Category Archives: 0032

March 16, 2022 · 6:52 am

putting the hat back on

She was back on the beach taking over the responsibility of reading *his* book while Allen floated in the sea a bit. Yellow floatie — instant attractor; which then placed similarly yellow Jennifer on his former beach towel. Archibald was not needed no longer since she had absorbed all he had to offer. She bid him well, departing with, “have fun with yourself,” knowing he already loved her a bit too. She had that effect, with the eyes and all, 9 to 10 legs, etc., etc. Perfection, she says to herself, not being boastful but just honest, she thought.

She wondered how chapter 1 could be in the almost exact middle of the book but there it was.

She read about a happily married couple who happened to be nudists and were about to join a related swingers club but for good, noble reasons and not the usual ones. They were trying to solve a crime, a murder, puzzle pieces still being arranged and put together. They then stare at red.

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March 16, 2022 · 6:09 am

00320204

“Perhaps it’s not Alien Island but *Allen* Island.”

“Maybe.”

“Picture this, ahem: Allen Yellow, our “Alien, Yellow” from novel 13, actually got to marry his friend Jennifer he met at Misty MO and now they live here, at this condo tower. The island is named for him — he owns it, or mostly does.”

“Perhaps,” she reinforces, thinking they have other locations to focus on now. They have a name, whether it’s Alien or Allen.

“Maybe he accepts the name Allen — I think he actually does this in 13. He dons a helmet that has an extra pair of eyes and which makes him look like a frog, a big yellow frog.” He turns to look in *her* eyes, trying to determine a color. Green? Blue? They could argue about it all night and then wake up the next morning and start over again. She better take it from here…

“Do you love me still, Allen the yellow alien? My Alien, Yellow (snicker)?”

He couldn’t hear anything in that helmet but she knew he did.

—–

He tried not to look in her eyes, knowing the paradox lie there, the stuff of irreality. Instead he focused on the mission.

“What,” he starts, “does he know?”

“He swallowed the frog to Prince story hook line and sinker,” Jennifer M. Friend stated proudly. They were hiding out behind the office, away from prying eyes down at the beach, Allen’s included. He was busy with the book she recommended. A tome about Prince Isles formerly Frog Isles. And without any frogs atall, apparently. They vanished overnight! How could it be?

“He thinks,” speaks Dickie Doom playing the part of Archibald now, “the helmet is needed?”

“He’s worried he’s going to lose his frog-like nature as well. So he wears it all the time now to keep an eye on it. I sometimes turn down the volume on his ‘ears’, just so I can speak to him without him knowing, a kind of sounding board — bounce ideas off of him that he doesn’t need to know about or understand.”

Dickie Doom/Archibald doesn’t respond any more since his allotted 10 words are up. We’ll see if he has anything to add to this in the next post (checking).

No. He doesn’t.

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March 15, 2022 · 7:04 am

Alien Beach (specifics)

“Well, Wheeler. There it is. Alien Island. The new foothold.”

“And here we are, still not together, still not a couple, Peter and Prissy swum away to some secluded haven in the sea.”

“He stole my hat!” Baker Bloch exclaims again, this time aloud.

“Indeed.” She noted it was back. Did *he* notice?

“What… do you make of it?”

“Do you know what hat stealing means? Hat removal?” she rephrases.

“Umm.”

“You know.”

“Sex?” he guesses, then realizes the obvious. “Ted Bear,” he says, segueing into Wheeler’s new train of thought.

“About this time in the past,” she began, “we showed a film. ‘3 Friends of Belleville.’ Remember?”

Baker thought back to a Table meeting that seemed far far away, almost hidden in time if it weren’t for memory reinforcements; continual; eating through time like sideways ants. “Yes. We could have moved backwards from Belleville into Billville: ‘Billfork’. But we instead moved forward.”

“‘Pumpkintwisters,’ yes,” Wheeler agreed, and then studied the shore again in front of them. Not looking back, not looking *black*.

Baker thought about Mabel, how happy she was. *Wait*. That wasn’t it. “Wilson Wheeler?” he said, testing her name. She didn’t answer. Her task for the night seemed done.

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March 15, 2022 · 5:35 am

retired, 2nd foothold (between black and white)

“So here we are again. Water. Mask. But you hear me clear as a belle.”

“So pretty here,” Baker Bloch deflects, emphasizing the so so much he shows up. “Oh… hello.”

“Hello,” Peter Soso says cheerfully to his side, just glad to be a part of the action again.

“Always someone between us, Baker Bloch,” she says in response to the manifestation. “And look. Now Prissy has arrived. Just because I said *that*.”

“Hello,” Prissy says daintily in her octave higher register. Both arrivals merpeople, both in love. Unlike Baker and Wheeler who are faking it at best. Instead (for them), a Prime Minister-Queen relationship, with no King involved. Unless Axis-Tropp counts. And I suppose he does, at least up to two.

“We’re back to square one,” Wheeler who is not a mermaid exudes, joined feet a false narrative. Likewise for the male Baker. “257.”

“We’re just off the coast of Alien Island and that is something to hold onto,” he says. “We’re on another lead. We’re still in the Wild–”

“Don’t say it,” she requests, thinking of Adam. And his own Eve. She postulates: Baker took over. About 2016 or 2017. About the time of the first third photo-novel. Passed the baton. That’s perhaps the only reason why we’re *here*, at this far point in The Pattern. On the Shoulders of Giants, she also ponders. Time to give something back.

“Someone else approaches,” topmost Prissy says, her head strangely merged with the surrounding kelp, weed in sea talk.

Just later:

“It looks like, sir,” Peter proclaims, “that you are still trapped in black, at least a byte.”

He took my hat! Baker thinks instead of correcting him with “bit.”

