fiction; jakob knight

[edelweiss]

Title Jakob Knight, Chapter 2
Author brightedelweiss
Rating PG (chapter at least)
Summary/Blurb This is the story of Jakob Knight, a story of a boy who finds a key that doesn't go to any lock, and doesn't open any doors.
Word Cout 3,362
Chapter Specifics Very heavy on the descritption, not glossing over that one.
Disclosure Contrary to fanfiction, this entire story, it's characters, it's world belong to me. Take it and I swear I will hunt you down. But on the bright side enjoy, comments are appreciated! As for graphics, the boy/man in the banner is Aaron Johnson in a screencap from the trailer of the movie Dummy.
Chapter 1



“I cannot believe you kept this.”

Eighteen year old Jakob Knight looked up. Poised over a pile of old National Geographic magazines, his eyes flicked upwards to see the other person rummaging through his room.

“Sentimental value.” Jake’s eyes moved back to the magazines, he flipped through them slowly, not particularly reading anything. There was something wonderful about National Geographic’s images, something more powerful about the images than there was about the words. Certainly the words told stories, described events, discovered phenomena, but the pictures were instant. They hit right away and there was something about their twisted perfection that had always fascinated him.

“They’re negatives Jake, from when you were – man, I don’t even know how old you were in these pictures.” Will held up the strip of negatives to the weak light in Jakob’s room. Over the years Jake had become so accustomed to the slow burning of the bulb - that deep golden color – that he preferred it more than a bright white light.

“I’m sure your parents have negatives of you hidden away somewhere.”

“Hidden, yes – but they’re the ones with them, not me.” The negatives were tossed towards Jake, who made sure not to catch them, and hoped that they wouldn’t be scratched by whatever they did fall on.

“Seriously Jake, you’ve got so much shit in this room –”

“I’d hardly classify it as shit.”

“Well whatever it is, there’s too much of it.”

Over a series of years – namely high school – Jakob’s room had become much more defined. Posters of baseball players had disappeared and been replaced by a runner here and there. A black and white image was tacked to the door, on it the face of Steve Prefontaine stood significantly strong, the jaw set tight as the figures around the runner became blurs. The rest of the room was scattered with photographs. From black and white to fading color, they were all pictures Jake had taken in the span of four years. Most of the photographs depictured nature, but the odd picture here and there had people – all of them either turned away from the camera, or not looking directly at it. They were never the focus.

The photographs themselves wallpapered the room. It hadn’t been his initial intention, but somehow or another it had happened. He had begun on the wall opposite his bed, but from there they had crawled onto the other walls. His parents complained about how the photographs made everything smaller and more constrained, but Jakob liked the companionship. Besides, without direct portraits of people, he was never struck with the feeling of being watched by inanimate objects. They were comforting, in their own strange way.

“I don’t know why we’re doing this.” Jake muttered as he walked away from the National Geographic magazines, and towards one of the pictures on a wall. It was a black and white image of a waterfall, and Jake carefully peeled it from the wall and then unconsciously began tapping it against his other hand. The lack of photograph left a blank square against the wall, and soon enough it was back in its original place – restoring the balance to the chaos as it did so.

“Why you’re doing this, you mean? I’m just helping.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a waste of time.” He was supposed to be cleaning his room in preparation for packing to college. Apparently it would be better if unnecessary papers – remnants from high school – were thrown away. Yet Jakob hadn’t found much that he wanted to toss. There were technical manuals, old notebooks, and then papers with little thoughts he had had in the middle of the night and hadn’t wanted to forget in the morning – but that was nothing compared to the journals, random writings and scribblings he had wanted to keep. “We’ve – I’ve – been looking at stuff for two hours and there’s nothing I want to ditch.”

“Yeah well, when you start arguing with your mother, keep me out of it.” Will answered as he shuffled through a stack of CDs. Jake only laughed.

“Your fear of my mother is…really awkward.”

“At least I’m not afraid of an ex-girlfriend. And that’s not awkward, it’s pathetic.”

Jake didn’t answer, instead glared glumly at the walls and the pictures on them, before moving closer to one of them that was pasted next to a corner beam.

“If you find anything useless tell me.” He said before looking at pictures, his hands forcefully shoved into the pockets of his pants. Jake carefully avoided certain ones – namely of a dark brown haired girl – and then looked down at the floor.

