Creative Fiction Writing by Buell Hollister
The Girl in the Picture
By Buell Hollister
The oval photograph was in a small, hinged case, worn and battered and its latch had long ago ceased to function. It had been among the many pictures of relatives and friends on my grandparents’ dresser, some of which were unidentified. It was understandable. Everyone knows their names, they must have thought. Then my grandparents died some 65 years ago and now no one knows who she was. It’s too late to find out – the picture was taken in the 19th century. She is quite young – perhaps 14 or 15 – but she has a cool, assessing look that bespeaks a much older soul. She is attractive; her hair pulled back behind her ears. She is wearing a necklace made of large links, probably silver. Her black dress is cut wide at the shoulders, showing a nice neck. She is sitting, her elbows resting on the chair’s arms and her head is turned slightly to the right, looking confidently at the great bellowed camera’s lens and through that, deeply into the photographer’s eyes. And now mine. Her expression is grave, yet there’s a hint of humor in it – or at least the capacity to laugh. The photographer might not have been a stranger as there isn’t the slightest hint of hesitancy on her face. Most old photographs like hers are of people abnormally stiff - even dour. Exposure times were long and the subject had to concentrate on being as still as a statue while sitting in front of a big strange, hooded contraption. The photographer would have been almost invisible with only his legs protruding beneath a black sheet over everything to keep stray light out. It must have seemed vaguely menacing. The technology then wasn’t conducive to grinning at all, yet this girl has a sense of naturalness, almost as though she was humoring the photographer. She is looking at him or her (and me) in a glance that jumps over a century and a half. Of course I knew the molecules in the emulsion itself – the ones that had been seared into varying shades of darkness by photons - were all that still existed of her from 1875 or so; light that had come from the sun and reflected against her face and upper body, then bounced back into the camera. Yet there she is, looking through the photographer and all those years, straight at me. I like to imagine the smile that is almost visible in her face, just below the surface of her measured gaze, was meant for me, someone who would be born many generations after she had left the earth. It was meant for me, not the person who took the picture, nor the one who ordered it taken. I know this to be an immutable fact.
The Door is a Jar
By Buell Hollister
The door is a jar. The jar is not open. How can a door be a jar, anyway; if doors were jars and the jars were on the walls of houses, you would have to go in and out through the windows. Come on, now, really! This silly little dialogue was pulling me to the surface like water wings. But I didn’t have to pee that much, and I wasn’t thirsty either, so I turned over. I was on my right side; now the left was much more comfortable. It was cold in the bedroom, but warm under the thick blanket and worn flannel sheets. I had a small pillow between my knees and a larger one, very comfortable and fitted precisely under my head. Before I had taken three more breaths, I was asleep again.
Now I was walking on a sidewalk. I was in a city I knew well and was going to a part of it that beckoned me, a place where the pleasant surprise was. I knew a shortcut underground in a train station that had many levels. It had the not unpleasant subway smell of old grease and electricity. It wasn’t well lit and the view down the tunnels was dim. On each level trains came and went, and now and then I had to cross tracks to get to the right one. Bright kiosks selling magazines were everywhere. Finally, I boarded the one I was looking for and found an empty seat. I looked out at the platform and watched it slide away slowly, then faster; I realized that it was the train moving and not the platform, still crowded with people, but the motion was so gentle as to be unnoticeable. After a while I saw we were no longer in a tunnel but in the country, with fields and pastureland stretching out, distant mountains in their far reaches. I got out.
The mountains made me realize I could fly. I’d forgotten that I could fly, and it occurred to me that I had forgotten before – and flown before -- in other dreams. I knew I was in a dream remembering the other dreams. All I needed to do was will myself into the air, to overcome the awkwardness that held me to the ground. Suddenly, after gathering myself together and making a jump, I was flying -- the ground falling away and its things were getting smaller. At first, I was afraid of falling, but my confidence grew and I began to soar towards the mountains. I was now as high as their peaks and when I came closer I could see in great detail their tree lines with their scraggy, thin borders between gravelly rock and thinning green growth; the high-altitude grass and moss penetrated by rock and then, even higher, snow covering everything. I wasn’t cold or uncomfortable, just curious. I flew over the top of the nearest mountain and kept going above the darkening atmosphere, yet I could breathe. Like an astronaut, I could see the thin nimbus of air around the curved earth and then the blackness of space everywhere. I was happy. When I looked down again, the Earth was as small as a marble.
My left shoulder woke me about then, a sense of discomfort radiating from it – an evil solvent dissolving my dream. I lay there for a while, feeling annoyed. I wanted to go back and rolled onto my right side and before I knew it, I was asleep again, but I was back on the sidewalk in the city. There was an unleashed dog sniffing around and wagging its tail. It approached me, and I escaped in the crowd going down the stairs to the same station. I boarded the first train I saw and got out again at the next stop, still underground. I was lost, and knew that this last train was not going into the country. A long, long escalator jiggled me up for such a long time that I began to wonder if it was inside another mountain and that I would emerge above the tree line like the one I had just seen. But then I was on a city street that I knew – it had a little shop that sold antique ship models and old books, a place that somehow was still in business despite eBay. I went in to the sound of a faint jingle and, just as I had in the subway, was aware of a signature odor – this one of tung oil and dust. A big model of an old tramp steamship was on the counter, black hull, white superstructure and buff brown decks. Little shining brass winches and railings and suddenly I was on the deck, right next to the bridge. I smelled the sea and oily steam and it was cold. The door to the bridge was ajar and I went inside to get warm. The captain was standing near the helmsman. The captain looked at me – his hands were clasped behind his back and he was on the stout side. His eyes had seen many horizons, many sunrises; his uniform was wrinkled but still neat and his cap had a strip of salt, green-tarnished braid. He gave an order to a steward, who disappeared then came back almost immediately with a mug of hot coffee. It felt wonderful and I took a long drink. I thanked the captain and turned to the steward to do the same thing, but he was gone.
Welcome aboard the Inchcliffe Castle” said the captain. “My name is Captain Ball.”
And then the real adventure began.