Tulips In The Deep - Literature - Nairaland
Nairaland Forum / Entertainment / Literature / Tulips In The Deep (1188 Views)
Devil And The Deep Blue Sea / In Deep Sticky Mud-A thrilling blend of Romance,Rivalry,Betrayal&vengeance / A Finger Deep (2) (3) (4)
| Tulips In The Deep by Magnoliaa(f): 5:52pm On Dec 04, 2020 |
♛
|
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Magnoliaa(f): 6:09pm On Dec 04, 2020 |
THE BEACH Fire is so bland, and boring. To me, nowadays, anyway. Looking at it flickering in the alcove flooring below, its warmth barely wafting in the cool and fresh rainy air of August at the Palms Beach lodging - I wonder how I was ever fascinated with its lashing flames. Just a dancing, shapeless red gas. In addition to that is the fact that I've evolved. I mean, I appreciate new, deeper beauty. I seek for inspiration in novel places, objects, and nuances. Which is leaving me frustrated - because I can not find unusual or fantastical settings to spur me. I need unexplored concepts, I want uncharted courses. Something out of the ordinary and different from my Lasgidi locale or Lekki terrains. My withering heart (I know this because I've been listless for the past few months), shrinks for the five-thousandth time as I flop away from the balcony, the citrus-y beach waves cutting into my tongue with its scent. ✧ I am an established author. Or creative... call it what you will. I have three, block-busting and high-grossing book series, adapted into chart-topping movies worldwide, and translated in about eighty languages, with business patent cropping out of them to my pseudonym—Magenta Leavess. Quite a trailing achievement, as. I. Have. Set myself up, (inserts literal grin), for these great standards and now I'm stuck. On my next project—The Flower Grave. An horror, and I can't seem to go on. Perfectionism is crippling me, anxiety is gashing me out and my whole bones feel like rock bits. I'm scared of not meeting up. I sink into my comforter, my afro furls curling behind my ears and turn to the side. I blink, look at my writing altar. It is an haven I get lost in whenever I am creating a masterpiece, but this time, it seem to repel any idea nor doesn't back up any. I stare out the window my messy writing desk, chair are station before, the blazing horizon trailing like an industrial worker going home from a day's labour. Seagulls lure with their croons. What am I to do? I can't keep on like this. You need to unclutter your mind, detox your being. You're juggling too much at the same time and they are weighing on you, my conscience whispers. I sigh and fling on my back. My puffy cream jacket spills open, revealing a camisole which rides up to my midriff. Closing my eyes, I try to detach my perception from my body. I imagine I am someone else, observing myself. The room is beauteously pleasing; black; interspersed with gold bits – on the rails, ceiling, window, bedding and picture frames. I am barely 5"3, my glossy dark skin supple and hem in the messy sheets. Inside my head—on my eyes going through solid colours, the voidness begin to transform and adapt. Cutting off, fixing, erasing and twining to transport me to a scene. Bizarre. Surreal. Those, are the words my mind spurt as a fit for where I am. It is definitely not something of this w—I mean the real world, where I left. I am on a beach: a very unusual one. The first thing I feel on my skin is the air. Pricking and soothing at the same time as if a bird is pecking at my arm and brushing the effect with its feathers. The sand is reddish - something of a deep orange, brown, dirtying my pedicured feet. I crane my neck to take in the water's sight. It is shimmering—clinking and sparkling in the distance like a precious stone, but the amazing thing about here is the clash of hues. The sun hangs low in the horizon, a blazing disc of royal purple that do not reflect a bit in the water. Instead, it is cerulean, its waves lapping lushly. This is amazing! Okay. Said that before. But, wow. I can feel a bunch of muscles easing somewhere at the back of my head as I gulp the panorama. I start to frolick the beach's length, humming a tune and allowing the ocean work its magic. I should do this often. I sense a primordial pull coursing through my body, writhing; like a spirit, explosive. It sizzles down my spine, making me straighten involuntarily. My concentration disperses with fuzziness in a relaxing manner, my heart light from appreciating the sensual setting. Inch by inch, though, its charm dwindles, leaving a bubbling pool in my consciousness. I am still terse with tension, and anxiety clamping on a chunk of my brain. I decide to