Category Archives: 03

August 4, 2019 · 6:52 am

pawn

Having faced 2 white dead ends in the southerly directions, Kevin A. rests outside the music store and looks back at Space Ghost’s trailer on what’s called “Ghost land”, even *before* their move here from Regaltown. Fate it was they were in Horns of Hatton. Like many others, Kevin A. has already shortened the name of his newly adopted hometown to just Horns. He hasn’t met the actual Horns of Jer (Left) and Benny (Right) yet, but will soon. He’s caught his breath. He’s ready to move on.

Kevin A. decides to change into tiny person Super Guy to explore underneath the store through this spotted opening here…

… but finds only one way out.

This transformation is the one superpower he has himself — as Kevin A. — since reading at a 3rd grade level doesn’t really count. Then *Super Guy’s* one, superior superpower is the ability to invert space left to right. If you remember back, Super Guy’s arch nemesis Aqua Dude’s chief superpower was the inversion of colors. In both cases, there’s the creation of a second, full world equally as large as the first. One thinks of Alice’s famous mirror world from “Through the Looking-Glass” in the case of Super Guy especially. Also different from Aqua Dude: Super Guy’s inverting powers are on automatically all the time. He has to will them *off* instead of on. So all the pictures above featuring him are actually reversed left to right from what anyone else would see.

Here’s another picture of Super Guy at the same bench we saw Jer Right Horn sitting at in the last post. “S” to “Ƨ”, you’ll notice.

And, in fact, the single path from the trailer, as Kevin A. finds out in continued experimenting, really leads here and here alone: the tomb of Max the Mad a.k.a. the Red Devil. The two parcels are inextricably tied together as one. Even the music shop opens up from the trailer side instead of toward the main part of Horns of Hatton. Very peculiar, seemingly, like a maze with only one solution for moving forward. Like *chess*. Kevin A. begins to believe he’s merely a piece in a larger game afoot.

Just beyond the tomb, a reconstituted Kevin A. then finds a portal to the next “space”. The in-between one.

Chickens, he thinks upon arriving. Always chickens.

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August 3, 2019 · 7:50 am

respects

They all sat on the bench, wondering what she was attempting to actually accomplish by being here. But they dare not ask, since they were the conquered if not the vanquished — yet. Grey Scale Kimball had assured the little people of the land that she was fairy friendly, and that she had come from Regaltown which was full of such people and they all got along very well indeed and that she herself was a type of fairy. The fairies knew what she was alluding to. Fairies are certainly not dumb creatures. Little bodies and brains, true, but a lot of thoughts spinning round those small grey matters. They knew that she was referring to homosexual fairies and not fairy fairies, although there were also homosexual fairy fairies, if not in present company.

Benny’s brother Jer showed up on the other side of the praying Grey Scale. He was much less timid in his position as the Left Horn to his brother’s Right. Horns of Hatton they were together, although not rulers of the land. That was Grey Scale now. Formerly: their father.

“My ruler,” he acknowledged Grey Scale while bowing a bit. “My brother,” he said over to Jer sitting on the bench with the fairies.

“Howdy,” Jer’s less formal brother spoke back. The fairies (Aubrey, Austin, Addison) waved “hi.”

Jer turned his attention back to Grey Scale. “May I assist you in your prayers, my ruler?” His voice was authoritative. *He* should have been the eventual ruler. Not this usurper. But armies decide battles and hers won. Certainly having the armored elephants didn’t hurt her cause. He should have thought of it first. They were there, just having a good time roaming the shallows and flats around the sacred Hills of Bill. He should have put them to good use first.

“No, I think I’ve got the hang of it,” replied Grey Scale, thinking: how hard is it to pray, dummy? I sit on the single pose ball, I *pray*. Very simple. But then she realized that maybe she was missing something. Like needed, spoken words. Perhaps a ritual mentioned in those dusty old tomes which she’s still read only about 10% of. She decided enough was enough before she got herself into hotter water, and rose solemnly, unlocking her hands. “There. I feel better,” she said, breathing deeply. She shrugged to both brothers. “But it’s war, fellas. There’s gotta be winners… and, well, losers.” She glanced into the tomb with this. The final resting place of Max the Mad, also known as the Red Devil. “Now he’s in a better place,” she tried to reassure again, but Grey Scale here instead pictured a world of fire and brimstone and much gnashing of teeth.

