Mister Scribbles

Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. 1798.

  But who's monstering who?

Once there was a fine warren on the edge of a wood, overlooking the meadows of a farm. It was big, full of rabbits. Then one day the white blindness came and the rabbits fell sick and died. But a few survived, as they always do. The warren became almost empty. One day, the farmer thought, “I could increase those rabbits, make them part of my farm – their meat, their skins. Why should I bother to keep rabbits in hutches? They’ll do very well where they are.” He began to shoot all elil – lendri, homba, stoat, owl. He put out food for the rabbits, but not too near the warren. For his purpose they had to become accustomed to going about in the fields and the wood. And then he snared them – not too many: as many as he wanted and not as many as would frighten them all away or destroy the warren. They grew big and strong and healthy, for he saw to it that they had all of the best, particularly in winter, and nothing to fear – except the running knot in the hedge-gap and the...

In the early autumn of the year 18… Madame Alexis Gheria awoke one morning to a sense of utmost torpor. For more than a minute, she lay inertly on her back, her dark eyes staring upward. How wasted she felt. It seemed as if her limbs were sheathed in lead. Perhaps she was ill, Petre must examine her and see. Drawing in a faint breath, she pressed up slowly on an elbow. As she did, her nightdress slid, rustling, to her waist. “How had it come unfastened?” she wondered, looking down at herself. Quite suddenly, Madame Gheria began to scream. In the breakfast room, Dr. Petre Gheria looked up, startled, from his morning paper. In an instant, he had pushed his chair back, slung his napkin on the table and was rushing for the hallway. He dashed across its carpeted breadth and mounted the staircase two steps at a time. It was a near hysterical Madame Gheria he found sitting on the edge of her bed looking down in horror at her breasts. Across the dilated whiteness of the...

https://youtu.be/rOVC4NY8Q-A Dreamworks, 2011. Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek hit the voice acting out of the park.

  X — This day when it had light mother called me a retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch. This day it had water falling from upstairs. It fell all around. I saw that. The ground of the back I watched from the little window. The ground it sucked up the water like thirsty lips. It drank too much and it got sick and runny brown. I didn’t like it. Mother is a pretty I know. In my bed place with cold walls around I have a paper things that was behind the furnace. It says on it SCREENSTARS. I see in the pictures faces like of mother and father. Father says they are pretty. Once he said it. And also mo ther he said. Mother so pretty and me decent enough. Look at you he said and didn’t have the nice face. I touched his arm and said it is airight father. He shook and pulled away where I couldn’t reach. Today mother let me off the chain a little so I could look out the little window. That’s howl saw the water falling from upstairs. XX...

  "It'll be good when we get the Project into final stage. Maybe it's just the propaganda from the newsmachines, but in the last month I've gotten weary of all this. Everything seems so grim and serious, no color to life." "Do you think the war is in vain?" the older man said suddenly. "You are an integral part of it, yourself." "This is Major Peters," Nelson said. Olham and Peters shook hands. Olham studied the older man. "What brings you along so early?" he said. "I don't remember seeing you at the Project before." "No, I'm not with the Project," Peters said, "but I know something about what you're do - ing. My own work is altogether different." A look passed between him and Nelson. Olham noticed it and he frowned. The bug was gaining speed, flashing across the barren, lifeless ground toward the distant rim of the Project building. "What is your business?" Olham said. ...