Anto & Moe

"As I wondered, Weak and Weary, Over Many a Quaint and Curious

Volume of Forgotten Lore..."

Fiction!

On the rare occasion that Anto and Moe arn't out partying or preparing for their inevitable (though not particularly sought after) world domination, they sometimes like to take a moment or two to rest and contemplate the universe, occasionally churning out enlightening essays, fictional or otherwise, which will now be shared with you, the general public, for the purpose of your intellectual progress. You may also find, herein, essays by friends and associates of Anto and Moe, as well as literature from our fans!

The following story is a satirical account of a young gothic teenager preparing to run away from home. It is a very special story as it is the short story for which Anto won the Institute of Education short story competition, the money from which was used to fund the creation of this website!

'A Very Serious Matter Indeed'

Although her letter was of dire importance, Silvia's attention was, as if by some supernatural force, diverted for a moment to the night sky outside her bedroom window. She watched as dark shapes - bats, she fancied - flitted about in the night sky, as if performing some ancient rite, known only to them and their kind whose practice was forbidden under any light other than that of the full moon.

She soon tired, however, of monitoring these secret rituals and her gaze drifted, like a dying autumn leaf, back to the confines of her own room. She looked down at her writing desk and saw that a sliver of moonlight had slipped through the window whilst she had been distracted and was now running over her own pale fingers, like an enchanted lover desperately trying to grasp her hand. She humoured it for a while, but then withdrew suddenly; for though the light of the moon was softer than that of the sun, it remained of the same breed. No, the external light was a Capulet and she a Montague; the two could never truly be united. The black curtain was therefore pulled tight.

Now that she was in here element, she basked in the darkness as one of the masses might bathe in the sun, poor unenlightened simpletons. But, alas! How the Fates perpetuated her suffering! For her true purpose - to finish her letter - would be near impossible in the darkness, the only state in which she could be truly expressive. She struck a match and brought it over to the wick of her most impressive candle' blood red, with a black inverted crucifix painted on the side. The match and wick met in a fiery kiss igniting the candle. She then shook the flame out of the match, savouring the odour of the smoke curling into her nostrils, before tossing it aside, like a forgotten lover, abandoned, exhausted, its purpose served.

Meanwhile, the candle light flickered about the room, investigating. It found little hospitality on her matt black walls, but slid pleasurably across the black silk sheet that covered her bed. It glinted off her posters, obscuring more than illuminating the handsome face of Captain Jack Sparrow, Legolas, and a frowning, love-sick Spike. She was now ready to continue her letter. She read over what she had already inscribed.

"Dearest Mother,

I should like to begin by thanking you for all the loving care you have bestowed on me over the last thirteen years, but I fear you can never truly understand me. I am therefore leaving home. Please do not try to contact me. I am in love. His name is Mortimus Orlando Elton and he understands me in a way that no one else can. I know that you will disapprove, but you don't know him like I do. He may come across at first as short tempered and feelingless, but...

Here she had paused, distracted by the moonlight, or perhaps turning to it for inspiration; but none had come, so she pressed her pen to the page and continued to write:

".... Underneath he is a caring, gentle man, and I know that I am the one who will make him change. At first I tried to resist it, but he is like a deep well, and I am drowning.

Your Loving Daughter,

Sylvia

Sylvia looked over the letter. She was rather pleased with it. For a moment she regretted that it was to be wasted on a parent, and contemplated bringing it with her. But sense prevailed' and besides, she could always quote the best bits if any opportunity arose to slip it into a conversation without seeming pretentious.

Once she was sure that her bag was packed with all her essentials, she would be able to leave. She looked over its contents: eyeliner pencil; liquid eyeliner; lipstick (black, purple and red); nail varnish (black, purple and red); €25.00. It was all there.

She blew her room an icy kiss goodbye, extinguishing the candle. With some effort, she pushed open her window, her escape rout from the tyranny that had been filing away at her soul for as long as she could remember. She hesitated for a moment; she would certainly miss this room... But then she thought of the adventures that lay ahead, of the castle she was to be mistress of, and peering across infinite forests from its high gothic towers, towers guarded by hideous gargoyles with contorted expressions of stone disgust. Then she thought of Him, of holding her frail white frame against his dark muscularity, and staring deep into his cat-like eyes, and pressing her soft lips against his...

As these thoughts had been flowing through her consciousness, she had been making her way slowly out of her window. She was at this point, however, so intoxicated by them that she over-balanced and. with a tiny shriek, fell from her window edge, followed gradually by the remainder of her long black dress. Fuming, she untangled herself from its lacy intricacies and, brushing herself down, walked boldly and intently into her moonlit kingdom of the night.

The Following is a short Story by the Esteemed Lauren Tonge Jones, a friend of Anto since Childhood and A particular favourite of Moe...

'Lydia'

Fifteen years ago on a Monday Lydia Bowen hanged herself. Stepped off the back of a low chair and danced, obscenely, kicking the air like a puppet.
For nine days she hung there, still, ripening. On the tenth day the rope bit through the softening flesh of her neck her body fell, doll-broken, onto the carpet.
At three o' clock on a Saturday a neighbour, distressed by the smell and the silence called the police. At half past six Lydia left her house quietly, lying still on a stretcher, informal in ziplock. At seven, the bereaved shook their heads and couldn't believe.
At seven fifteen they wondered why.

Why?
Only afterwards they look back on their blindness and see nothing wrong.
Nicholas, having been an eight year old boy at the time was naturally obsessed with the macabre details. The patronising subtlety of distant, funereal-sombre relatives to a child, whispered accounts of how his aunt had passed away in peace was not enough. Even as he found out more (as the night progressed, mourning brandies loosened tongues) he felt that something was amiss. It did not seem fit that his aunt, his beautiful, laughing aunt would want to end her smiling life.
Why?
Cremation would be best, they were assured, and open casket was almost out of the question. Strangulation rarely left an attractive remain.
Nicholas, at the spreading, had taken a carbonized handful of his aunt and stuffed it hurriedly into his pocket. At home, he relocated the ashes into a matchbox, sealed up with tape.

Didn't they see that-didn't they know that the less they told him pushed him to want more? Nicholas grew up around a hard nut of desire, and loss, and obsession. If there had been no secrecy, no layers of coy guise, then maybe Nicholas's fixation on his beautiful dead aunt would not have escalated beyond the illicit, incestuous twinge in an eight year old's trousers, but as it was…
The mystery was the flash of ankle beneath a petticoat, a glance around a corner. Ultimately, it left Nicholas starved and desperate for more. What the child did not know couldn't hurt him: They were so utterly, blindly, pathetically convinced of the rightness of their choices-What the child did not know hurt him very, very much.
His aunt was the glance around every corner. She was the watching of the walls.

Nicholas grew up through fifteen years of dangling dreams and swinging shadows. Twenty three years on this earth, now-his right hand compulsive, fingertip touching the worn matchbox in his pocket-left hand quick, sinister, dexterous. Guiding the sightless pen, feeding the line that framed the pencilled, perfect face of his Lenore. Lydia. Dear Aunt-Lydia-Nevermore.