Category Archives: Ashton Village

May 6, 2024 · 4:02 am

00420613

“I get it now Wheeler. There’s a boat here on the mountain. Hence: Boat Mountain.”

“Also known as Mountain of Boat or Mount Boat,” added Wheeler for Newt, perhaps a hubby, perhaps not.

“Okay, cool. So that’s done.”

“It is.”

Newt looks around. “Nice view up here. Let’s go sit on that bench we passed and enjoy the mountain air for a while.”

“Okay. But we have to get back home before Indie Cartoon Night. Starting at 7.” They begin walking toward the bench just over the top.

“Amazing Digital Circus, Episode 2. I’ve heard,” he speaks while being careful about the rocks.

“I’ve previewed it for us. Don’t expect it to be the same as the first. I *know* you’ll be disappointed. I just know it.”

“Maybe not — but thanks for preparing me anyway.” Reaching the bench they sit down.

“What’s this one about?” he asks. “Abstracting again?”

“In part,” answers Wheeler, not wanting to give away too much. “More action — I know you like action in your animation,” she jokes. Newt dislikes most action scenes; thinks they’re superfluous to a character driven plot.

“Aah, I see.”

“And there’s some backroom stuff,” she countered, knowing that would please him. “And that’s *all* I’m going to say.” She pats him on the knee after checking the time on her phone. “6:25 now. Better head back, actually.”

Newt takes one last look around. “I was hoping we could see Millbank from this vantage point. Maybe a little too far away here.”

“There,” points Wheeler. “I think those black trees sticking up may be part of it.”

“Amazing the Halloween village is still there. Last year it was taken down in maybe November or something.”

“Just for you my dear.” She pats his knee again. “To keep you happy.”

—–

They had just settled into the comfy couch after turning on the TV when the doorbell rang. But it was all part of the plan, the act.

“M & M Lawn Care here!” the taller of the two shouted through the door. “Lawn maintenance at your service!”

—–


put to work

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November 8, 2023 · 2:55 pm

00400612 (holiday rotting away)

A homeless person in Millers Pond looks across the sim line and takes pictures of neighboring Millbank before it’s too late and all the Halloween oddity over there goes away for another 10 or 11 months or so. Specifically, he’s recording a supposed secret meeting between Dr. Mouse and Dr. Brown not far from the mortuary and mental asylum where we first saw them in this here photo-novel: 40, fast drawing to a close itself. Which will last longer might be a question to be asking, Millbank or this?

Two went in, one came out. Murder. Most foul.

—–

“Pretend you’re a woman of that type, Dr. Brown,” Dr. Mouse said within, “with alll these temptations just sitting there all around you. Would you stay on the grounds?”

“No red blooded man *or* woman could resist,” spoke Dr. Brown, knowing human psychology and physiology all too well. Convex and concave — attraction. Irresistible, especially in that overall climate. And he didn’t forget concave to concave; applies here too. The institution Dr. Mouse set up will not hold the girl, a true Venus.

“Serenity Lane, yes,” spoke Dr. Mouse about the fairer sex aspect of the situation, having studied the combined files thoroughly by now. “Drugged her, then drugged her over to the prison, the mother mayor’s magical cuffs in place. Serenity loved Marsha just as much as she loved ex-wife Shelley before; would keep her around at any cost. Shelley… Johnston — Johnston, right?”

“Yeah. Think so,” answered Brown.

“And the other?” Dr. Mouse tested.

“Brown,” answered Brown.

—–

Mouse couldn’t take a chance on the name synchronicity. He’d have to find another second hand to go along with his first in the aberrant bomb clock of time that is their story. Tick tick tick goes the sim of Millbank. Tick tick tick goes the text of photo-novel 40. Oh what the heck, let’s just start with this house to destroy the evidence.

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November 1, 2023 · 1:32 am

00400516

“One more haunted house and we’ll be done with Millbank for another year, troupe,” spoke their obvious leader, front and center and gazing inward to begin gauging the spookiness of the place. Toddles. Ready to explain to them what’s actually going on with their now intertwined relationships. Just after this — she’s curious about the final twist here, which she knows is coming but hides the details from her higher, psychic self in order to be surprised. What’s the point of existing if you know *everything*, she reasons with it.

“Doesn’t look too scary,” offered Vain and Artery Boyy beside her. “Not like some of the others.”

