A new area has opened up in Blue Mountain for exploration I call One Pink Mountain. Or Pink Mountain. Or Pink. Because of the circle above below. A passageway leads us there — magical. This will be a *shared* environment. More soon!
Area: Almost exactly 1 square mile. Let’s spread or widen it a tad or pinch, then, and make it exactly.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0501, Blue Mountain, City Park, Country Park, County Park, Red Hill, West Virginia
Then Sandman made his pitch, which meant Shelley made the pitch for him, still writing, still scribbling down ideas to be written out properly later. “I have a whole sim out there, down there, up, over.”
“Oh yeahh?” she decided to say. “Tell me about it. Can I come?”
“Precisely what I was going to say.”
“Through me,” she said. “Pitch it.” She closed her eyes to the pitch black sky and listened. The noise of the party died away. Edward’s game of life was over. The 6th turned out to be false, unlike the first 5. It wasn’t all about him. Butterscotch, he loved butterscotch. Didn’t hate it.
So he brought out the red and green box, showed it was empty, and then brought out the somewhat smaller, lavender box that use to reside inside it and also demonstrated its emptiness by–. “What it needs, Shelley–” he said, laying it down between them now.
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess.”
Sandman turned away from the rail, dared to look in her eyes again now that they were closed. Put a lid on it, he thought. Close it up. She opened her eye. He stared into infinity.
“One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t kill the whale myself and then lay it out in the central mall for all to see. And *smell*.”
“Good one, Edward,” spoke Penny approvingly, marking it down in her head. Edward is *vicious*. Probably a tiger in bed as well. She imagines taking her clothes off and laying beside him. And certainly not for the first time.
—–
“I hate to interrupt, Shelley, but are we inside the novel now or still talking about reality?”
“Both,” said Shelley to Sandman standing beside her, both somehow listening in despite the distance, despite the noise of the party elsewhere. “Don’t you remember?”
—–
“That’s the first, Edward. 5 to go. Pick a category, either proud of or not proud of. Or regrets.”
“But we have to guess *this* one first, adopted sister of mine.”
“Yes,” said Sandy to Penny. “Of course. Wellll… I vote yes.”
“Yes it’s true?” Penny, always the clarifier.
“Yes.” They both turn to Edward.
“Truth,” he said, getting a laugh from everyone. How vicious! they all think. The rest of the girls started to swoon that hadn’t already and the rest of the boys that already weren’t scared got so. What would he do to *us* if we crossed him? Some of them had already seen what he did with Sandman down at the rear docks. Sent his tail running back home!
—–
“One thing I want to clarify here if I may. I’m *only* 2 years older than Edward — Eddie — mid 30s as opposed to his early ones. The ‘old man’ appellation doesn’t really apply.”
“Do the *girls* know this? You have a streak of gray in your hair after all,” said Shelley, defending the names in her novel that are the same in her life right now. She’s acting through them all.
—–
“2nd, then, Eddie — can I call you Eddie? Edward thought for a second. No he decided, but then changed his mind looking at the disappointment on Penny’s face. “Tell you what: you, Penny, can call me Eddie but Sandy has to keep calling me Edward. How ’bout that?”
—-
“How ’bout that, Sandman?” asked Shelley still standing beside him on the porch near but not next to terrace #2 where the others were. Noise all around, as stated. Pitch black the sky was even though it was clear. Looking into her altered eyes at this right angle in the night light, Sandman could only nod.
(to be continued)
At 1 AM all the important people at the party gathered around Penny and Sandy at Terrace #2. They made sure Edward was as much at the center of it all as possible.
“Edward,” said Penny over to the sprawled out model of a dude across from her, “you start. We’re going to play a game.”
“The game of life,” Sandy sitting behind Edward continued for Penny. “3 things that you’re most proud of. Then 3 things you aren’t, or have the most regrets about. The others have to guess if you’re telling the truth or not. Go ahead, Edward. You’re the most important.” Everyone had a polite giggle, since they knew this was truth. It was all about him. It wasn’t his birthday, but that might have made the day even more special. A celebration of the man just for the man himself, without any reason, any rhyme. Like a thunderstorm popping up on a clear afternoon. Out of the blue, they decided together last week. Invite *everyone*.
“Even Old Man Sand next door?” spoke Penny using his old man nickname, wanting to clarify the list even at this very early date. “Your parents would.”
“My parents are *dead*,” said Sandy to this. “Or else… visiting relatives back in Pennsylvaniaboro. Yeah, that’s better.”
“Thought so,” replied adopted sister Penny, knowing her parents were on too much wellness medicine to be sick, much less dead. They could afford it — why not protect themselves. If their girls have to go to a mid-level college like New Hampshireville State Institute of Klubs instead of top notch Crabwoo because of the cost then so be it. Plus they weren’t a big fan of woo woo, except for the medicine, it seems. Elderberry laced with Vitamin C and Zinc night and day. Poke them and they might bleed a little purple. Dark bleeders we could call them.
“*Anyway*, we can play the game of life; learn more about our mutually desired boyfriend.”