conjure a new vision—worthless pieces of information swirling on my mental screen—and link its effect with that of this 'Red Beach'—believing their potency to be effective (of) a therapy. An hydrotherapy: the therapeutic use of water. I smile to myself at that thought. Yep. Maybe that is exactly what I am doing. ✧ UNDERWATER My eyelids snap close and unfurl drowsily. I bring delicate fingers to my face in an attempt to block the pour of a concentric beam. It isn't from a sun, no. I pry my fingers away, one after the other, to behold an empyrean orchard. The illumination is a uniformed mire, diffused and enveloping. I can not tell its source. "Welcome," a voice calls (in what I sense to be a mock ardor) behind me. I spin, but, instantaneously, my attention splits to noting a crystalline sheen in my periphery. Damn! I am torn. Stuck- which should I focus on? The alluring surface or the mysterious voice? Surprisingly, my nonexistent discipline materializes, putting me in a position to decide on what to do – face the source of the voice. I turn. "Who are you?" "What can I say?" she, the voice owner, responds leisurely. I can place a bet on my face schooling a million expressions, my brown eyes—glassy irises, riddling with questions. Wait. A. Minute. Why - does this person look like me? A clone?! Same skin tone. Height. Hair... she even speak like and share voice as me— "Your alter ego," she cuts me. "Huh?" "Your alter ego." "My alter ego?" I repeat, dumbly, I'll add. "Yuppity, yup." The girl twirls and sashays around me, folding and smoothening a needle-like leaf. "I know. It's kind of confusing right now, but it'll make sense eventually." "My alter ego?" Because I have to say it out loud again, my brain a piece of rock against the absorption of that detail. The girl's finger shot up. "Don't. Question this. Just - don't. Else. . . ," she splays her arms, "all of this'll go away. Dissolve. Poof! When you question it, your brain picks up on the struggle, will believe something isn't right and try to correct it. (How can you be speaking to a second you?) Your brain"- she makes an act of knocking at my head- "can tell if you are in a discomfort, and try to rationalize . . . a situation into. . . a judgement that you are comfortable with. You know it's always doing that. Analyzing, adapting or even shutting down sometimes, in some cases. . . .So when you question the logic of this 'meetin'. . . "Remember – you're in a visualization, some mental film. You've done this before, nau. A kind of flipped lucid dream. Ehen. So anything is possible. You've flown; transcended physical laws, and 'I' am just simply one of such . . . (You need to) let this flow. . . "C'mon. Oh, I'm Fade, by the way," the alter ego continues. Humph. Fade. Lade. I see. A alternate variation of my name for my alter ego. I begin to shut my resistance against the possibility of this--talking to me in my head; in another distinct, same body as mine; in another dimension. . . and so, I try to follow the—my—Fade's imploration. To let this be, naturally. It's simply a stretch of my psyche. I mean, this is just me, after all. Myself. Why should it be a deal? "Exactly. We're same person," Fade says. In response to the thoughts in my head, I suppose. Phew. "Okay." A giggle rings out my lips. This is w— "Maybe I'm that voice. The second one in your head, that speaks to you. . . ." "Hm. That makes sense." So, I extricated and personified the voice that talks to us - that we hear. Cool. "Yeah, yeah... So, this," Fade starts, sauntering ahead of me to the gleaming surface I spotted earlier. I discover it to be another water. A lake. Azure. It is freaking captivating I halt in my steps, on a path slick with dew and scents from flowers of a perfumed oil, honey and melons. (How the heck did I ever mentally come up with this place?!) The lake's top is frozen and lucent, with football-sized unfrozen parts on it that burps every now and then. "Hey?" airy Fade's voice snips at my spellbound self. "Sorry!" I come to. "Here is just- oh, my God--" And I bind myself once more to the scenery's assault. How I am still taking in breaths is a mystery. Why aren't I asphyxiating? My lungs are on an hiatus. (I know my body, I can tell this). Everywhere is like some ice village; a reminisce of a book I read a long time ago - White Fire - set in an Ice Kingdom. I am in a fortress of snow and riverbanks of tranquil waters meandering underneath majestic bridges that sways iridescently. Pearly palms take root in an architecturally-inspired formation, their tops reaching to the wool-white heavens. The lake renders a twin of everything. Edging closer to it for a