“I *can’t* believe I *found* you.” He was talking about the cans but also the girl. One and the same.
You didn’t, she thinks. Then rotates 90 degrees in 3 years and changes, DEMON forehead exposed for all to see from this angle.
“At least you got us a *real* soda this time to begin,” spat out his girlfriend-not-wife, once the love of his life but now fading in the distance. Only the littlest fox unites them still. Their son daughter.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0210, Dokken Hollow, Jeogeot
“No sorry we *have* to keep it this dark,” Sherry says to the new stewardess Blush, ready to take the air and leave this forbidden dot on the map that is our world. Or so it seems.
“Him?”
“Yeah. Because of the boss. You know, The Boss.” And she wasn’t talking about Springsteen. Not yet. This was (about) New York not New Jersey. For now.
“Marty,” Blush specifies a name.
“Black Hole Sun, right.” Such a can of worms this situation’s become.
—–
Meanwhile, in another part of Vortexville, Tessa practices her heart shooting skills to take down a lover. Soon the target becomes as large as a small boat to her.
“Die, die, DIE,” she says as she pops the stupid winged beings off one by one by one in the now spacious air within.
Blowing smoke from the end, Tessa then reholsters the six shooter beside the other already in her pants. She determines she’s ready for Kill. Arthur that is. As in crossing a line from New York to New Jersey. Her 3rd eye will absorb the return shot from the north. She’s trained for that as well.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0210, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya, New Jersey, New York, Vortexville
Sans Newt now, Wheeler was testing out more locals and taking more notes while also trying out new outfits, this one called Fern (dress) with kind of matching shoes I suppose.
“Excuse me, ma’am. The bathroom’s locked with no one inside. Do you have the key?”
“Bathroom’s *broke*,” exuded Gertrude Witherspoon from Grapeseed, a person dying on the vine.
“Well can you tell me where the nearest public restroom is? My husband and I were just passing through on the way to Chilbo (she lies).”
“Mmmmmmmmm. I *said*…. hmmmm…. let me…. think… ummmmm.”
“Well, never mind,” said Wheeler. We’ll just do it in the grass beside the road.”
“That sounds best,” the woman said with no irony in her voice. Did she really think this was the best solution? Would *she* resort to that?
Wheeler was about to walk through the front door in a huff when…
“Oh wait, young person.” Young person! Wheeler thought. The old hag had just redeemed herself, ha. “Bert’s in his office today for a change. Bert has an extra set of keys. Just knock on the door — ’round the poster there.” As if she couldn’t be bothered, Wheeler thought, watching her continue to just stand there and pose in various ways. Provocatively? Could be if she were, say, 60 years younger, Wheeler thought, and then also thought that’s not a very nice thought. *She’s*… well, she always says she’s 25 working on 39. But those days had passed. Just call it a Jack Bennyism vanity.
Going past Gertrude again — bathroom’s broke *pheh* — she gently knocks on the door.
Bert, or who she presumes is Bert, calls back in a pleasant enough voice to come in. She goes in.
But not before noticing what appeared to be Gertrude prominently appearing in that poster. Queer! she thought.
Then the same poster inside along with another surprise.
“You!”
And just like that she was gone.
“Warning warning. Destructive couple on the way from the west south north east central.”
Gotta get that internal compass fixed sometime, thinks Princess Pinky Gumm. But she knew it really didn’t matter. Here. “Okay, great candy sentry!” she shouts up. ” You continue to keep watch on the, er, *castle* while I try to meet them 1/2way!”
“No meeting those hell bent on destruction 1/2way,” booms down the sentry. “I sense… the death of candy. Split in two.” And here candy sentry splits himself in two for a brief moment to illustrate his point.
Princess Pinky didn’t explain that by 1/2 way she meant space not negotiating tactics. Candy sentry was rather simple that way. Fixed on things in a rather one dimensional manner. But the death of candy? What was going on here?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0045, 0210, Nautilus, Oooo, Perch-Mistletoe
“Since you’re so curious, um…”
“Stacey,” I said.