“The mortuary, yeah,” said Rock on her other side, and stifled an urge to barf again at the mere thought of the gruesome scenes and things found within. The others knew it was a mistake to take him in but there were no distractions outside like a sandbox or something. He could wander off and get lost if left by himself in that way. But still: the damage was done to the 46 year old man from Nantucket, the opposite of Toddles in many ways since he has a child’s brain inside a grownup’s body.

Toddles looked around the yard: no distractions again. “Are you going to be okay, Rock? We don’t have to go in. We can end our tour here, go back to Big Sandy with the satisfaction that we visited everything except this last building, the most central one still but, like VA Boyy said, not that impressive on the outside. We can basically say we saw it all, we finished it all off.”

“I — want to be complete,” he said, wiping sweat from this forehead. “I  — want to go in.”

“Okay,” said Toddles. “If you’re *sure*.”

And here comes the twist. When they all went inside, seats seem to be arranged for them as if in a play, include Rock’s at an old upright piano. It was here he discovered a middle name: Roll. Rockabilly star R.R. Ramby was born. After brushing away the cobwebs he played beautifully, even though he only took a few lessons in childhood before being written off by his parents as useless and not worth throwing money away on. With this different form of music he automatically found himself banging away at to alleviate the fear aspect, he would have the last say.

All this was set up by the rock star that came before him, shrine remaining upstairs. Roll over Beethoven. Here comes a new one.

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October 31, 2023 · 6:34 am

00400515

The weight of the past…

… finally collapses the present into a hellscape sinkhole of no return.

Over and over…

… and over.

—–

“As you can clearly see, Dr. Mouse, the darts weren’t the cause of the death.”

“As I suspected,” he said in his superior, haughty way. “What did the extracted bodily fluids reveal?”

“Dr. Rabbid over at the lab is still working on the results,” answered Dr. Brown. Dr. Mouse was thinking he’d have the results already, would *cane* them out of a subordinate if needed for such an important case. All Millbank is depending on a correct diagnosis. For its own survival.

Sensing the tension, Dr. Brown put forth another option, since he didn’t have much faith in science to figure it out by this point. He acted as if it was his own idea instead of Dr. Rabbid’s but would quickly point the blame finger at the non-present doctor if Mouse didn’t like the proposal.

“Seance?!” Dr. Mouse responded to it, initially seeing only the negative of the thing. “Here? In Millbank?? Are you mad??”

Well, a little, Dr. Brown thought, but then answered: “It could be elsewhere. The other doctors wouldn’t have to know about it. You could be a hero, sir, swooping in from the outside to save the day.”

“All Hallows Day,” he specified. “All this,” and he looks around the room that represents the entire sim in the moment, “wouldn’t have to go back into storage. It could be perpetual, a permanent fixture. *If*…”

“… we could just figure out how to affix the past to the present; make it stable and unfluctuating,” finished Brown for the higher up doctor.

The phone in Dr. Brown’s pocket rings in an ancient way. He answers; he acknowledges; he hangs up. “Dr. Rabbid’s results indicate formaldehyde, 37 percent.”

“Formaldehyde?!” shouted the superior doctor even slightly louder. “Then this *is* about preservation.” The seance was a go, at least in the eyes of Brown.

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October 30, 2023 · 4:56 pm

interpreter

“Let’s recreate the crime scene, Grandmama,” she recalls him saying in the dream she just woke up from, relayed to her psychic granddaughter Toddles a little later to complete the loop. “We have Bart jiggling on his skateboard in the southeast corner again, waiting to be freed so he can go back to Oz and the lucrative Butterfingers business he’d set up there. Roadrunner is running circles around him, representing constraint of freedom. He is stuck for now. Then Twitty Bird darts right by him in the picture, chased by Sylvester the Cat per usual.

“Conway Twitty threw *darts* at a map of the United States to come up with his stage name, one hitting Conway, Arkansas and the other Twitty, Texas near Magic City, Abra, and perhaps some other meaningful names. Kellersville next to Heald obviously, referring to the water healing of deaf blind mute Helen over in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Bart’s sister Lisa just ran into this same Sylvester in NWES City — which we need to get back to by the way.”

“The two darts represent drugs,” Toddles interrupted her grandmother’s dream review with an insight.

