Category Archives: 03

future now

She didn’t want to be a celebrity, at least like this.

The pressed followed her around like a pack of wolves, hounding her ’round every corner.

But that was far in the future. In the here and now of Storybrook (*not* Storybook), she was just a nobody, a local kid with a knack for smack — smacking around drums. People around her saw it as a hobbie not a profession. Sure Led Zeppelin, The Who made some money off gigs. But, looky, people would say, their drummers are both dead! You don’t wanna end up like them — do you?

She thought about giving up drums for the most part and taking up photography, like her new friend Frankie. Not *quite* close enough yet to earn a colorful nickname, but they’d been joking around lately it could be Beige. So it’s around. But what of SEAN “Green” Penn and Olive, the ones that had earned color so far? Completing his transformation, SEAN had moved into the green house over at the beginning of Arnold Lane, now covered up by sand and only known about through maps. Olive, I think, might run the local bookstore. Unless it’s Ms. Crumplebottom. We better go check…

Pink was asked to run the store while the owner went to get some lunch. Who could it be?

She’d started reading the red book that everyone in town was talking about, especially since the Corona-V beer became such a popular take-out order at the local bar. “6 feet, 6 feet!” everyone ordered about the distance between themselves and others, because no one wanted anyone else to know how much they’d been drinking. You could smell the Corona-V for 3, 4, 5 feet. But 6 seemed like a naturally agreed upon distance where the smell dissipated and everyone became the same again, subtract other obvious physical characteristics of a drunk. But that was the thing. You couldn’t *tell* just by looking at people if they’d been imbibing the toxic drink. “Oh Sam over there in the grocery store has been chugging them down,” Ms. Snippet, one of the town’s many gossips, might say. But really the only way that you could tell is by smelling their breath, if you didn’t see them down the brewskies personally.

Still waiting for the owner to show back up…

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stranger

She finally turned away from the photos. “I know how you feel,” she spoke to acquaintance Marsha “Pink” Krakow, working on a friend. She called her Marsha instead of Pink for now. “This feeling of — someone watching you. Hoooverrring above you even.”

“Is that how it was with *you*?” Marsha spoke over, curious about the resonance with this strange girl who also frequented the Wired and Wireless upstairs bank of laptops. Usually searching for crime stories this girl was, though, not rock bands.

“Shhhhh. There he *is*” she whispered over as Tom Banks entered the store from below.

—–

He admired his work before looking over and spotting Frankie.

“Hi!” he exclaimed to his star photography pupil. “And helllooo,” he said creepily to Pink. He immediately recognized another star.

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Hoooverrring

Always down there looking for that extra “R”, Fanny Mae Palm Branch thought about her boyfriend/fiancee Robert Dee Generic, an Ordinary originating from Pasttown.

Ain’t gonna find it. This is *Reality*.

“And stop trying to perv on that pink girl!” she wanted to shout over as well.

Marsha “Pink” Krakow tries to decide what she wants to search for on the internet today at the nearby Wired and Wireless coffee shop.

Led Zeppelin or The Who is always a good start.

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03 01

Using his shield as a camouflaging device, David A.B. sometimes liked to mingle with the commoners, the ones far far below him on a scale of 1-10, he being a 10 or a 9.5 at the least. Nothing to see here, he says in his mind about himself while looking around. Certainly no *God*, your creator, amongst you. No, just an ordinary Joe waiting on his train. Just like the lot of you. Joe was a good name, he then thinks. I believe I’ll keep it for this part of my journey. He turns to the Ordinary reading the paper to his left. “Joe’s the name,” he spoke in as ungodly a tone as he could muster. “How about you?”

“Ted,” came the fainter answer. “Ted Johnson.”

“Just waiting on the train, hmph,” Joe states the obvious. Ted returns to his funnies. “Hatfield” — so humorous.

“Oop, there ’tis!”

Gazing Eric Gordon beside Ted exclaimed, “It’s like it just appeared — out of *nowhere*.”

Ted looked up from his cartoons. “Wow, that was super fast today. Usually I sit here for over an hour.”

Not on my watch, David A.B. says inwardly.

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last

I sat about as far away from the attention mongering super duper heroes as I could. Swooping in here and taking over the basically dormant University of the District of Columbia property and renaming it DC Universe, hrmph. The audacity! Newly crowned neighborhood watch queen Mary Peppins, red umbrella-less for a change, is making some good points though.

“We must be vigilant for interlopers into our special, special sim,” she goes on, “now that they’ve discovered The Diagonal runs through it. Mr. Mann?” She points up to me. “Would you like to say a word on that? Since, eheh, you know, The Diagonal runs right through the center of your building. You, aherm, predicted its coming after all.”

I started to say, “well it runs through the middle of *your* property too; why don’t *you* talk about it?” But I acquiesced. “It’s all about The Man,” I said simply. “The Man (upstairs) is in the center of the sim that is on The Diagonal. My *nickname* comes from The Man. (My name’s) actually Larch. The Larch.” So — The Man; The Larch.” Made sense to me.