“Since you’re so curious… Stacey,” he began again, adding my name, “I want to take you somewhere.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking I had no other choice. I was trespassing on his land after all. And he was so much, er, bigger than me. And even more, I think, remembering the stealthiness.
“Up in the fields,” he continued. “Won’t take a minute to reach. An object, invisible to my touch but not to a certain set of others. I know you know about the plane, the *vine* — I saw you in the lower field flashing your light at the thing.” Your confounded, bright light, he thought but kept to himself. And your blasted crunchy boots. Nights are for silence!
“I’m with you, sir.”
“Great. Give me one second.” And he went into a nearby lavatory to stuff his ears full of cotton before proceeding.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0044, 0210, GTA, Witcher
“The spool table at the beginning of the section was a tip off (spool tables play a part in a number of my collages). Keep your eyes peeled.
“And so I went back and replayed moving past the ‘Horn Girls’ sign at slow speed, got the correct angle with the leany telephone pole to display the situation as best as possible.
“Then I walked near the mega-mall heading down famed Grove Street and similarly blocked out the hyphen between the two words with a palm tree: no fairies with boots around, though, ha.”
“Ha,” Lexi responded in kind to the boss, not the big boss but the boss boss still. Someone to answer to. Which she just did.
“Then I waited at the Blue Balls sculpture until it got fully dark.”
“Blue Balls. And that’s the same as Blue Moons?”
“I suppose. Then, after narrowly avoiding getting hit by a train (he forgot to look both ways before crossing the tracks), I see Redd. Standing under a streetlamp to illuminate her cause.”
“Younger version. And you say you don’t remember the encounter but Redd does. She told you about it later.”
“Yeah. She said we… well, you know.”
Lexi sighs. This had been a long day at it and it was 3:30 in the morning. Time to send Edward, her Eddie, back to the loving arms of his non-wife Shelley.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0210, GTA, Hana Lei^^
I found they’d arranged for me to stay with a prominent town businessman: none other than the owner of the red topped building that I’d had my eyes on ever since I arrived by boat from Wallytown earlier that day. Mayor Golden Jim escorted me over to his house on the western edge of town for introductions. We found him rocking in front of an unlit fireplace, apologizing for how cold it was and that he’d run out of “burny sticks” weeks ago.
Golden Jim immediately scolded him for this. “I told you Wendy would be arriving today; I told you to get your house in order; I could have gotten you all the firewood you could fit into this place of yours, pheh.” He looked around at the numerous cats roaming around here and there while sniffing the air. “And you could have done something with these *animals* as well. Place smells like urine.”
He stood up and turned toward us. An okama! A man who was basically half woman, although I’d never seen one up close and personal like this. He said his name was Majo, and then he leapt on a nearby cube stool face first and proceeded to do some kind of yoga exercise on it, another type of rocking.
“Feel free to use Fuzzy Wuzzy over there to jump in place a while and get your body temperature up. I do 30 jumps 30 times a day now, but I’m always doing this, cold or not. That’s why I keep the house cold because I’m so warm from all the exercise. My apologizes again, fair Wendy.” He stood up once more, approached us, looked me over head to frick’n foot. “Wendy of Alpha I believe,” he said with a kind of disapproving smirk on his face. He was staring right through me.
“No takers for Fuzzy Wuzzy? Very well…”
“… 28 (jump), 29 (jump), *30*,” and he leapt down on the other side now, approaching me until his face was only about 6 inches from mine. “I’ve heard you’re here for my *store*.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0210, Kangerootown, Omega^^, The Cross^
“She’s gone now.”
“She certainly had important information to relay to us.” And lo and behold his 50 year old cold was gone (!).
Time to move back to the present as inevitably as red turns yellow turns green turns blue. 1936. Or thereabouts.
