Daily Archives: October 30, 2020

October 30, 2020 · 5:14 am

This cat was a little better trained.

Barry was sleeping on a different couch but in the same old place: the old Same Place, a restaurant adjacent to the Pink Motel that had a duplicate or doppleganger in Tinseltown. This is what happened to him as an acne spotted kid when he and his mother had an argument, often about grades and schooling, sometimes about church and religion, occasionally about the status of the world in general. Marsha “Star” Pink was an optimist, Barry a born pessimist. Or was it the opposite? Heck, let’s jettison the whole idea of discussing the world in general. Let’s focus on local. Barry was sleeping on a different but familiar couch. It reminded him of the one in Norm the Cashier’s Flower Shop but that’s a future memory instead of the past.

He wakes up remembering something awful happened. Bullfrog, a friend of the family, had been killed over in NWES City, known then as New WES City before the shortening and way before the CITY decided to remake itself as a town to counter all the copycat but obviously inferior “cities” spring all inside and around it. Like Meat City, like Zen City before (destroyed by an atomic blast much like the one pictured on that vending machine in the above photo). Like Collagesity, with sity equaling city. You know. These are not Collagesity photo-novels any longer, but something else. Sunklands for the moment because that’s where *my* home is. Not Rubi as in the past. Not Fordham, or Urqhart over on the Corsica continent.

Pink knew Bullfrog from her mother who was green Green. An EEL of a man is often how her mother described him, but she was conservative leaning. Bullfrog was progressive and that’s a fact, and that fact which got him killed by a red headed and red hatted evil entity known as Lu Ellen Hutchison (or Hutchinson) played by actress Alice Frame in Act II. And now she’s back as similarly red topped Wendy. Barry DeBoy knows nothing of Wendy now, or that he is directly sleeping with a mortal enemy back in Black Ice in the present. He is ensconced in the past, in the dream. Bullfrog has just died by gunfire and his mother Marsha “Pink” Krakow, not yet a Star — neither Trek nor Wars — remains in shock, and Barry along with her. This was Uncle Bully to him, a friendly not hostile moniker. How could this happen?

(to be continued)

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October 30, 2020 · 5:14 am

Pink lives?

Aah, the old sign remains.

And the cats! So many cats. Now to dare try the manager’s door. Hell’s Here!, though. He attempts to ignore the warning and return to his childhood. Hello There! instead (!).

“Hello there!” he finds himself automatically uttering as he passes from outer to inner.

To his great disappointment, he just then wakes up for real, the presence of his mother unresolved.

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October 30, 2020 · 5:14 am

Barry 02 02

He awoke again a little later on in the day, not having moved from his spot in front of the Raccoon typewriter. Nappy the cat stared directly into the camera, aware of its presence. Eraserhead Man even dared to wave at it, thinking the noticing was funny. Barry DeBoy was not aware of it. Barry DeBoy was in character. He had awoken again, in the same spot as before. Someone, perhaps himself, had turned off the lamp.  More clarity all around this time. Wadded up papers on the floor — was this something *he* wrote, perhaps a future or past version again? He picked one up, unwadded it.  Something about a place named Gaston. Later he found parrot droppings on the floor of the shed and put two and two together to make four or five. A pirate with a parrot had been here, and he thought he knew which one. The dream controller. The one who brought the virus in his pirate ship for communities that didn’t heed the warnings. Like Maw’s Storybrook. Like this place. DeBoy tries to remember the name, the most obvious thing he should recall. But all he could come up with was The Waste, which he knew wasn’t quite right. Something about a number. Or numbers.

He unwadded more; tried to piece together the story being written. Gaston had appeared in something called a photo-novel in versions 6, 11, 16, 21. Through this, the bastard pirate had concluded that it was related to something called a Magic Square of Jupiter, a 4×4 glyph that appeared, perhaps most famously, in Albrect Durer’s print “Melancholia” from back in the 15th Century or something — this from the pirate text again.

He finished unfolding the papers, shooed the conscious cat from the table, and tried to align them in correct order. 70 pages total, he understood from the numeration. But only 4 present here: bits about the magic square and the overall theories but no meat, no details. He would have to shift his attention elsewhere for more answers.

He turned to the stool and the easel holding a canvas on the other side of the screened in shed. Painting. Barry DeBoy realized he had two functions in life now. He was a writer. He was an artist, if not a painter then the equivalent. But in this moment: painter. He had work to do… he remembered that too. The CITY design. Black Diamond. He must get to work soon.

He wasn’t a writer in this incarnation. He was an artist. He wadded the papers back up and threw them in the trashcan underneath the desk. The true story of Gaston would have to wait until another day, another dreamer in another day perhaps, or one who dreams he is real even though he is just another character, one in a long long line now. Maybe he will share a first name with another of his kind — quite likely, given the sheer number. But before DeBoy gets to work — this is *his* work station now, not the pirate’s, not anyone else named Barry — he must explore the neighborhood. Find Suisan if possible and get the story about his mother. Maybe even — Maw? He had to look. He had to know. Suisan would know. If she was available.

