The hideous animal
Feb. 8th, 2005 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
This hideous animal, denizen of some ghastly species hinterland between hare and deer, has long been dead. It "lives", stuffed, in a neglected vitrine at the Royal Museum, Chambers Street, Edinburgh and it was there, last month, that I exposed my photographic plate, steadying my apparatus against the cold glass pane lest terror should render the beast's visage even less supportable to my weakening constitution. Ghosting, red eye, shake or motion blur would, I confess, have induced in me an uncanny shudder even more unsettling than the clammy hand which was at that moment gripping my innermost being even as a body-trafficker grips the chill wrist of a half-decayed corpse.
It is rumoured that anyone who gazes too long upon this foul colt, even in photographic form, will be so possessed by the intense spirit of evil lurking in its yellow, ferine eyes that they must needs suffer night sweats and tormented dreams. Some even whisper that the creature's image is cursed; impossible, once seen, to banish from the inner chambers of the mind. That would indeed be unfortunate, for it is further advanced that those who cannot, after precisely forty nights of tossing, neurasthenic fever, squeeze the creature's likeness from their ken must--but no, I cannot credit it, but I will, I must mention it--perish in agony, burnt to death in a mysterious fire of spontaneous origin!
The nocturnal ringing of an infernal telephone! The scabrous scythes of Hades! Hieronymous Rabbit! A wall-eyed imbecile fumbling at the door! The spattered blubber of the murders at the Greyfriars kirkyard! Forgive me, dear reader, for a moment I lost my composure. But not my reason! Being a man of science I must discount all such rumours as the tittle-tattle of the frothing farmhand and the harlot-frisky bickerwench. And yet... and yet... this sinister will'o'thewisp, this vile flibbertigibbet haunts me still and will not leave my mind! The sprite has crept through my dreams for thirty-nine nights now, and will not leave... Even in this drowse which descends upon me, I feel its breath close upon my neck... close and cold... [Here the journal ends. The author was discovered, his corpse a ghastly scorched log, the following morning.]
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 08:02 am (UTC)my forehead's a bit warm
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 08:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 08:08 am (UTC)we have nothing further to discuss. Good day!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 08:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 08:26 am (UTC)bluebloodcurdling!
Date: 2005-02-08 09:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 09:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 10:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 11:16 am (UTC)Your are either trying to prove to us, sucessfully I might add, that you could make a living as a writer of fiction, or the cabin fever up there in whatsit has been getting to you.
The style recalls Poe, or Melville as parodied by David Mitchell in the first part of Cloud Atlas.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 11:38 am (UTC)mm, a large herd of beef steak.
still, that is a hideous, loathesome, fulminous beast. what have they been feeding that poor vitamin-starved vegetarian, people?
DUNH-DUNH DUNNNNNH!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 11:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 12:13 pm (UTC)Looks suspiciously like this beast, alive and well in Paisley's Barshaw Park. Of course, all residents of Paisley have that tormented look about them.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 01:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 01:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 02:41 pm (UTC)sincere,
tufted deer
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 02:58 pm (UTC)spoof!
Date: 2005-02-08 03:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 03:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 04:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 05:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 05:25 pm (UTC)I burt my other copy in a coffee can.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 05:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 05:45 pm (UTC)W
Sublime...
Date: 2005-02-08 06:55 pm (UTC)Weegeesque
Date: 2005-02-08 06:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 07:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-08 07:22 pm (UTC)...the esquilax, a legendary horse with the head of a rabbit, and the body... of a rabbit!
Okapi
Date: 2005-02-08 09:58 pm (UTC)two words
Date: 2005-02-08 11:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 01:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 01:39 am (UTC)There have been instances outside of colonial lore when the dregs and upstarts of European nobility (read: the interesting ones) have graced our shores:
Joseph Bonaparte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bonaparte) (eldest brother of Emperor Napoleon and onetime King of Spain and Naples) lived for 17 years on his Bordentown, New Jersey estate. He is said to have seen the Jersey Devil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Devil) while hunting one evening. His mansion, only 15 minutes from my door, still stands.
And let us not forget another dodgy yet titled sort who lived amongst the rabble, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. (http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/oisteanu/oisteanu5-20-02.asp#1)
W
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 02:36 am (UTC)Thank you for that truly fascinating link. She seems very, very German.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 02:45 am (UTC)Have you noticed that titled sorts often are quite dodgy?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 04:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-10 09:28 am (UTC)