Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)

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Our Strange and Wonderful House was an experimental collaborative prose work created on Ficly by a large number of writers, starting from a premise and format established by Zxvasdf. Although not conceived of as a novel at its inception, it was termed one by the foreword of the 2022 ebook edition, which was put together by Aristide Twain. Although she was not the main character, Jenny Everywhere, in several incarnations, recurred several times through the book.

Instead of any singular narrative, Our Strange and Wonderful House was made up of a series of vignettes describing, or centering on, various areas of the titular sentient, impossibly vast, shifting House. Many, though by no means all, of its Chapters and Appendices were written in the second person, putting the reader in the shoes of an otherwise-unseen visitor exploring the house. We have elected not to give character pages to these figures, so as to avoid having to make judgment calls about the degree to which the "Yous" of various individual parts should be considered the same continuous character.

Contents

Plot

Welcome!

An individual welcomes a group of writers who have gathered to participate in a “challenge”. They explain that what they are actually to do is to participate in the creation of a Strange and Wonderful House, whose blueprints, infinite in proportions, are currently blank.

Chapter 1: The Courtyard

After stepping through a portal of some sort, an individual finds themself in the Courtyard of the House, facing the gates of the estate proper, which appear to be made of a glowing golden metal, but are actually made of transparent tubing containing a multitude of luminous insects milling about, fulfilling unknown tasks. The gates open of their own accord and the visitor steps through as the portal sings behind them.

Chapter 2: The Anteroom

The visitor reaches the Anteroom, lit by a chandelier on which small groups of fairies dance. A pillar of cold light, burning fairy dust, occupies the centre of the circular room, a portal that will transport whoever steps into it to the room of their choice. The visitor steps into the light.

Chapter 3: The Pleasure Pad of Federico Ruiz

The Pleasure Pad of Federico Ruiz, the decadent domed leisure area overseen by Federico Ruiz is described.

Chapter 4: The Catamaran Loos of Oceania

The Catamaran Loos of Oceania, the House's bathroom, which contain an entire ocean, with the actual plumbing in the centre of a boat sailing the quiet nightly sea, are described.

Chapter 5: The Library

The lady Elshanor returns to Hawk Manor after a lengthy absence. Walking through the incredibly dusty corridors, she makes her way to Hawk Manor's Library, where she finds a strange, shimmering portal which appears to lead to another library, that of a mysterious infinite house.

Appendix 5-I: The Other Side

In Hawk Manor's library, Alastair is skulking in a dark corner, bemoaning Elshanor's absence. He suddenly sees the portal shimmer; though he gets his knife up, he quickly sees that the woman stepping through is in fact Elshanor. However, almost as quickly, he realises it is not quite the Elshanor he knew. The two stare at each other in shock.

Appendix 5-II: The Bathroom (of the Library)

Elshanor steps into the Library of the Strange and Wonderful House, immediately noticing that the floorboards are as creaky as the doors of Hawk Manor's library. She walks through the Library to find a metallic door curiously ill-fitting for the decor of the room, which turns out to be the gleaming library bathroom, impossibly spotless, in stark contrast to the dust of the library. She notices a paperback copy of Les Misérables and debates taking it back to its proper place, but her musings are interrupted by another creaking sound in the room behind her.

Chapter 6: The Theater Room

The Theater Room is described. It is a haunting place where the unwary visitor may lose their freedom and sanity as they find themselves drawn into the dance of the inhuman “players” wearing human faces, with them soon performing for the players' amusement instead of the players for the visitor's — and in more permanent terms, the players are “always looking for fresh blood”.

Chapter 7: The Coat Room

The Coat Room is described. Its appearance changes from “warm and cloying” to “large and drafty” as needed, with the staff changing from Dwarves to Titans to match. Although it is possible not to call on the services of these changeable valets, the Coat Room is apparently so huge that many become lost for weeks on end, forced to survive off scraps; “on many occasions bleached bones of owners are found mere yards from their coats”.

Chapter 8: The Closet in the Sitting Room

The narration promises that inside the Closet in the Sitting Room is a portal to Narnia – and indeed that one could get to Narnia from any closet. However, the Closet in the Sitting Room is designed as a test to this faith: although it does actually lead to Narnia too, this is not immediately apparent because there is a further doorway disguised as the back wall of the closet.