SHADOW: (says something)
PEANUT: Ah, what? I don’t understand… a thing you’re saying, man. Do you have any idea what you sound like? Bluh, bluh, bluh, bluh. That’s what you sound like in my head.
SHADOW: (says something)

https://12ozmouse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Shadowy_Figure

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October 30, 2023 · 6:24 am

00400513

Turns out it was all a misunderstanding mostly created by Toddles herself. Vain and Artery Boyy and, especially, Rock didn’t have the sense to think that a legal guardian must be found for Toddles, due to the fact that she acted so *independent* around them, we’ll say. Toddles insisted they celebrate the reunion and work out the kinks of the intertwined connections later on after visiting the Millgate Halloween Festival — located to the north and west of Big Sandy on the old Bellissaria continent — before it was too late and her 2nd favorite holiday after Arbor Day was done and over with.

—–

They’d left Rock to play in a haunted sandbox outside with an object provided plastic zombie pail and ghost shovel. He would be happy for hours if needed. And Alice F., wore out from the tour already, was upstairs taking a power nap, as she described it. The bad dreams began almost instantly, like back in the Belt Days.

Which left Toddles and Vain and Artery Boyy (aka Gill) downstairs, trying to figure out a mystery. “The thing that interests me most,” spoke the precocious child, obviously precious as well, “is *not* the 2 darts through the eyes — that’s more a distraction I’m thinking. It’s the presence of that blue ball at the foot of the body. Blue, Vain and Artery Boyy. Like your better half.”

He thought of Blue Berry Girl here and the life that could have been. But too late now. She was off to the Pleiades or Andromeda or some other starry paradise high in the nighttime sky. Seeing herself seeing herself seeing herself…

“What do you mean?” he prompted, staring at it now as well.

“Well, I mean, it just doesn’t *fit*. Let’s continue thinking out loud together — why did the Lindens, or Moles whoever, put it there?”

After V&AB didn’t answer for a spell, Toddles went on. “Blue ball begets yellow ball begets red green begets green red. We’ve already been through that. The prison bowling alley. Exactly 2 sections back.”

“I–” Vain started, then stopped. He had nothing really to say. He just decided to listen to genius unfurled in front of him. Yes, he’d try to stick with the child. He’d fight for her, even, at this point. Grandmas are challengeable legal guardians he figured. Not like a mama and a papa, which apparently Toddles didn’t have. He wondered why — he’d ask the grandma as soon as she finished her nap. He’d battle on the grounds that she had a 37 year old brain inside a 3 year old’s body, ready to be released on the world.

Alice woke up in a different bed, but the shadow figure was still there, go figure. And then someone else. Not a leprechaun but similarly sized. Maybe it is some kind of leprechaun given what comes afterwards. “Hell-o!” he or she or it says innocently in a child-like voice. “Hell-ooo!”

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July 6, 2023 · 4:12 pm

00390201

Weird she can see the lower tip of Beatrice from here, she thinks. Where she, in fact, comes from (novel 38; on a white horse). She checks the distance on the inworld map in her, um, mind. Over 200 meters away still, and her draw distance used here is only 64 to reduce lag in an urban area. She thinks again of Constantinople, the *real* thing, and her graphically talented, er, doppelganger. Here incarnated as Myrtle Beech out on the southern tip of *this* island. Another 200 meters or so in the opposite direction.

She moves to the opposite window of the upper floor of her new (!) apartment, important furniture purchase finished. It all revolves around, well, the central affair which is not an affair atall. She smiles at the irony. She can continue with her romance novel 39 and keep the marriage to Arthur intact. She can have her cake and eat it too. She came here, in effect, in 2 boats at once. But what really was this island she now exists on with her others? Constants? Close enough.

Arthur will be home soon from job hunting. Better get back to the interwebs and do some more research before he arrives (she decides). Hogs the whole living room with his applications and such. Great views, but — drawback — small apt. Barely room for the bed upstairs. And what about a kitchen? She’s *not* sharing an oven and a fridge with that big headed dude downstairs (!).