“Ahem, thank you Mr. Mann, er, Mr. Larch.”

“Whatever, honey,” urged husband Achilles T. from the side, nose still as big as ever. “Get to the part about the tiny orange house with the swing.”

“Yes, uhem.” Mary was obviously nervous about talking in public, being a simple housewife and all and without any experience in that area. But the neighborhood needed her, and former president Elaine Ratio was nowhere to be found. “Well…”

Just then, littlest vampire Buster Damm screeched up in an old pink convertible, surfing on its hood. “I believe you’re referring to *our* house!” he called through the hole behind The Mann.

He promptly went over the the DC Universe jail and freed Lego Monster Ken who killed everyone inside, RAWR!

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penultimate? 02 (Manns Choice)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_comics

“Geez I miss the old country. But I must get back to Instabar for the neighborhood watch meeting. Might be the last of its kind!”

“What about *us*?”

“You’ll just have to wait.”

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penultimate?

When I stared over at White Elvis, I realized I had his hair and got rid of it. The older doo, not the younger one (pictured) here. But still — a reminder.

I am now more The Man(n) than ever.

I turned to red, white and blue Cpt. Americus downing yet another piece of yellow chicken from his magical, chicken piece producing bucket and ask him where it went all wrong.

He mentioned something about Wheeler f-ing things up. I didn’t know who Wheeler was. He said she was the ideal woman, the Venus Da Milo. I said, “*de* Milo.” He said, “whatever,” and chose a breast to eat next with his free hand.

I thought back to the story of lusty Jack the Mallard on Fruity Islands for some reason. Probably because I was looking for the same there. I must go back sometime. Eden…

As he kept vociferously munching and crunching, I considered I was dealing with a Southerner here. Hence the chicken. Hence the White Elvis; black nowhere to be found in this recording studio. No Lena Horned, for instance. No “Ballad of Stormy Daniels.” I then realized this could be the studio of Your Mama. This was *the* room. I decided to ask.

“Who’re you recording today, Cpt.?” I didn’t say the full name on purpose. I was testing how far I could go without falling back.

Cpt. Americus glanced into the studio, as if someone was there. “Oh, the usual. Local gal.”

“White, I assume,” The Man(n) wanted to say, but instead said, “good that you’re developing the local talent.” And then more information spouted from the Cpt.’s masticating mouth full of chicken. Disgusting. But – must – keep — digging. Further tonight.

“Yup,” he spoke. Then the girl returned from her break, beautiful in a black gown.

—–

I decided to go back tonight. The place (with the beach chairs) Da Womann and I sat and chatted and some other stuff was gone. Maybe it was all a dream? But the statues were still there. Adam and his Eve.

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more neighbors

“The Man had many centres he could manifest out of his inventory, but, legend says, when he found wo-Man he stopped the process and threw up his arms in glee. Thus Eve from Eden is born and Adam, The Man incarnate, called it D-vine.”

Larch (later: The Man himself) halted his creation story spun atop his spinning cube to look down at Superduper Guy and Batty Man’s “backfire-mobile” (his word for it) pull up next door.

“Pow POP!” it went when stopping, and Larch imagined small cartoon clouds with these words emitted from a smoking muffler. Nightshift worker Mrs. Dumbledwarf to the south became even more awake when the two super heroes slammed their car doors, then spotted Larch on his rooftop workshop and threw up their arms in greeting, calling “What up, *Man*!?” in unison before heading into their mansion, not waiting for a response. Because it never came.

Larch hated those two.

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Down on the beach and 100 years ago:

No one ever listened to Glaub the Uninformed. “Hey guys. Guys. Hey guys. Hey you guys. You guys. Hey… looky. Hey you guys looky. Looky over here. Looky. Guys?”

“WHAT IS IT?” his fellow Dwarvin pirateers exclaimed in unison, still not turning around.

“I think The Man is *this* way.”

“HUH???”

After finding yet another of his proclamations a dead end, it was Delvin’s responsibility to shut Glaub — they call him Glauby — up for the rest of the afternoon by sitting tight on his face and body.

—–

“Mmhphmm, mmm,”

“What’s that Glauby?” Delvin exclaimed, pretending to interpret the garble. “The Man isn’t that way after all?”

“Mm, MMHmp, mm.”

“That’s what I thought.”

But Glauby’s mates hadn’t tried hard enough, so use they were to the wolf cries. This one time his naive instincts were correct. They didn’t check upstairs.

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Hidey, actually

“Hmph. Hidi’s got a privacy screen surrounding her property now. And ban lines. Can’t get in. Doesn’t reply to im’s.” Mary Peppins scratches her chin, then continues to speak to herself while looking eastward. “Guess we’ll have to put up with that eyesore over there a little longer.

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