Chapter 9: Hallway – PI3

An unnamed “I”, visiting the House for what seems to be the first time, but whose brother was familiar (or possibly contributed to) the blueprints, makes their way through Hallway - P13 Served by a lift – not an elevator, just a vertical shaft with a very forceful updraft – this organically curved hallway, whose floor glows a soft blue, provides access to the Observatory through an “elegant door of dark wood”. The visitor reaches this door and gently taps it.

Chapter 10: The Observatory

After the complex locking system opens the door, the visitor enters the Observatory, a high-tech circular room with a reclining chair in the centre. The visitor is greeted by the A.I. overseeing the Observatory, who introduces herself as “’Ana”. She explains that the Observatory allows residents of the House to observe “space and time”. When the visitor asks what the chair with its joysticks is for, she very casually replies that it is used “to control the lasers, of course”.

Chapter 11: Every House Needs One

Rennik, apparently attending some kind of party at the House, visits the men's room, which turns out to have rather curious gravity, such that men amuse themselves by trying to aim for the urinals while standing upside-down on the ceiling. Another of the men asks Rennik where and when the party he comes from is happening, leading to some confusion between impossible rooms as Rennik and his interlocutor mix up the 3rd floor basement with the 2nd floor attic past the tennis courts.

Chapter 12: The Dining Room

The Dining Room of the House is described. It adapts itself, with the décor, entertainment, and cuisine all being appropriate for the diner’s expectations. That nobody else might perceive what you do is not a problem.

Chapter 13: The Guardroom

A visitor enters the Guardroom, where a number of heavily-armed men watch over the locked, reinforced door that leads through to the Conservatory. One guard asks them if they want to go through, telling them “Better you than me” when they acquiesce.

Appendix 13-I: The Conservatory

The visitor glances through the bars of the door to the Conservatory and is unsettled by what they see, but stick to their plan of visiting it. The guardsman outfits them with full armour similar to the guards', complete with a metal rake for a weapon, before sending them cautiously onwards.

Appendix 13-II: View From a Jungle

The visitor enters the eerie jungle. Strewn about are panes of glass; through some of them beams of sunlight come to nourish the plant-life, while others are windows into other areas of the house. For example, one is the party in the “roughly-finished basement”, another is an elegant and studious woman strolling with melancholy through a “tattered” library, and “a fantastical bacchanal led by a grinning imp”. The visitor tries to refocus, making their best efforts to stay on the path, but suddenly a cackling voice finished a train of thought for them with the word “Mad!”. Without hesitation, the visitor identifies this as the voice of the gardener.

Appendix 13-III: Back to the Garden

The visitor is being chased through the beautiful garden by the Mad Gardener, who wields a machete even as he sings in a “deep but strangely serene voice”. As they run, the visitor also catches a glimpse of the Gardener's reflection in one of the panes of glass — not an old man with a machete, but a a creature with a great many wings bearing a flaming sword.

Appendix 13-IV: The Madman

Still chased by the Mad Gardener, the visitor takes a wrong turn and, running out of path, ends up reluctantly running out of the marked path and into the foliage. There, they soon reach a dead end, their way cut off by a wall of glass panels which soon reflect a vision of horror: the Mad Gardener's true angelic form morphing into a demonic one. The Gardener manages to plant the machete in the chest of the visitor's body armour, though it holds and they are not injured. Keeping them on the ground, the Gardener yanks out the machete and prepares to behead the visitor.

Appendix 13-V: The Saviour

The Mad Gardener's machete blow is blocked unexpected by a steel spade held by another man who wears body armour under a long coat, “camouflaged with paints in green and brown and various twigs and leaves”. As they circle each other, dueling like swordsmen with their respective unlikely weapon, the Mad Gardener seems to recognise the other, whom he calls Grigori. The other angel replies that the Gardener has “succumbed to the madness”, and asks him to please surrender now rather than make this harder than it has to be. Naturally, the Gardener refuses, tackling Grigori with an animalistic shriek and attempting to stab him.

