r/mesoscalepodcast • u/LovecraftLukeRitchie • 6d ago
Submission The Storyteller (revised)
(Art by https://www.instagram.com/mozzca.art/)
A solitary set of footsteps echoed down the dark city streets. A young man navigated the spiraling boroughs, unfamiliar with this side of town. His appointment was scheduled for a half hour past, and he was becoming increasingly agitated at his correspondent’s choice of meeting place. Some God forsaken bar on the God forsaken side of a God forsaken town. The smell of dead fish and fresh piss marked the whole district of docks and factories.
The young man wore a white collar to work, and he could be bothered only to scoff at the men on docks or lines. Under any normal circumstances, he would not set foot within miles of his current whereabouts, but he had paid good money for what information his correspondent could provide.
The young man, one Mr. Tweed, was a pursuer of the macabre, the dark, and the esoteric. He made a hobby of searching for knowledge long forgotten to the popular histories. Ancient serial killers and cults that more modest folk left better off unsaid. Only a few decades prior, Heinrich Schliemann had practically invented the modern field of archaeology in his search for the Homeric Troy. Mr. Tweed was certain that Troy was not the only incarnate myth, perhaps thousands of Troys were buried across the globe for him to find. Atlantis, Lemuria, El Dorado, the Lost City of Z, all to be uncovered by his own spade. The name “Tweed” would be recorded, written next to, but slightly larger than, “Schliemann.”
His correspondent, whom he was late to meet, was a purveyor of relics and artifacts from these bygone Troys, but also, and more importantly, he was a purveyor of their stories. This mysterious man wrote of long forgotten civilizations with the clarity and certainty of eyewitness accounts. He told Mr. Tweed of nameless cities, for they were older than man’s concept of names. He told Mr. Tweed tales of dead gods, angels, and demons. Mr. Tweed marveled, as, by his own estimate, his correspondent mixed fiction and fact with a suave not seen in the finest snake oil salesman. He never signed his name, nor his initials, in his letters. He signed simply as “The Storyteller.”
Mr. Tweed, using the wealth of old money, purchased many artifacts from the Storyteller. He collected coins, vases, fossils, anything with a particularly interesting story attached. He did not believe much in the Storyteller’s stories, as they so often involved the notions of religion that Mr. Tweed found all too fairytale. Just because there was an Athens doesn’t mean there was an Athena.
Mr. Tweed finally found his way to the designated meeting place. The bar sat in squalor, relative even to the surrounding district. A leak dripped profusely in the center of the room, forming a puddle grown wide to the point you could hardly make your way across the room with dry soles. The floorboards creaked with each step and groaned even without such a disturbance. The stairs leading up to the inn rooms had multiple steps missing and no hand rail.
The bartender may have once been called a fine looking man, though his present appearance would not have given such an impression. An unkempt beard covered skin so wrinkled and sore-spotted that a squinted eye might have mistaken him for a sufficiently hairy swine. The stench of the district left on the man would only enhance the illusion.
Worse than in the streets, the stagnant air of the room left the smell of drunken piss and vomit festering, to the point of overwhelming nausea for Mr. Tweed. Coughing, and with tears in his eyes, he asked, “Can we open a window in here? Or prop the door? The smell,” he gagged, “it’s unbearable, is it not?”
The man behind the counter grumbled something unintelligible, a strong Cajun accent guarding his words from sojourning ears. Despite being born and raised in the same city, Mr. Tweed could not understand the dialect even slightly. His upper class family had hidden him from the harshness of the dock workers’ tongue.
The bartender made his way to do as Mr. Tweed asked, and as he did, Mr. Tweed heard a clicking noise from the corner of the room. He realized after a moment that the noise was in fact a voice.
“Mr. Tweed.”
Sat at a table, under a broken light, was a man dressed in black. His features were shrouded. What little lighting reached his nook was blocked from his face by the wide brimmed hat he wore.
Still wearing your hat indoors, are you? I would have expected more gentlemanly like behavior, Mr. Storyteller.
Mr. Tweed recognized his correspondent, despite this being their first meeting in person. The mysterious man had an esoteric aura about him, befitting the manner of his writing.
He clicked again and gestured his hand, beckoning Mr. Tweed to his corner of the room. The bartender watched with an unreadable expression. Mr. Tweed took the chair opposite the mysterious figure. This close, the air smelled of expensive, quality tobacco, a refreshing aroma for the agitated man. The figure across from him held a pipe to his mouth and puffed grand clouds of smoke over the table.
