceiling. The light came from a round fire pit in the center of the room, a hole in the floor with a low stone wall around it. The fire sputtered and then expanded as if someone were stoking it. The smoke rose straight up, without trying to choke the room. Updraft, I suppose.

The room has six corners and six doorways - one of them the way I came in. Is this house really big enough to have five wings?

Well, eeny meeny miney moe doesn't work with six. I close my eyes and put one hand on the low wall around the fire. I walk in circles, keeping my hand on the wall and my eyes shut. I open my eyes and walk to the doorway I'm nearest. If it's the entry hall again, I'll leave - or hug one of the statues until I die with my muscles twitching.

This hall tilts down. It'd have to be going underground. That would explain why it's cooler down here. I thought the fire was a little much for this weather.

The floor is covered in some sort of blue fungus. It looks like mold, but it glows. A good thing, because the hall is not only steep, it's twisty, and I need the light so I don't fall. There are a lot of doors along the way, little short doors like I've descended into the land of the gnomes. In fact, toward the end of the corridor I have to stoop a little bit because the ceiling is not doing its part. Then it opens out again into a large cave. At least I think it's a cave. The fungus stops there and I can't see anything but a big black open space.

Someone presses something into my hand and I spin. I'm holding a torch - I mean an open flame, not a flashlight. It crackles and I move it away from my body quickly. Whoever gave it to me certainly moves fast. But the intention is clear.

I move forward. The walls of the cave must be far away. I feel like I'm walking in a void, that the ground only exists in a narrow circle where the torchlight falls, and as soon as I move on, it vanishes again.

Then something is in front of me and I make a sharp noise and stop. In fact, I step backwards. Collecting myself I move the torch closer. It is - well, I'm not sure I know what it is.

It looks like a person. But it's not a person. It's a statue of a person, a pale white-gray-brown mottled thing; very realistic, but - Oh, heavens, it's a mushroom. It's a gigantic fungus, growing out of the dirt floor, and it's shaped like a human.

Its eyes are closed, thank goodness. It has a peaceful expression, like it's found bliss. Its hands are on its hips, attached to the hips actually, grown in a single connected mass. Who did this? How do you do this, train something to grow like this? This isn't topiary. You'd be able to tell if it had been carved or clipped into this shape. It hasn't.

Maybe it wasn't always a mushroom. He. Maybe he wasn't always a mushroom.

I realize all of a sudden that I should have been dropping breadcrumbs. I hope I had been walking in a straight line, but under these conditions, who could be sure? I decide to turn around and find my way back before I get too deep into the cave.

I'm concentrating on retracing my steps and I run straight into another mushroom-statue. It's soft and cushions me, but it gets the worse of the collision; little pieces of mushroom come loose and fall on the ground. I put my hand to my mouth: Now I've done it. The statue's missing a nose and a chunk of arm and some fingers, and the whole thing's tilted a little like I've uprooted it. I try to straighten it. What if I've damaged someone's lifelong hobby? I pick up one of the larger pieces that I've broken off, brush off dirt. Well, no hope of gluing it together. Now what?

The chunk of mushroom smells really good. I am hit with the temptation to nibble on it, like Alice, and see what happens. Of course, it's probably poisonous. I'll probably begin spitting out black bile and die ... and frankly I'd rather go hug one of the green-fire statues ... and I've already eaten it. What? Why did I do that?

Oh, now I'm dizzy. That wasn't a smart thing to do. On the other hand, it feels really ... good ... Oh. I want to touch myself, rub my hands along my arms and legs and my crotch, just so I can feel my skin. But I don't want to move. I just want to stand here and feel this, let it happen. Mmm. Oh, wait - there's the entrance, I can see it now, my vision's all funny. I don't remember where I dropped the torch. I should leave. I don't want to move. In fact, my feet won't move. My feet won't move?

I pull hard, struggling to lift one foot. Finally it comes out of the ground. I pull loose the other foot; by the time I do that, the first foot is trying to stick to the ground again. I shuffle forward, one step at a time, keeping my feet in motion. My body feels wonderful; it wants to stop and be overjoyed and not worry about this nasty movement stuff. Then I'm out of the cave and my skin is a pale gray color - or maybe that's the blue light of the fungus.

I dropped the torch back there. I don't think there's anything there that can burn, is there? I should go back in and get it. No, that's not a good idea.

I decide the thing to do is to get away from the cave as fast as I can. I go up the hall and duck through the first little tiny door I can find.