Life of the Strange

Get to Know Some of the Strange Things

The Castle of the Strange was a tall, spiraling building on one half and a wide, blocky one on the other, with rooms and corridors stretching underground like roots, and ruled over no one in particular. The castle was surrounded by a stark, dreary setting that no one liked to talk about--and where not many people-like things lived...the scenery torn apart by a terrible and distant past...

Aardy was laying on the floor of her room, which was near the back end of the castle and on ground-level, totally bored out of her mind and feeling pretty much cheated about life.

Crumpled up bits of paper were surrounding her somber figure, her ash-colored dress brushing against her shins.

The crumpled up paper taunted her, a very symbol of the fact her head was empty of good ideas to fill up the pages and lead to somewhere fun. But so far she had only managed to write the word "fart" over and over, which was not exactly the tale of the century. Though it was a technique that usually brought ideas to her.

Aardy coiled her hand into a fist and hit the floor beside her in defeat, making a weak thud noise. She curled into a ball next, her tangled messy hair only falling a bit in line behind her.

"I'm all washed up I guess." She muttered.

Now her hair covered her face and went in every direction like the spiraling tendrils of a storm-cloud as she sat up. "Fart." She said in a dignified way. "Fart, fart, fart."

A pause.

"I can't work in this environment." Aardy declared, getting off the floor to scan her room, which was painted almost all purple.

(Purple was a color made for royalty, after all.)

However the floor's carpet remained to be a reddish-brown with blue trumpet flowers on them, which was covered with scattered bits of paper from her defeated-creativity-attempts.

There were a few clothes on the ground too, even though she had a small closet to prevent such things, and a shelf to keep trinkets and books.

Finally there was mysterious trunk on the floor next to the foot of her bed, that also doubled conveniently as a cursed pirate chest.

That was it, and she made up her mind that it was indeed a poor environment for her creativity.
She bounded out the door and into the carpeted hallway, tired from the short description of her bedroom.

The hallway was narrow and the carpet was scratchy and uninteresting, because it was what people called "the servants quarters," which Aardy assumed people thought as lesser in the Old a Days. People were, as another one of her assumptions, very dull and boring back then.

The electrical lights above her buzzed and flickered like fire flies, showing against the grey, water-stained walls.

She navigated the twisting corridors and into the large dining hall where there was an even bigger, more elaborate electrical light called a chandelier where it hung high like a bees nest of buzzing, flickering bulbs. She liked to stare at it.

Duke was sitting up at the head of the long, antique-like wooden table that took up most of the room. He was reading something off of a thick packet of paper.

Duke liked to think of himself as one of "leaders" of the group that made up the castle, even though it was unofficial and that leaders weren't much of a real thing. He had long, black hair and light skin that made Aardy think he was secretly an evil vampire. He was too pale not to be.

Though if he really was a Dracula, he was a wimpy one. He never drank any blood and all he did was nag people around. He might of been Dracula's mother. Aardy thought Duke was a rip-off if he was a vampire, and would like a refund and replacement posthaste. Only cool vampires allowed.