(to be continued)

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October 30, 2020 · 5:13 am

Barry 02 01

He woke up somewhere very different than before. Twilight. The lamp had not been turned off from the night. The cat Nappy purred beside him, half aware that his master had awoken. 1/2 and 1/2 once more, but I’m suppose to limit (that expression) to one per photo-novel section at the most, as prescribed by my word therapist Bob the Knob who I don’t really like that much so I may insert it more. Or less. Damn Bob. Recommended by Richard, who I haven’t talked to since session 3. Or was it section 3? NO, there was no Richard in the story.

I’m admittedly getting a little confused about all the names (finally! the reader might utter here). Barry DeBoy who just woke up here in a strange but then very familiar land shares a first name with Barry X. Vampire who arrived in our text in photo-novel 18 — and also *writing*, at least partially, said photo-novel. He was a creator like me within the pages posts of his own creation. Mirror within mirror, etc. But the mirrorings seem to be increasing lately. It’s time, for example, to face the fact and the music that the two Barry’s in our novels — let me check (checks) — yes still only *2* Barry’s. Anyway, they are probably the same, and my rationale — well, I won’t go into it in detail but let it just play out in the text. Returning to the awakening DeBoy version, then…

Took him a minute to realize where he was after gaining consciousness but as he looked around at the tall, brown grass, the dilapidated buildings and signs, it dawned on him, as the sun, let’s say, gained height over a yonder horizon. Home. Maw may even be here, even older than before. Some called her Pink, some just called her Star, but her actual name was Marsha. Marsha “Star” Pink.  All three were correct, I suppose. But what am I doing here thinking about names? I must think about *action*. Barry tried to recall where this shed was in relation to his house where he grew up as DeBoy, who started as simple D-Boy (one who makes a lot of D’s, etc.) but then changed in stature within the community as he received the tie from… who? He recalls something about another Barry. Himself? he realizes. From the future or from the past?

Suisan might know. If she’s still around — or still alive for that matter. Always wearing that mask while growing up, always afraid of the germs and viruses swarming, she put it, in the air all around us. And now her fears have come to fruition. The Jasper virus, the mother, is here. He peers in the direction he remembers that his mother lives in. Home. She could still be there.

But then another whole series of memories locked into place. His mother had died! Along with Suisan, along with a friend named Brown. Along with another friend named Green. Maybe someone named Olive, even. This was a land of… he looked down at his hands. He attempted to swat one with the other but it only passed through. Yet another dream. His mother was dead but then she was alive, at least during *parts* of his childhood. How could this be?

(to be continued)

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October 30, 2020 · 5:13 am

Snowmanster

He was dreaming again, hence the tie. “This is a little f-ed up,” he said to the woman nearby, who didn’t reply. No, he didn’t like this place. He had found a limit. Wendy would not be his daughter or something. He’d leave all that to Toothpick and Elberta and their Deep South ways (!). He’d have to talk to Eraserhead Man about this shoot, compare it to DaBob in that other production he worked in, the one less famous. Or was it more famous. Snap out of it, snap out of it! he cried inside while snapping his fingers, which, of course, passed through each other. Tarboo Bay, DaBob, The Twins… they were all together; all in on this. What does it mean? He better get Wendy to safety and out of the shiny light of revealing film while she’s still wearing that dress. He knows a guy who knows a guy in Snowlands who has a remote-ish cabin kind of tucked away in some small woods, getting smaller by the month but Barry DeBoy doesn’t know that in the present. He’d only find out about the deforestation of Purden in the future through a rogue Snowman gone good instead of the usual bad but still with a bad Santa, one called Satan, an obvious anagram (too obvious). The Snowman’s name is… well, let’s just wait. Regular readers of this here blog and derivative photo-novels probably already know the name. Let’s just make it the title of this here post.

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October 30, 2020 · 5:13 am

revealing

It was all so very funny, Supper Man and his new arch-nemesis Toothpick battling it out for the right to marry Dinner Girl and/or Elberta first. Because their fists and, occasionally, feet kept passing through each other. Neither was real. Onlooking Barry DeBoy determined it was a dream a while back because he was wearing the red tie. In reality he didn’t possess this tie any more — gave it to Miss Graham the schoolteacher in exchange for… what? A life without the 5 looking on. A life without Pan-Z. He felt the precious tie one last time before waking up, instead holding the air in front of his chest as it vanished into nothingness again. The Great Void. Blackness. “Yippy tie one on I suppose,” he tried to humor himself in the moment, but he’d also heard the word “tile” used in that expression recently over at the temple. Funny again. “Yippy tile one on” — made sense as well.

He rolls over. Helloo, who’s this?


Dreaming still. Wake up, wake up! But he didn’t want to suddenly. Wendy wakes up instead, tells him who he is. Not “Q”, because that’s already been covered. The symbol on the hat could pass for a “Q” but he didn’t want it to now, not for Wendy.

—–

“Annnnnnd CUT! That was great guys! But — Wendy. We need to get you out of *that* dress and into the blood stained one as soon as possible! The Twins are breathing down my back, bearing down on my neck! You need to be invisible down there.”

Wendy knew what he was talking about but didn’t care. Wasn’t she Miss Graham reincarnated? She was. Didn’t she give Hucka Doobie the red tie procured from Barry DeBoy in a similar way before and send her away? She most assuredly did. Baker and she were getting too close. “Barry, *you* are Baker,” she said earlier. “You are the artist that is going to paint CITY and save us all from suburbia.” He turned it over in his mind like a rubik’s cube and saw the truth in it. Better get back to work…

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