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March 13, 2022 · 8:34 pm

Merking about

“Ahh, my Queen approaches!”

“Just *stop* it,” he heard through the water and mask.

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March 13, 2022 · 10:28 am

Sykes

She closed the door but dare not look around.

The swamp tree.

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March 13, 2022 · 8:54 am

death

“What did *you* see Mr., um, *Head* (snicker).” She wasn’t going to dig this dude out as well. Write it off as a lost cause, she figures as he automatically starts her worthless, chat received fortune. “You will find a sock you thought you’d never find.” Hmm, maybe not so worthless after all, if sock equals key. And it probably does. Still not digging him out.

She moves to the house. Coke machine still there, as Billy Dancer reported before getting stuck. Chef-inspector Petty gone — must have either crawled off or the body disposed of by Billy. She only mentions the supposed killing, the bloodless slashing of the dummy’s throat. The old boss dug short and succinct like that; wanted to rack up the cases instead of going over the nuances of each individual one. New boss was different. Not the same as the old boss, as The Who famously sang about. Or maybe they are, she pondered further. Wanda and Sykes: different in their own nuances. But it’s all still about numbers, the bottom line, no matter what Sykes promised at first. Maybe she’d be asked to pare it down as well. Probably, hmph. She’s already starting to resent the new hire, even if it’s all in her head.

Joey moves upstairs. The computer Billy also briefly mentioned still plugged in, still given the blue screen of death (BSOD). Those people we, the readers, saw before around it near the beginning of this section, Frank Pinocchio and Fay Blue: gone. Just like the chef-inspector.

Next room; low voice:

“Yeah, she’s about to come in here and discover her dreaming self and wake up. Better amscray.”

Voice demanding something on the other side. “Okay, okay, I’ll bring the body as well. No waking self.”

The voice on the other side seemed to repeat the same thing although it was hard to tell from a distance.

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March 12, 2022 · 5:57 pm

key lost again

One of the oldest tricks in the book, she thought from her observing position. Lure ’em down to the beach with a piece of watermelon, then, BLAMO, instant terrain change in the shifting sand to trap them up to their motherlicking balls, she’d always heard the expression. Or at least knees in this case — enough to do the job.  She saw she could still dance the bill but it must be hard in the grainy resistance. Old habits die hard as they also say.

Time for another agent to take over from this obviously inept one. Another *Venusian*. Welcome back Joey Avatar. Digging the purple hair.

She dug her out and then sent her packing, even taking her badge. We’ll continue this obviously important story soon.

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March 12, 2022 · 10:40 am

00320114

She came in on a ship bound from Wommington (island), this belle of the billy dance, tradition over there. Navel motions they called it during acts of war. Wommington had fought Constance (another island) but dare not directly attack Long (yet another island but bigger — bigger in a longer if not wider way). Subterfuge was the answer. And positioning on Jourdain-Benvolia (another island similar in size to Wommington and Constance) nearest to Long (see above) and, especially, Capitol Hill, one of the high points of the island and a popular tourist attraction during season.  As we’ve seen, atop Capitol Hill rests the old gypsy wagon with the flying key inside a cage, unable to get out because of its self-enclosed nature. Then just outside this, another cage, another trapped *thing* (thankfully!), Democrats ruling for now. So Capitol Hill represented a pivotal spot.

As the sun came up, she turned away from it and acted like she didn’t want to have anything to do with the small, caravan topped summit. All was good over there, she pretended to anyone who was looking on, which she imagined were at least several, and perhaps one or two spies amongst them. She couldn’t take any chances.

She carefully avoided the rocks that guarded the opposite beach like anti-tank obstacles. So many lost already! Like that bigger one over there perched high in the air and later transformed into several apartments for the Jourdainian rich and trendy, second or third or even fourth homes most likely, often purchased just to show up those poor, lowly Benvolians that they’d always be attached to by that cursed little isthmus strip of land. If only our God had remembered to cut the cord from those *babies*, they lamented about the tag along, more undeveloped eastern side of their joined landmasses. They looked down on them fer sure.

Somehow making it through all that crap and pulling up on the beach, she spots Chef-inspector Petty still studying the prize he received from the otherwise empty coke can days and days ago, because time was frozen here. Strangely shaped, gold: a key in one word. 319 he knew. Triangle. He stuck the key in his pocket to go along with his (paper) pills and threw the empty coke can on the floor after crushing it with his free hand. The billy dancer looked on, thinking she had found the answer. She moved swiftly. Petty was on the floor with a slit throat in a second, a seeming mortal blow. The belle took the key. Now to find the proper door.

(to be continued)

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March 11, 2022 · 10:29 am

00320113

Although separated now, she often dreams of him still, and sometimes she *is* him in the dream, like here. He (she) exits the rundown house where he’s lived for going on 25 years, intending to go to the library but then realizing he doesn’t have a key any longer. He doesn’t work there no more. A dove flies overhead and something lands in his beautiful purple hair, making it imperfect. Thinking the dove pooped on him, he curses it as it wings its way back over the plain from whence he or she came.

He turns around, intending to wash his hair out in the sink or, better yet, take another shower, then apply more gel and finisher. He steps into the shower after removing his clothes. He’s still taller, darker, and, yes, more withdrawn. But he’s about to change that, about to wash away his “sins”. The water comes on. He washes his tall, dark body. He wishes Debbie were still around, wishes he could invite her over to join him. He imagines them together in his head as he continues to suds. Body done now; hair next. The water moves to the head. He rinses it well before applying shampoo, and, finally, touching it for the first time since the dove incident. His fingers start to move around his scalp. Something oddly shaped and metallic is quickly encountered. He withdraws it from his curls, looks down at the open hand. 319. This is the gift of the dove. This is the gift of the *library*. He doesn’t need to head there any longer.

She wakes up.

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