Jeez I haven’t felt this good since Mary left, Eraserhead Man thinks by Ruby’s side. I could *marry* this girl. Yes: marry.
So he remembers the disappearance of his wife now too.
Category Archives: 05
reunion
Young Ruby had somehow made it all the way to EM’s Urbane Blue set in the heart of Meat City without compromising her integrity.
But all she found inside was a floating, slightly glowing Eraserhead Man, deep deep deep within. No Herbert Dune, no Jill MacGill/Gwin or Chloe Price or Benny and Jer Horne or Franklin Bowers and his former wife Jenny — lets go with Patsy — or Rabbit 03 or the Blue Yip Yip. Only the director of it all.
He was the dreamer dreaming the dream all along. The blue structure acting as a coffee shop within was a portal indeed.
With no role found to be played — Gwin’s vacant part was a red herring — Ruby had no choice but to return to her empire. What a long journey in vain!
No Timmy when she returns (dead), no Tin Tin (married, or so she thought). Just her and Madame Silver, battling out the final days. Should she wake the dreamer? Maybe that would be a better solution, she realized. But *gradually*.
She kept tap tap tapping at his wooden yellow shoulder, each tap a little stronger. But even after a hundred of these, we would still consider the gesture quite light of touch. Ruby was subtle like that. Quality over quantity indeed for this one.
The dreamer awoke like a fresh spring morning; turned to faced his rouser. “Ahh, Young Ruby,” he cooed. “A sight for sore ears.” Now maybe he can toss aside those hearing aids for good.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0502, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
6 times
2:55:
“No, there’s no plans for a prison in these schematics, Mr. Man.”
“EM! Call me EM! Everybody does!”
“Um, EM.”
“How ’bout Smithy’s place?! Is it finished?!”
Rob Reeder and Ted Totter just stared at each other, unable to decipher what Eraserhead Man was on about now.
“Um… Smithy?”
“Yeah. And Ghostwood! Ghostwood Estates Mental Hospital! Audrey’s there!”
Rob Reeder and Ted Totter exchanged looks. “Do you want us… to *add* these things, Mr. Man… EM?”
EM paused dramatically, then: “YES!”
—–
“Where *is* he?” groused Chloe Price, sitting in the blue chair . “Where’s our famous director?”
“He said 3 o’clock,” returned Jill MacGill from the red one. “Be patient.”
Chloe checked her watch, then nodded. “All right, all right.”
“Only 3:05 now.”
“O-*kay*.”
—–
3:15:
“I’m tired of looking at this poster and water fountain. I’m going to roam about the place. Freely.”
“NO,” commanded Jill. “EM said to *stay put* this time. He’ll be here shortly. Sometimes he goes on… tangents. As you well know. He said 3 so it will probably be 3:30. Just give him time. Don’t leave me in this spooky place *alone*.”
“Spooky?” questioned Chloe to Jill.
“I meant just: place. I suppose it’s not that spooky.” But Jill was shaking within. She’d seen a ghost here and another one could come.
—–
—–
3:35:
Jill relented out of boredom and strategy. “All right, tell me about this game you found near the Horne Inn. The one EM left you.”
Suddenly alert, Chloe’s head bounced up off her raised knee. “I’ll do better than that.”
—–
3:45:
“Wrong building!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0010, 0501, Coast Town Sims, Sansara, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
N. Yd
“Tilers, Tessa. It marks this place as safe after all, despite the surface malignancy.
“But we can’t take a chance anyway this time — fog rolling in; darkness too. We better ascent that tall ladder over there to higher ground for the night.”
“I’m *more* than ready to get out of these lowlands,” Tessa offered, staring back at the pirate ship from whence they came. Shark references everywhere. And not in a good and beneficial way. *Those* signs are there too, and in much more profusion. Tessa thinks that her Grandpa Gold puts way too much stock in these Tilers he goes on about at times. Left their signets here, dropped their talismans there. Sanctified grounds, he states and walks forward. Nothing malicious has happened… *yet*. And this is just the kind of place to break the lucky streak.
“We’ll come back in the morning if possible,” he says. “If Tilers were here then there is surely more to look at and study.”
“Whatever.”
—–
The next morning, on the same spot:
“Oh the weather is *much* better now,” Tessa voiced sarcastically. “I can barely see 20 feet in front of me.”
“The tile here indicates safety, however,” her grandpa reinforced. “Safe to split up, then. You examine the buildings that way,” — Grandpa Gold points behind Tessa — “and I’ll work my way around from this end — counterclockwise — until we meet up somewhere in the middle. Is that okay?”
“If you say it’s safe, then I suppose it’s safe,” says Tessa, doubting the words coming out of her mouth but also putting her trust in who she assumes is a wiser and older being.
“Saves time that way,” he adds without verification from the child. “See you in the middle.” He turns away from her and walks toward the first structure in his direction. Tessa begins on her side.
—–
“Freak show eh?” Tessa speaks aloud at one of the westernmost structures of the compound, thinking back to something called the Elephant Man, she believes. Nothing to make fun of! But is this an octopus who has the features of a man or visa versa? Anyway — not alive. Taking a picture and moving on…
—–
“Nothing in there either.”
“Oh, there you are already, Grandpa. We meet in the middle, I suppose. Anything on your side?”
“A church,” he states.
“Tilers?”
“I think so. The right colors. They were indeed here. But first: let’s look in the last house of all. Together.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0518, New Island, The Waste+
futures
He looks down at the Orion’s Vale sinkhole and dreams of a Corsica continent that could have been.
But perhaps the dream contains pathways of possibilities yet.
