Category Archives: Estate

Kidd Tower 01

He was washing the car with roommate Devil Dave in Wendy when he got the call.

“You get it.”

“No, I’ll get it.” Typical, playful pals. Karoz answers the phone ringing in the front seat. He forgot to roll up the side window and it was ringing wet but so apparently not damaged. Wife Baker Blinker was on the other end. He’d forgotten he was married. “Come… *home*,” she said with defiant voice. He knew he was in trouble. “Chilbo?” he asked for some reason. It had been their home for I suppose 5 years. Why would it change now?

“No. We have a new home.” He knew somehow! Maybe it was just the oddity of the call. Baker Blinker hadn’t phoned him in, what was it, *2* years? He’d forgotten he tied the knot. He told Devil Dave all this after receiving the rest of the information and hanging up.

“Summer,” DD replied, still playful wiping the front of the La voiture de Grand-père they’d been bumming around in for 3 months. “You moved here at the beginning of summer. You last talked to Baker Blinker in spring, May I suppose. Not 2 years.”

“Oh.” He recalled now. But bad timing with the car wash. He’d have to drive it through the ocean and get it all salty to reach where Baker Blinker indicated was their new home. Place called Constantynople —island-state up in Nautilus, she said. Strange pronunciation, he thought. He also realized the irony that they were going to be residents of the place, “Constan*ti*nople” being the best known hit of the bizarro group known as The Residents. First track off “Duck Stab/Buster and Glen”, also their greatest album. He knew it well through the audiovisual synch “Waits 4 No One”. Wheeler (Wheeler!) use to play it quite a lot on the TV. Back in the days. Got him in a lot of trouble that one afternoon. Had the sound up too loud — may have even been “Constantinople” playing; more irony if so. Baker Blinker approached unheard, opened the door of the bungalow, witnessed what was inside. Nothing *too* bad, but Karoz had his legs propped up on Wheeler’s lap. She knew. He wasn’t allowed to enter the wrestling ring again for maybe about 3 months after that, maybe more.

“School’s closed anyway, library shut down,” said Devil Dave in resignation, car wash given up. He hated to lose his friend, his won over ally, but the future calls. Literally. Karoz Blogger wasn’t a bachelor. His days at Crabwoo U. were long gone. This had to be all a dream. Wake up, he said to himself. Wake up! And he did.

Karoz remained in the dream, though. Sans Dave, he now prepared to waterproof the car for his journey. He wasn’t going to leave Wendy without it, planes and trains not being an option here.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0602, Constantynople, Kidd Tower, Nautilus, Rank & File, Wendy-Ontario-, Wild West

Vowells

And so they were wedded that June. Something about substance over style in the vows. Something about quantity over quality. Substance and quantity over style and quality? Something was wrong here, really wrong. What does this wedding have to do with Constantynople, our newly minted darling of the blog? And why do we have the returned, purple gowned Wheeler in Alpha with Baker Bloch? Marriage of convenience? Let’s back up, have them eat those words for now…

We are at the end of 32, sliding into 33. Wheeler wasn’t joking. She’d won the Tic-tac-toe game fair and square. “We will be married to each other and also the town,” he now recalled about what she said at the grated white table in Ontario above the completed board, food shunted aside for the moment. Town, he contemplated. Wrong one. *Really* wrong one. He was falling into a pit, deep and dark and dank and dingy. 4D. No returning to kaput Ontario to the scene of the crime. We’d have to resolve this situation elsewhere. He lost his hat.

Someone stirred in the blue and yellow glowing teepee.

Fall over, Pitch Darkly stepped out of his dark (etc.) house and into the blinding white light. “Hey you blippity bleep bleep kids stop playing around with that statue!” he cried from the porch.

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flashion show

“Welp, we finally found her. Our Sleeping Beauty. Clockwork eye’s a dead giveaway. Right Ted? Ted?”

“Oh yeah, we can’t find him,” John the Mind Reader remembers about his wastelands partner-in-law, as they call each other sometimes — always there; force of habit to think he’s by his side per usual. “We can’t find Ted,” he reiterates with a sigh. He stares at the teddy bear the Ratcatcher still clutches tightly but doesn’t make 2 1’s out of 2. Lime green has a way of blinding you like that. Witness the truck that pulled into the Last Drop the other day. Final meeting of The Gossipers.

