The Nightbook E-Book

Lea Rohrmoser

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 128

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

"The Nightbook" is a short story collection about hopelessness. It is breathtaking prose and beautiful poetry. Written to be an anchor for those who feel despair.

Leseprobe

Really, I walked down a path without hindrance that, neither becoming broader and more magnificent nor more slender and sordid, headed towards a centre I, too, an arrow myself, aimed at steadily and with utmost attention. I turned a corner. A second one I turned just alike. Then the path dissipated into short sections until I found myself in a labyrinth. The exit I was not able to find and the centre I could not reach. Yet, I never wanted to escape nor break away. On the contrary, I imagined a well that, with pinpoint precision because it ran deeper than the curves of the labyrinth and without further ado, caught the centre underground while standing on the periphery. Despite my search for it, I reached neither and was forlorn. I awoke in the early morning hours of the next day with a violent, childish hopelessness that my weeping, although gentle and fluent, shocked me thoroughly. To sink to the bottom of my hopelessness is the object of this book. These are the transcripts of my dreams.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

THE BATHHOUSE

THE CLUB

THE BEDROOM

THE TOWER

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

1

A steep forest trail. I wasn't in a rush. Cleansed gravel revealed velvet-brown sand which, despite the heat, didn't raise to dust. Yesterday's rain allowed it to contain itself. Theforest showed me its black trunks, skeletons, that hold the forest above earth. There were flowers. Their name remained unbeknown to me in dream. Why would I have to know their name? I could hardly focus my gaze on them even when I leaned forward. Finally, the fog before my eyes lifted and I beheld the sticky, hairy stems each of them as thick as a finger with pink muzzles hanging onto them like leaves. They stretched towards me bluntly. Now, they crept up to me in hundreds from the thicket while I faced them alone. Although the snap dragons were superior to me in number and size their colour radiated feebly. In fact, I almost forgot about them. That's how mousy they've become. I must've turned myself away and walked further, when, just a short while later, I stood in front of them again. On my left yapped the tree crowns. Like ropes their ends were hanging down into the valley. On my right gibed the flaccid flower muzzles at a sharp angled left turn that placed itself around the hill like the loop of a gift ribbon. This path I wanted to follow, but it didn't lead back to the plain on the other side of the raising from which I've come, but onwards up the mountain. In this location, spread as if it was painted because it couldn't have grown out of the flowers, a fat male hand pointed at me with a soft, slightly bent index finger. On the fourth finger of this outsized hand stuck a wedding ring that brought me some uproar. The shame of having been chosen by a married person overpowered me with unreserved rigour...

I floated under a flimsy cloud ceiling. Here as well a hand didn't break forth from it, but appeared like an albatross that thrusts itself into the sea to join its fish. It embraced me with unease and lifted me into the altitude.

- The Hand

2

A grey street, despite the flaky blue of the house walls, was governed by an ascending cobblestone pavement. The heavens above it collapsed and as if I was a caricature or a cartoon character I trudged up the street drowsily kicking the side of the broadwalk with every other step. A greasy polyp, a house-sized occurrence, had shoved itself out of the sea and into daylight. It then, this day, eight-thirty in the morning, had swirled two lovers into its gullet.

Considering it neither had teeth nor cruel intention - it was only a misshapen single-cell organism - I pondered over the question whether the couple could simply slip out of the thing's body and annul their imprisonment. My hopes were denied. That is not what happened. These two people were lost and the polyp, which already had glared in the morning sun, lies there now as well, in the afternoon, half ashore and half in water. Precipitately, the tourists disappeared and the holiday resort transformed into a run-down dullsville.I was lucky. There was a cowl attached to my coat and, breathing into my shawl, I endured the dreadful weather without having to be cold. Three men overtook me on my path. The youngest only walked reluctantly with the other two. They had linked arms with him and half carried him while the middle man dragged his feet. The two men wanted to do evil to the third man, but I should not judge. That young man could equally be a liar or even a murderer. I was confident they will arrange with each other.

There, my longing seized me. How could I leave this place? Further have I parted with the polyp. I turned around. It still seemed to lie directly in front of me. Its enormous size made it appear to be close. If I were to walk further up the road I would find nothing. This townlet led to an ugly industrial area that I wasn't supposed to be in. I can already see the trucks and office block facades as if I was among them. Perhaps, I thought, I should walk back. At the same time I knew I wanted to say good bye to this city. I lifted my head to look for the train station or rent a car, but mud already squelched under my boots. I had left the it behind me and found myself in a nature reserve which was flooded with more and more of this brown...

- "You're quite brave."

A man had undressed me down to my underwear. The bed's mattress was too soft but rather comfortable and the room was furnished in a barren and impoverished manner, yet I felt warm or heavy and this man, who had saved me from the deluge, poured, as I was lifting my head, hot water on a teabag. Something scratched me on my hip and the pleasant warmth of the room was enough to preserve me from the immense shock of a missing leg. As I was investigating my surroundings further in a disorientated manner I found it attached to the hip of the man. He must have sown it to himself as it hung there limp but alive and well supplied with blood. He immediately realised the questions I must have been asking myself. Nervously, he began to talk of a car door which had severed my leg from my body and the emergency surgery he was forced to perform because under water I had been... My only option was to believe him. He could sew the leg back on today. A local anaesthetic would suffice and I absolutely should watch him. He even owned a revolver with which I could aim at him during the surgery. He had performed these surgeries for himself when his legs weren't working well. His donors were influential people, he explained hastily, and they had too much of everything. They were reasonable enough to spare what wasn't necessary. I nodded full of shame. He had guessed my doubts concerning his integrity perfectly well even though I followed his story with what I thought would pass as sincere interest.