Appendix 13-VI: The Gardener

Avoiding the Mad Gardener's blows, Grigori beheads him before saying a few words over his body. Introducing himself as a Gardener himself, he then tells the baffled visitor to hurry away with him, lest they fall pray to other entities who might be attracted by the scent of blood.

Chapter 14: I Am An Athenaeum

In verse rather than prose, an Athenaeum describes its own nature and function in the first person — where a library is a place for reading, an athenaeum is a place of social learning. The athenaeum of the House is implied to connect to all others, in the fashion of Pratchett’s L-Space.

Chapter 15: The Stairwell

The Stairwell, a spiral staircase starting near the front door and going upwards, is described. These stairs, built when the President of Zimbabwe complained about the lack of stairs and opened on “the first day of Spring”, pass through “an infinite number of portals, spanning the width and depth of the house”. The supports are in the shape of animal limbs, and each stone step represents a ley line. Every four steps is a doorway. The doors go up to the front door of the Attic, but they also go beyond it — and at the very top, there is a golden gate surrounded by “dry ice tended to by the very highest of the goblins”. It is closed, and a sign hanging from the padlock states: “If you have made it here, then you only deserve to fall, for a life wasted is not a life lived in Good.”.

Chapter 16: The Throne Room

Having followed the portals, Elshanor arrives in the Throne Room, where fifty diverse thrones sit against three of the four stone walls. She immediately recognises the throne meant for her, a silver-set, royal-blue-velvet-padded one. As soon as she sits down, her throne becomes the head throne, and a man is sent through as a disembodied voice explains that he stole waters from the Fountain of Youth and calls on Elshanor to judge him. Two buttons, one white and one red, have appeared on the arm-rests. She looks and into his eyes chooses the red, for guilt. A portal opens beneath the man's feet and he plummets into Pandemonium.

Chapter 17: The Portal to Pandemonium

Rohinder, judged in the previous chapter, falls through the portal and ends up in the middle of the great, golden hall of Pandemonium, which he finds to be “just as Milton described it”. Through “black fire light” he sees another throne, higher and golden, and sitting within it “the most beautiful and deadly angel anyone had ever cast eyes on”, who booms: “So your judgement has been placed? Well, I suppose that now it is time for your punishment.”

Chapter 18: The Jenny Everywhere Museum

The Jenny Everywhere Museum is described. It is a wing of the House that was set aside for Jenny Everywhere by the Architect itself to use as a museum for herselves and her friends – and, possibly, as a storeroom for random junk she may have acquired while wandering the universes. “Known contents” are said to include:

Appendix 18-I: The Jenny Everywhere Museum (cont'd)

Two further items within the Museum are listed. The first is “a bottle filled with a miniature universe” containing the story of Kal-el”. The second is a computer linked to “our” universe's Internet, allowing her to set up her own website, ficly.com.

Chapter 19: The Ruined Chapel

The Ruined Chapel is described. It may be accessed by leaving the House proper by “the back door of the Conservatory” and taking the path between the Dark Wood and the Tarn. There, before its altar bearing a statue of a headless, hands-less woman, is the Lady in Mourning, a mysterious, ghostly figure in perpetual grief, wearing a black veil that goes down to her feet. To a visitor who distracts her from her despair via something like a story or a song, she will answer any question, except for her name. The altar is surrounded by ashes that are all that is left of visitors who looked upon her unveiled face — for every night, at midnight, she lifts it up to cry out “Woe unto they who once stood on high! Their temples are in ruins and their names are forgotten.”.

Appendix 19-I: The Right Wrong Questions

An old, wandering mendicant in dusty, tattered clothing, evidence of “a long and arduous journey”, comes to the narthex and impresses the Lady in Mourning with a “beautiful and haunting song of despair and decay” before kneeling and asking her if her name is “Catherine”. She answers no, he sings another song, asks her if her name is “Osceola”, and so on and so forth as he peacefully spends the last years of his life trying to find out the Lady's name, retreating each night around midnight (when she unveils so lethally) to gather food and drink from the wilds near the Tarn. Eventually, he passes away, a last “smiling” question on his lips. At midnight, the Lady, instead of her usual refrains, looks up towards the stars to sing “a song of hope and dreams”. The next morning, the Chapel has lost its aura of melancholy, and the Lady in Mourning has gone, as has the statue on the altar.