Back to future Yd Bay:
Yes it got worse for Grandpa Gold and Tessa Fish. Especially Tessa. North Yd: a post-apocalyptic town not to be played around with.
“No. Uh-uh.”
Grandpa Gold knew that if they didn’t get out of there by sunset there may be no escape from the darkness.
“Grandpa. Get *down* from there. No playing around!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0517, Corsica, New Island, The Waste+
“Let’s go visit that small town over there.”
“What do you think Baker Bloch?”
“It’s really interesting. Really is. Soooo… Bart Smipson is invisible now? Is, er, that the alchemical experiment gone wrong?”
Baker Blinker put her hands behind her head. “I suppose. We don’t really have to explain it. Things are implied.”
“I suppose,” echoed the male Baker, irking the female Baker with the implied language. “We can write it over,” he then suggests. She was thinking: I’m *definitely* not writing that over. Took me 4 hours as is! “Nah, it’s fine Baker Blinker. It really is,” he says to reassure, looking at her pained reaction to this. “I get it. Bart Smipson is invisible on New Island and that’s why his sister Lisa couldn’t find him. He’s probably a fugitive of the law, and that’s why these Silver and Gold people decided they had the leeway to experiment on him — not registered, perhaps.”
“Baker Bloch, I’m not sure if you get the basic gist. Bart was suppose to be a companion for Tessa, to get her mind off the killer sharks, ahem, whales and such. Like earlier in these Collagesity novels, Toyna Two Egg created robot Arale from a kid her parents gave her when she was just a kit.”
“Kit… kid. I recall. But why invisible?”
“That’s the ‘wrong’ part about it.”
Baker Bloch rolled up the paper in the typewriter a little more. “And this part below the line…” He turned to Baker Blinker in her hanging chair. “Ready to read yet?” he queried.
She blew out air. “Go ahead,” she relented, steeling herself for more veiled criticism.
—–
Future times. July 11, 2022. Yd Bay again. Much much more has washed ashore.
Through the peculiar odor from what was cooking (stench, to her), East Bennington refuge Tessa Fish issued a declaration. “I don’t like this place, Grandpa Gold. I don’t like this place *one bite*.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0516, Heterocera, New Island, The Waste+
alchemy
“We should tell Tessa the truth, Monsieur Gold,” she spoke after finishing her meal.
“You mean that we are actually brother and sister as well as husband and wife, Madame Silver?”
“No — although that may be handy later on.”
“That the killer sharks she is so fond of are actually whales?” he guessed again.
“No, not quite yet on that one either. She’s having so much fun with them, and she detests whales as you know. Considers them noisy.”
“They should have never bought her that Engelbert Humpbackdinck record at such a tender age.”
“Right.” She picked up her sterling silver fork nervously and then set it down again. “No, I think it’s time to talk to her about the experiment, Monsieur.”
“The one that went right, or the one that went wrong, Madame?” he asked.
“The latter.”
“Ahhh,” he uttered, thinking back…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0515, New Island
big over trashy
Blue Jay Wade was still kinda noticing (and imagining/remembering) the thing before the thing while Big Red washed his hands prior to serving their evening meal. Carrot and cucumber enchiladas it was tonight, yum. Big Red could cook with the best of ’em. Something to reassure himself after this afternoon’s humiliation, Wade speculated. But I guess he got his revenge at least on Trashy. Certainly did. Thinking it best not to re-imagine *that* right now, the blue bird-man turned his attention instead to the left.
“We gotta pay to get these windows unfrosted sometime, Big Red… Mr. Butler.”
“*Why*?” Big Red was still in quite the pissy mood.
“Because, you know… of The Monster. Sneaking up on us all the time. We don’t even have time to react most times.”
“I *like* The Monster visiting us,” Big Red measured out acidly while putting their enchiladas on plates and lumbered toward the table. “I *like* being abducted. It’s like a mini-holiday. Away from *you*.”
“I’m just saying…” Blue Jay Wade tried to defend himself.
Big Red hovered to the side. “If you’d spend more time at your *boathouse* then you wouldn’t notice these windows so much.”
Blue Jay Wade tested the frosted panel with his finger to see if dirt or grime could be adding to its translucent quality, so little could be actually seen.
“Stand up,” Big Red barked while roughly plopping down their plates on the wooden table and sliding one over to Blue Jay Wade. “You know I don’t like eating with my back to the wall. Get up; you can have this plate.” That image of the thing after the thing flashing in his head, Blue Jay Wade quickly complied and slunk over to the center seat while Big Red glowered above and behind him a minute — breathing rather heavily and menacingly, a suddenly sweating Wade felt — before moving to the vacated chair.
—–
Ruby found Trashy’s red, white and blue severed head the next day bobbing around Yd Bay on the other side of the island. “What have I done??” she cried, worrying more about what suddenly pill denied Aunt Annie was going to do to *her* than anything.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0514, New Island
little over big
“Why don’t you just take your clothes off right now and go hop in the tub, Big Red. Because you’re going *down again.*”
Blue Jay Wade pretended not to see Ruby’s victory dance on the table…
… but certainly noticed Big Red’s big, hairy heiney as he waddled back to his house for his loser bath.
“Don’t say *anything* Trashy,” Big Red warned while passing.
“Like *you’re* going to do anything about it,” taunted the drug dealing clown.
Oops.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0513, New Island
start again
It certainly was an interesting illusion, this blue image against Fishers Isle in the exact same place the blue mini had been before.
(Ruby turned) But it was certainly an illusion.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0512, New Island
Sunklands 