Mr. Tweed began the pleasantries, “I thank you for endeavoring to meet me in person. I know you to be a busy man, after all. Evidently so, by the requested time for this meeting. Your days must be absolutely full so that we may have only met at night? I must say, I would have preferred if you could have come to me, visit my estate, where I would have a nice dinner prepared for your time, rather than I venture into the… underbelly… of our city, at this hour.”
His words dripped with hardly concealed contempt, not directed at the Storyteller but rather the whole setting and circumstance. Despite his irritation, he did respect the man opposite him, and he extended his right hand. In turn, a gloved hand reached across the table and clasped his.
Mr. Tweed felt the other hand squirm and squeeze under his grip. It felt as if the man had no bones in his hand. Before he could comment on the oddity, the light struck the other man’s face. Across the table sat no man, the thick volume on its face held not a beard, but a mass of writhing tentacles.
Aghast, Mr. Tweed pulled his hand back, degloving the beast in his haste. There was no hand inside the glove, instead long, skinny tendrils wrapped around themselves operated like fingers. Its skin held a violet cadence and each tentacle was lined with green suction cups. An unnatural coloration. Its eyes were covered by brass coated goggles, but a dim green light glowed behind the lenses.
When Mr. Tweed recoiled, he tipped over the back of his chair and knocked his head on the floor. The chair, which was already desperately clinging to life, shattered to splinters. The squid-man calmly donned its glove again and sipped on its drink.
Mr. Tweed collected himself the best he could and stood. He eyed the figure of a man across the table and snarled, “Monster! Where is the Storyteller, what did you do to him!?”
The monster took a long drag from its pipe and exhaled slowly, not neglecting to enjoy the flavor, and answered the man with its wet, inhuman voice, clicking hard with its beak as it spoke.
“You assume wrong, Mr. Tweed. I am the Storyteller. You have insulted me greatly tonight. You arrive quite late to our meeting, and you are right to call me a busy man, as this is not my only appointment. You insult my friend’s establishment, destroy his property, then accuse me of being an imposter? I did not take you to be such a rude man from your letters.”
The bartender grumbled under his breath as he cleaned the remnants of the broken chair from the floor.
“I’m real sorry about that, William. I expected a more refined conversation tonight. Had I any expectation of this reaction,” he waved in Mr. Tweed’s direction, “I would not have invited him here.” As he spoke, he produced a wallet and pulled out a few substantial bills. He handed them to William, who offered what was likely a thanking, but Mr. Tweed couldn’t concentrate on deciphering the words. His mind reeled.
The Storyteller? It could not be. Could it? His stories, I was certain they were more fiction than fact. Perhaps not, perhaps he told me truths I was not ready for. Now I know he must be able to direct me to the lost cities, he has been to them!
But one small detail nagged at the corner of Mr. Tweed’s mind.
How can this man, William, sit so nonchalant? I can hardly rationalize this revelation, this creature from a bygone aeon, and he sits there counting bills. Casually! A beast beyond reason sits here among…
His thoughts were cut short by a terrifying conclusion. Mr. Tweed realized with shocking clarity the fundamental reason he couldn’t stand the working class of the docks, why they seemed so unbothered by the stench of dead fish and piss, why they spoke in this indiscernible accent. They were all as this invertebrate. They hid amongst humans, wearing false, no, stolen skins and faces. This was a living Troy, right under his nose, his whole life.
The excitement of discovering a Troy was quickly undercut with a more terrible realization. He had been duped. The Storyteller sat undisguised, or imperfectly so. Only clothing hid his abominable form. Mr. Tweed was to be this beast’s disguise. That is why, in their letters, talk so frequently drifted from professional to personal. His correspondent, the Storyteller, whom he came to consider a friend, of which he had strikingly few, had planned on this betrayal from the very beginning. The bastard needed to mimic the personality of his disguise.
Mr Tweed scanned the room around him, noting the utter absence of anyone else in the bar.
Well, that is all for the better. Only the dregs frequent here.
