Word Count: 1541 words.

This story is incomplete. I don't know how to finish it. I don't know what its identity is; kind of fitting, to be honest.

I'd like feedback on this one. Enjoy.

The moon conjured mists and mental images of dwindling torches on the 123rd Day of the year 1781. The nightsky appeared brittle, like cast iron, and Zeus would split it with a lightning bolt every now and again when He thought no one was looking.

Dogs gathered in secret ceremony at the hollow amidst the woods on the hills flanking Cicadily Home. These were dogs of vast variety, from stray kings to hyena-kin. Their eyes shone like coins, sending faint beams which tore through the lambent shadows of the night, naught a little occult. Confused they were, these hounds, as to why they had been summoned here, and who had summoned them, and how they had done it.

Just as they started to bark with half a mind of doing so for perpetuity, a terribly rigid man was seen sauntering down the hills. He was whistling a foreign melody, sharp to the ear and sharper to the confounded dog ear. Mist coiled around his bodice. The rigid man held a cane in a hand, and a hat held his head, and his back was awfully, artfully straight. It was common knowledge that such uncommon spines of the ironed-straight sort belonged to the Bents.

"It would appear," spoke a mysterious voice in the dogs' chaffed ears, "that this is the time of the year Mr. Bent comes to visit."

*

'Hither to thither, unguided, unfettered
Run they travelers!
Wherefore is known not, numbers there are few, fewer even
Than their unravelers!'

The poet who wrote the poem from which the above lines have been extracted had no identity. His name was nearly as big a mystery as what travelers he bespoke of. But Mr. Bent of Cicadily Home, in all humility, had faith that the poet must have been referring to individuals such as himself and Old Storm.

Cicadily Home was only Mr. Bent's home in speaking — an adumbrate maze for ghosts and ghouls. For he, beneficiary of the Bent name, did rarely ever stay put in one place longer than a stubborn wind. It could be said that he grew up in the place, in the vertiginous stack of walls he was made to call Home. It could be, and was, spoken in whispers by many: the cooks told this to their scullery maids, the maids hissed it into the garbagemen's ears, the garbagemen informed the feral rats so that even wild animals knew Mr. Bent was of Cicadily Home and Cicadily Home of Mr. Bent. That Mr. Bent did not in the least seem interested in producing an heir engendered further conspiracy in the civilly wild lot. 

Mr. Bent seemed not to care for whispers so thin a breathless breeze could blow them away. Still, he visited Home every year at least once. Not for sentimental reasons but because it felt like a right rite, a ritual as of keeping a stopped clock in dingy hallways. He would show up unexpectedly, so the cooks and maids and garbagemen all had to keep up their guard year and eve around. Should he turn up on a week they'd neglected their duty . . . the idea was unbearable. Cicadily Home had to have perfect reception for any Bent, whenever he or she may choose to engage.

*

"It would appear that this is the time of the year Mr. Bent comes to visit."

The dogs started. Some of the more irascible ones growled. Who was this speaker? How could he speak to them all at once? And whyever did his voice erupt directly in their ears, like it never traveled through a throat or from a mouth?

A brass doorknocker slammed against the little door at the back of the Tower of Grey. Someone opened the door, observed a special spine, and bowed so deeply that their nose touched the shining stone floor.

"Mr. Bent!" the someone — a maiden maid who went by Miss Umbar — exclaimed. "Why, what a pleasant surprise!" Her bones creaked like the hull of an old ship as she deconstructed the bow.

"Surprise?" said Mr. Bent with a smile that ill-suited the sharply defined outline of his jaw. "Since when is it a surprise for a resident to return to his house?"

Miss Umbar's mouth performed several rotations and her voice-box tried to coordinate with her brain for the effect of emitting a sensible string of words. In the end she simply bowed again, so very deeply this time around that she practically ate the stone floor.

Mr. Bent laughed a rich laugh and stepped inside the Tower, inside the Home; his Home.