“Well… anyway,” he continues only to himself, “I’m going inside, Ted’s rad peepers helping me out or not. Must work fast; report to Al due tomorrow whatever the circumstances. Here goes (!)”

He spots the red doors leading to the stairs going down…

—–

Not what he expected. Sisters’ act! Of sorts.

And there’s Ted across from me, he thought. Finally! “Hi Ted!”

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00380312

She checked the TV guide in this limited satellite viewing of a place but nothing else came on until the sun rose up at 6. 5 more minutes. Edward was finished with the 1st chapter of the book both in reality and irreality. They needed to unwind after all the excitement, thus the cartoons. Bugs Bunny, Ren and Stimpy, and then the most controversial to end. Adventure Time. “Too Young”. Lemongrab was a trip! He makes a mental note to look up more on the character after their excursion into the sea today. Goal: Galapagos Islands. Or Azore Islands, whichever appear first on the screen. If the latter, however, they’d have to watch out for Keith, make sure he didn’t see them together. Shelley was dressed in her usual sun blocking duds which were the same as scrubs. Loose fitting. Ducks all over the top. When she appeared in them after Adventure Time, somewhat nearsighted Edward thought they were lemons and that she’d donned the outfit as a joke. But it was just her usual for maritime adventures.

An image reappeared on the formerly static filled screen. Crack of dawn, yay! Now they can continue watching themselves. There they are out on the beach, choosing one of the 2 available boats, her “boys”. Edward or Arthur? she pondered in front of their noses. Both the same length if slightly different shades of gray. She could have both! She climbs in one then climbs in another. Yes, these will do fine.

(to be continued)

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mine

The letter, however brief and simple, took her breath away. She clutched it to her chest while looking out at the beach. The penner: Edward, sweet cute next door neighbor of daddy wannabe Keith B., now far removed and roaming around the coastline of Africa last she heard. Her: Amazon. Here. “My Dear Valentine,” it started. “I love you with all my heart.” it ended. No middle, but centered through and through with a beating, pulsing passion. For a change. “I *love* it!” she called to her wannabe substitute lover. She’ll let him, she knew. But she has to tell Arthur first. Only in the novel, of course. She’ll write it all out just before it happens in reality. Or (this) *ir*reality. Nothing is real here. Right?

—–

“Funny that you’re 6 foot 5, Edward,” she said afterwards. “Just like my Arthur.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” he requested, and then kept on reading what was directly in front of his nose.

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Thomas too

She was getting old quickly and she knew it. She sat up all night in her rickety swivel chair in her hovel of an office, pondering possibilities. Eureka!! she thought after sipping the last of the SODA before her at 6:10 while the sun was trying to crack on her dawned face. I’ll form a group. Better: I’ll form a whole *sim* that the group will control. You can’t manifest anything there unless you join. And it will all be set in the future, she continued to brainstorm with herself. People — certain people especially (she was thinking about) — would have a hard time finding it that way, a very hard time. “They’d have to take a special train, plane or automobile. One made of ectoplasm and not real matter, yess,” she hissed aloud, bringing back her snake aspect. She was on top of the mountain, a fulfilled pyramid, tip included. Pink Peak. Grant Hill had nothing on her. Because he was she.

“6′ 5″,” she revised later in the Amazon. Close enough.

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the bed is a couch

She kicked off her leafy shoes and stayed a while in this place wrong for others but not herself. Alvin arrived with the rest of the greens just before the crack of dawn. Just what I need, she thought, staring out at it through unwinterized windows. A warm truck. Soon to be getting even warmer!

But where was the baby she use to clutch?

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couched terms

“Hello, Tom? I’ve arrived. And there’s a sprite already here, just like you said there would be.”

(reply)

“Hold on.” He removes the phone from his ear, looks over. “Honey, what’s your name?”

“Morgan,” she said in an ordinary enough voice for a part plant person. He raises the phone again.

“Morgan, she said.”

(reply)

“Wrong place??”