deeper immersion, I am please with what seem to be muffled echoing from eons past, a constant punctuation from the ruffling leaves. It's all sounding arcane. I give my ears to the whooshing and sleek trickling of the river being intermittently put on hold by a frenzy breeze into ripples of standstill. With another zephyr comes a fruity smell, compelling me to inhale and close my eyes. It. Is. The. Single. Most revitalizing thing I'm experiencing in my whole life. Bursts of milky, peachy and berry goodness on my taste buds lace with a buttery and jam flavour. It feels like I'm in a dome confectionery having spicy-smelling ovens for air-conditioners. The atmosphere is that luxurious, like fine jewelry from flourishing ancient cities. I bask in it: immensely pleasuring and washing my soul anew. I feel different, fresh, uncorrupted, a sanctified being as if from before the beginnings of the world's foundation. My whole consciousness is subject to a rebirth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Will your kind Highness, ma, please, pray attention to me, oh lowly servant of yours now?" "Yep," I pipe and turn attentively to Fade, finishing my visual exploration of the Charming Rivers I'm in the midst of. "So, where was I? Yessss. We were working on helping you unpack your stuffy mind. You seem to be doing a good job of it, though. This," Fade gestures to the river fluttering with tiny lights, "is one... of the processes." She spins to me abruptly, perch dangerously close to the water's bank. "Gimme your hand." . The moment my palm make contact with hers, I lose my vision in a nanosecond and only to regain it back . . . underwater. 4 Likes |
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Omoluabi16(m): 6:55pm On Dec 04, 2020 |
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Magnoliaa(f): 10:56pm On Dec 08, 2020 |
Oh my gawd. What?! What the fuc— I'm-- Holy moly. I'm underwater. I'm floating underwater, breathing. What is this?! I could never dip my face in a basin or sink of water and pulling it out without using my hand to squeeze out the droplets else they'd sting. And I cannot remember getting a swimming lesson at any time. I'm not drowning and the water isn't stinging! I swim and double over, kicking lightly in the enveloping blue. I am horizontal, facing the surface of the water above that look like a washed-out white. My breaths form into bubbles with every exhalation. In a splattering bassy voice I call out: "Fade?" Hers, like a mighty rushing torrent, comes with the response: "Yes?" "I'm breathing!" I swim an arc to stare at her, a close gap between us. "Anything is possible in the imagination." Wow. Woww. "So relax and absorb this. Let its purifying effect take place." Ah, ah. I moan, content. This is sooooo good. It's undescribable. The water's inside is magical. Unbelievable this still is to me. I'm kind of living in it. And it's crystal... Dazzlingly massaging. Above me feels warm, unlike the promises of the icy top. I'm neither choking on nor drinking the water. I simply am not taking it in – it is going in my lungs and coming back out. Smoothly. I consider the mesmerizing baby blue bottom for a few seconds before flipping back to my former position and choose to go with the flow. (Pun very intended). Fade was so perfect at it. We are light. In a suspension. My inner self (albeit existing outside of my body) is far gone, deeply in a hypnosis so I am simply just enjoying the result of her efforts. Since she's a disjoined bodiless entity of me, we still share some link and because she does not have the vehicle (me), unbounded by time and space, her meditational speed is exponential. I keep still and allow myself into a sedation. Just still. For one, two seconds. Zero worries. Three seconds. Unhinged. A minute. Completely mute. Two, three, six minutes. Flying at the deepest psychical level. Ten. Thoroughly tranquil. Twenty. Mind deconstructing. Twenty-eight. Zapping on enlightenment planes. Thirty. Zilch. Thirty-five. Cleansed emptyness. Forty. Hurtling in the cosmos' mind. Nothing. Forty-five, fifty minutes. Deep. . . fifty-five. . . deeeper, involved, transformed . . . sixty . . . changed. . . . . We pump out of the water. "That. Was. Fantastic!" "I know," Fade says smugly, shrugging a shoulder. ✧ THE TULIPS' MAJESTY I come to face with the most magnificent of resplendence beauty I've set eyes on in all my years alive—a house of Tulips. I mean it is built of tulips, enchantingly set against a mirage backdrop. How-? This is confounding. I do not understand. It just is... erect... made of the tulip flowers, its petals on the outer surface blowing softly to the