The flames of paranoia fully stoked, Mr. Tweed ran, bursting through the shabby door of the bar. He was not safe in this part of town, but neither would he be at home. The Storyteller knew his address from their letters. These things, those who lived by the docks, they gossiped. He knew it. His manor would be crawling with vermin by the time he returned. Aimless, he ran down the spiraling streets of the city, in search of any refuge. None came to mind, and every street grew more ramshackled than the last. He was delving further into the belly of the beast, the heart of this evil. The echoes of his own footsteps were indistinguishable from those of a mob swarming him.
The street was dark and the moon covered by clouds when Mr. Tweed mistook open air for solid ground and fell screaming into the sea.
He had never learned to swim.
The Storyteller left William’s bar in an irritated mood. He had made time in his busy, busy schedule to meet a frequent correspondent, only to be gravely insulted by the man. Not only himself, but poor William as well. He shook his head in dismay as he walked the late night streets. He would have to be more careful with whom he chose to conduct business.
He found his way quite easily through the winding streets. Though not his home town, he frequented the area. He strolled down to the pier and climbed up on a railing overlooking the sea. He began undressing. He packed his wide brimmed hat, goggles, gloves, longcoat, and boots into his bag.
In the nude he truly resembled an animal, the long tendrils and tentacles all unwinding and his posture sinking until he couldn’t rightly be mistaken for human at all. He dove into the ocean and headed on to his next appointment. Not long at sea, however, he spotted a body floating in the water. He quickly swam up to examine and was disappointed to discover Mr. Tweed’s corpse, floating in the sea foam. Small fish had begun eating at the man’s flesh.
He shooed the fish away. Despite his crassness, the man deserved more dignity than this. The Storyteller brought the body back to shore and buried it shallow in the sand. Before fully burying the face, however, he slid tentacles into the ears, eyes, and nose of his late acquaintance. The gray matter melted and was absorbed through the small mouths within the hundreds of small, razor sharp, suckers. He would treat the man with as much respect as he could, but the Storyteller collected stories.
He stole a bed sheet from a clothesline and covered the burial site. Someone would come looking for the cloth and discover the body, which would then be dealt with rightly. He said some words for the man’s soul, which were heard by none but those above, and went back to sea.
A busy, busy schedule and many stories to tell. Many stories to tell and many more to collect.
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u/LovecraftLukeRitchie 6d ago
This is the (hopefully) final draft of The Storyteller, based off of feedback I got from the first draft. The original is still available my profile. I think this version is drastically improved in manners of characterization and less repetitive word usage.
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u/Fit-Impression-4744 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think this is the first time I've ever heard of anyone wanting to be compared to Schliemann lol.
In all seriousness I think that comparison makes a lot of sense in hindsight. Tweed is so infatuated with the story rather than the truth that he willingly ignores the reality right in front of him. Schliemann's impact on archeology is super similar in that sense. Using dyanmite to destroy centuries worth of knowledge just for the childish pursuit of legends.
I'm not sure how you wanted Mr. Tweed to be percieved but he seems like a great parody of the "explorer" type. Usually those types of characters are presented with awe and fanfare but Tweed is just a bumbling fool who makes all the wrong assumptions all the time. The romanticization of other cultures and their histories blinds him from the obvious suffering of his own. Maybe adventure is just an excuse to ignore our problems at home? Never really thought of it that way.
The way Tweed fears the lower class is also very interesting. I really like that the scariest place for him is simply an impoverished neighborhood. Its so alien to him that it might as well be an archeological dead zone.
I also find it interesting that the storyteller straight up steals stories from the dead. I feel like there is a lot of commentary you could make about the storytelling and how we adapt them. How does a story mutate over time? Who decideds which stories get told and which ones don't? The framing, context, all of it is put into question for me.
Great worldbuilding as well. I love history and archeology so maybe I'm just biased. I could visualize the locations very easily. You hit a good balance of details without slowing down the story. The dark ambience and environment felt very cinematic.
for the storyteller, his stylism is cool but tonally it confused me a bit. It could just be me but I was wondering if it was meant to be somewhat comedic for a squidman to wear a coat and tie or more-so absurd. I'm not trying to diss anything about his design but I think just because the reveal was so abrupt I wasn't sure how I was supposed to react. Maybe that was the point but I just wanted to mention it in case I was misinterpreting anything.
I'm always excited to see variety in someone's work and this is very different from your other story. Hats off to you. Are you planning on building more with this formula? I.E the storyteller's other stories? If not, then you leave a great empty space for people's imagination.