I
2 sentence story inspired by Edgar Allan Poe
Persistent furtive tapping, echoing up from the eternally dark basement, drew me down into the abyssal dankness. Now I wander lost in this subterranean vault, haunted by the unceasing touch of a thousand spectral fingers searching for my soul.
or H. P Lovecraft, I guess, if you replace fingers with tentacles blindly searching for whatever blind tentacles search for.
II
Some Nicely Turned Phrases by Authors I Love to Read:
“The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.”
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
“What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?”
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed.
III
And a little helping of Albert Einstein to finish it off.
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.
Myriad Ways 