Daily Archives: September 4, 2023

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“Do you see Mid-Hazel? Is she dancing?”

“No. Can’t see her.”

“How about the pumpkineaters?”

“Still under the orange tree. Like normal. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. Hazel is probably just inside stretching again. You know she has to do it every hour or she simply freezes up, probably dies as a result.”

“Every half-hour, I’ve heard. But no time for disagreements. I see movement!”

“Blue clad Sarah in front of the littler one.”

“This could be—”

“Aww MANNN. I didn’t need to see that. Here, Boyy, you take the binoculars and keep watch while I go throw up.”

“But you have no…” Boyy was going to tell Gurl she has no internal working parts to throw up with but too late. Dry heaves over there, purely an emotional reaction to what happened below. He dares to look. He increases the magnification to the max.

Blood on the ground but no sign of Sarah, with the littler one gone too. Maybe he drug her up in the yard to finish his consumption yeck, Boyy rationalized. And, oh boy, now Al is positioned in front of the bigger pumpkineater. Mid-Hazel is clearly seen behind this time. Gurl comes back and observes naked eyed. “Is Mid-Hazel… *naked*?”

“ZOWIE!!! My turn, Gurl,” and he hands the binoculars to her and rushes to the same place in the bushes.

Al is dead, Sarah is dead. Tom is not going to be happy about the news. Two of his best agents!

(to be continued)

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yes, it’s bad

She invited them into her trailer for more talk but there was nowhere to sit and they had to just stand and watch her accomplish her stretching exercises, saying she had to do them every half hour on the button (her archaic expression) or else her ancient body would simply start to freeze up. “A bit chained to the trailer, then,” she said. “I was just joking about the being away part before, lassie,” she spoke directly to Sarah. “I just don’t have a dot to be a presence.” Sarah checked the in-world map again in her head. Two green dots together apparently representing her and Al beside her in the sim of Coyote Canyon here. But no third. Mid-Hazel was right. What *were* they dealing with here?

“Beautiful, wasn’t I?” she said, apparently indicating the portrait of a young woman beside her, one of the few objects in the trailer besides the exercise stand and some random decorations. “Toast of Ghosttown, high in the sky it was. But not a skybox. A plateau.” She switched to about the 5th or 6th stretching position. “Almost done,” she excused the necessity. “But I may have to start again if you’re here long enough. Are you staying for dinner?” Mid-Hazel resisted the urge to joke that, “they’re it.” Plenty of time for macabre later on. Henry’s mouth outside was already salivating at the sight of the boy’s featured body. The girl he will leave to Junior (also salivating).

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no friend

“Do you like him dearest? I gave him my eyes. Well, I gave him eyes *like* mine to be specific. Buttons, see?”

Sarah jumped off the ground, turned toward the muffled voice speaker. She tried not to gasp at the sight. After all, Our Second Lyfe is full of strange avatars. But this one seemed different… realer. Scarier. “I’m… so sorry… miss. We didn’t, we didn’t…”

“See a green dot at the trailer?” Mid-Hazel completed Sarah’s thoughts, the counterpart to Al, the love of his life by now, even though she may have to be put in “storage” again until he can figure out how to get to the wedding part. He’s committed to a future date, though — whenever it can occur. “Thought you were alone at the place? Yeah, I just pop in now and then. Coincidence, we’ll call it I’m here when you’re here. Serendipity. *Synchronicity*. Are you aware of that term my dear? Do you know the meaning?”

“Yes,” she spoke, brushing her hair away from her blue eyes and trying to make herself more presentable to the… whatever it was she was facing. Old Hag? Witch? Maybe a combo of several archetypes… yes, another term she learned in her college psychology classes, Jung touched upon here there and there.

“Then you’ll know this is *fate*, this meeting is.”

Al appeared from behind some bushes. He’d heard voices but he had to finish his tinkle, nature being the harsh bitch she is (he was thinking at the time). Both turned toward him.

“Ahh, and the *man*. Always a man lurking around for a pretty thing like yourself, honey.”

Al walked up, confident that they had a right to be here because of the orange trees and because of what they found beneath them. More orange. Pumpkin orange. “I assume this is your land, um…”

“Hazel,” spoke Mid-Hazel. “The central one. Two on the end,” and she extended both arms and looked at each “hand” that wasn’t there, “but I’m the most important. They say if you’re in the middle that sometimes you’re simply in the way. And so it is.” She collapsed both extremities onto her heart to indicate herself, the center, the void in middle of it all — no hands to mask. Mid-Hazel, Witch Hazel to some, especially if you’re from the West Coast. “We were just talking about eyes, young man; my kind of eyes,” and she indicated the larger pumpkin creature again.

Suddenly Sarah was teleported about 10 yards away and then quickly walked back, thinking she did it to herself somehow. But she didn’t. She was simply standing a bit too close to him and he didn’t like it, this mustachioed fiend of the night.

(to be continued)

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“Orange trees,” spouted Al, still under a spell. “Just like the lights before, don’t you think? Come join me, Sarah, in celebrating the sight of our arrival.”

“Um… okay.” And she sat down beside him but not without internal considerations of the consequences of all this. Is she the only one between them who can see this could be a trap? Halloween was still almost 2 months away but for some, the few, the powerful, it has already start at the 1st of September. If Christmas can have the day after Halloween until sometime in January, then All Hallows’ Eve can have at least its 2 months as well before this. So says Hazel.

After about 15 minutes on the rock, he gets up. “Shall we proceed?”

“I… guess so.”

(to be continued)

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