“He’s soo secretive!” said Penny to this. She knew Crabwoo held many secrets. And Edward, or so he said, was a star pupil back in the day. He’s in his early 30s now. Let’s see exactly how much he remembers of the magic.
(to be continued)
—–
Gold face? he thinks.
“AVOCADO,” came the booming voice back, reading his mind. Everything was out in the open here, nothing hidden. She, Elvira, addressed Baker as Mountain Man.
Yes: Mountain Man. A fellow drawer. He must help (2 places at once). Showing him an easier way to the top is a *beginning*.
Then there’s the other side.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0413, Blue Mountain, City Park, Lands End, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Wild West
“Inter-resting,” spoke Ruby to begin. “A drawer who is not a drawer. 2 places at once.”
“What does it *mean*?” asks Baker B., shaking as much as the apparition. Not fidgety, then, as much as plain out scared. Shakiest gun in the west. Which meant: on the other side, they were as much ghosts to him as he to them. At least Baker B. was.
“Stop shaking,” requested still pretty calm and cool Ruby Fantasie the soothsayer from Spirit Witch who was more use to these things. “Settle down. Look where the gun is pointing.” She meant to say planchette but let the mistake stand. Channeling.
“At me!”
“At *you*! Pull the trigger. Go ahead (she also spoke to the one on the other side of the veil): pull it. It won’t hurt him. Finish the act of the drawing. Finish it up. End it. Go ahead. Goo aheadd…”
Baker B. couldn’t do it, Ruby Fantasie realized. There would have to be another time on the opposite side of the Great Cycle, as I’m just now calling it. One great cycle = one photo-novel, 37 in a series so far. The 37th is also a romance of a novel thanks to Shelley and her Umbrella Klub funded eyes. Club. And then the manifested magic works its way back from end to beginning. Aloha.
He was trying to stay in the present and read about horses in a row but his mind kept going back to Evelyn. Evelyn Hart. She was the center of his world; the love of his life. His name? I’m picking up on Murdochh, yess, a Middletown moniker. The plot thickens more, like a vanilla shake turning chocolate and beyond. This man was a link.
If only the toys would stay still enough for a proper portrait (dramatization).
“Stay. *Still*.”
A guest arrived very very late in a private propeller seaplane, so late that no one really took notice of her. She was looking for *Edward*; heard he came here with another gal. The gall! But turned out it wasn’t her Edward but someone named Eddie, although very curiously, very curiously indeed, still named Daigle, but with an apostrophe inserted between the D and a in his case, making it D’aigle. What gives? she had to think here (in the script).
They hadn’t met since college or perhaps high school. Perhaps both (variable realities). No, let’s go with college. Amos was 2 grades up from Edward, but they stayed in the same suite in the same dorm at New Hampshireville State Institute of Klubs. Actually let’s go with Crabwoo — Crabwoo University, commonly abbreviated Woo U. Woo Woo U. some say, because that particular institute specializes in the study of the weird and kooky, like the Loch Ness Mobster or the New Jerseyvania Devilburg Man. But it wasn’t all fantastical criminals. There were the saints as well, and Edward knew several, growing by the moment. All females of course. Amos knew one. His future wife. The late great Edith Pickey, always picking at her food after the others had long finished and thus her nickname for a name. Shelley would remind Sandman greatly of his former partner.
She spied him from the pool while Edward kept carousing with Penny and Sandy, drawing them closer and closer to the blows that would come later, with one black eye and one blue arm the result. “That up there on the balcony is the man who left the party,” she said to herself, staring up, almost meeting his eyes but not quite. “The one Edward called The Great Antagonist. Why?” She had to find out.
(to be continued)
In the past, Amos T. Sandman had always been invited to the Hook family parties, always brought over presents like a seafaring Santa or something. Tradition, let’s say, honored down through time since Benny and Marsha Hook moved here from Pennsylvaniaboro over to the west of the south of the continent. But this party was thrown not by the parents but the daughter. Two of ’em, in fact, since Penny really had become an adopted sister to Sandy in the past couple years or so, at least up until this particular shindig when the dispute over Edward finally drove a wedge between them. Edward, in his sadistic way, actually enjoyed stringing the two along like this, knew his powers of attraction. He looked across at Shelley when thinking this, knowing she was the same, even though she didn’t realize it, at least most of the time. Penny, Sandy — didn’t hold a candle to her, he thought in the moment, staring at her, not noticing the Umbrellas in her eyes but getting there. If they would just step out of the light and into the night he could see. But this particular revelation would be left up to Sandman.
Anyway, back to him. He saw the lights of the party, instantly thought that his lack of invitation was an oversight — happened once or twice before as he recalled — and loaded his boat down with the presents and headed over. Boy at the dock: unresponsive. Girl in the hammock chair just up from him: the same. Even had to dodge her legs to get to the next level and still: nothing. He had a glimpse of The Void even then. Meeting cold Penny and her lack of words was the last straw. To the bar! he decided. I’ll at least get a few drinks under my belt before I make my exit back to my lonely, neighboring abode. Bartender Rose was the only one there he met who paid him any attention, a paid friend as it were.
Then Edward showed up and things went from bad to baddest, skipping right over the middle degree.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 