That was when he caught the reflection from a hole in one of the corner beams. Jake frowned, took a hand out of a pocket and stuck his hand – ever so unwisely – into the crevice. It was a key. Jake turned it over in his hands and held it up to the light with a sort of wonder on his face.

“Hey do you remember this?”

Will furrowed his eyebrows for a second, stared at the object in Jake’s hand and then shook his head. “Nope.”

“Remember that day that…” Jake started to say and looked hopefully at Will, a sort of light energy in his eyes. Will clearly didn’t remember the key. The blank stare told everything and Jake paused. “We were about…eight or something? We found the key under the bed…” Still nothing, Jake frowned and then laughed. “Guess that’s a no. Well here it is, funny how things come around full circle.”

“It’s an old key in an old house, explain how that’s unusual.”

Jake groaned, scratched head in a frustrated manner and then sighed. “It’s not finding an old key, but just finding something years after I first found it. It’s serendipitous; it’s just…neat. Or, I dunno, it just sort of brightens things.” Jake looked at the key. From what he could remember it didn’t look all too different than it had all those years ago. If there was any notable difference in it, Jake wasn’t about to find out. All that stuck out now in comparison to then was the rust. That and for some reason it seemed all the more important.

“It’s a key that we found when we were about seven.”

“Eight – or nine.”

“Whatever, it’s still a key. We’re going to college, and I’m pretty sure it’s unhealthy to have that level of fascination or happiness over a rusty key that’s broken, and that you – or we – supposedly found when our voices were high pitched.” Will responded, eyebrows raised and filled with skepticism.

“You don’t find anything fascinating about finding something twice?”

“Jake we forgot about it once, what makes you think you’re not going to forget it again. Besides what’s the point of having a key if there’s no door?” Jake frowned at the comment, Will had a point. Three years ago they had replaced most of the doors with working doorknobs, the rest remained simple latch doors. As far as he knew there weren’t any proper key holes or doors that this particular key would fit into, and without a door the key was sort of useless, an interesting item, but not exactly helpful. “Anyways I think I ought to go. If you find the baseball mitt I left here when I was six, call, okay?” Both rolled their eyes, and then Will was gone.

Jake hardly noticed as Will left and instead turned the key over and over in his hand, shoving the National Geographic’s under his bed in the process.

“I won’t forget it.” He mumbled to himself, only then realizing that he was alone.

He felt odd, or different, as if the key had suddenly lit something in him that he hadn’t realized before.

Jake didn’t necessarily know what it was about the key, but he did know that there was something. It was as if the key had some sort of symbology, some sort of importance, as if it wasn’t just a key that had been found by a boy ten years ago. There was something about the way it felt as he moved it over the hands. The key felt alien and at the same time familiar, as if he had always had it but never known. Puzzled and frustrated, Jake slid the key into his pocket and sighed. He turned around and looked at the photographs on the wall, as if they miraculously could answer all of his questions.

“Jakob, what happened to cleaning?” Female, annoyed, and tired. His mother.

Jake turned towards the door with the puzzled look still fixed on his face. For a second his eyes lit up and he smiled, but both the light and the smile disappeared quickly.

“There was nothing to throw away.” Jake answered truthfully, taking his hands out of his pockets.

“I am quite sure that if I looked through your room I would find plenty of miscellaneous objects or papers that you will never need to look at.” His mother shot back raising her eyebrows and moving from the doorway into the room.

“You never k-” Jake attempted a retort, but was cut off.

“I’m very sure that I do know. You have notebooks of subjects I know you will not be studying, and in addition there are the journals you never wrote in. Don’t tell me you’ll find some sort of use for them because I know you won’t. If there isn’t a bag of paper – or 3rd grade craft projects – in the hallway by seven tonight, I’ll start throwing out anything remotely useless myself.” His mother gave him a pointed look, glanced over the room and then left. Jake sighed.

There was something about throwing away old papers that he had never liked. The idea of looking over his schoolwork years from now and having the option of chuckling at it was something he liked. And the journals…his mother had had a point, but having to throw away or recycle perfectly good notebooks almost embarrassed him. If he had to throw them away then, there had been no point of buying them in the first place, which clearly meant that he had failed in whatever he had happened to attempt in purchasing them at all. The last thing Jake wanted before college was a bit of failure.

