Category Archives: 02

lines

The Sun and Moon seem to be moving very fast in this town.

“I thought I’d come talk to you first, Marilyn, clarify some stuff about your angle in this, ahem, evolving story. We have bigots in town, we have zombies, probably all wearing spiked or non-spiked helmets. Like that policeman who keeps eyeing me all around town.”

She wanted to say Tank but held back. And Bazooka — Bazooka was his dad, and, as former captain of the force back in the good ol’ days, the one who wore the spiked helmet. Tank: just a bright blue cap. Put him in the bigot category.

Then she remembered the slip of paper in her jeans pocket, the one she was suppose to pull out in case she got stuck. She pulled, she read. “Moms, don’t let your boys grow up to be Dimmy Jean.”

Silence. Was that helpful? she pondered, staring into his watery eyes. Was he… crying?

—–

Dimmy wipes the counter down nervously, thinking that 1/2 the people in the room are watching him and half aren’t. But he doesn’t know which. He tries to determine friend from foe through the caps and helmets but all the lines get blurred together. He’s lost it. He needs to go home but he doesn’t even know where that is any more. Home is here I suppose, he says to himself. He pours two shots of Jack Daniels, one for the raccoon man and one for himself. “Here’s to home,” he proclaims while raising his glass, resigned to the fact. Over in one gulp, he pours another while 1/2 the room still eyes him.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0205, Jeogeot, Newtown+, Sunklands

Ten

He gets close enough to where he can’t miss.

—–

“Aw mann.”

“No mann’s from you, young’n,” replies Duncan Avocado to the boy’s protest. “You’ve got to go back to Aunt Clare for a spell. Just until I can figure out a plot to this here photo-novel.”

“But… you’re such a good cook!” George thinks back to the ice. And snow. The crunching. He could lose a tooth this time. ‘Nother one!

“Remember to pack some extra coats. November now. On the other side of the chasm schism, there’s Tennessee. Perpetual snow.

“I *hate* snow!” Certainly sounds like a boy of 10 now. Unless he’s 13. We’ll get to a picture in a moment to properly see and deduce.

“Besides,” Duncan attempts to rationalize. “Your Aunt Clare needs you — she gets lonely, out in those granite hills.

“I’ll have to get some shoes,” George continues to complain. “I *hate* shoes.”

“Now, now,” Duncan tries to calm. “Most boys don’t have your luck in the first place to move to warm climates when they choose. Scratchy just happens to be as far south on this continent as you can get. It’s warmer than everywhere else. You’ll return soon enough. Think of Clare — think of *others*.”

“I *hate* thinking of others.” Duncan gives up. There’ll be tomorrow for more coaxing; maybe the boy will age by then.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0204, Cass City+, Maebaleia/Satori, Nautilus, Purden/Snowlands, Sansara, Southwestern

00300203

Why was he brought back? To contemplate, I suppose.

Tillie will be here soon. But first: the boy. George, revolving around 10 to 13 to 10 and back and back endlessly. Obviously a reference (he thinks) to the relationship of the I and the E of TILE, 5 and 8 tiles respectively. 5 turns into 8 turns into 5 and on and on. Similar — the same, really. Raising up of 3 then lowering back down again. And 10 is twice 5.

It obviously has something to do with the Last Christmas where I couldn’t relay my information about TILE, and its unique qualities, to Clare. I believe Clare is in the background, ready to emerge. But where? And how?

The board, eh? a b c d e. 5. e becomes E. m n o p q r s t. 8. Ultimately back to 5 through 7, T, and 6, L. 5 is I. 5 is Eye. 5 is…

“… me.” Little George.

“Take me home, Duncan. I’m hungry.”

Duncan?

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0203, Michigan, Nautilus, Southwestern

resemblance 02

Baker Bloch comes back to study it, knowing he was summoned.

“What do you think it is, W.?”

“You know what it is,” she replied, still beyond the frame. Probably Wheeler don’t you think? Maybe not.

“Oracle,” he answered. Both were thinking, of course, of Carrcassonnee. She’s returned (!).

“You put the eye in there,” she stated, ready to move beyond the veil, “and you’ll *see*.”

I wonder additionally if this is Borneo. Borneo to Delphos, actually. “Whadaya think, Blackey?” he says to his bird on his shoulder, the same size from this angle as the blackbird in the background more in the center of the beach, highlighting its name. Staring up as well, Blackey thinks hard. He knows it has something to do with TILE.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0202, Nautilus, Southwestern

resemblance

It’s called The Rock, W. And on top, a radio tuned to a rock station currently playing The Beatles. We must look for nodal points (in these here photo-novels).”

“(We must look for nodal points) in these here photo-novels,” she echos. “Find me.”

—–

“Are you Wagner?” No answer.

—–

Baker peers again. “Kind of looks like a man, don’t you think? With a mossy beard and all, perhaps (looking again), a veil. Cap and a veil.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0201, Michigan, Nautilus, Southwestern

worlds

I looked down then and there. “Julius,” I decided. “Your name is Julius.”

“What was that?” Shelley was still reading the magazine featuring the chair she was rocking in, a kind of mirror world. Now was the time.

“Nothing dear. Just the baby burping.”

She didn’t even reply this time so distracted she was. She was putting herself in that place.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0217, Bellisaria, Continent 02

domesticity (Cotton-Tailgate Industries)

By the next spring’s fall we were married, Shelley and me, and even had a realistic looking baby to tote around by then. It was 2 months old and we still couldn’t decide on a name. We didn’t even have a sex for the kid, since those kind of things could also be chosen back in the days before severe power outages ended all that. Afterwards it was deemed best to select before birth, whilst the child was tucked safe in the womb. Sex Stealers didn’t exist then — hard to imagine now since they seem to be around every street corner, peddling their ware. Apples and bananas, that’s all it is these days. The Orangemen some called them, because that’s what each and every one of us had in common and they couldn’t touch, not even on the navel. That was our saving grace all along, although we didn’t realize it before the Big Change.