Strange, she think while staring from the couch now (*not* new). The entire Smipsons family shows up at the bottom of the store’s page but no sign of Al or Sarah’s avatar, hmm. Oh, she realizes. No adult content here; she’s not signed in to the Marketplace. And Al and Sarah are certainly adults now after what happened at the Homeless Union last night, away from Cowboy’s still drunk presence. Who cares if he chokes on his own vomit, Sarah thinks while packing her duffle bag for an overnight stay, looking down on him writhing about on the stained bed, murmuring something about Wanda and Gloria giving him 2 rides between snores and incoherent utterances. I bet they did, she thinks with vile, harking back to that afternoon and the beach and the lateness of his appearance and his *appearance* when he arrives. Drunk off his tits. “I bet they did,” she hisses aloud before stomping out, thinking this is at *least* a 2 night absence now. Maybe forever; probably so.

Back to the family…

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July 5, 2023 · 3:08 pm

00390117

The actual seance in Ruby’s Bellissaria home in Ashton Village, or “reading” as the invitation called it, was kind of anticlimactic to what just happened outside. Psychic Olive Olystick knew instantly upon seeing green clad Al and blue clad Sarah sit down opposite each other at the prepared table that they were destined for each other, *made* for each other in effect (manufactured). Groover filled in the needed 6th spot for absent, sick Cowboy, taking the “yellow” seat opposite Olive’s red. “We have our 6,” she said in the introduction, amended up from 4 to include mutual friends Gloria and Wanda from down on the beach. But Olive knew they didn’t really count. There was still only red, green, yellow and blue around the table. A true TILE, yes, modified for the moment. She had manufactured Groover as much as Al had manufactured Sarah, and visa versa as well. Round and round and round.

Al, of course, asked about Bart and the renegade treatises, both his and Lisa’s, although the boy’s higher channeling effort took top priority in his mind. The reason for him being here in the 1st place. Olive looked deep into her mind, produced an image of a cow that was also a human. “Someone lives on this continent who has your answers. Not the 2nd continent (of Bellissaria), not the 3rd, nor 4th, nor 5th. Here. Not far away to the north — Northern Hills, I’m seeing. Groover knows a person involved.” All eyes at the table turned to the Trojan-Durexian war vet, who just sat there was his mouth agape per usual, like he was as surprised about this information as anyone else. He wasn’t. “Grooover,” urged still-in-trance Olive, seeing that gleam in his eyes.  “You *know* something. Spill.”

“This must be about Chet,” he replied in his goofy, high voice, knowing he couldn’t hide anything from Olive.

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July 5, 2023 · 9:12 am

Ashton

As fate would have it, they met at the front door of the place. “After you,” Sarah spoke to green clad Al opposite her. “No, after *you*,” he returned, like the gentleman he is, unlike a certain other person in her life we won’t speak about just yet for fear of him show… oh darn. There he is. Straight from the beach and drunk off his tits.


“Ah, *there* you are, *hiccup* love of my liffe, appfle of *burrp* myyyy…” He falls down. Sarah doesn’t move toward him to help. Al picks up on the worst. She turns toward the sober man here again. “Let’s go inside together,” and she holds his hand while they walk within. She feels warm, Al thinks. She feels… good.

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July 5, 2023 · 7:16 am

Village

She manifested two pills in her mouth and swallowed, one red and one blue. That way her size stayed the same. Phyllis began to speak.

“Red yellow green blue. NO purple. NO orange. NO nothing else. We have our 4. I am Phyllis. Let’s begin.”

This was a test run with her old pal and sometimes comfy pillow Groover but she was taking it very seriously. She wanted to make sure she hadn’t forgotten how to do this, and that Phyllis would still come through clear and strong. Strong enough to answer questions. Ruby had taught her well.

Meanwhile, just next door…

“Tarnation, woman. You’re not really thinking about *going* to this thing, are you?”

“You can come too,” she offered only 1/2 heartedly at best. She could also feel the future, telling it didn’t include her Cowboy, the thought-to-be love of her life. But that was long ago. Before the 1st lassoing.

“I’ll hogtie you I will,” he continued in that fashion. “I’ll *make* you stay one way or another.”

“I’m going,” she said firmly from the couch that was the same color as her dress. She was one with it. Cowboy had to get up and leave. “Well then tarnation galdarnit I am too!” he said in a huff before slamming the front door, intending to head to the beach for a Blue William or three or five. Boat Bar’s Gloria and Wanda would listen to him there, especially Wanda. But that would give him a lot of trouble later, perhaps the final nail in the coffin that had become their relationship.


“I wish Sarah was as good a listener as you… Wanda.”

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