He shut the door with a mix of resolution and contempt and then surveyed the room. There were several choices. It was five o’clock and he had more than two hours to clean his room. Cleaning would be easy, especially because it would only take around half an hour to find stuff to throw away (as much as he hated to admit it). Still, he had options. He could completely ignore his mother, because as someone going to college and living independently clearly he ought to start living on his own now. He could wait till the very last minute to do exactly what his mother would do later – throw anything in sight away. Or – or – he could start cleaning now, have time to himself, have a pleased mother and avoid a lecture involving ‘I brought you into the world’ or ‘so that means you’re going to pay for your own college education?’.

He started cleaning.

In about forty five minutes Jakob’s room was void of all useless memorabilia. At the end of it all there were three bags outside his door. One of clothes that had been stewing in various parts of his room for ages and now no longer fit. Another, papers to be recycled, with a few notebooks thrown in as well. He had considered actually cutting the wire off of the notebooks to make them fully recyclable but decided not to after it took 10 minutes (and newly cut wire flying in all sorts of directions) to detach the paper from the smallest notebook. The last was just a load of trash. There hadn’t actually been any third grade projects lying around in his room, but Jake had found more than enough to make up the difference. The astonishing thing was that looking at his room now, it appeared just as full as it had once been. Despite the bursting bags lying outside of his room, the inside didn’t even look that clean. He wondered how his mother would take it, then pushed it out his mind. He had cleaned. There.

Jakob found his camera more quickly than usual, and methodically checked to see that there was enough film in it, and that his light meter had properly working batteries before he left. Wordlessly he brought the three bags downstairs, left them where his mother wouldn’t miss them and then went out the door.



The outdoors had always had a tremendous affect on Jakob. He had once read Ansel Adams’ book of letters, and had marveled over the deep love the photographer had had for nature. He had intended to read it to, in some sort of way, become a better photographer, but had only ended up with a deeper appreciation for the wilderness. He could no longer look at a leaf without noticing the way the light passed through it. He had once woken up at three in the morning to make sure that he caught the way the sun rose through a tree on one side of the house. The film had over-exposed but the moment hadn’t changed.

The morning in particular had been cold, and a light fog (the kind that bordered on mist) had settled everywhere. He had originally just come out with his camera, a light meter and a fold out chair. Then he had felt the chill of the morning and had realized that his hands would be frozen by the time he would be able to take a picture (or hold the camera steady). That was when he brought out the tripod. The negatives had been so washed out Jake hadn’t even tried to get a print. Still, those moments of silence, mixed in with the overlooked treasure of dew on tall blades grass hadn’t disappeared.

The air today was crisp – a typical fall day. The black camera strap, with the iconic yellow Nikon lettering, was thrown around his neck, and as he stepped onto the brick laid out in front of the house, Jake took off the lens cap and snapped a shot with no preparation. Seconds later he checked the meter and let out a chuckle. Underexposed. Photography was something of a therapy for him. Some people wrote, others ran, but Jake practiced photography. That and read, but there was something about shutter speed and aperture that was relaxing.

Jake slipped the light meter into his pocket and as his hand knocked against the key he remembered it. It was definitely strange, this key. Jake had a particularly good memory, but for some reason, for the second time he had forgotten about something. It wasn’t the fact that he had forgotten anything – that he could handle - but that he had forgotten the key. All the moments in which he had found the key had had a sort of lightness to them. They had been the sort of which epiphanies were born from. And yet, he had still forgotten it.

It was too peculiar and he found himself annoyed and simultaneously inquisitive. It also somehow made the key all the more important. Jake had always believed that what one always remembered was therefore the most important. By that rule the key should have been insignificant, and yet it wasn’t. Perhaps it was because he was continually forgetting it. Not that it had happened a great amount of times, but he had told Will that he wouldn’t forget the key and he had. He had denied forgetting it vehemently and yet in no more than a few hours it had completely slipped his mind. Incredible.

The key was out of his pocket now and Jake was staring at it furiously, though why he didn’t know for sure. He didn’t suddenly expect to realize it’s all powerful importance, and yet he was hoping dearly that he would.

It was a key – a tarnished key, with a broken ring – that as of today he had found three times.

