Category Archives: Continent 02

q and a with the girl who came home

interviewer:

So how are Patty Spearmint and Patty Peppermint you’ve been associated with earlier (photo-novel 1) related?

LTV:

We are sisters! At least in spearmint.

interviewer:

Spirit, yes. So I’m gathering (the 2 Pattys) are the same.

LTV:

We don’t talk about Schneider. I drew a mustache on the mannequin outside. Its sex changed (note: LTV starts weeping a bit here).

interviewer:

Here ya go, LTV (I had her a hankie; she loads it up and hands it back to me, nose cleared for the moment). Thank you.

LTV:

Sorry.

interviewer:

That’s okay. So to continue, Patty and you shared the joke about the Wells: well well well, if it isn’t the Wells (etc.). Then the Wells became reality (“neighbors”). *Your* reality.

LTV:

Snowball in Hell helped. Stabilization. Affair with…

interviewer:

Scratchy?

LTV:

Not quite.

(end of Part I)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0305, Bellisaria, Continent 02, Continent 04

white on black

I just *love* this music, Swanky. She’s my brother, you know.”

“Indian?” he asked.

“But American. Not Asian,” she clarified. She didn’t think. Point is, she was home, listening to her old music on her old phonograph player. All the Wells: well well well. That was an old joke she shared with Patty Spearmint, her bestie since grade school going on high school. Schneider would enjoy it too. If he were alive to hear it. All the Wells were musical, geniuses even. Rosie decided to part ways with the rest and become a scientist. Now she worked on the Crabwoo Revitalization Project or whatever the heck they’re calling it these days. Blue Feather Redevelopment Initiative — something. And she had that single eye which was different too.

They tried burying it in the front yard that day, but it just popped right back up. They had to accept her as a sister, albeit different.


Rosie at work, realizing she should have bought a telescope instead of a microscope for future research.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0304, Bellisaria, Blue Feather Sea^, Continent 02, Maebaleia/Satori

she’s coming home

He was playing on the keyboard.

She was belting out the piano.

The front door rang. No one knew where they lived. Who could it be?

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0303, Bellisaria, Continent 02

stormy

It was a coastal afternoon sort of day. He tried his luck with a passing fairy who spoke two octaves above him. “Crabwoo?”

“What was that?” she buzzed, and was gone.

“Darn.” He shakes his head. “Fairies,” he utters. “Everyone says they know everything but I haven’t seen nothing yet from the lot of ’em.” He imagines spitting on the ground, this *dreamscape*. He wakes up.

—–

Shelley made it no secret that she wanted another baby. She tried provocative pose after provocative pose for enticement, even buying this giant cat-girl scratching post to aid. “Dear,” she called over to Tommy, reading another magazine at the top. Herself again, of course. “Yes, what is it?” He mixed a dab of indifference into the tone. Hatti’s influence again (of course). She’s a genius at recipes, he thinks often, especially deadly ones. But just plain harmless tasty ones too. Half and… “Dear,” she prompts again, seeing she’s losing him to the dreams. Snores would soon follow if she wasn’t quick. She assumes a different pose to change the scene. She puffs her stomach out to appear like it’s got another baby in it already. This time he takes the bait. But that was his plan all along. Julia here we come!

—–

Out in the yard, the mannequin shuts her ears and eyes, having enough of babies. Where was her own? She didn’t care; she put it out of her mind. Eyela erupts from the ground behind her, another spat-upon fairy.

The front doors remain locked.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0302, Bellisaria, Continent 02

hhi-ding

“I had that dream again where your name was George,” she offered at the breakfast table. Toasty-O’s this time. New shape: hexagons. And licorice flavored, yum. Something different, something to spice up the palate. Last night it was fried red tomatoes. Night before — he couldn’t recall. Something with spaghetti and yogurt. Afterwards: salmon flavored ice cream. A lot of times it was all about color, warm mixed with cool. Just like (orange toned) Julius. He gurgled and spat out more milk — happened a lot these days as well. “We’ll have to ween him off the stuff soon,” she said, looking over at the white stain enlarging on his baby blue bib. Because of course Shelley knew now as well. This was a boy. She just didn’t realize when it happened. Like unwanted pregnancies this was an unwanted sex. But it was too late to abort (the name). Julius it is, although Shelley would have preferred a Julia. Sometimes the man still rules the house. Especially with a wife so vain she stares a little too often in the mirror. He can trick her, he can distract. Now what *next*, he ponders from his side of the breakfast table, staring over as she picks up another magazine. He’s planted them all around the house and beyond. Henrietta had taught him well, ha ha. Hehe. Ho.

“Who?” he asked innocently, knowing exactly what his real name was, one he hadn’t revealed to Shelley except in the deepest depths of night.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0301, Bellisaria, Continent 02

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

research

“You have wonky eyes.”

“You’re one to talk.”

—–

“6 o’clock?! I’ve got to get back for supper. Butter get those flapjacks on, witches!

—–

“Soup’s up!” Fisher the fry cook called.

“That’s yours, Groover,” Olive Oylstick reminded her dinner companion, wondering where her pancakes were. Damn witches.

“Oh GROOVEY!” Shut up, is all she could think with rumbling stomach.

—–

Picking out a new favorite stuffed animal at the pet shop, one without wonky eyes. She doesn’t want to be reminded! She stares straight at them to keep aligned.

—–

She brought Groover back to wait at the Blue Airfield (in Gray?) for her cousins Zimmy and Mr Z, all three born from another mother. They never showed up. “Just like pancakes,” she groused, looking over at the monster everyone in certain parts of various continents were talking about. Knob Noster, some called it. “You know this means we’ll have to stay in the homeless shelter again, Groovey… Groover.”

“I don’t care,” he said, patting his full stomach again. One meal at a time for him, one meal, one day, one week without a 7th to show up. She could put an end to it; turn him in. But she needs a pillow tonight, apparently. She glances one last time out the window to see if any more ships were flying in. Ghosts again.

—–

“Hey stop reaching. *My* wine. Now get behind me and fall asleep so I can too, pheh.”

“Wonder who the new bozo is over there.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0507, Ashton Village, Bellisaria, Color Sims^, Continent 02, Sansara

Waggly Willard

I kept waiting for ghosts to appear but only the tops of one or two came into view while I had the patience, along with a mostly present bat. I knew a full investigation of *Bellisseria* could save me, but I couldn’t call it that. Not in this here blog and accompanying photo-novel, or visa versa actually, because the photo-novel is the dog that wags the tail now. Not like in olden days with the books. Something changed about 5 years ago — almost exactly 5 years ago in fact. A beat increased in frequency enough to become a note. And here we are. At the end. Except it isn’t. Back to investigating…

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0506, Bellisaria, Continent 02

closer

Sandy knew this was the dream to end it. She had a breathing helmet and so did the person before her. In the past.

“Hilllllsdale County,” she said to herself in that Texas drawl while studying the screen. Haven’t thought about that place since 18-86!”

A snake completing the task and swallowing its own tail appeared beside her. She remembered.

(*pop*)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0417, Bellisaria, Continent 02