Chapter 20: The Stationery Room

The Stationery Room, accessible only to the Master of the House and those to whom he gives permission, is described. Unlike many other rooms in the House, which are “fluid in their relative locations”, the Stationery (or Stationary) Room always exists at the center of “an imaginary line between the Master Bedroom and the Gatehouse, always maintaining equal distance from the two”. The Room itself is “somewhat small”, with a single desk sitting in the center, facing the door. At its back is a window covered by heavy curtains, and all the walls are covered in bookshelves and, in one carner, a large cabinet. The desk contains an infinite supply of “papers, envelopes, inks, pens and waxes”.

Chapter 21: Elevator

Until recently, the House did not have an elevator, but the Great Glass Elevator has crashed into the west garden and the sentient House interprets it as a donation, gearing up to absorb the elevator into itself by opening various doorways into empty elevator shafts. Despite the objections of the goblins who guard the Stairwell, work by the lawn gnomes to repair the Elevator and install it in the House is well underway, and the House's excitement is such that it is “buzzing with excitement and creaking with worry, lurching, stretching, and then settling” to unprecedented degrees; “there is a continuous seance on the 7th floor to keep spirits and demons out of closets and cupboards”.

Appendix 21-I: Very Small Assault

While having tea with his mother Hattie, a boy called Mika notices the presence of a number of animate lawn gnomes crossing their lawn, which disturbs him and Hattie all the more when Hattie reminds him that they've never owned any lawn gnomes, as Mika's father thought they were “a quaint but equally low class alternative to pink, plastic flamingos”.

Appendix 21-II: A Very Pink Assault

Mika and Hattie, eavesdropping through their windows, hear the lawn gnomes taking a phone call, and are relieved to hear that the gnomes are leaving their garden, having been contracted to go repair an elevator somewhere. However, their liberation is short-lived as Mika notices the neighbours' plastic flamingos are starting to move.

Chapter 22: The Gallery

The Gallery is described. It can be entered through ornate wooden doors beneath “the stained glass window showing the birds from which the Seven Noble Houses take their names”. It contains works of art from various styles, time periods and universes, presented in no particular order — including “photographs of poor children in a city that is almost but not quite Victorian London”, “pages from a medieval manuscript portraying impossible beasts”, “a Cubist painting showing the depths of Hell”, and “a painting Van Gogh never made in this world”. The “armed statues in every style imaginable” which adorn the hallways, on the other hand, are not part of the exhibit: they are instead “the guards of the Gallery”, who “bring swift death to any who attempt to steal from it”. Deep in the Gallery, any visitor will find a room with paintings depicting key moments of their own life, including a painting of their own death at the far end of the room. “Few have the courage to venture this far.”

Chapter 23: The Rose Cottage

Malthus, a mysterious, lonely man, waits in the very cold room where he lingers and which he oversees although it “isn't really his”. Rubbing absently at his silver ring, he notices that the engraving has changed to an image of a stork in flight, as it always does to warn him of an impending arrival. Malthus is inwardly happy, as he always loves meeting new people, “but he [is] also aware of the fact that no one ever [finds] their way to the morgue by accident”.

Chapter 24: The Cellar

Young siblings Mandy and Christopher sneak into the Cellar despite their Uncle Jack forbidding it. Despite Christopher hearing strange noises and wanting to leave, Mandy takes a wine bottle from one of the shelves. Chris tries to wrestle it from her to make her put it back, and causes her to drop it instead, with it shattering. The two instantly realise that the liquid isn't wine, and the door slams shut, seemingly of its own accord.

