The Wispy Woodsy Willows and Other Strange Stories

By Elias Rafferton

Delight yourself in this curious volume where you will find five distinctly original stories.

"The Institute"
An unnamed narrator desperately seeks a way out, questioning his circumstances and the unbelievably complacent populace around him. Rumors of "adults" and the "outside" spur him on, while the mysterious "ice corridor" beckons his arrival.

"The Majestical Mystery Cure"
A young man by the name of Rudolph attempts to cure hair loss and ends up creating a cure for anything. The results of his discovery are quite comical and rather unexpected. He and his friend Hamilton set out to secure the love of his life and also save all those in need. Good pie is sure to be included!

"Clouds in the Night"
In this chilling tale, Tillman is a young hitchhiker pursued by a mysterious, menacing force. Constantly on the run, he may have finally met his match when he is picked up by a party who lead him up a dangerous mountain. He isn't sure who he fears more: his new companions or his mysterious pursuer. Are they working together? What do they want? And why do the faces in the night sky seem to be getting closer than ever?

"Toy Stand"
Normally, kids sell lemonade at neighborhood lemonade stands. And normally, adults sell toys in toy shops. But not in this story. Meet Martin, a good-spirited young lad who encounters a strange man selling toys at a neighborhood 'Toy Stand'. They don't come cheap, but boy are they worth it. Like Martin, Camille also discovers the wonders of this peculiar operation. But beware Martin's rival Zeek. He is out to steal what's not his, and sabotage the marvels of these spectacular creations!

"The Wispy Woodsy Willows"
Wilbur Wilhite and Wendy Wilson have always wondered why the forest is off-limits for children. There is a clearly marked sign to keep them out. But this warning won't deter them for long. They must find out once and for all what all the fuss is about. They decide to team up. They will leave at midnight... (Written in the style of a poem.)

Also includes two short poems, "Ode to the Void" and "Bitten". From master storyteller Elias Rafferton, be assured you haven't read anything like it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elias Rafferton
• Release date: Aug 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370885565

Elias Rafferton

After spending years trying to figure out life, death, God, Satan, the Devil, heaven, hell, suffering, Buddha, Krishna, Christ, love, sex, dreams, eternity, infinity, samsara, nirvana, mind, matter, energy... and just about everything else of the sort I could possibly get my hands on... I finally reached the 'end of the line'. At 29 years old I realized directly and undeniably that knowledge of the type I sought is fundamentally impossible. With this I also realized in the most complete sense that there is no such thing as a permanent 'ego' or 'self' as I'd always previously assumed by convention.Having experienced these strange and wonderful but somewhat terrifying realizations about the underlying nature of mind and reality, I felt compelled to share. While books of this kind cannot communicate what is incommunicable (of course), they certainly can help one lay the intellect to rest (or at least, such was my own experience). They can help show that ontological knowing according to any conceptual framework whatsoever is in fact fundamentally impossible, and that ego (or 'self') is really just an ever-changing, never-fixed construct of mental phenomena. Hence the book, "Message in a Bottle: The Obviousness of Infinity: An Ontological Inquiry", my feeble attempt to offer what I've learned (or unlearned, I might say) to anyone who similarly seeks 'the end of seeking'.I also like to write fiction (particularly short stories), and generally tend to blend elements of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and the supernatural. My first release is the short story collection "The Wispy Woodsy Willows and Other Strange Stories". I hope you enjoy!

Book preview

The Wispy Woodsy Willows

And Other Unusual Stories

Published by Elias Rafferton, Copyright 2017. All rights reserved.

Contents

The Institute

I

II

III

IV

The Majestical Mystery Cure

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

Last

Ode to the Void

Clouds in the Night

I

II

III

IV

V

Toy Stand

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

Finish

Bitten

The Wispy Woodsy Willows

The Institute

I

The Institute has beige walls, nothing but beige. Beige everywhere. A dry, bland, dreary, sad beige. The beige has seeped into everything. Just imagine, room after room after room of dull, stale, greyish beige, so boring and drab that it makes one want to go blind just to escape it. Seriously, why is there so much beige? Why the same color all over the place?

The Institute is huge. I mean, we are talking HUGE. Room after room after room. There must be thousands of rooms in this Institute, with thousands and thousands of patients. Most rooms house three to five, but some have more and some have less. Each has its own bathroom, which has no decorations and walls slathered in beige. (Jiminy jeepers all that beige.) There are two sinks, a shower and tub, a toilet, and a closet full of linens. Every Sunday we wash our linens in the laundry room.

We each have a bed, drawers, closet space, nightstand, a collection of books to read, a writing table, paper and pencils, and some paint and canvas. Some of the children also have instruments, and on Saturdays we sometimes assemble in the ballrooms to hear them play. We also display our paintings or share the stories we write when gathering in the ballroom on Saturdays, or even on Fridays some weeks too. We have cards, board and video games, and often get together after dinner to play.