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August 2, 2019 · 5:29 am

grey is the day

“I’ll never get through all these books, Chesteria A. Arthur. Conquerors draw the worse lot!”

“The whole assimilation process, yes,” speaks Grey Scale’s mate from behind. She thinks: we must get rid of this blue vase I’m leaning next to and kind of hiding, yes. And that one over there as well. Don’t have Grey Scale be reminded of her blue enemy in any way. The Big Blue Machine. Like a sleeping blue whale. So deep, so blue.

“You’ve become quiet, Chesteria my love, my dearest. Please keep talking to distract me from these confounded histories before me!”

“Okay. Just don’t turn around. I have something between my front teeth and I’m presently sucking it out. Keep at least pretending to read and I’ll move to you.”

“Alright.” She feels Chesteria’s hot, 1/2 cheetah breath against the back of her neck now. “Maybe I’ll read aloud to you. Then you will feel the weight of your eyes too. Listen: ‘In 1312 the village of Horns-on-Hatt was formed with 15 soldiers of the disbursed Copper Queen’s army. Items included 10 cows for milking, 5 golden rings, 25 standard issues of toilet paper bark, 50 bayonets, 22 rubber gloves, 14 fishing rods for the hobbit pond, 77 individually wrapped pieces of copper colored candy for the boys and girls, 88…’ well, you get the picture. Do you see what I mean?” She abruptly shuts the book without saving her place somewhere near its beginning. Dust flies from it, making golden-silvery glints in the air where the sun shines. “And, you see (she waves her arm around the table here) there’s maybe 20 more to go through. I’ve done 6 — *started* 6. I just can’t even get through the 1st chapter of most. If you can call these sections chapters. ‘Moby Prick’ did writing right. These (she waves again around her) are just ephemera, the flotsam and jetsam of dull, boring grey life. Soldiers’ lives at that in this case.” She pounds the book before her with a flat palm, as if trying to compress its three dimensional nature back into 2. “*Cartoons* would be more entertaining. *Much more*. In fact…”

Chesteria was reading her mind. She had the newspaper funnies in her back pocket, ready to whip them out to stave off breakdowns. Grey Scale Kimball eagerly pushes the “soldier book” away and flattens the funnies before her. Almost immediately she begins to smile. “Hehe. Hatfield. So funny.”

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June 14, 2019 · 10:29 am

expansion of the map

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June 13, 2019 · 8:22 am

inside (Long Drive 02)

“Mary, keep blocking the door.”

“Burster Dang?”

“Buster… DAMM.” Pitch Darkly repeated to the receptionist. “He must be in your database. He’s been writing me for going on 2 years now about this place, and his studies in Sinkology.”

“OH,” Annaliza Pageant exclaimed, looking Pitch over better. “You mean the *vampire*. A tiny, like his wife. Except she is a tween.”

“A tween?” Pitch was unfamiliar with the term.

“A tiny that can also be an un-tiny — normal, er, like you and me.” She studied the tall, bloodied vampire again. “I mean, like *me*.” She was thinking that Pitch might be another type of tweener, except between normal and giant this time.

“Sooo,” Pitch attempted, “Buster is just a plain ol’ tiny.”

“That’s right Pitch sir… darling. But he can turn even tinier. A bat, don’t you think? My English is still not polished, excuse me, even though I have also been here 2 years. Many, many people come through this place. Tinies are handy…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Buster tells me all about it, how they specifically recruited him. It’s because you can see around them better when in flight. I mean, they can see around *themselves* better. Works well for the scouting.”

“That’s, um, right Sir Pitch.” She looked at Mary now. “But your wife — she is different too?” Mary hadn’t moved an inch since blocking the door a couple of minutes back. Hands on hips, per usual when standing in place.

Pitch glances over at her. “She can sit down too. And fish. Lord you should see that woman fish. She can really reel them in, can’t you Mary?”

“That’s right, Pitch,” Mary readily agreed in her normal, cheerful voice. “Perch is my specialty. But,” she quickly added, “perch is the specialty for the whole continent, er, whole *world*. I bet there’s some in that pond we passed on the back corner of this place. You know, inside the small Linden pine woods.”

“Yes,” the receptionist responded, “there is fish there that I assume. Perhaps your perches too.”

“Ahem,” Pitch urged, indicating the computer and the database pulled up on it. “Buster. Buster Damm, and that’s, D-A-M-M. Like an actual dam but with an extra ‘m’.”

