Category Archives: Novels

November 28, 2023 · 4:31 pm

00410206 (Biff)

He was scrolling through Cass City photos on his computer screen while waiting for a client to show up, reminiscing about the old days. Ahh Pink, he thought while studying the 1st one that popped up. Rented the space opposite the town watering hole called Shenanigans. Reverse the colors and directions here and one could change into the other, he realized, as in an aftereffect on a sunnier day. Did Pink understand this when she chose the location?

And what about his office directly above it in the same building? Well, 3 stories above it, the intervening 2 floors still vacant. Have been for a while, so the padding might be permanent between him and his supposed true love. Yes, he determined not too soon after she arrived in town that he was smitten by the still youngish, almost child-like looking 38 year old “girl” from Nantucket with her semi-fiery blonde hair and her perpetual hot pink clothes and attitude. She told him one night at Shenanigans, the only “date” they went on if you can even call it such, that she use to not be this way. She was a 3n1 (or 3-n-1), a composite, she said, and cryptically left it at that. He’d studied the term since; hadn’t come across much information. Basically posts of this blog is all. Yeah, better make that he hadn’t come across much information period, blog still off-limits to him for his own protection. Pink, however, is a different story, par for her Nantucket golf course upbringing. There she was also known as: Wanda. Yeah, she was out there in reality but also in his dreams too, acting as a mirror to herself. He had to be constantly reminded that she could do those things, 4th dimensional tricks one could put it.

He kept scrolling through the Flickr pool of photos until the end, then tried a general search for “Cass City” within the popular image hosting service. Soon he came across this, the photo he’d hoped to find all along:

“Moby Prick,” he said laughingly. And everyone thought it was fable before he snapped the monster from Doug’s dirigible back in last April’s May. Of course some people, perhaps most, weren’t convinced, said it was a trick of the land and the light. He sends the photo to his printer, intending to have the evidence close to him this time. It seems to keep making itself scarce, much like the great whale itself, he realizes. He’ll print out 5 copies just in case.

Knocks at the door. His client. He only managed to print one copy out because of the interruption and then misplaced it before nightfall, hmm (more tricks).

(to be continued)

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November 28, 2023 · 10:58 am

00410205

He was dozing in the office per usual when the phone jarred him from his dream about hot tubs. Wanda? he thinks about the girl there. Who’s Wanda? He cuts off the rings by answering, assuming it was a wrong number. 5:30 in the morning. Who would be calling him now?

A dame named Wanda, that’s who. Or so she said. Probably the psychic police again, he thinks, hounding me until the end.

“Sykes,” she said about a last name when he asked her, poised for retribution.

“Is that with an i… or a y?”

“W-why (nervous laugh)… do you ask?”

“Because I was just dreaming about a dame named Wanda,” private dick Wendell “Biff” Carter admitted but cockily, “and I wanted to know how to spell her last name for the next time we meet up.”

“How odd,” the woman also claiming to be Wanda said on the other side of the line in a tone that Carter identified as sincerely surprised. Maybe not the psychic police after all, he pondered. Maybe one of those what you call *synchronicities*. He tested further. He realized she seemed to be talking to someone with the receiver’s mouthpiece covered. The detective was good at detecting that — had to be to survive, he said to himself as he honed his craft by trying out one muffled voice after another with his girl Friday secretary Berta. What kind of cloth or hanky or whatever was used for the muffling? Could be important. In this case he was thinking: cashmere. Slight bit of scratching against the receiver (wool) coupled with a Cape Cod accent. Rich dame, he surmised. He needed money. He’ll overlook the oddities to proceed forward.

“What can I do you for?” He tried to wake up as much as possible to absorb the stream of information he assumed was coming his way.

“I *was* looking… for a mirror.” That was it. Mirror. The dream, he knew. She found it. Click went the receiver. Took a long time to return to sleep after that. Wanda in reality, he thought, glancing over at the phone again. Wanda in the dream. Maybe if I return to the same dream I can get more info from the dame who lives, ahem, *inside*. He leaned back, hands behind his head just like we started with. “Wanda Wanda Wanda,” he muttered as Newton slid back into Jasper. “Wanda Wanda (snore) Wanda…”

(to be continued)

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November 27, 2023 · 4:13 pm

Going Back

The name of the city had changed from Cassandra to just Cass. What she knew as the Seraph Club was now the Serapis Club. She had to look that up. Old Graeco-Egyptian god associated with a Jesus-like cult. But in Our Second Lyfe, well, an interesting topic. Cult in that case headed by a doctor — looks like a Mouse. Make that: looks like Mouse (for a name (according to an attached notecard she found)). And this Cass City? Azore Islands alternate or parallel history. Pyramid, hidden from the public eye after a brief exposure. Atlantis at the bottom of everything and sloowly making its way back to the top again. She’d seen the Abyss inside. Abyss, she repeated in her mind. Dr. Mouse and his Serapis might have a point.