tune of air wafts. "Anything is possible, remember?" Fade offers when I look to her for a span. Its walls, tulips. Steps leading up to the patio, tulips. Deep down the edifce, around the ground level, I could see green shoots forming into vines. Foundation? What da’. How is this standing? It looks sturdy. Except for the dancing pink, red, yellow and white leaves. As at now, my mind is in the same state as the vines below: twisted. My mouth remains agape as before. . . . "Comme, come on," Fade chirps, smashing through my disorientation. "Let's go in and explore moreeeee." I tentatively put my feet to the first landing stair bracing my mind for a fall. . . . . . which did not happen. Once in, bonny trifles, snazzy and photogenic ornaments and blossomy aesthetics the house hold whams my senses. I am awe-striken, my brain (I know so well, should I add again) already on an errand of going about the task it haves. Describing in here will be exerting strength on my person. I begin to move around the house: tracing slim fingers on the edges of (the) tulip-y settees. I stop at a bookcase. Its borders and dividers are of the same flower. On top of it is a clock piece, lamp, and a writing materials holder, which I do not need to add that their design matches where they nestle on. Marching to the window over a rug of tulips and past a floret-furnished dining room, my dilating eyeballs flit up and my throat lets out a gasp on the dangling and shining prismatic twig chandelier. Jesus. Christ. This place could match a Disney fairyland! I stretch my hand to the sill and yank it back when the colorful petals caresses my fingertips. They are ticklish. And hilariously so. I do it again. A yelp escape my mouth and I draw my fingers away. Man, am I having the fun of my life. I love the thrill of electricity I feel touching them. Sensitive am I to them? Yes! I can't help but still touch them. The shock I get as I keep doing it is now making me delirious I am chortling, all to myself. "What are you laughing over?" Fade asks rhetorically, her own laughter slithering through her words. And that have me cackling louder. It is contagious. How she's trying not to laugh and failing and me trying to keep my giddiness under wraps and influencing her in turn. Round and around like that. I finally break away from my spot and carry on admiring the X-shape living room like a child lost in a toy store while Fade disappears. Many minutes later she comes to rouse me from the couch I am rocking on. "The bedroom. Let's go see it!" she says. I oblige, and behind her I tail like an animated animal. 2 Likes |
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Magnoliaa(f): 12:06am On Dec 19, 2020 |
The bedroom is a masterpiece shocker blowing my mind to smithereens. It is as if I am cocoon in a bloom yet to open. A nectar-ish smell in the room intoxicates, darting up my nostrils to reach the innermost parts of my flesh. No one can tell me otherwise about what the place is, will be, and never become in my memory. Everlastingly hallow, and despised. My heart is becoming a pulp, dripping into a pool all over my feet. I can not get my legs to move as a faint numinous din continues to buzz in my soul. Imagine a room in a fashion for a butterfly. But a conscious one. I mean one with human attributes and all. Just like a fairytopia cartoon I watched a long, long time ago. . . .The barbie fairies Elina, Azura- something from there. The bedspreads, posters, wall-fitted TV are all of a tulip-make except for the latter's screen. And pretty much of every gleaming surface around the room. The vanity bears an etch of glinting, cut flower parts. Same scintilla of flowery sliver coat the edges and outsides of the dressing table and its chair and the closet. I tear my fixation off on observing and move further in. The bed beckons. Fade lounges on it currently and I couldn't hold back anymore – on tip toes I whirl and at my knees, fall backwards on top of the duvet. Blisss. The chocolate quilt kisses my neck, cheek, underarm, waist - places that are now exposed through my camis since ditching my jacket. A steamy sensation seep through my skin, coiling about my heart. My vision becomes somnolent. Limbs growing lax, I am loosing perception from a formless blanket of blackness trying to slip over me. Adrift. Powerless. Vaporous. Vanishing. I go through various sensory stages. Over; back; hurtling. Till I could tell by clairvoyant means I am in a deep yet awake sleep. Every nerve in my body is heightened. Pictures are enlarged to twenty times what humans see; sound fifty times the ears could hear; taste, seventy times. Random numbers – obviously, but