“Oh, that’s funny.” The receptionist giggled briefly. “Like, er, DAMMastock.”

“What?”

“The sink: Finsteraahorn-Dammastock. To go alongside our Grossglockner-Schrekhorn.” The receptionist’s pronunciation was immaculate now. Pitch surmised that she might know German too. Japanese and German, hmmm. What were we dealing with here?

(to be continued?)

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June 12, 2019 · 7:37 am

Sink X

“It was a meeting of the Pipersville brain trust. Cindy A., Jim A., and Todd A. A different setting, certainly, than the Hole in the Wall the general public knew them from. The Tipsy Trio some call them, like Your Mama. She knows them all too well, she thought — back in the days they were best mates, her being a kind of unofficial 4th member of the club. Jim’s Club — ahh yes. That was the name. Because Jim was the ringleader; on the catbird seat. Now that Keith had fled the scene. Bower-Brown. Undercover. Famous, even infamous, but also not known atall. The sink did that to people, affected their minds. This was proven by the theorems they were working on at the time. The bank had 1 room where they could test subjects, but there were others. You could call it a time machine, but that wouldn’t be taking it far enough. Kind of a space machine as well. No, let’s call it an *Option* machine, both through space and time.”

Preston Weston was cutting the z’s by then. Craighead Phillips, the more moral Option, decided to call it quits for the night. Long journey back to Old Wagon Road or thereabouts to pick up where the other one left off.

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June 12, 2019 · 6:02 am

sink in

“We have this road running straight here, and then the same road running to the side as well. Wonder what it means Option 01?” Pause. “Option 01?”

Turn. “Now where’d he go?”

—–

“You know, Son, these wearable pipe chairs come right here from Pipersville back in the days. Hence the name.”

“Cool, Dad. Um, cool, heh, that you’re hanging around more now. I sort of, I don’t know, *missed* ya.”

“That’s great, Son. No, I’m back. Or at least more back.” Damn sinkhole, he thinks to himself again while staring down at it. He’s glad now he planted that big Tree Green 02 back in the days as well, since it now helps impede his view of the bottom. Along with that big piece of plywood the neighbors left just sitting down there. Cursed sinkhole. Maybe just start a petition to cover up the thing. We have the Professor Suckaluck death story to get the ball rolling. Rolling, rolling, dead. Doorknob dead.

“Dad?” asked Preston Weston, still clutching his zapper gun. “Are you in thinking mode right now?”

Craighead Phillips Option 01 turns to his only child. “You’re one to speak about thinking modes.” He points to his head. “You have a whole *world* in there, Son, heh heh. Your mother can’t wrap her brain around it.”

“Are you asking me to tell you a stor–yyy?” Preston Weston queries expectantly.

Craighead Phillips takes one last drag off his Chesterton cigarette before snuffing it out on the cement porch. “Nah, I’ve got to catch up with my other self, the one who cares less. Just wanted to come visit and see how you’re doing, kid.”

“I’m fine. So — you’re not going to stay the night?”

“Nah. Your Mama and I have patched things up pretty well but not to that extent — not… well, let’s not go that far quite yet. Maybe within a month or so.” Maybe within a month or so my other self and I will tire of exploring north east south west on the continent, he thinks. Away from this blasted sinkhole. Anywhere else. But maybe they could *all* go away. At least for a bit. A vacation of some kind. He decides to test the water.

“Son, if you could go anywhere. And I mean anywhere. Where would it be? Where would make you happier in the world? Mars, I’m guessing.”

“Aww Dad. You know the answer to this.”

“Not the Pipe Room. Don’t say the Pipe Room.”

“I… I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Because we don’t talk about the Pipe Room,” Craighead Phillips insisted.

“I *wasn’t* going to talk about it.”

“Son. That’s where your mother went off her rocker. When she was just a kid. Only a little more older than you. Did I ever tell you that story?”

And he thinks *I* have an overactive imagination, Preston Weston ponders while wondering how he can get out of a 15 minute soliloquy himself at this point.

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June 11, 2019 · 7:03 am

Pipersville

“Come on, Preston Weston. It’s time to go into town.”

“Aww, Maww. Do I have to? I always get burrs on me passing through that small forest on the the way, heh.”

“Now, now. That cute, little Felicia Mae Appletree might be at the laundromat, hmmm?”