As if he was little again, Jake found his mind wandering off towards all of the secrets that the key’s lock would reveal. The personal history of his house for one – of his ancestors – was most prevalent. Jake turned to look at the house. It was more than a few centuries old, but Jakob couldn’t place the exact year that it had first been constructed. Probably some time when Kings and Queens still had prominence. Even then, there was still nothing architecturally defining about it. There wasn’t a particular flourish that evoked an age. It was just…his house. It had always been a deep red sort of color – an almost mahogany. His mother had once tried lace curtains, but his father had guffawed the idea, mostly due to the fact that there were already shutters on every window. The shutters themselves were intended to be white, but time hadn’t been kind and instead they were something of a peeling mess. All of the doors were neither painted nor unfinished, and instead had a varnish over them. After particularly difficult winters they had to be re-done, but Jakob always liked them. A wreath that had needed to be thrown away months ago still hung next to the front door, and the wrought iron fence by the back door was rusting on purpose. A vine grew up on one side of the house, and wrapped itself around a shutter possessively. The shrubs his mother had planted had grown closer to the house and were so large now that cutting them seemed an impossible task.

The surrounding area had the same purposeful neglect about it. There was a potting shed on the house’s south side, and an old gnarled horse chestnut on the east. He hadn’t ever gone into the shed – mostly because the possibility of a garden snake or a spider’s nest unsettled him. He didn’t plan on breaking the trend. As for the tree – the branches were too high to begin an ascent. If anything it served as good shade on a sunny day, and a noir image against cloudy skies.

The house itself was surrounded by a field that year after year became smaller and smaller due to what he liked to categorize as a creeping forest.

Nowhere on the entire property had Jake ever found a lock.

He looked down at the key in his hand. His hand was covered in orange specs and had taken on a different sort of shade. He had been rubbing it. The rust appeared fluid now and the key looked wholly different. Where did it go to? Where was the lock? It had to be somewhere on their land. Surely he hadn’t found a key that had absolutely nothing to do with him. Or perhaps his hope of a connection had begun to turn into baseless fact.

Jake suddenly found himself overwhelmed. Thoughts rushed in and didn’t move aside for others. He needed to think, or at least take a breath from the thoughts rushing. He made his way to the tree. The branches sprawled and reached out. Its gnarly and ancient appearance made it seem the most fierce living thing he had ever set eyes on. Harsh and abrupt people were nothing in comparison to it. As the sun began to wind downward in the sky, Jake raised his camera (key still in hand), set the camera to the highest aperture and clicked. Snap. Things felt better already.

At the base of the tree Jake knelt and let his fingers go over some of the inscribed initials at the base of it. There were several initials seemingly entwined with each other and the bark. His parents initials were carved into it, as was just about every couple he knew that still lasted. Perhaps that was one reason why he was single, woman-less. His initial was not carved into the tree. There was no J entwined with another letter.

Of all of the inscribed letters there was one that stood out the most. They were deep, really set into the wood. It looked like a fierce wound but at the same time it was fascinating. You could never see the end of the carving. The bark was so thick and hard that bare fingers alone couldn’t reach where it ended. As for inserting a knife, well, it had always seemed sacrilege to carve, or even follow the carvings, of an already cemented couple.

C + L.

Those were the initials. He had always wondered who they had stood for, and now ran his fingers over them ruminating on a love that he didn’t know he could ever possibly handle. His hand dropped and he shifted backwards, raising the camera to take a shot. As the shutter opened the key fell. When it had closed Jake moved forwards again and picked it back up.

That was when something clicked. Gears turned. Jakob Knight felt himself somehow transfixed. In between the moments of picking up the key and looking up at the tree – at the initials – something shifted. It came from nowhere, but like the importance of the key, Jake felt like the moment had always been there. It had been waiting on the sidelines. Now it was here. Everything felt…right.

In the next moment Jake raised the key and then – almost possessed – he pushed it into the plus sign in between the C and the L. He turned the key gently in the wood, slipping his finger into the broken ring.

Everything faded.

Comments

[terra-mater.livejournal.com]

wow. i actually liked this chapter a lot better than the first one. the grammar was more refined, as was the style and the characterisation (particularly jakob's). my only real problems would be that you briefly slipped into passive voice ("the negatives were tossed towards jake") and the word "had" was, to me, a little overused. other than that, though, a very good piece of writing and i look forward to chapter three.

[brightedelweiss.livejournal.com]

thank you. I'll remember to watch out for passive voice, and over-using had...I'm writing right now and I've realized just how much I tend to use it.

I'm glad you liked it more than the last, I enjoyed writing it a lot more!