Shifty Mansionic Dimensions

This post is inspired by and dedicated to my wonderfully imaginative friend, Tom. You can visit Tom’s blog at The Mansionic Perspective and share in the wonders of his blog world. You can learn all about gargoyles in his post The Winged Lion and the Gargoyle, and enjoy a further fantastic post about Winged Wolves (not the gargoyle wolves featuring in my own post) so do check this one out as well – it’s awesome! The Wild Winged Wolves of the Wilderness

Spinning haphazardly through a cosmic dimension shift Tom found himself spat out of the mouth of the dimension shift to a crescendo of wild howls and screaming tornadoes, at the front entrance of his Mansion. He was a little disconcerted to note that his Mansion had taken on a dark turreted gothic look in his absence, and he couldn’t say he was overly impressed with its leaning towards the dark and evil side either. Tom was pretty sure that he hadn’t ordered the evil wolf gargoyle door knocker now gracing the front door of the mansion and the fact that one was now there wasn’t a particularly promising sign. He channelled his inner werewolf – affectionately known as Tommy, but Tommy merely raised a hairy eyebrow at him and winked conspiratorially before yawning boredly and showing off a gleaming set of fangs.

The evil wolf gargoyle door knocker was not the friendly variety. At the sight of Tom’s hand reaching out to knock it the door knocker wasted no time in snapping and biting at the offending hand with ferocious devil-spawned wrath and a malevolent snarl for added effect. It smirked an evil smirk as Tom’s hand was hastily withdrawn.

The door swung open on its own, to a gaping dark void in the hallway that melted away to display a scene from Ancient Greece. Greece…in the Mansion’s Hall? Tom eyed the Mansion suspiciously, not for the first time today. A hearty snoring rumbled from within shaking the Mansion wall, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness swirling in the doorway, Tom spotted a long chain and a heavy door ring attaching a sleeping slave to it. Slave-butlers! – Tom realised in a flash of unexplained knowledge, with the sole the purpose of answering the door. Not too surprisingly this one was exercising the common practice of slave-butlers involving having died of boredom or fallen asleep by the time a visitor materialised. He looked on curiously as a rich Greek visitor approached the door and seized a short iron bar attached to a chain with which he hammered deafeningly on the door. The sleeping slave-butler, rudely awakened, jumped to his feet, muttering a disgraceful string of grumpy Greek obscenities whilst tripping over his own feet scuttling to open the door.

The scene unfolding in the Mansion’s hallway, took on a slightly ugly tone, as the iron bar proved a handy weapon for the rich visitor to use to beat the homeowner to a pulp; in the process, leaving an unsightly mess on the doorstep whilst the grumpy slave snickered maliciously in the background before falling asleep on his feet. Fast forwarding to a future Greece, the scene displayed a world without slave butlers or the potentially lethal iron bars, instead showing a far more civilised heavy-duty plastic ring attached to the door creating a convenient combi door knocker and handle. The history of door knockers was very dark and fraught with dangers Tom noted, before the evil wolf gargoyle swallowed the whole scene with a ghastly groan and eyes that glowed with a hellish fire.

Taking his chances Tom dived gamely past the gargoyle door knocker and through the front door – The trip down the hall, round to the kitchen and up the newly formed staircase to the study left Tom increasingly sure he hadn’t bought any of the gargoyle wolves he found shrieking furiously at him whenever he should forget and try to approach his doors. He was also left to puzzle over the presence of the glowing volcanic rock artefacts glowing in his sitting room and alongside every evil wolf gargoyle that he encountered along the way. He wondered briefly if it had anything to do with the unexplained knocking on the Mansion windows that seemed to be growing louder as he progressed through the gargoyle adorned Mansion.

A quick detour to the Mansion’s illustrious library of all knowledge saw Tom launch the Tomipedia application, a recent acquisition that the Mansionic App Store had suggested when he had been browsing through his Smart Mansionone”. Tomipedia greeted him with a flash and a bang before exploding into life with a resounding voice-over of the search content it had found somewhere in the depths of itself. Accordingly, the knocking increased in volume and threatening rumblings of discontent.

“Tommy knockers,” the Tomipedia grandly informed him, having projected a 3-D version of itself onto the oakwood wall panels of the Library of all Knowledge, mythical, supernatural beings such as ghosts who were generally considered to inhabit a variety of different mines scattered around the globe. For clarity, and having taken note of Tom’s rich imagination, the Tomipedia roundly dispelled his notions that it might have been referring to land mines rather than coal mines and the like. Furthermore, according to the booming Tomipedia, Tommy knockers were little green men sporting white whiskers, and fitted out in old-style miner’s attire. They stood around 2-feet tall, bearing an uncanny resemblance to goblins, gnomes, and leprechauns. In Germany they were known as Berggeister or Bergmännlein, titles which referred to “mountain ghosts” or “little miners.” They had a reputation for impish mischief and were well-known for hiding tools and snuffing out lights, for example. But despite their behaving like naughty little rascals laughing at them or trying to ignore them would be a very foolhardy and unwise move.

