Category Archives: Novels

March 14, 2023 · 1:37 am

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I’m going to do things a little differently this go ’round. The focus groundside will be Sunklands Institute, pictured here. Up in the air is where I’m going to be doing some experimenting. Point is, I’m back on Nautilus, and maybe even a better place than Fordham, than Rooster’s Peninsula. I won’t give out the location because it’s all still being set up — may take longer to solidify this time, or at least that’s what’s in my mind right now. It all pivots around Sunklands. Another Table meeting could be happening very soon.

The big Nautilus map back in skybox 02 is lighting up again: location of Lemont Sanford and Shelley Struthers renewing their wedding vows upper center (Uberto); Burro Alley and attached Slaashides community where Johnny Cage came from just up there in the left hand corner. And more in the middle… not Collagesity. Pretty sure of that. It’s all an alchemical roller coaster of a ride I’m still enjoying, even after a decade an a 1/2’s worth of involvement in Our Second Lyfe. I have more to mine here.

Nautilus is a way station.

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March 13, 2023 · 8:25 am

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It was always risky going back to the Omega continent, but I thought this hot dog perched atop a Wendy’s hamburger joint meant something. Wendy’s hadn’t sold the questionable commodity since the mid 80’s, yet here it is. In the present tense of Our Second Lyfe, Oriental style; thinly squirted with mustard.

—–

Barry X. Vampire felt he drove his dinner guests away with his impatience. He was anxious to start the next chapter of his book, his life in general. He stares past a nearby house of one of the guests, a nice enough guy named Stan Gunderson who he met at the market a couple of weeks back, toward the Dead Sea and what he’d always heard called Dead Dog Isle. He wanted to know why it was named that. Was it one of those false memories that seemed to be more common these days? He had to find out.

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March 12, 2023 · 9:08 am

sleepwalking

heading inside for more boos (part 2 I suppose)

—–

“We ended up at the exact same spot we began,” spoke Hucka D., suddenly finding herself back on the bed beside Barry. “Exactly the moment we decided to leave!”

Barry checked his pants but he was okay. This was no dream. Not really. Not any more than anything else they’ve experienced since this here photo-novel began, 37 in a series.

Then he forgot everything, the whole trip to Lordsburg/Shakespeare. It is as if the text at the bottom of the state never existed; no subtitles. Nor the top for that matter (Brilliant again). Only middle now. Barry DeBoy was on his own again, Hucka D. choosing not to take part in this reality. His mother as well. There was no reason for him to stay.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0301, Bogota, collages 2d, Google Street View, New Mexico, Willow Hill

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March 12, 2023 · 7:21 am

back to Torrance country

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March 11, 2023 · 9:55 am

small European counties

Barry Deboy made simple collage-photos about it later:

“No luck, chief,” Officer Blair spoke over the police radio. “We’re sitting right outside 102 — been here for about (checks his watch), 17 hundred hours.”

“Since 7 this morning,” chipped in Officer Doublebush riding shotgun, simplifying Blair’s language as usual. Blair continued. “If that old scoundrel Charles Nelson Blinkerton is here, then it’s like he disappeared into thin air. Over.”

“Roger that,” replied the chief. “Keep… your position. Over.” Lt. Tank Bazooka had made a decision. The military needs to be called in. Hesitating only slightly, he punches the big red button on his intercom to start the process.

—–

“Wonder what kind of conspiracy theory Tank roped us into this time, ha ha.”

“UFO’s?” also laughed Officer Gore, riding shotgun. “Portals out the desert?”

“Shakespeare, pheh,” said Officer Chamberlain to this. “And now a surrealist painter come back to life.”

“Pop,” said Gore. “Pop artist. Like Luxembourg.” He meant Lichtenstein of course. Or did he?

(to be continued)

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March 10, 2023 · 1:00 pm

missing people

https://searchlightnm.org/down-for-the-count/

Turns out Lordsburg didn’t kill Shakespeare after all, despite the present presence of the train still.


Heater presents…

Turns out they died together, just separated out by a bit o’ time from our perspective.

Separ, New Mexico

“There’s only one thing to do,” observing Hucka D. opined to mate Barry DeBoy, trying to decide where to stay for the night after Shakespeare vanished again with the death of Nikki and Hal down at the (former) saloon. They’d come upon it: Room 102, where Hucka use to exist as New Mexican surrealist/pop artist Charles Nelson Blinkerton back in the day. Before she died and was reborn as a bee. Way back, now, in 2008. Good times.

She knocks…

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March 9, 2023 · 12:30 pm

death at the saloon

He stands in the 4th and stares out at a Hill fronting another hill in the distance. He knows the mystery of the Silver Nuggets is buried along with her blurred given name — he can’t make it out on the queerly angled monolith before him. “Jnlo,” he tries aloud, a mere slur of the truth. Sirens, then, in the distance; dust trails along the road below him from this vantage point, the one belonging to Shakespeare and not Lordsburg, but not for much longer. The present is about the breach the past in order to find him, the perpetrator. The bully of the town and then some. True murderer we have here, two times over. Nikki and Hal. Who could have seen it coming, except everyone who had ever read the Bard.

—–

“Blurred”, speaks Barry DeBoy about the pale face in the center. “I’m afraid we’ll never know.”

“Truth,” says Hucka D. to this.