Appendix 24-I: Montresor

The supernatural fumes of the wine plunge Christopher in a hallucination where he is a bold and bloodthirsty pirate going on adventures. He is pulled out of the daydream by the voice of a dubiously-human old man who describes himself as Montresor, Keeper of the Cellar. Montresor explains that the wines in the Cellar are distilled from memories, and is apoplectic at them having spilled the pirate wine, as the Master of the House had personally requested it for his imminent negotiations with the Goblin King. As penance, he orders the children to find another legendary pirate and get memories out of him, and then “take them to Father Time's attic to be aged” — threatening to feed them to the giant rats who also dwell in the Cellar if they don't comply.

Appendix 24-II: The First Step

Regaining their poise, Christopher and Mandy complain that they have no idea how to even begin to find a legendary pirate, let alone collect his memories. Smelling that he has potential for magic, Montresor takes Chris by the hand to another part of the room and pours him a glass of midnight-blue liquid from a bottle whose label depicts a wizard. He drinks it and finds his mind “flooded with magic”.

Chapter 25: Mud Room

The incoherent first-person perspective of the yellow-raincoat-wearing serial killer who haunts the Mud Room is given as they look back on how they got their taste for murdering people in the rain, and begin to chase a new, female victim. They do not appear to realise they are inside a room of the House rather than actually outdoors.

Chapter 26: The Airing Cupboard

The Airing Cupboard located on the fourth floor down the east wing has a terrible secret. It ceased to be used as an actual airing cupboard a century ago, when a parlour maid “discovered its true nature”, which prompted “the Master of the House at that time” to conceal the entrance by placing a life-sized portrait of his mistress over it. Reportedly, his wife was so outraged she left the House forever, moving to the continent, only to die of jealousy “a mere fortnight after”.

Now, the door is uncovered once again as part of the preparations for “the coming of the elevator”. The first visitor to take notice of the door pulls it open and is greeted with “the unexpected scents of lavender and lye soap laid over a base tang of copper”. A mysterious figure wearing a “peculiar” Victorian nightdress is sitting in a corner; greeting the visitor with “Darling! You've been so long!”, it closes its arms tightly around him, locking him into place.

Chapter 27: The Lab

The Laboratory is described. Located “dangerously close to the Kitchen”, it is bigger on the inside thanks to its space expanders (one of the first things invented in what started out as a repurposed cupboard) and home to the Artifectors, who “spend their days thinking up new ways to make life for the residents of the Mansion easier — or harder, if they feel like it”. Inventions stored in the Laboratory include various time-travel devices, “a prototype for an innovative bee-based mode of transport”, equipment for measuring “luck, rubber band elasticity and sense of humour”, unfinished blueprints for an anti-procrastination device, a Shiny Object Locator which has been misplaced, and various thinking caps. Besides all these hallmarks of mad science, there is “a little corner dedicated to non-mad science” which sees very little use.

Worldbuilding

Jenny Everywhere

  • Not being limited to a single sequential human lifetime, various incarnations of Jenny Everywhere both passed through the House and settled down to live within it.
    • One version was acquainted with the Architect, who gave her an entire wing to turn into the Jenny Everywhere Museum. The Museum is visited and filled out by many other incarnations of Jenny, with only Jennies and those they vet being allowed in.
    • One version of Jenny was of humbler status within the House, interviewing to become one of its Maids.
    • A friend of Jenny's (in an unspecified incarnation) was told about the House by Jenny in great detail prior to visiting it herself in The Doorbell.
    • Although she is never explicitly referred to as a Jenny, the “Guardian of the Ink Wells”, also known as “Inkstain”, is “a small teenaged girl (…) dressed in a robe and aviator goggles”, and she has a red-haired, freckled friend with whom she undergoes a teleportation misadventure. She states when asked that Inkstain is not her real name, but does not disclose the latter.
    • A Jenny witnesses the eventual fall of the house, later reappearing in the epilogue PROSE: Overgrown.

Laura Drake

Universes

Other

Continuity

Behind the scenes

Read online

The original prose pieces making up Our Strange and Wonderful House can be found on Ficly, although a number of Appendices and a handful of Chapters are not listed as part of the Challenge and must be sought out individually. The 2022 annotated, collected ebook edition of Our Strange and Wonderful House can be read online for free on Issuu or downloaded for free as a PDF or an ePub.

Watch online

A video trailer for the story was made by Aristide Twain and is available for viewing on Youtube.

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