Category Archives: Novels

April 8, 2020 · 6:12 pm

jazz slang

“Real real good to see you down in New Orleans, yeah. Real reet.”

“*Well*, Marty. We’re not *going* to New Orleans as it turns out. We’re avoiding that boat, that dream.”

“Real reet, yeah.” Then bass voiced Marty stops talking to actually listen to The Man.

“Marty Marty Marty,” The Man starts again. “You should have never left Legos to make the new album. You’re not *black* enough, and I know a thing about black. Why you’re — you’re about as black as White Elvis, and that’s not much.” He points to his wig, perhaps still covering the ant saliva from before.

“Listen,” responded Marty, realizing his own hair is really the only black thing about him.

“Yes, good. Arkansas we’re at and Arkansas we’ll stay. The boat and the stream remain empty, devoid of content.” The Mann then stares at the bar. “And what about this setting? So shallow. Where’s the actual bar with a bartender and all.” He takes another swallow of Jack Daniels in disgust. If only all this were a dream.

“Silly love songs.”

“Yeah. Those too.”

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April 8, 2020 · 10:36 am

name

After the successful gig, SEAN “Green” Penn and The Mann, owner of New Orleans Blues Little Rock for the moment, got as close to the pool table and the spread out map of Arkansas upon it as play would allow. They mapped out a strategy.

“I say we head for Formosa next, you know, the LOST island. Right up here.” The Mann pointed a little north of Little Rock, or as close as his pointing finger could get.

“How about Mountainburg?” SEAN countered, indicating west. “In the mountains–”

“Ozark, I know. Too dangerous,” The Mann opined. “Too many moonshiners. They’ll want us to stay more and that’ll be it. *Stuck*.” He sticks his finger on the pool table, like it’s glued there. He leaves it for about 3 seconds before removing to enhance the Elmer effect.

“What about Kate?” SEAN then spoke.

“What *about* Kate?” The Mann quickly followed, looking at SEAN’s eastward pointing finger this time. Close to the Mississippi River and Mississippi state leading to New Orleans. Can’t take the chance there either. Current could take them. He told this to SEAN.

“Well…” he said, heaving a resigned sigh. “Better just stay here a spell, then. This (he waves his arms around) Little Rock.”

“We could increase the Rock. Make it bigger. Would that help?”

Would it help? SEAN didn’t know right off.

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April 8, 2020 · 8:47 am

Knew

“Shoot girl. You shouldn’t be smoking in here. And why do you want to go to New York City anyway? There’s nothing but trouble there.”

“Because it’s in the–”

SEAN “Green” Penn swung toward her while interrupting. “*Don’t* say contract. I don’t want to hear about no contract.” SEAN knew he had the appearance of a white child to Marsha “Pink” Krakow, about the same size and also color as herself but a boy instead of a girl. He was indeed “Green,” the grocer’s kid originally from Kraken but now living down on Southside Bay in a houseboat.

“Why not? You signed one too.”

“I did *not* sign a contract.”

“But… you *showed* it to me.”

“I,” and SEAN rapped the table in front of him with an index finger to punctuate, “signed a piece of paper, girl. *Piece* of *paper*.” He sat back, looking at her, gauging her reaction to this truth. They stared at each other for a while, as if exchanging information through their eyes. And perhaps they were.

“Baloney,” she finally uttered to break the tension. “Hogwash. You just don’t want to go to New Orleans.” She threw up her arms in exasperation, and then he did too.

“Who said *anything* about New *Orleans*? We were *talking* about New York, and how to cross Arthur Kill to get there.” But then he remembered as Marsha “Pink” Krakow before him kept shaking her head. He was already *there*. In a bar that plays the Blues.

Or was it Little Rock.

Turns out the bar plays blues and a little rock. And it was in Little Rock. SEAN “Green” Penn was the main act tonight. He had yet to meet Pink. Or Olive. It was 5 years in the past. He only had 5 years to make this right, 5 years to make this right, 5 years to make this right…

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April 8, 2020 · 7:52 am

03 of ’em

“Who *are* you?” Marsha asked.

“My name is Jane. But you can call me Olive. Olive Green. I’m really just a kid beneath it all. Like you.”

“So I see.” She looked at the contract again before her on the table. With all the information.

“Sign… just there.” She pointed.

—–

June Bug Jane had found her nest egg in Paradise. “Olive Green Pink”!

Two more contracts to create and she’s done.

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April 7, 2020 · 8:11 am

children

“She’s *good*, Katy,” states Keith B., listening in on “The Real Me.”

“Call me *Kate*,” Kate McCoy hawed back.

“Alright, Kate. But she’s not as good as my little girl.”

“Oh, just *shut* UP about your little girl. What about ME?”

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April 7, 2020 · 6:56 am

missing piece

Gene Kelley, Mr. Fix It of town, waited patiently beside his new work for Marsha “Pink” Krakow to finish her stress relieving ride on the big white bunny in the playground behind the Black Elephant pub.

But then she passed it right by without comment on her way back in. Time for a bit more practice today! She’s calculated that she can be up to 10 minutes late for supper and not get *that* reprimanded. She’s timed it all out. Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” and The Who’s “The Real Me” coming up!

“Afternoon, Gene,” she offered while barely glancing sideways, absorbed in her thoughts of drumming glory.

“Afternoon, er, *Marsha*,” he returned, staring at her as she walked to the side door of the pub and re-entered.