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March 8, 2023 · 9:35 am

Lemon Cove

“I’ve been betrayed? By a *triangle*??”

“I can explain.”

—–

He often thought of that day he found Elvira with a shape. Three corners and the truth, he knew after that. So far did he run to square and the extra corner that he didn’t have time to stop. Until today. Decision. The portal would be open again to New Mexico: 7:15 this morning. He could take his bike and just ride ride ride, never looking back. Stupid second world, he thought and almost spat on the ground, at least imagined it. The powers that be had a plan. He would blend in with a pack of choppers heading south from Los Lunas, become part of the pack itself. “Do whatever you have to to accomplish this important important mission,” spoke his most immediate boss. And so he found Nikki at Silver City when the rowdies that had been hounding him since almost the beginning finally and completely dropped away (siren calls just here there and there), rode alongside her until the Shakespearean end. He didn’t plan to fall in love on the other side but love happens, as they say. Yeah, he also thought of the triangle as he made his plans for the future with her, used that negative energy to propel himself away away away from Burro Alley and the possibility of return.

He sat here like a lifeguard on that fated day, actually imagining blonde Nikki from the future before (and below) him. Across the namesake cove, not quite in the corner but getting there: the 4th, the future — without Elvira, Our Second Lyfe, his triangle of bratty kids, pheh. “Elvira can take care of them,” he said aloud, still staring down at the form that had taken shape. “They all take after her anyway; best that like stays with like.” He refused to see his own brattiness, the bully that he’d become in his negative thinking about this that and that. So if Nikki likewise betrayed him… well, it won’t end pretty.

“How pretty,” he said, oblivious to this possibility.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0212, Nautilus, New Mexico, NORTH, Slaashsides

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March 7, 2023 · 12:06 am

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When he shot out of the 1st to 2nd life portal known as Burro Alley, Santa Fe, New Mexico at 9:34 Mountain Time on Sunday, March 5th, 2023, he had a good idea this would be his last trip to reality reality. He’d prepared for this moment, said goodbye, in effect, to the virtual wife and kids — if it came to that. Because he didn’t intend to go back to playing second fiddle in a second life devoid of 3 of the 5 major senses, subtract psychic, which was in fact stronger over there. He cherished feeling the bumps in the brick pavement of the alley, loved the smell of fresh bread coming from the Burro Alley Cafe beside the stick laden burro statue at the entrance, reveled in the taste of their fish tacos for breakfast, dinner and sometimes lunch, if fish burritos, which he didn’t like as much, weren’t substituted on the menu.

—–

“The plot deepens.”

“Or thickens,” Hucka D. responds, taking another gander at the photo Barry’d produced from a facebook page on the ghost town. Can-can girls in Shakespeare, the past come to life. Both knew this was an important clue. They’d just produced the word “cancan” in a collage created by folding up the back of a 1923 German dance recital poster found in Hal’s saloon near the center of the resurrected village. Or altered village is perhaps a better way to put it, since both dead and alive versions are just as real as the other. Featured Isadora (or Isadore) Duncan and her daughter Irma, joined at the hip now through the collage fresh as a wet drink produced for a condemned bully whose throat was bone dry from defending himself and saying other locals had perpetrated much more heinous crimes. Didn’t work: hanged in the Grant Hotel Dining Room alongside a cattle rustler. Could have been Barry and Hucka’s fate as well except it wasn’t.

“And the Hills buried on a hill (above the town formerly known as Grant in a county formerly part of Grant). Don’t forget that — fits in with Grant Hill, who drinks sprite, both lemon and lime together to produce something not quite as good as either separately.”

“Another one to wet the whistle.”

“Yess.”

—–

The dog burrows deeper.

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March 6, 2023 · 1:16 pm

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They’d prepared 2 nooses for “folding f-cks” Barry and Hucka down at the dining hall of the Grant Hotel, named after the president and not visa versa. But that’s when the choppers arrived from the north, disrupting everything as stated. Johnny Cage was hiding amongst them, blending in as best he could, speed included. Around Silver City, Nikki (that’s it: Nikki; not Penny, not Wanda) slowed down enough to ride alongside him for a while, enough to strike up a friendship, enough to open doors for the potential of more. By Lordsburg, Johnny had made up quite a number of scenarios in his head, all involving Nikki and marriage, some with babies, some not. In some they just ride and ride off into the proverbial sunset, the wind in their hair and the moon at their backs. Others they use the top 5 gears of their 15 speed mountain bikes (which Nikki had bought in the meantime, ditching her motorized version) to climb the highest peaks of each of the 50 states, Florida and its puny 345 foot high Britton Hill included. “Well start with that,” he said in one version. “Just to get you acclimatized to mountain air, ha ha.” And then he laughed a bit in reality at his imagined joke. Nikki motoring to his side noticed. “What’s so funny, Johnny?” she asked, but before he could answer they were upon the sign. Shakespeare thata way, ghost town no more. The Void saw to that. He could feel it deep in his bones now, starting at his modified neck and working down. If he could just figure out a way to steal it outta here he’d be a rich rich man, set for life in whatever form it decides to take in his future. Babies? Sunsets? Mountains? One way to find out. They followed the choppers that managed to beat them down the now dusty road, beside the water tank with the town name emblazoned on its front.

As they passed, the LORD on it sank below the horizon with the rest, history come back to life.

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