Better get some human clothes to go along with a human form asap. This situation needs investigating!

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November 26, 2023 · 3:16 pm

crossfire

When they had finished with her hair, it had turned fiery gold again, with a corresponding change in clothes. Marsha “Pink” Krakow was back, baby.

Took a while to properly cool off, though. “Thanks guys!”

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November 26, 2023 · 9:00 am

00410202

Mouse leaves the scene, happy with the results. “Taxi!!”

—–

“Someone’s coming,” spoke the top.

“Must be that girl again,” said the girl of the two.

The girl entered the chapel.

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November 23, 2023 · 7:55 pm

00410201

The day after Thanksgiving. Normalcy returns to the small virtual village of Amiable with plenty of leftover goodies from the festival, a huge success. Corn shucked, weighed and balanced, and then baked into bread and other products; sweet roots based music produced aplenty; sweets and refreshments served all around.

—–

“Offer you a drink, Doctor?”

“Not now Victoria.” He wanted to keep his eyes glued to the front of the club, for Dr. Grayson was waiting on someone, another doctor he assumed. The place: Cass City, queen burg of Satori’s Deep South. The time: 1939 apparently. Just before the great war that never was. Thanks to the book.

Dr. Mouse walks into the Serapis Club. “Check your coat, Doctor?”

“Not now, Victor.” He had a mission to fulfill. Bring what he assumed was another doctor up to speed. And then have him take his place. Hopefully.

(to be continued)

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November 23, 2023 · 3:42 pm

00410117 (chosen one (doing white right))

Being Thanksgiving Day already, Marsha “Pink” Krakow started to husk corn for the festival. Now plain June joined her. Tom showed up and did a little work. Christina showed up and did even less, ranting on and on about her miracle recovery from polio as she does. And Stan never showed atall per team leader Donna’s prediction, over at Dick’s sweets and drink stand all the time drinking and sweeting away her worries. Team leaders never subbed for team members according to the rules — she at least had that going. But the corn was slow to be shucked and the cornbread needed to be served by 7, 7:30 at the latest. Something had to be done. Enter Andrew “Biff” Carter from the woods with a black and white shucking machine made from miracles, June’s beautifying witch power transferred to it instead. Marsha was suddenly free to do something else: either Reuben or Steuben, whichever one was the drummer, was lost in action (remember we’ve already heard from the horse’s mouth that one of the two wasn’t real). Marsha felt 2 drumsticks manifest in her back pocket, also part of the magic. She went over to warming up Batcorn beyond the corn and offered her services. She’ll play her way onto the band, she determined then and there, watching the machine spit out husk after husk, leaving naked white ears of goodness in its wake. All team members and all team leaders were happy. The 2023 Amiable Thanksgiving Day Festival would be a success despite the odds.

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November 22, 2023 · 3:44 pm

00410116

“I have come from the mound I have come from the corn. Your turn now.”

“From the mound?” still sitting Pamela returned to the person claiming to be Jane as in Plain, even though everyone knew her as June. “From the corn?”

“Yes. From the mound from the corn. Your turn now.”

Pamela pondered what to say next.

In the gap: “Follow me.”

—–

“From the mound…” she said, standing before it with Pamela now.

—–

—–

“… from the corn.”

“*Five* people is all,” exclaimed Donna, leader of the husking team and owner of most of the stuff in town: cows, vineyards, etc. Using the other hand, she counted them off with each finger starting with the thumb. “There’s *Tom* — and he’s all thumbs ironically; probably won’t go through a half a dozen himself; there’s *Stan*,” she continued this with the index, and then freed it so that she could point in the distance. “He lives in *Braggtown*. Do you know how far away *Braggtown* is over those hills? In other words: will take him half a day to get here, half a day to get back. And, let’s see, half + half equals whole, as in, a whole day away from *husking*. If he even makes the effort.”

“I believe that’s where Christina claims she’s from,” offered upbeat Ben beside her, leader of the sweets and drinks team and solid with his own personnel. Scowls all around. “*Christina*, then,” said Donna, holding the middle finger now, “can’t mow grass much less husk corn. And that leaves…”

“Jane,” spoke the person everyone knew as June just back of the white corn mound. Pamela had disappeared beside her. Pamela was never real as it turns out.

“Jane,” said Donna back to her, taking in her plainess from about 10 feet away. “Is that what you go by now.” She didn’t add the “whore” part but everyone knew she wanted to. They had some bad blood between them, namely a man named Bazooka, formerly the police chief of this here little village. Former owner of Biff’s farmhouse before he allegedly came over from Braggtown himself, but perhaps that’s just more Christina talk, Christina’s World.

