After many years of hard labour, of sweating and straining, of cursing over many a smashed finger and toe, the ogre’s tower did reach beyond the reaches of the highest oak trees in the forest. He climbed his tower to the top where the wind was bitter cold. He looked down and saw snow on the leafless tangled treetops. He saw winter, winter everywhere, the entire ancient forest blanketed in snow beneath him, the ancient forest and winter on every horizon. He smiled a crooked smile. He was king.
He breathed deeply. The winter wind stung the scar on his nose. He did not remember how he got it. The wind screeched woefully through the barren black trees. He had forgotten how to speak that language. Far below him beneath a frozen crust, the blue stream carried glowing ice slivers in its current. It told no stories anymore. He did not remember that it ever had. For years and years it only babbled noisily.
He wanted silence! He wanted the wind to stop calling and the stream to stop crackling because it was his forest, his kingdom, and he wanted silence!
And silence came. Silence came like forgetting to breathe, like forgetting to touch, like forgetting to believe. He watched the silent snowflakes fall. He watched the snow swirling in the wind. He saw the branches bending. He saw the creatures walking, jumping, running. But he heard nothing. He heard no sounds and forgot everything that he could remember. He forgot even his own name. Miranda turned to ash and fell from her bed in the ogre’s ear, pale, cold, and gem-like, as beautifully as any other snowflake in the silver night. She fell to the roof of the mighty tower and she disappeared in the cracks of the stones.
Centuries passed and the ogre passed too. Centuries passed and the forest re-newed. Centuries passed and the tower crumbled down. Centuries passed until the tower was a pile of stones. Centuries passed and the blue stream changed her course and she began once again to collect the stones that had been pulled from her so long before. She re-claimed them all, all the stones one-by-one, like a mother calls back her children from their adventures of the day; and on that clear night in spring with its waxing new moon, when the stream pulled that last stone from her banks and it tumbled into her waters, the stone made a spark like a tiny pink star that did not extinguish when it dived into the water.
The star began to dance with the minnows.
A compilation of side-splitters from Tim Heidecker’s podcast “Office Hours,” with appearances by Fred Armisen & others. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 9, 2021
This retrospective compilation covers the last 25 years of dramatic darkwave from Austrian goth band Whispers in Shadow. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 21, 2021
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