During the weeks, we have various activities to complete. Some of us make clothes, and some grow food. Though no one has ever been ‘outside’, we do have growing rooms with very large windows in the ceiling that open in the day, so light can reach the plants, and gases can vent out. There are some herd animals that we grow for food and other goods, including goats, cows, bison, chickens, and ducks. These growing spaces are very large, with ceilings about forty feet high, stretching out thousands of square feet. Grass grows abundantly for the ruminants, and the birds seem more than capable of finding insects and scraps when foraging.  In like manner, there are vast expanses dedicated to spinning cloth for clothes. In the Institute we do not go hungry or bare.

We all wear the same clothes, here at the Institute. A lightweight beige shirt and pants, all one color. It matches the color of the walls. As far as I know, I am the only one who questions the ubiquitous presence of beige. Whenever I mention my distaste for beige to others, it seems they do not understand why I am unsettled about it. For everyone else, beige is a favorite.

Everyone here is a child, no matter their age. I personally know of one fellow who is eighty years old, but is still just a boy. I’ve heard of a girl who lived to be a hundred. However, there are legends of some who are called ‘adults’, though I have never seen or encountered one myself. These people, so the legends go, are not children, like the rest of us. Adults are, supposedly, taller than children, with different features and deeper voices and stronger bodies. They are allegedly very rare. Some say they don’t exist at all. Though I have never seen an adult, (and am therefore not sure of their existence,) I do know someone who claims to have seen one.

Absolutely I did, saw one as plain as day and as dark as night.

Well, what was he like? I asked in return.

I think it was a she, and to be quite honest, she was pretty, um, well... boring. Didn’t say anything, didn’t come too close, just stood off in the distance and watched us.

Did no one approach her?

Oh, some surely did. Some ran right up to her. I watched em’ do it. But after just a minute or so, they came right back, looking disappointed. I asked them what had happened, and they said, ‘Nothing’.

Hmm, I responded, after musing it over a few moments. Well that sounds disappointing."

Exactly. She was boring. There was nothing else to it.

Huh. So all those legends of daring acts of bravery and bravado are just tall tales then, eh?

I guess I can’t say for sure, but nothing special impressed me about this one. However, there was one notable thing that intrigued us all, but only for a moment.

What was that? I asked eagerly, perking up again.

Her clothes. She wasn’t wearing beige, nor was she wearing pants and a shirt like ours.

"What was she wearing?"

It was a single piece, covering her whole body. Guess I don’t know what to call it, though I did find a picture in one of the ancient books, where it was labeled ‘dress’. I think she was wearing what used to be called a dress.

Wow! I exclaimed. I’ve never heard of a dress.

Again it wasn’t exciting or glamorous or anything like that. It did have a lot of different colors, but was otherwise simple and plain. It didn’t go well with beige. We lost interest in it very quickly.

And then what happened?

She left. Turned around and headed out and down the hallway. Like she had just wanted to check in on us and that was it. Never saw her again.

Well, I replied in agreement, That does sound pretty boring indeed.

II

Like I mentioned before, the Institute is humongous. It goes on forever. In fact, nobody knows where it ends, or where it begins. One time, I mustered up quite a bit of determination to find an end, to find some final point where I could not go beyond. I set out down the hallway and just kept walking. I must have gone for days. Walked and walked and walked. I stopped at cafeterias along the way, met some new people, slept in the hallway or on the floor in the rooms of some of the kids that I’d met. I kept going like this for quite a while, but to no avail. As it turned out, not only did I not find an end, but I felt like the farther I went the bigger the Institute was getting! The Institute actually seemed to grow larger with every step towards the ‘end’ that I took. Finally I had to give up and turn around.

How did I get to this Institute? Good question. I don’t really know. I think I’m about twenty years old, but I’m not sure. Was I born here? I have asked others how they got here, and most say that they’ve always been here, and that there is nowhere else to be.

What about outside? I once asked my roommate.

Outside where?

The Institute. What is outside the Institute?

Outside the Institute? What do you mean, ‘Outside the Institute?’

"You know, on the outside. Out there. I pointed up. Outside these beige walls?"

Out there? sounded an incredulous response. Out there is nothing. Nothing at all.

There are windows in the Institute, plenty of them. As mentioned, the field rooms have windows in the ceiling, but also the hallways, bedrooms, dining quarters, game rooms, ballrooms, music halls, and pretty much every other room all have windows in the walls looking out. Even the laundry rooms and bathrooms have windows. But strangely, these windows only look into more of the Institute. They reveal only more hallways, more rooms, and more beige. Forever and ever. Beige walls, beige halls, beige people. Room after room after room. But how, then, you might ask, did I get the idea of an ‘outside of the Institute’ in the first place?

Mainly, I developed this strange notion of an outside because of the windows (or ‘skylights’ as they are sometimes called) in the field rooms. They look into an expanse that seems to go forever upward, which is possibly even larger than the reach of the Institute itself. Usually during the day there is a bright light shining through the field room windows, which we call the Blaze, and through which on occasion water pours in. We collect this water in giant basins for distribution within the Institute. At night, when all the lights in the Institute are turned off, we sometimes gather in the fields to gaze at what we call the twinks, which are the jewels of the night.

