She kicked off her leafy shoes and stayed a while in this place wrong for others but not herself. Alvin arrived with the rest of the greens just before the crack of dawn. Just what I need, she thought, staring out at it through unwinterized windows. A warm truck. Soon to be getting even warmer!
But where was the baby she use to clutch?
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“Hello, Tom? I’ve arrived. And there’s a sprite already here, just like you said there would be.”
(reply)
“Hold on.” He removes the phone from his ear, looks over. “Honey, what’s your name?”
“Morgan,” she said in an ordinary enough voice for a part plant person. He raises the phone again.
“Morgan, she said.”
(reply)
“Wrong place??”
—–
“And that’s what brought me here, to the tree, to the *mutants*,” he said to John the Mind Reader still sitting opposite him in the present, drinking his coffee, still enjoying the beans. “Spill some more,” he requested, leaning back, carefully sipping at this tilted angle. Sometimes just the mention of the word triggers the event, he knew. The others finally arrived, the lot of ’em, crammed altogether in a lime green truck with Dude on the side and Chevy Dodge on the back. Joker and Jester, Jethro and Bauer, Doug and Clyde (formerly Tin Tin and Clubby). Paired troublemakers all. Liars to the hilt. They say caffeine makes you so if unchecked by alcohol. And there hasn’t been a (wal)drop of beer wine liquor in this levee type of place since January. And then: Jackson Bloch riding tailgate, the strangest of them all.
But where was Ted? all began to murmur as they took their usual seats in the establishment set up near the lip of the Great Fissure or Fracture, your pick. “Right here,” micronized Ted said unseen in the center of it all, tightly clutched by his new master.
(to be continued)
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“How I got here? It was dark. I couldn’t see the road. No street lights in this place. I ended up in this there tree, one of my tires dangling beneath like an eyeball loosed from a socket. Ghouls below — dancing. Carcass roasting in the middle but it wasn’t an ordinary animal. A *human* animal. They said it was a sparkly pink cowboy, formerly. They talked backwards a lot.”
“Like Doug over there?” John the Mind Reader pointed in the direction of Doug over there.
“No, not like a German (Doug was German: Douglas Hinterbocher the 3rd or 4th, I never can remember). Like a mutant.”
“Fine Young Cannibals?”
“Kind of,” I answered to this. “Anyway, I eventually came to the attention of Thomas, short, at least at one point, for Thomasina I gathered.”
“Yeah, the Big Boss. I know her.”
“Of course you do, John. We all do. Pyramid.”
“Right. Dunes.”
“We all come from there.”
“I recall.” But John the Mind Reader *didn’t* recall that part of their shared hertory, all of ’em. It was a big ol’ blind spot, as he put it, mostly in his mind and not to others and where they couldn’t get to it easily, he figured, being the only Mind Reader in the village, or at least he believed. Not until Brunhilde Sarah Jennifer Lane, another sparkly one in fact. Shared presents. The Answer? Maybe.
“Gorman was one of the ghouls.”
“Oh. *That* explains a lot.”
“Sure does.” He shut up for a while after that, figured he’d revealed enough for now. He could still see the fire, the carcass, the smiles and grins all around, only a few with a full set of teeth, thanks to the rotten dentists around here, mostly old and displaced Tilists. Including Gorman. Knew about the evils of Sprite all along, as it turned out. Grant Hill, PHEH. What was up on that hill anyway? Another mountain?
—–
“When did she first become visible to you. This… *woman*?”
—-
“She said she came from a library.”
“Ahh. More *origin* stories,” said John to this.
(to be continued)
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The Big Boss had many disguises for her many clients. “Next!” she called to the one currently struggling to get over the front door. Fear of snakes, this Brunhilda had. So she prepared in kind. Copperhead the supervillain she becomes, nemesis of Batman and Superman alike, throw in a couple of Aquaman tales ta boot. Traveler of space and time.
“Am Iiiii nothinggg?” she hissed to start, setting the paranoid tone. She was still using the power of the mountain which she stood at the top of. Always. Her realm of control. For Al — Alvin — it was fear of psychosis. Let’s see, she mentally checks. Marvin is next, a bed wetter as a child continuing into jr. high, high school and college and even, every now and then, the present. Zappa’s “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” should do the trick. Sung by Zappa himself, along with daughter Moon Unit who calls the whole affair grody to the max, and wishes herself to be gagged by a spoon because of it. Have to pay her extra because of the child labor laws at the time, Thomas calculates between Brunhilda’s sobbings and moanings. She holds two big fake rocks in her hands and hisses even louder between them, making sure her face is in darkness yet the long, forked tongue is still exposed. She gathered that from a memory as well. Brunhilda sat down on similar stones with a copperhead wedged between them as a Piedmont teen, setting in motion the whole phobia thing. She faints at the sight. She’s done.
—–
“Next!” Softer, to her side: “Get ready, guys.”
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Sunklands 