—–

“And that’s what brought me here, to the tree, to the *mutants*,” he said to John the Mind Reader still sitting opposite him in the present, drinking his coffee, still enjoying the beans. “Spill some more,” he requested, leaning back, carefully sipping at this tilted angle. Sometimes just the mention of the word triggers the event, he knew. The others finally arrived, the lot of ’em, crammed altogether in a lime green truck with Dude on the side and Chevy Dodge on the back. Joker and Jester, Jethro and Bauer, Doug and Clyde (formerly Tin Tin and Clubby). Paired troublemakers all. Liars to the hilt. They say caffeine makes you so if unchecked by alcohol. And there hasn’t been a (wal)drop of beer wine liquor in this levee type of place since January. And then: Jackson Bloch riding tailgate, the strangest of them all.

But where was Ted? all began to murmur as they took their usual seats in the establishment set up near the lip of the Great Fissure or Fracture, your pick. “Right here,” micronized Ted said unseen in the center of it all, tightly clutched by his new master.

(to be continued)

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Junkyd again

“How I got here? It was dark. I couldn’t see the road. No street lights in this place. I ended up in this there tree, one of my tires dangling beneath like an eyeball loosed from a socket. Ghouls below — dancing. Carcass roasting in the middle but it wasn’t an ordinary animal. A *human* animal. They said it was a sparkly pink cowboy, formerly. They talked backwards a lot.”

“Like Doug over there?” John the Mind Reader pointed in the direction of Doug over there.

“No, not like a German (Doug was German: Douglas Hinterbocher the 3rd or 4th, I never can remember). Like a mutant.”

“Fine Young Cannibals?”

“Kind of,” I answered to this. “Anyway, I eventually came to the attention of Thomas, short, at least at one point, for Thomasina I gathered.”

“Yeah, the Big Boss. I know her.”

“Of course you do, John. We all do. Pyramid.”

“Right. Dunes.”

“We all come from there.”

“I recall.” But John the Mind Reader *didn’t* recall that part of their shared herstory, all of ’em. It was a big ol’ blind spot, as he put it, mostly in his mind and not to others and where they couldn’t get to it easily, he figured, being the only Mind Reader in the village, or at least he believed. Not until Brunhilde Sarah Jennifer Lane, another sparkly one in fact. Shared presents. The Answer? Maybe.

“Gorman was one of the ghouls.”

“Oh. *That* explains a lot.”

“Sure does.” He shut up for a while after that, figured he’d revealed enough for now. He could still see the fire, the carcass, the smiles and grins all around, only a few with a full set of teeth, thanks to the rotten dentists around here, mostly old and displaced Tilists. Including Gorman. Knew about the evils of Sprite all along, as it turned out. Grant Hill, PHEH. What was up on that hill anyway? Another mountain?

—–

“When did she first become visible to you. This… *woman*?”

—-

“She said she came from a library.”

“Ahh. More *origin* stories,” said John to this.

(to be continued)

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Thomas

The Big Boss had many disguises for her many clients. “Next!” she called to the one currently struggling to get over the front door. Fear of snakes, this Brunhilda had. So she prepared in kind. Copperhead the supervillain she becomes, nemesis of Batman and Superman alike, throw in a couple of Aquaman tales ta boot. Traveler of space and time.

“Am Iiiii nothinggg?” she hissed to start, setting the paranoid tone. She was still using the power of the mountain which she stood at the top of. Always. Her realm of control. For Al — Alvin — it was fear of psychosis. Let’s see, she mentally checks. Marvin is next, a bed wetter as a child continuing into jr. high, high school and college and even, every now and then, the present. Zappa’s “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” should do the trick. Sung by Zappa himself, along with daughter Moon Unit who calls the whole affair grody to the max, and wishes herself to be gagged by a spoon because of it. Have to pay her extra because of the child labor laws at the time, Thomas calculates between Brunhilda’s sobbings and moanings. She holds two big fake rocks in her hands and hisses even louder between them, making sure her face is in darkness yet the long, forked tongue is still exposed. She gathered that from a memory as well. Brunhilda sat down on similar stones with a copperhead wedged between them as a Piedmont teen, setting in motion the whole phobia thing. She faints at the sight. She’s done.

—–

“Next!” Softer, to her side: “Get ready, guys.”

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