—–
Dr. Mouse confessed to his daughter Alice about what happened. “Why didn’t you just pay for an abortion?” she queried in the diner the next day. Mouse had to run off to an appointment the day before or certainly they would have caught up then. Interview with another doctor, a more promising one than Grayson and especially Brown so he couldn’t miss it. Apologized and was on his way, leaving Alice to the pinball machine herself; left alone in the city once more. She peered up at the last score before inserting a quarter: 28064212. Lunar month. Deception. The Sun nowhere to be found. Gloomy day.
The huge Arabic number disappeared as her own scoring began.
Sunnier now. A boy in the far distance stops revolving around 10 to 13 to 10 etc. etc. and becomes 18 for a spell. He asks out the girl down the street he’s had a crush on forever. Now that he can speak to her eye to eye he figures: why not. Forecast doesn’t call for rain until Thursday. And today was Munday; time for maybe even several dates with tall, blonde Sarah. Or was it Nikki?
Back to Mouse and daughter Alice in the diner booth. “Octavia,” he hesitated, “… we had a different relationship than…” Did he want to say “clientele”? He just decided on the “others.” Her other men, her other clients, Alice understood. “She knew the man who owned the swamp, the one the psychic children in town were always altering and changing. This made her special in my eyes. The man’s name was…” He suddenly couldn’t remember, although he’d thought of him a thousand times since Alice’s conception on an old mattress in an alley back of Greene’s Motel (he assumed). “Robert,” he then recollected. He tried the name out on Alice.
“I don’t know that name,” she returned. “Do you mean Bob Levarbe? Leverber?” she tried again herself. “Levargee.”
“Bill,” he suddenly recalled. And a last name. Lavosier! He felt the air around him become heavier and more combustible. BOOMB! he recalled. He got too close.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0210, Cass City^, Maebaleia/Satori, Paper Soap, Soap
“The land description says, stay as long as you like, use what you wish. So this is my new home, just for a while, just until we figure out if we want that apartment or not more long term, Eddie. I promise to keep my cow outfit on over here. I promise I’ll keep trying to remember who I actually am. Is this going to be okay with you? I’ll still come visit you of course. Maybe even moreso (!).”
What choice did he have? Their primary cores had just given up their property over on Constance Island in Nautilus. They were drifters again, vagabonds. The apartment situation had not yet been settled. They needed a home *now*. “Sure, Ginger,” he said, reaching over and patting her pretty black knee on her black and white leg, hoofed at the end of course. And she was still in Broadwater, still off the (city) grid. That was a very very important factor, resonance with the good state of Utah not kicked in west to east, ending with the bend. The mayor’s car had not yet been dispatched.
But it eventually presented problems when Edward moved in, a cousin pretending to be a lover to keep the rent low. Because, as we’ve kind of hinted around, Edward sort of wasn’t real in this dimension of Their Second Lyfe.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0210
Shelley finally got the rescue rope off the tree branch and moved closer to the edge of the thing. She was suddenly in a position of power and was taking advantage of it. “I *should* let you drown in there.”
“Me?” she struggled. “Why??”
“Because you were obviously meant to replace me. Now I’m expendable.”
“You tricked me!” The pepper on her shirt was gone. Next up the shirt itself, then the identical doodle-bug haired head blub blub blub. They were on a walk after playing basketball a while, Jennifer winning in a close match. Shelley spotted the sign which was closer to her, but didn’t mention it to Jennifer, her double, her doppelganger. Slippery on the far edge, thus: this. “Help!” she started. “Hellllp!”
—–
“And pull your shirt up over your shoulder like I do,” Shelley continued with the conditions after the mouth had submerged. “Just NOd if you understand.” This was the final one, the choice of destiny. The tank must be under the shirt, she decided quite a while back, actually. Viewing the exposed thing cost her a point or two in the basketball game, a seemingly small but important difference. The most obvious and distracting in the moment anyway.
Jennifer’s half submerged head managed a NOd. The rope came — just in time.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0039, 0210, Hana Lei^^
Sunklands 