One day, looking up at the bright light pouring in, shining upon the animals grazing in the field, I thought to myself, "What’s up there, outside the windows, from where the light shines in and the water pours down? To where does that go, and where does it end?"

Now, when this thought occurred to me, I naturally assumed it would occur to almost anyone else who looked up at the Blaze, twinks, and the mysterious expanse that was holding them in place. I mean, what else could one possibly think upon making this observation? However, as seemed unfailingly to be the case, when I asked others for their thoughts, they thought I’d gone loopy.

What’s out there, above the roof, where the light shines in and the water pours down? I asked my other roommate.

Above the roof, like up and out beyond the skylights?

Exactly. For instance, if we stacked all the ladders we can come up with on top of each other, and just kept climbing, up and out, where would we then be? The look on his face was response enough; pure bewilderment.

Why would we ever do anything like that? I suppose we’d topple over well before we made it to the top. I didn’t press the question further.

There is one area that is strictly off limits in the Institute. We call it the Ice Corridor, but officially it is known as Room 1001. Where there is normally a window for any given room in the Institute, the Ice Corridor has a mirror. Nobody can see in.

There have been stories, tales from long ago, of a few who were said to have disappeared into the ice corridor, never to return. They were said to have been the quiet but inquisitive type, always asking questions to which there were no answers. Namely, these stories tell of folks who were unable to suppress their insatiable curiosity concerning the nature of the icy beyond. One story in particular lives on in infamy, as perhaps the most tragic of all ice corridor accounts.

There was boy, probably about twenty-five or thirty years of age or so, who was very well liked and respected in the Institute. He served as a herdsman, tending to sheep and cows, and was quite adept at his position. The animals seemed to obey his every command, and not a head went missing or sick in his entire tenure. He played the flute quite beautifully, enchanting all who would fill the ballrooms whenever he performed. He was quite a likeable guy.

He started asking questions one day, seemingly out of the blue. Questions like my questions. How did we get here, why all the beige, what’s ‘outside’ the Institute? It was later discovered there was a young girl he liked who’d been ill, and then who’d passed away. It was quite a tragic affair, as she’d been so young at the time and it had occurred so suddenly and unexpectedly. They’d grown quite fond of one another. This wasn’t known by most until after he disappeared. It wasn’t known beforehand that his questions may have been prompted by this loss.

In any case, he kept asking these questions, and became borderline maniacal. He’d spend hours talking to people, dozens one after the next, asking them for answers to his questions. He always got the same empty responses. The more he asked, the more he realized nobody around him knew the answers. He started to believe there might not be any answers, that was no reason or explanation for things, and that there was no outside, no way out. He started to go what we in the Institute call hollow.

Hollowness is quite a frightful thing, so I’m told. It is when you feel so entirely empty inside that you feel as though you no longer exist. Somehow, so they say, you are still living, yet feel entirely absent. No one who describes this condition has ever claimed to have actually experienced it themselves, and there are no known survivors. Anyone taken by the Hollow has either died or, in rarer cases still, disappeared into the ice corridor.

And of course, this is what happened to the young flute playing boy. Reputable, liked, talented, and charming in one moment, then spiraling away the next. After the onset of his inquiries but before the complete onset of his hollowness, he continued playing the flute. His songs because erratic, eerie, violent, and harrowing. Impending doom seemed to be implied, and as his condition progressed, one might say there even seemed to be a hollow quality to his tones and melodies. This sort of spirit was rather quickly disparaged by the Institute at large, and so soon enough he was prohibited from playing in the banquet halls. Just before his disappearance, it is reputed he could still be heard playing in the fields, late at night, faintly, hauntingly.

Finally, one day he could bear it no more. As a few watched on, in the early morning hours, he opened the door to the ice corridor. A frenzied flurry poured out, it is said, into the hall. Without looking back, he stepped in. We are told the door to the ice corridor will not open from other side, but no one heard him try to come back. Nor did any dare to open the door themselves to call after him. After the door shut behind him, he could be seen for just a bit longer as he walked slowly and steadily into the cold darkness beyond.

III

I’ve gone to the hallway with the door to the ice corridor, and indeed quite a strange chill came over me. Looking into the mirror, I received a very unusual feeling, as though this mirror was very different from any other I’d looked into before. Somehow, I felt as though I wasn’t looking at myself, but I also didn’t feel like I was looking at someone else. Even though clear as crystal I saw my reflection, it felt like there was nobody really there at all.

There are warning signs posted all over the door leading to the ice corridor, and throughout all the hallways leading up to it for several hundred yards at least. Even the cafeteria walls are posted with informationals detailing the exact location of the ice corridor with severe warnings against venturing in. One time a few onlookers happened to see me standing up against the window looking in, and one of them quickly shouted that I step back. I turned and saw others, with very concerned, fearful expressions as they watched on. I nodded a bit, as though snapped out of a trance, and stepped back as instructed. Indeed it felt trancelike, in a way, to be peering into the unknown