—–
“Come on in, gentlemen,” leads t-shirt wearing Karl. “Everyone grab them a seat. Big Smoke, you sit opposite me if you don’t mind. We’re the ones to start.”
“Oh I *do* mind.”
“Well, never mind that ghetto front now, ha ha.”
“Ho ho,” responds Big Smoke, a smile breaking on his face as well. He pats Karl on the back before sitting opposite him as instructed.
—–
“Big Smoke,” Karl begins the serious part of the Grove Street gang reunion, “I turned you into Big Black Smoke in the blog and attached photo-novels to match The Kinks song of that title. So because of the flip side of that one being called “Dead End Street” on the single, the A side to match “Big Black Smoke’s” B, I made you sleep at the end of a dead end street here in Our Second Lyfe and then had you killed by a man named Arthur Kill because you were a rat. I didn’t know anything about you also living at the end of a dead end street in San Andreas at the time, nor that you were also a rat, a traitor, in that game. So we start with that. I had *unconscious* knowledge of our previous lives but not direct knowledge. That’s the beginning for us, the seed.”
“Big Black Smoke (name) would have fit me better in San Andreas,” Big Smoke replies. “But Rockstar probably didn’t want to go there. And *where’s* my mofo ghetto accent, he he he? Laughs all around now. Everyone had ditched that angle to more directly speak to the reader, you out there, beyond the 4th wall, listening in. I could have slapped a ghetto accent on them but that seemed to be forcing it.
“What about *Marty*?” Lance spoke to his left, having the same blog and attached photo-novel knowledge that Karl and the rest did. 4 equidistant chairs in a well chosen place in Our Second Lyfe will do that to you. You could call it a TILE but that maybe wouldn’t be going far enough since the chairs are all white this go around. A *unity*, a 4n1. Comes in handy sometime, especially when you want to pull out on a painful subject for needed distance. Like here. San Andreas… Grove Street.
“Marty killed Arthur Kill the killer he hired to kill you,” answered Karl. “But that was later. After the lego people arrived.”
“Hmm,” Lance said, reviewing all this in his head as well.
“So in (this) game — Lance — you’re Big Black Smoke’s grieving brother. But you conveniently forget that fact when you arrive at the airport in Nautilus a couple of photo-novels later to pick him up. But perhaps this is before the killing and actually makes time-sense here. You call him Smokie in those couple of related posts but we know this is Big Black.”
Big Smoke (indicating his body): “Black goes with green like n-ahs and Grove Street, hu hu.” Snickers all around if not laughs. Everyone was a little uncomfortable with the use of the n word now. Unlike before. Different times, different situation. Maybe the chairs again.
“Sweet.” Karl turns right now. “You’re *not* my brother Sweet in this scenario but someone named Sean ‘Green’ Penn. We’ve actually never even interacted in this blog (and attached photo-novels) up till this point. *Proving* my point. Instead you’re mainly involved in the Storybrook, er, story. Photo-novel 19. You’re best friends with a girl named Pink who’s only called that by those closest to her. Others *knew* her as Marsha.”
“Because she’s dead,” Sweet explained the “knew” part of Karl’s description, to the reader again if not the ones seated around the fire here. “But… she came back to life in photo-novel 40. And — me too later on, come to think of it. How?” Death by rats as well, Sweet remembered oh so painfully as Sean. Draw back, draw back!
Sunklands 