We were able to acquire a full time, realistic looking chef as well, although he had nothing to cook at the moment. I made good money at the cotton mill, since I owned it now. Part time owner. Along with Peter Cotton himself, the inventor of the world changing cottonpicker by then. Some say we worked our laborers too hard, but his likewise-wife-by-then Henrietta “Hatti” Wilson wanted it that way, said that made them sweat and glisten to her liking. She often sat outside in disguise on a bench at the front door watching them leave the mill after their shift was over and get in their cars to go home to their mostly indifferent wives. Indifference, she sometimes ponders as they all motor away from her, leaving her alone again. It will eventually destroy the Earth and perhaps its Moon along with it. But maybe at least the Moon can be saved — she’s working on it. Malyshkin. The rebirth of Crabwoo.

“Dear, dear, you’re spacing out again. That’s enough milk for today.” Indeed, as I focused and looked down, the toddler’s navel was white with overflow. Better drain a little out before bedtime or else we’ll be up all night again. Oranges and milk: who knew they were the perfect pairing. If only it would have remained that simple.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0216, Bellisaria, Blue Feather Sea+, Continent 02, Maebaleia/Satori

levity needed

By 9 o’clock she had him sweeping the floor while she kept reading recipes, trying to decide. One thing she knew, butter would be involved — not glisteny enough now. She floated some toward her from the table.

Peter Cotton wasn’t surprised, because of the hat and all. And he’d heard rumors in the village about witchcraft up on the hill. So when Hatti propositioned him in the streets of VHC City after his shift at the mill he thought he’d give it a try — something new. His current girlfriend Frieda Friendly wasn’t hacking it for him in the bedroom right now. He desired something a bit more, um, magical? Maybe. Different anyway. He didn’t know, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he wanted change, and change he would get. If he wasn’t killed first by the dinner.

Peter Cotton was best friends with Tommy Tailgate, who also got propositioned in this merry month of May (or August (or October)). He was also on a date. “Excuse me while I go powder my knees,” said Shelley Struthers later on at her Top o’ the Hill Hooktip apartment containing that ultra mysterious and perhaps ultra powerful triple number of the sim: 135, 135, 135, highest on Heterocera’s Diagonal as a whole, with an old name of Head. There was no Heart now, so the additional description of Head wasn’t needed no longer. There was only one. Art’s place along with the proximate heart is gone. Abandoned land. “You just sit there on the ottoman,” she requested, knowing it would eventually work its magic if he stayed still long enough. 135, 136, 135. Very close. Close enough, as indicated.

Shelley stared into the bedroom mirror and it mysteriously cracked. Didn’t seem like a good omen. Maybe she should have a rethink about her vanity, she rationalized. Go tell Tommy to move from the ottoman to the couch. A calmer, cooler date to begin, yes. And go out to eat as well.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0215, Heterocera, VHC City

but wait there’s more!

The mirror had long cracked for Henrietta, locally called Hatti for the obvious. Not because she wasn’t beautiful in a way, but just because of the evil, let’s say. Actually let’s go with: she did it on purpose. She didn’t want to become Vain. She wanted to become herself, beyond the hat. But she knew it would take Time.

She purposefully made holes in it so that her blue-ish hair would poke through. Some say it was black, but that was just a trick of the light. A trick set up by Hatti/Henrietta as well. She certainly had talent in that direction, genius even.

Today she intended to ride her old Schwinn bike down into town and ask Peter Cotton out, who labors in a mill. She likes the way he walks the streets all sweaty and glisteny. Maybe it’s just a passing phase because last month she liked her men bone dry. But the one she had a particular eye on died at the first of the month, struck down by a mysterious malady and gone in hours. Some say deadly nightshade did him in. How peculiar. *She* has a jar of that very substance up in her cabinet over there with the rest of her poisons and potions. And it’s two teaspoons down from what it was last month. So curious, she pondered to herself with a wry smile forming on her cracked, withered lips which she’s covering with blood red lipstick right now. And all because he had the audacity to turn her down; hopefully Cotton will work out better.

—–

Comic Baker Addon Door? How strange.

To the witch house…

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0214, Heterocera, VHC City

Head

5 til 3! she thought while looking out at the big Hooktip clock tower with her red and white umbrella peepers. I’ve got to get going!

I put on the garb of a white mage tonight, trying to act like I knew what I was doing. I was able to sit down on a diamond shaped plot of good ol’ actual Linden grass in a mainly artificial terrain constructed by the land owner of this little forest here, one Clare Nova. Remember her? Anyway I was smack dab on the Diagonal, at, let’s see, 36, 35. Close enough, as they say. One off of any of the two (or three) numbers is okay — difficult to tell any difference in the, um, energy, quote unquote. “It’s often not what’s right on The Diagonal,” I say to myself almost religiously, “it’s what you *see* from it.” Like that clock in the background Shelley Struthers up in the middle of the sim might be looking at at the same time. Actually, nope, in checking she’s put on that long Pepper shirt she likes now and is starting to brush her luxurious blonde hair (to her) in front of the vanity mirror. One stroke, she counts, two… three. Always 30 and she’s perfectly beautiful, almost as much as Ginger Granite down the lane. She can never get her bearings in this sim for some reason. What was its name?

30.

She splashes water on her face and prepares to face the world.

Today is the day she’s going to get up the nerve to speak to Tommy Tailgate, maybe goad him into asking her out. Goad? How about “guide”? She wants to get better at doing such things. Like Ginger again.

*Shelley*. That was the name of the lane. Like her!

There. Picture perfect.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0213, Heterocera, VHC City