Well, that was very strange considering Tom wasn’t aware of having an inner mine and until this point hadn’t really considered the possibility that he might have one. He made a mental note to consult his inner Tommy knocker at some point and find out exactly where it was living and what sort of inner mine he might be harbouring. A gold mine wouldn’t go amiss.

A particularly thunderous tapping and knocking on the both the Mansion windows and the surrounding walls, acted as a sharp reminder to Tom of the Tomipedia’s reference to the term “knockers.” This title, his Tomipedia informed him with a flourish and in Tom’s book, a wholly unnecessary and thoroughly over-dramatic, loud boom, was articulated as “knackers.” A term, it added, with slightly sadistic cheer, that arose from the knocking on the walls of the mine – an occurrence that frequently crops up just before cave-ins.” …

Cave ins…that wasn’t a good sign…. The Mansion, now a dark, turreted Gothic Mansion, was about to experience a cave-in?!!

It was definitely experiencing something from the wrenching and cracking sounds emitting from the masonry. The massive tear in the wall probably shouldn’t have been showing him another galaxy let alone a fearsome manifestation of the evil black wolf gargoyle door knocker leaping at him through the galactic vortex and an interstellar star show but it rapidly became clear that that was the case. It didn’t look much like a door knocker anymore and neither did it strike him as looking particularly black though this was likely the result of the galactic star show, but evil and gargoyle sprang to mind without any help from Tom’s abundant imagination. It still had wings, he noted. But then again wings seemed to be an obligatory gargoyle feature. Not so much perhaps, however, the song of the stars that was echoing theatrically, from deep within the heart of the gargoyle wolf’s wild howling, nor the shadows of a thousand alien worlds that it now had dancing unnervingly in coal-mine black eyes. The Gargoyle Wolf wasn’t in a good mood. And had a few choice words for Tom.

“Your sighting of black wolves is frequently understood to be a warning omen of your “shadow self” element. Which means Tom, that your visual perception of a black wolf, could be an indication that it’s time to re-examine that element of yourself – right now!!”

The gargoyle wolf reached out and slapped him around the nonce with a hairy brass paw – or rather with the door knocker it had previously been holding in its jaw, and continued in a screaming cosmic howl –

“This element of you is the dwelling place of undesirable thought configurations and philosophies Tom. Are undesirable thoughts creating incomprehensible challenges for your capacity to grasp and perceive the opportunities in your circumstances? Are you in fact cleaving to incorrect and untruthful conjectures that are causing you to defer action on matters of importance, or to postpone your crucial life decisions? Are you hesitating – shaking in your boots no less – because you are uncertain as to whether something is the right thing to do?”

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At this point Tom couldn’t help feeling that all these things might be a possibility, that back hander with a brass door knocker wasn’t the greatest!

“The dark, shadow wolf may be emboldening you to ponder on your attitude – By relinquishing your hold on your undesirable thought configurations, you may well light upon new routes to realize your aspirations.”

At this point Tom’s main aspiration was to find a paracetamol for the headache and an ice pack for the bump on his head, but he was fairly convinced that this wasn’t quite what the wolf gargoyle had in mind when it intoned such words of wisdom to this mere mortal. Probably best to head for the bathroom! There was a big black hole in the bathroom. The door to an alternative universe. Hopefully one that was more sociable than this one! A quick pit-stop at the Mansion’s kitchen to grab an ice pack from the freezer resulted in Cook chasing him back out, brandishing a ladle and a frying pan, closely followed by one of the glowing volcanic artefacts Tom had noted were dotted around the Mansion alongside the evil Wolf Gargoyles….

He tumbled back in the direction of the bathroom, which as it turned out was also harbouring an evil wolf gargoyle and several glowing volcanic rock artefacts – lurking menacingly and so far inexplicably, outside the partially open bathroom door…Well, the Mansion had never made life easy for Tom, he reflected, before making a magnificent gargoyle-defying leap through the bathroom door into the swirling galaxy that had appeared where the shower usually stood…this was going to be a really rough ride he realised as his hair took on a new life all of its own and his disembodied legs waved mockingly at the evil wolf gargoyle before vanishing through the galactic vortex to join the rest of his body in a Mansionic Dimension shift to….?

Over to the Illustrious Tom! Do pay a visit to his blog site – his imagination knows no bounds and you’re sure to find something that will grab your own imagination and keep you coming back!

References

• Knock Knock! A brief history of door knockers: https://www.fiveminutehistory.com
• A brief history of the door knocker: https://www.willowandstone.co.uk
• National Coal Mining Museum: https://www.ncm.org.uk/news/tommyknockers
• The Legend Of Tommyknockers Of The Western Mines: https://anomalien.com/the-legend-of-tommyknockers-of-the-western-mines/
• https://www.millersguild.com/wolf-spirit-animal/