And her *mother*, Preston thinks. Saturdays are *so* cool. He resets his zapper gun to smooch mode. “Okay. You talked me into it.”

—–

“Almost there, Preston,” Your Mama encourages.

“Jeez! Dang burrs.”

—–

I’m just going to pass that place by, Your Mama thinks when stepping onto Brown Street, named for 1/2 of the famed Brown-Bower team of Sinkologists. What put Pipersville on the map!

And those too.

“Jeez, Ma. Walk on the sidewalk will ya.” But she didn’t want to get too close to any of those doors over there. Too tempting…

—–

“What happened to the laundromat?” Your Mama asked aloud.

“Creepers Ma, I-I don’t know.”

She throws her sack of clothes down in the middle of the road in disgust. “And no water in the sinkhole (as a backup). Damn sinkhole.”

“Maa!” Preston protests, knowing you’re not suppose to cuss that sacred cow ’round these here parts. He scans the area to see if anyone overheard the faux pas. Your Mama cusses again. And again, beginning to stomp on the sack of soiled clothes with all her might. “STINKING SINK HOOOOLLLE!” she hollars in crescendo, then collapses beside the battered sack, crying. Preston goes over and tries to comfort in his own, special way. “Aww maa. Not the tears again. Did, heh, I ever tell you how Antarctica became frozen?”

“Preston, dear, please. Not now.” Not ever, she thought. Because she’d made up her mind. She was leaving.

—–

Spiky-headed Craighead Phillips shut the book. “And that’s how Preston Weston got lost in his dreams, Katy. No tether to reality any longer. The End.”

Tracy Austin (Clown) weighed in. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate book for a child, dear.”

“I disagree,” gruffed Phillips in his whiney voice. “It’s got kids written all over it.”

“One kid.”

“Yeah, Dad,” offered Katy, wise beyond her years (but, after all, not a kid at the core). “Couldn’t you, I don’t know, chip in or something? He was *your* son after all.”

“Yes,” spoke Tracy again. “I agree. One of your Options should have been chipping in.”

Phillips sighed, realizing he’d have to go back in time again and switch things around. Damn sinkhole.

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June 10, 2019 · 7:17 am

options 02

“Sinkology is a relatively new development on Maebaleia.”

“Satori,” Option 01 corrected, trying to read his own manuscript.

“Yeah, what I said. But it started on Jeogeot and spread here. But first it skipped Maebaleia…”

“Satori.”

“Yeahhh, and went to Corsica instead. Chasm Deep and also Egghill Sink, of course.”

“Of course.”

“That’s where it picked up resonance from Earth.”

Option 01 stopped trying to read and lifted his head. “Your son Preston Weston is very interested in Earth, and getting rid of it.”

Option 02 met his eyes. “*Your* son.”

—–

“Nothing but vampire drinks here. But…”

“… another door.”

“Each supposedly duplicate castle has its advantages and disadvantages compared to the other,” returns Option 02. “My guess is that they cancel each other out and are unimportant to the overall story here.”

Option 01 paused, again wishing he had a drink. “Like us?” he then asked.

—–

“Ma, I’m home!”

“Ma?”

—–

“Do you think I’m pretty, Preston Weston?”

“Um, *sure* Ma. Not as pretty as Mrs. Appletree, my geography teacher. But, yeah, pretty still. In a ma kind of way, heh.”

“Your *father* thinks I’m too fat.”

“W-what?”

“Yes. Too fat.”

“Is, er, that why we’re not *eating*?” Preston Weston’s stomach rumbles again involuntarily. No food on the table, nothing being prepared. This was not the usual!

“He picks you up, he drops you off. God knows where he is before, between, and after.”

“Jeez Ma. This is kind of *sad.* *You’re* sad. Do you want me to tell you one of my stories to cheer you up? I have a new one… listen, heh, South America is being invaded by giant ants…”

“*No*, Preston,” She looks at him directly now. “But… thanks. That’s very nice of you to offer.”

“Jeez Ma,” Preston repeats more seriously, seeing the tears in her eyes.

—–

“Drive over to the east coast now, Option 02?”

“Sure.”

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June 10, 2019 · 6:39 am

options 01

“Ready Option 02?”

“Ready Option 01.”

—–

—–

“A difference.”

“Different options.”

“Yes.”

—–

“I got stuck (!!).”

“So did I (!).”

“They’re very different.”

“They are.”

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