He naturally performed with great diligence. I was holding the revolver, but caught myself being more attached to the transplantation itself but my missing faith in the man. My leg lived again on my hip. I was able to move it. It didn't even hurt and as early as the next morning I was able to get up and walk around the room. The man had fallen sick. The wound on his hip was weeping horribly and became inflamed.

Filled with hope to enliven him, I turned on the television and the volume as loud as possible. Then I took the revolver and shot him.

- The Polyp

3

Celebration! A great celebration! Such a celebration have I never before attended. It was the first time we experienced overpowering joy to that degree. Needless to say we know how to celebrate. The new year, solstices, birth- and dying days were routinely celebrated with due diligence. The arrival of not only one, but a multitude of ships at the horizon, white like pearls as if the ocean offered its treasures to us, presented itself as a singularity that none of us living ones would ever expect. So, we asked our idols, small wooden figures their mouths wide open, whether or not we were to be hospitable or hostile towards these newcomers. We were relieved to be allowed to take our colourful cloth out of our chests and spread thistle blossoms on the path to the harbour. We murmured laudatory speeches to our idols as we waited for their ships to arrive. With a sound like a kiss they banged against our dock. We devotedly waited for the travellers, but the ships were empty. Once they had drifted towards our shore; they fell onto their sides. The water held them tight. Then they sank to the ground. This is how the celebration ended that was supposed to become one. No one wanted to admit their sadness. I grieved alone and asked my idol furtively what I could do to not think about the ships any longer. My idol sent me to the forest and the disappointment over this assignment issued from my habit to go to the forest daily. We were in need of the forest for our survival although we kept goats and even cows just outside town. Nevertheless, I followed the word.

I met a little creature on the path, but at the spot where I was supposed to see a piece of it I looked at the tree behind. A piece of forest next to it then showed me the missing piece I was not able to spot on it. I stopped paying attention because the creature confused me and my idol suggested I should pursue another path. On a blotch of moss deep in the forest lay a baby idol. I couldn't believe my eyes. I had never seen such a thing. It seemed to be a baby out of flesh and bones, not a wood carving that magically appeared in front of our doors when we are children. Clapping my hands I cried out in joy and bolted at it to pick it up, but as I came close and stretched out my hands I realised that I was mistaken. My so-called baby idol was only a big stone. For a moment there I actually believed in a child-idol. I must guess that it was a punishment. My idol did not speak to me, so I sat myself down on the ground to wait for the idol's voice to return. There, a hundred idol voices poured over me. I was hardly able to discern mine under their screeching and stammering, but I was to go to a specific spot and unearth a corpse.

The corpse was half rotten. Someone had battered the head of a living person that was now in earth. I pushed aside the last remains of dirt. It twitched twice. The corpse awoke and sat up. Horribly it cried. Neither did tears run out of its eyes nor was it able to stand anymore. The idols asked me what happened to the ships. I answered and the corpse fell back into its pit and was dead. Ants and maggots already went for it before I was able to turn away. The strange idols had fallen silent for a moment and I asked my idol what I was supposed to do in the forest. I had to walk further without guidance. I came across a bird that had fallen out of its nest. My idol told me to pick it up. That was not a bird. It was a bird-like bird with a human head. I picked up a bug that climbed up a tree next to me and put it in the bird's mouth. Three months I stayed in the forest until the bird was able to fly. Then it flew above the ocean. Despite my maternal pride, I was angry at my idol. I wanted to go home and sleep in a soft bed.

There the idol grew in my mind and became unbearable to talk to. Its voice shattered in me like the ocean on stone and wind. I cried because I had lost the voice who guided me, but my tears have dried. My idol had grown into what must be a god and wasn't for me alone.

- The Idol

4

I sold my organs and saw myself lying on one of the field beds in the greenish light of a hospital as a couple of arms sliced open my belly to remove my stomach. The stomach is a big deal. Most people, including myself, started with the spleen. Then they moved on to the glands. With the anus, one usually waited until having had two or three surgeries and overcame the embarrassment of exposing oneself to the doctors. That’s how you worked your way up and after a few dozen surgeries you reached the heart and lungs. That was an event for most because the functioning of these organs was already well-known without any research or tiresome explanation. And doesn’t it seem particularly morose when you tell someone that, in 24 hours, the living heart will be replaced by a mechanical one? I can answer that question with a "No" and turn my head away when two strangers indulge in their nostalgia. In the end, they sold their hearts like everyone does and don't think about it any further. The heart and lungs made no difference. You inhale and exhale, the heart pumps like before. Only the mechanical stomach requires an adjustment. There is a special porridge you had to eat. If you didn't, the stomach rejected the food and you'd gag up the valuable money you'd just wasted. The porridge was much cheaper and removing and replacing the stomach is an unquestionable gain when it came to the financial upkeep of one’s body.

I have to say that I had no problems in this regard. As a lab technician at the nose factory I made good money because I was in close contact with the radioactive substance that mutated our cells. At the same time nuclear fusion ensured we had enough energy to sustain our metal bodies when the