point remains. I am still surprisingly functioning well in spite of the overload of details. I am thoroughly satiated and purged. My purpose for embarking on this journey I sense fulfilled— "Hey!" Count on Fademi to rip my ... everything. Internal eyes roll. "I heard that. Why you wanna drag this longer and ruin everything, though? ‘Brevity is the soul of’- -anyhow, I don't know. Sha, come. Let's goan watch the sun set." And she shoots to the west wall in a blur; jerks a floor-to-ceiling, maroon-tainted flannel curtain of tulips that seals off a colossal French door. Glazed mountains and burning ringlets of sunlight designs the mushy floor in silhouettes and luster before I could comprehend what had happened. I hop on my feet immediately, enamoured by the landscape. The sun rays bounce on my body as I make my way to the door which opens of its will. I step out onto a balcony. "Fade. . ." I call speechless, half- looking back. She just smile radiantly, her eyes oozing pleasure. I can't say anything. Nothing, at all. Right now. I stand still and look. Look. Look at the heavenly sunset sight before me for an uncountable, unforgettable period. Branding it in my memory. I will never let go of this time and its experiences even after I return to the real world. "Thank you," I say after an eternity. It is deserved. You're welcome, my alter ego tells me. My lids droop. I hadn't notice the rail with the balusters of grape cluster. I pluck one from it and pop in my mouth. . . grapy savor trickling down my throat. "There's a last place." ✧ 1 Like |
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Nobody: 1:05am On Dec 19, 2020 |
Magnoliaa:Damn! You're good. 1 Like 1 Share |
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Magnoliaa(f): 10:22pm On Jan 25, 2021 |
LAGOS Sticky eyelids peel back, gummed to underneath my eyes for centuries. I see oblivion. Thumping and spiraling. I blink once and twice, and I begin to see shapes taking solid casts. Something twinkles somewhere as my judgment springs to life. I listen to the honking and adrenaline faraway on the main road for beats till my vision becomes adjusted to the grayish darkness of my room. I can spot the lighthouse beacon around here zigzagging on the window pane—a reflection. The whirring of fans downstairs reaches me. There's light. And fūck, I forgot to turn off the electrical appliances. Oh my God. My body start to itch; my mind on a charge at fretting. Oh, God, no! I- I- just came out of a meditation for one of the compulsions that plague me. I. am. not. going to sink back in! I also have to release all the energy and artistry potentials I gained from going there. . . What's the worst that could happen? Who knows for how long the light has been on and the fans working? If there were going to be any danger, it'd have happened by now. I wouldn't be alive. But better safe than— Shush it, mind! Just shush. Ugh. I hate, hate the tendency to always think the worse of situations. Nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. I fly up and rush to my altar - my writing altar. I won over my compulsions this time! Phew. And another victory... Good money put into therapy right there. I grab a felt-tip pen it could snap in halves and reel a fancy notebook towards me. I haven't written a single word of the story . . . I put the pen to a line in the book, hovering over it as the pictures and characters caged in my brain fumbles through the bars and finally breaking out. I scribble, and scribble, and scribble, all through the night trying to keep up with the outbursts and every tangent of the story arc popping up. |
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Magnoliaa(f): 10:31pm On Jan 25, 2021 |
This bot finally gree free me.  Omoluabi16: Thank you. I didn't want to obstruct the flow of the story, hence why I didn't respond all this time... I keep getting banned each time I post. Mtcheew. Ciara9251: Thanks.  |
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Seezzy(m): 11:47pm On Jan 26, 2021 |
This is beautiful!!! You should consider writing poetry, too. |
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Nobody: 1:14pm On Jan 27, 2021 |
Seezzy: Thanks. Poetry? Arhh. Me and poetry, we are like the branches of the letter Y. I just no fit write am.  |
| Re: Tulips In The Deep by Nobody: 12:40am On Jun 10, 2021 |
. |
(1) (Reply)
Chinua Achebe-the Man / A New Romance Novel By Myne Whitman / Don't Quit No Matter What........
(Go Up)
| Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket Links: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2024 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise. 73 |