He removed his hat and flung it carelessly in no particular direction. The hat spun and maneuvered, as blind as a bat plus as frightening, and it rustled into place on a golden candelabra. Next Mr. Bent tossed away his cane, which Miss Umbar caught before it fell to completion. She had recovered. From what, she didn't know. She put the cane in an umbrella stand.

Outside, dogs whined. Some of the more cloy ones cried. Whatever, Miss Umbar wondered, was the matter with those canine rascals?

In an imperfect voice she urged the owner of the Home to have a seat. "Only if yew want to, accourse," she added hastily.

Mr. Bent sprawled himself down on an armchair as erect at the back as him. He crossed his legs in the manner of rich genuflect and began to wait.

Stupidly stood poor Miss Umbar, unsure of what her duty asked of her to do. Was she supposed to stand there looking like a damsel in very mild distress? Or was she meant to offer him dinner? It was getting awfully late for dinner. She'd ask him too, if she couldn't feel the distinct coat of anticipation that Mr. Bent had wrapped about his body, along with wisps of mists he'd brought in from out.

"I am waiting for somebody," said Mr. Bent kindly to confirm her suspicion.

Miss Umbar muttered "Hmm" in a tone that politely made it clear she wanted to know who the master was waiting for. But only the dogs spoke in reply, and them in a cacophonous tongue she could rarely understand. She could tell, though, that the mutts were feeling especially agitated to-day.

A while later, to save Miss Umbar from passing away of boredom, a hero knocked at the door of the Tower of Grey. Mr. Bent reacted to the knock by not reacting at all, whereas she scampered over and unlocked the door; which swung open smoothly to reveal her hero; who was a gargoyle of a man. As much as Mr. Bent was ironed straight, Mr. Hero was gnarled. Redolent to an old fir tree, bodily knots seemed to jut out rudely from his patched clothes. The gentleman's face was no less twisted — at least Miss Umbar hoped he was a gentleman, otherwise an encounter with such a creature did not promise niceties —, twisted like a rubber pipe, twisted like a coiled serpent, twisted like a lamb's hair, so twisted.

Without a word the goatish gargoyle stepped in, because Miss Umbar was loath to stand in his path. He turned his head to look directly at Mr. Bent, whose solemn visage broke into a bent smile.

"Storm! Storm, Storm! My old man!" said Mr. Bent ebulliently. Each noun was punctuated by unbelievably raucous barks. "I am blessed to see you again!"

"I am no less blessed," rumbled the twisted Storm, "to be at the Home. Place hasn't let a rat ruffle its hair since I was last here."

It was this rumbling voice that the hounds had heard in their heads, which had driven them to a pitch of near lunacy.

"And when was that?" Mr. Bent asked.

"Some twenty years ago," said Storm. "When you were still a child."

Miss Umbar watched the two men with excitement. So this was Old Storm, the legendary Traveler! He was said to have been there at the Pharaoh's funeral, spying upon the proceedings from atop a minaret. He was most certainly in possession of the Perplexed Map. Oh, she was witnessing a great man, a hero truly, was Miss Umbar.

". . . fair lady . . .?"

"Hmm?" Her cheeks flushed crimson, for she had been too occupied by her thoughts to be paying attention to what Mr. Bent was saying.

"Close the door, Homelady," said he.

She hurriedly shut the door.

"But I can still hear them bark," complained Mr. Bent. "Such noise!"

"Worry not," said Old Storm throatily, and puckered up his crooked hands to the shape of a beak; then snapped close the make-belief beak; and the dogs silenced. Miss Umbar blinked at the sorcery.

"How useful a trick!" said Mr. Bent to a smug-looking Old Storm. "Wherever did you learn it?"

Old Storm waved. "Tribe Ha'lok taught me. The tribe-leader desired to marry his daughter unto me, will you believe it!"

"How tremendously fascinating," said Mr. Bent. "The trick, I mean. I've earnestly lost count of all the times learned people have tried to marry their daughters to me. And--" here Mr. Bent leaned over conspiraciously (his back still erect) "--on some occasions, their sons as well!"

"Well, well!" warbled Old Storm. "How about that!"

Sorry about the randomness. I wrote this in a trance. What did you make of it? Suggestions?