OK folks, you may recall the previous post “Here, try this.” It has turned into a fascinating detective story that I am going to call The Case of the Missing Plot. It is all unfolding inside of the Exquisite Family Records Archive. I am getting close to having most of chapter one worked out. I’ll post chapter one in bitesized parts over the next number of days. It has been keeping me busy day and night. I am even dreaming it at night when I sleep. That’s wild.
Each of the chapters of the eventual novel will open with one of 14 short stories from the desks of different authors of an unfolding exquisite corpse game that is happening in concurrence with the story. here is the first
THE CASE OF THE MISSING PLOT
Chapter One - The Fragment Enters
From the Desk of Murasaki Shikibu
On the morning they became aware, a sheet of paper lay between them on the table.
It was not of imposing size, resting as it did upon the low lacquered surface, yet it occupied the center of the chamber with a composure entirely its own. The room had been arranged in the customary manner. Screens painted with pale autumn grasses stood partly drawn, and beyond them the garden’s maples had only just begun to relinquish their green. A faint breeze stirred the blinds, carrying the scent of damp earth and the lingering sweetness of chrysanthemums set out earlier that week for viewing.
Light entered obliquely through a narrow aperture in the shutters, falling across the paper in a long, restrained band.
The two gentlemen did not immediately look at one another. Each was aware of the other’s presence as one senses a figure behind a screen, close enough to alter the air, distant enough to remain undefined. Their sleeves, layered according to rank and season, brushed softly against the tatami as they adjusted their posture. Neither spoke. To speak prematurely, in such a circumstance, would have betrayed impatience unbefitting their station.
The paper had been folded once and then reopened and laid flat upon the surface with the evidence of the crease still visible.
The lower edge extended slightly beyond the table’s lacquered lip, as though the page itself had not yet decided where it properly ended.
Upon the crease lay a small bud, tightly furled, its outer petals pressed close in quiet discipline. It bore the faint bruising of having traveled, as though carried within a sleeve. Perhaps it had been gathered at dawn from the eastern garden but that could not be determined from observation. It possessed no urgency. It rested, and in resting it seemed to suggest that whatever it was, it would become only what it already was.
One of the gentlemen, though he did not yet know what it meant to initiate such an act, felt his attention drawn toward the fold. His hand moved slightly from within his sleeve, then made a subtle gesture as if inviting his companion to take up the brush and write a poem. The other, who seemed to understand that watching may, in certain moments, be more exact than acting, attended instead to the bud’s edge, where a petal had thinned almost to translucence.
The paper lay without impatience indifferent to their presence as it bathed in the morning rays of the sun.
There were no visible marks upon it. Yet both men sensed, without turning their heads, without the smallest alteration of expression, that the page had already begun something neither had yet written. Its stillness suggested prior contact, as though it had once received words that now lingered beyond the reach of sight.
Outside, a single leaf loosened itself from a branch and fell, brushing briefly against the veranda before coming to rest.
They were aware of their breathing.
They were aware of time passing, though no drum from the watch announced it.
Neither spoke.
Beside it rested a writing implement neither of them remembered placing there.
to be continued
When I read that title, I can't help but think of that line from the Firesign Theatre!
I love the details and the enigmatic vibe. What's going to happen?