She finds herself in a place doing realistic things, like blow drying her hair. But this is the morning she finds out she is actually a man. She stares into the mirror, looking at them after the removal of the false, the fake. How deflating!
The mayor’s nose keeps growing. Guy visits the doctor again, still working for the resistance. A new strategy is being hatched. Stealing the golden goose egg *has* produced results. He’s straightened out, elongated: the I of TILE revealed.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0508, Kowloon^^, Maebaleia/Satori, MISTY MO^^, Paper Soap, Soap, Yaya Land
Jenny Powers could barely hold on to her just purchased paper due to the passing wind of the train. “Thanks Hatti!”
She only had time to read the headlines since she had to pull another double shift down at her veterinarian’s hospital in Meatside. Damn, Tim. Why’d you have to go and *die* on me like that, leave me with all this *work*? But then, of course, she felt guilty for thinking this. He had *provided* for her, as she him. They covered for each other, him on weeks that begin with the odd numbered dates and she with the rest. But now she had to cover *all* the numbers. It wasn’t fair. She needed help. She needed — dare she ponder it? — another husband? Drat, she *hates* when she thinks like that. Headlines, headlines. “Plastic Surgeon Surges”: looks like Mayor Longnose is gonna lose this election to this new guy, this doctor fellow. What has it been: 14 times? Too long. The town needs new blood at the head, a facelift even. Plastic surgeon sounds about right; cut him down to size, the big blowhard.
The wind eddies from the loco motion continue down the tracks, sucking in all the news fit to print along with some autumn leaves. Fall is coming. The Fall.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0507, Paper Soap, Soap
Astronaut AB drops by V-Gate (also known as Valgate) to say hello to a fellow “Rimmie” she remotely spotted sitting on an oppositely colored couch. We’ll catch up with her continuing story soon. For now we know she still desires to be the first person on Mars, man or wo-man. Good for her! But she needs to know about the dangers posed by the Boos there, black and white. She needs to understand *opposites* better, shadows. But she’s on her way; I’m not too worried about the sharp young gal.
That picture on the screen behind her reminds me we should get back to Supergal Ruby and her interactions with Greg Ogden with that extra G in his last name. Probably in Paper-Soap I would think. We must return.
And I forgot Astronaut AB was there too before checking, in disguise as grieving Jenny Powers whose husband just died, the vet of town every other week or so, the weeks that she’s not. Now it’s a full time job thanks to her loss.
—–
He came in on a fast train bound from some place called Boner, North Carolina. Or so he thought.
Because: Boos again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0506, Nautilus, Paper Soap, Rim Isles, Soap
Always look for the spaces between things. There lies art.
I am not a painter in this life. I am a collagist. Moving on…
“What does the future hold for me Esmerelda?”
“A cave? A *landscape*?”
Very faint from across the table again: “Enter the cave.”
He paid Ms. