World Garage: New Short Story Piece - World Garage

The following story is simply the first few pages of something Ive been working on so far. Just figured I’d post this out there, see what people think for some feedback. The story is a bit darker than my normal work so bear with me!

The courtyard that spread out before the entrance to the castle was one of scenic beauty. When it was made it would have been a true masterpiece of landscaping but hundreds of years on the toll of time had given it a strange whimsical feel. The centre of the courtyard was dominated by an impressive fountain, long since dried up, consisting of two dragons locked in battle with one curled around the base roaring at its foe who reared up at an opposing angle. Armies of moss and lichen surrounded the leviathans, pressing up over their wings and across their hides.
The base of the surrounding fountain was filled with dried leaves scattered from trees preparing for the coming winter. The trees obscured the view of the outlying castle walls, years of neglect and growth leaving them wild and clawing up the neighboring stone walls. Cobblestones underfoot had somehow became cracked and uneven, some even inexplicably missing and as they neared the trees they became replaced with wild weeds and savage grass. A few stylized arches formed a wide path around the fountain and to the doors of the castle, some collapsed partially while others remained strong and defiant.
In front of the great oak doors of the castle stood an elderly butler in a clean yet worn black frock suit and white puffed shirt. His head was completely bald, shining almost as brightly as his buckled shoes in the early morning sunlight. His overall appearance stood out sharply against the grays and greens of the castle courtyard, a sharp slice of black cutting into the gentle flow of the vista.
The castle itself dominated the skyline. Towers and buttresses seemed to grow out of the walls in an almost organic manner with broken or cracked windows caked with grime scattered around like some sort of architectural case of dandruff. Its heavy pale grey stones seemed to press into the fabric of reality itself, straining the eyes mildly to look at them.
A young man entered the courtyard cautiously, taking in everything slowly as he made his way to then around the fountain. He looked to be about in his late teenage years; short yet scruffy brown hair adorning his head, slightly large dark brown eyes set into a narrow defined face atop a medium framed body. Rough dark coloured travelling clothes which seem well used and worn kept him warm against the slight chilly wind from the north.
“Impressive is it not, young master.”
The man jumped and focused on the butler, “I’m sorry, I did not see you there.”
The butler offered a curt smile which vanished a fraction of a second later, “Quite. What is your name and what is your purpose here?”
The man composed himself and offered a half bow in return, “I am Jack, and I came here to explore… I thought this castle was abandoned, everyone I’ve spoken to confirmed as much…? Jack let the sentence trail off.
“On the contrary, young sir, there are at present a lot of people in the castle. Some have been with us for years.” The butler turned and opened one of the large doors with surprising ease and stood to the side “Please feel free however to explore, young master.”
Jack took a few steps forward then stopped, looking carefully at the butler, “I’m allowed to go in, just like that? Wont the people who live here be upset?”
The butler shook his head and gave a sharp bark that could have been generously called a laugh. “Of course not, young sir, I doubt they will be angry…”
The butler stepped forward towards Jack and guided him gently by place a hand on his shoulder and pulling him towards the open door. Jack, reluctantly at first, allowed himself to be guided and stepped into the open doorway.
“…after all, no one’s seen them in decades.”
The door slammed shut behind Jack with an ear-drum splittingly loud boom. Jack spun round to see the butler leaning against the door, puffing heavily.
“What, wait….” Jack stumbled to get his words out but stopped as something strange began to happen to the butler. His face slowly melted backwards as if the skin was being sucked off him from behind, revealing dark red muscle and pale tendons before they too followed the skin, vanishing into the door behind, leaving the grinning skull of the butler.
“Have fun, young master.” the skull rattled. The whole door seemed to sigh and rapidly the skeleton crumbled into the butler’s clothes vanishing just as quickly from sight. As the last fragments of bone blinked out, the clothes followed suit and in no time at all there was no evidence that the butler had ever been there.
Jack stood there, dumbstruck. He blinked wildly a few times before patting frantically at the area where the butler had stood. Finding nothing he turned his attention to the door and tried to open it but it may as well have been a wall for it would not budge even in the slightest. Jack slowly stopped shoving and pulling the door and leaned against it with his forehead, looking down at his feet.
A few minutes passed while Jack got his breathing sorted, willing himself to calm down and relax before turning around slowly to take in his surroundings.
He was in a large hallway. At the opposing end, two stairs circled up on either side to meet in the middle on the first floor where a large archway sat. Beneath this a tall magnificent grandfather clock emitted a loud tick which boomed across the pale white marble tiled floor. In the middle of the floor there was a large dark blue thin and frayed rug bearing a silhouette of a two dragons in a similar stance to the fountain, but more stylized. These ones looked more like a ying-yang symbol and didn’t seem to be so much fighting as just resting in a mirrored pose.
Jack walked forward, looking up at the walls to see large portrait paintings of various men seated at desks looking serious and thoughtful. The walls themselves were a dull red, the paint cracked and peeling as it neared the rafted ceiling. Directly above Jack there was a magnificent chandelier with what seemed to Jack like hundreds of candles, all unlit but clean of cobwebs and dust. The whole room was lit by three large windows above the castle entrance, allowing pale sunlight to illuminate the hall within.
Numerous doors left the hallway around the room, all closed aside from one to the left of Jack. This door was slightly ajar and as Jack approached it he started to hear what sounded like someone muttering angrily under their breath in time with a scratching sound. He tentatively pushed the door open a bit more, his hand still trembling after the occurrence with the butler, and found himself looking into what looked like a study if an explosion were to go off in it. Upon every flat surface there was stacked heaps of parchments, the floors were covered in scrunched up balls of paper and stacks were pushed up against the walls. In the midst of all this chaos sat a gruff old man scribbling furiously on a document with an quill pen. He was dressed in a manner not dissimilar to the butlers, aside from where the butler lacked a single hair on his head this man seemed to have a small badger wrapped around his lower face for he had beard that exploded from his jaw, large bushy eyebrows threatening to obscure his vision and reams of dark grey hair stacked upon his scalp.
As Jack entered the room he stopped his muttering and paused in his scribbling, “Well, boy?! Don’t just stand there! Name?”
Jack found himself almost snapping to attention and stuttered quickly, “J-jack, who are you? The butl-”
“Jack? Jack what?”
“Jack Dashel, why are yo-”
“Occupation?” the man interrupted.
“-u doin- what? I don’t have an occupation..” Jack looked helplessly at the man, now completely lost.
“You have to an occupation, you can’t just come barging into the castle and expect to do nothing!” The old man put the quill down and sighed as his beard seemed to shift on his face. Jack realised that the man was smiling. “Look, you’re new here, I understand – I was young once too, full of heady ideas above my station and not willing to conform to rules.”
“I don’t know what’s going on! I just came here to look around, and that butler said I could come in but then he turned into a skeleton before my eyes and now you’re shouting at me!”
“Oh he always does that, just ignore him. He only does it for attention.”
Jack felt his temper snap briefly, “What? Die repeatedly instead of walking out the room like a normal person?”
The man picked up his quill and pointed the end at Jack, peering at him through his bushy eyebrows, “Listen here boy, you have no right to be questioning your betters. Clearly you think you’re different however so I think ‘Jester’ will suit you for awhile.” the man grabbed a sheet of parchment, and muttered under his breath as the quill scratched its way across the page. Jack tried to read the page upside down and realised that there was no ink in the quill and the parchment was completely blank. After a moment or two the man folded it up, grabbed a wax stick from a drawer and after heating it up over a candle sealed the document shut. Before the wax cooled, he pressed his index finger firmly into the wax and held the document up for Jack to take.
Jack walked to the desk and gingerly took it, pausing in wonder briefly to see that instead of a heavy fingerprint in the wax he instead saw what looked like a crow with its wings spread out. The man shooed Jack away back towards the door, “Go on, go find Gren, he’ll sort your attire out.”
Jack turned around and walked out the door holding the document in both hands quietly. He had taken a few steps out of the door before he realised he wasn’t in the hallway but instead in what looked like a large wardrobe. Rails of clothing criss-crossed around him; tunics, exquisite gowns, strange stripped trousers, even suits of armour hung from the various rickety polls. Upon the walls hung various hats and masquerade masks in-between candles that weren’t lit but yet still gave off a bright yellow glow. In the middle of the room there was a dressmaker’s mannequin wearing a long black cotton dress around which a small man worried. He can’t have been more than 4 feet tall though his head was unusually large and had some thick glasses which Jack realised with horror were stitched into the skin around his eyes. He stopped fretting over the dress and turned his head to look at Jack, his eyes magnified to fill the area of his glasses. Jack felt his stomach turn as he realised that the stitching holding the glasses in place seemed to be moving and twisting through the man’s skin, constantly shifting to adjust to his facial movements.