“And me, Marsha ‘Pink’ Krakow,” she spoke while walking in stage left. Donna let go of her ring finger and took firm grasp of her pinkie. She joined the inner circle; tried to smile cheerfully. Dick to her right (music team leader, replacing stressed out Sitton seen in an earlier blog post here) tipped his hat, a built in gesture. Silently amused Harry (weights and balances) studied Donna’s reaction to this newcomer, this Johnny-come-lately.

“Marsha, huh?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Staying up at Biff’s I understand. Found the secret bedroom. Found the *truth* behind it.”

“Um. Yes, er, ma’am. I suppose I did.” She looked over at olive green Jane beside the unhusked corn, recognizing an old friend from Storybrook. Jane will get her through all this. There *must* be a loophole.

(to be continued)

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November 22, 2023 · 2:36 am

00410115

So what of White Rock population places in the Oracle? one may ask (31). Jane pops up.

And then the same for Gotham (2).

White House (10) or Whitehouse (15) only produces itself. There is only 1 White Mound and that’s in Grayson County, Texas. Curiously, the county also contains a Whiterock (or White Rock), which is actually very nearby. And then both in turn lie near a (larger) Whitewright, making a kind of White trilogy in that location.

And then there are 2 separate Black Rocks in Grayson County, Kentucky, the 2nd of 3 counties sharing that name. Notice Kentucky Town in the midst of the White trilogy pictured above, along with Tom Bean.

The 3rd and last Grayson County (Virginia) contains some interesting place names too. We could go on and on.

Dick Grayson was the actual name of Batman’s crime-fighting superhero sidekick Robin.

There are no Blackhouses, Black Houses, or Black Mounds.

Continuing with our story…

—–

“It’s a beautiful view you have here, Reuben, and I can see why you stand here all the time, looking at it.”

No answer.

“I… know something else about you, Reuben.” She looks up at the boy towering above her from this sitting position, the last member of Batcorn, the one supposedly with an identical twin named Steuben. Dream girl Pamela knew better. Instead: Reuben is the same as Steuben, as in a first name paired with a last.

She knew this from Kansas.

No, let’s make that an ancestor to the twins who were named for him. If so, his grave might be here.

And here.

Center of old White Rock. Or maybe White Mound she hasn’t decided.

All of Amiable came from this.

Someone appeared over the hill from the direction of it, walking toward them.

Jane.

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November 20, 2023 · 8:48 pm

00410114

You of course can’t have a perfect 1:1 match between virtual and real here but this difference right at the very end of our journey into the heart of Amiable via Google Street View stuck out to me — last snapshot from their vehicle in fact before it turned around and went out the way it came. In reality reality, as defined by Google Maps in the year 2010 mind you, we have this mound of white rocks piled up next to the start of that weedy lane we saw, in its virtual version, Marsha “Pink” Krakow sitting at a table at the end of earlier in this here photo-novel, the one where she found an accordion just laying there on top of, unattended.

Then switching to the closest angle I can get in virtual we have this. Notice there’s no pile of white rocks now but a series of white rock walls in the same location with concrete mixing equipment in their midst…

… and then just beyond, a whole white rock house with an extensive patio area made up of the same material, none of which appears at all in 2010 Google Street View. In the white mound from the latter, we thus seem to have the seed of an extensive white rock construction complex revealed in present day virtual. Since everything else has been re-create in such loving detail, I think we can pretty safely assume that this white house, and maybe the accompanying walls and patio space, actually exists in Amiable now when it didn’t in 2010 — or the whole project was just getting started back then.

Here’s a curious and perhaps related anomaly from the Oracle. Searching for population places with the exact name of Black Rock across the U.S. reveals a single deviation among 13 examples: a hamlet instead called Whitehouse located in Maryland with a *variant* name of Black Rock — why it shows up in this particular list in the first place. It got me thinking: if we *de*construct the rocks making up the house, say, in a reversal of time itself, would we return to the white rock mound or something different… say, a *black* rock mound? Dark Matter again in other words; no emission of light.

And why is Pamela here staring at all this in the first place? is another question to be asking. Does she understand the concept of the Taoist yin-yang symbol (taijitu) and that white inevitably cycles back around into black via a planted seed? There’s something odd about the girl. She’s only real in…

—–

Marsha wakes up in the hidden bedroom again but with head pointed the right way this time. Thing is, she tried backwards when she laid down to sleep, with head instead at the bed’s foot; it switched once more despite her efforts to rectify the situation. She knows now up is truly down, white is black. In the dream.

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