“It’s an *eleph*ant,” he called to her just out of earshot now. “Trunk removal,” he added weakly, summarizing the rather long story about its concept.

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April 6, 2020 · 10:59 am

opposition

Most people considered Storybrook a paradise. The white of the light was often blinding.

Arthur Kill knew this and was here to prove the yucks of the town wrong, among other assigned tasks. He could start with the children, he realized, upon learning their names. Their *true* ones. Pink was the first he encountered, at one of the several jobs she held at the time: shoeshiner. “One Who Shines,” she jokingly called herself after he sat down, and Arthur stared through her with this: into the void once more. You will *never* be a star, he thought as she nervously began to rub the first pitch dark shoe with her pink rag. Not you nor anyone else in this town. I’ll see to that. *Marty* will see to that — through me.

Marty should be showing up soon, red hair back in place. So as not to reveal too much too soon. The peppery black void must be hidden for now.

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April 6, 2020 · 9:56 am

beginnings

She often thought back to that day later on. “What are you doing here in Storybrook, sir, if I may be so bold to ask?” A person of color in Storybrook was unusual. She’d only seen a handful in her 13 years of growing up here.

“I’m looking for something,” came the cold, monotoned response of Arthur Kill, shoes shined until the starless void within was revealed again. “It could be right behind me for all I know,” but he then didn’t look over his shoulder to find the accidental truth he spoke.

The girl? Her friends called her Pink, because she always was. Actual name: Marsha Krakow. And she’s most likely the next star in our Collagesity series of photo-novels, this here being the start of the 19th.

In kin with the now deceased Cpt. Americus, she liked drumsticks, usually holding 2 at a time in this case. Double the fun.

—–

“Can I help you with that tire, Lester?”

“No I’m good Marsha,” came the friendly response between screws. Lester was a friend but not a good friend. She let the “Marsha” appellation go with him. And with most people. But to her good friends, the *closest* ones, and they numbered three, it was always “Pink” or suffer the consequences. She had likewise despised first names to hurl back at them — Betty, James, Clovis — if they slipped. For all of them had nicknames based on color. It was a game that went back to when they were all kids growing up side by side by side with each other on Arnold Lane. Right down there…

Four houses in a row.

Back to the drumsticks…

She often forgot she was holding them for hours after a session.

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April 3, 2020 · 8:51 am

Five

Wheeler decides to beat her to the punch. If there *is* evidence of a continuation in Jumboro and this attached Jumbo Core, she was going to find out herself. No filtering through bias. And, besides, Hucka Doobie has a kewl beauty of her own as a strong African-American woman struggling in a white male society. Yes, Wheeler admires her very much. She wishes she were equally spiritual, but there’s the Venus in her that is always niggling away at the good, the correct, the *Christian*. The Lord and The Lamb do not find favor in her sometimes — often. Oh, Axis is right, she thinks then and there, perched on the rooftop of a skybox she had no business prying into. But she was here now, bad instincts taking over again. Might as well take a peek inside.

The Jumbo Core, yes. Amazing. And Jumbo is perhaps the most famous elephant of all time, a Barnum and Bailey product, like oppositely sized Tom Thumb. Wheeler studies the alternately green and yellow colored squares of this “grassy base”, as the description puts it. Is this the original 9×9 square of sims? she ponders. It *must* be in some way. But what does it mean? Anything about the objects positioned upon it? But Wheeler can discover nothing of marked note.


nothing of marked note

She looks all around the rest of the skybox remotely before “accidentally” moving through the wall behind this grassy base into a back room that she hadn’t *checked* for some reason. A broad smile formed on her face. “Yellow-green and red-violet!” she cried aloud, seeing the 2 colors juxtaposed, floor to wall. The Thomas Main and Nick Barkley story can continue!

And her own, she realized.

END OF “COLLAGESITY 2020 EARLY”!

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April 3, 2020 · 8:12 am

07 04

“I keep telling you Wheeler, er, Venus, that Corsica is an elephant. It keeps coming up again and again. And by this I don’t mean Bracket’s foolish Comma Islands. The *real* Corsica. The one with crates with meaningful content.”

Wheeler/Venus waves her hand dismissively toward the thing both blue-green tinted beings were staring at: the, um, *object* in the middle of the room. “Continent… content. What’s the difference. Just open it will you. Get this photo-novel done.” And I was *so* looking forward to playing Venus Flytrap, she seethes inwardly. Axis is just going to nip it in the bud because he thinks we should refocus on Red Star, blocking up reality like, well, like *Seven* never existed. Seven Across, 7th seal, whatever. Seven is gone. Five is apparently where we’re at and where we’ll stay. Square of Mars.

“I have one more mission to accomplish before we can wrap things up, open the crate. Hucka Doobie is set to go to the northeast corner of Jumboro, right beside your New Orleans Blues Little Rock club, to revisit the *Jumbo* Core related skybox that Baker Bloch got, er, blocked from several days back.”

Wheeler would have had a glimpse of hope for Seven — the lives and potential deaths of Chry State’s Thomas Main and Chry U.’s Nick Barkley, etc. — if it weren’t Hucka Doobie heading the mission, because, from what Baker Bloch told her recently, the bee person seemed to hate her now. No way is she going to produce evidence for the continuation of Venus Flytrap, pheh. Is she?

One way to find out.

(to be continued)

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