“Why hello, you’re new here! How can I help you?” the man moved with surprising speed though with an odd stoop in his posture and looked up at Jack with big wide eyes.
“I’m Jack, the man from the other room sent me here with this…” Jack looked back at the door behind him and could see the hallway clearly just a few feet away, “I’m sorry, I’m really confused as to what’s going on. I just walked out of the other man’s room but I’m suddenly in this room.”
The little man laughed and clapped his hands together “You _are_ new here! I’m Gren, you’re looking for me right?”
Jack nodded and went to speak again but stopped as Gren laughed again, “Then that’s how you’re here!” Gren loped around Jack and ushered him gently to a stool to sit down before explaining further. “The castle can hear your thoughts and has a limited understanding of where you want to go based from that. When you walk between rooms, it simply adjusts where you are within the castle to where you want to be. It’s very practical and time-saving!”
“But what is this place?! Nothing seems right and everyone Ive met has had something wrong with them and… and..” Jack faltered as he noticed that Gren’s lenses appeared to be going all blurry. He realised that Gren was crying as a line of stitching under each eye untied itself to let the tears pour it. Not before long Gren was almost doubled over and sobbing hysterically.
“Um, look, I’m sorry.” Jack looked around helplessly and patted the sobbing man on the shoulder gently.
Gren straightened up slightly after a few moments, his sobs stopping, and moped the stitching under his eyes as it tied itself back up. “It’s ok, I understand how it must look but you need to understand that it wasn’t always like this.” Gren slipped between some clothes rails and dragged another small stool out, plopping down next to Jack, and started to twist the hem of his robe while he continued. “This castle used to be a lively and fun place where every day passed without sadness or sorrow.”
“The King was young then, always laughing and smiling. His court was of an equal attitude and it seemed like nothing could go wrong. One day however the Queen went missing – oh, she was a beautiful lady, Jack – and although the King ordered the lands to be scoured no one could find her. In a rage the king ordered no one was ever to leave or enter the castle again and of course that’s when things turned bad.”
“The residents began to change; some becoming meaner, some turned sick in the mind – some just became scared. Like me. Then physical changes started to happen. The king turned exceptionally gluttonous, to the point where he is now incapable of leaving his throne. The knights’ flesh withered and crumbled to dust, remaining as walking mute suits. This happened to everyone – myself included as you can see – though the king’s daughter seemed to grow more beautiful but developed a sharp tongue, snapping at anyone who tried to talk to her or come near her.”
“Occasionally, some residents would just vanish. All their belongings would disappear also, almost as if they had never existed. Shortly after, new people would arrive like yourself, and they would quickly develop similar symptoms to the rest of us… I must admit though, they generally seemed to intrinsically know what was going on. You’re the first whose seemed so surprised by everything.” Gren wrinkled his nose and looked up at Jack. “Did Barnabus give you a letter for me?”
Jack nodded and held out his hand with the letter to Gren who looked at it as if noticing it for the first time.
“Oh, there it is, thank you!” He took the letter and examined it carefully, as if reading something. “You’re also the first Jester we’ve had…” He wrinkled his nose again before slipping off his stool and disappearing into the racks of garments. After a few moments he emerged dusting off a red and black jester’s hat and a similarly themed tunic along with a black pair of trousers. He handed them over to Jack and smiled, “Try these on.”
Jack took them in his hands and looked at them before looking at Gren, “Um, can you….?”
“Oh, yes, sorry!” Gren turned around while Jack changed into the jester’s outfit. It fitted surprisingly well as if it had been tailored for him personally.
“Ok, Im changed.”
Gren turned back round and clapped his hands delightfully, “You look great but you’re missing something.” Gren scratched his head slowly before lighting up and vanishing once more between the clothes. He emerged carrying a small stick the length of Jack’s arm bound in red and black leather. At the top of the stick there was a small plain wooden ball wearing a miniature version of the hat that Jack wore. With a flourish he handed it to Jack.
Jack took it and waggled it a few times before looking at Gren, his eyes watering slightly, “Gren, I really don’t want to be here, I want to go home.”
Gren sighed and took Jack’s free hand, “None of us want to be here anymore, and we all want to get out.” At that moment a trumpet fanfare echoed throughout the castle, causing Gren to visibly panic, “It’s time for the Kings court – Jack, just because no one’s managed to escape yet doesn’t mean it’s impossible, never give up hope! Come on, we better go!”






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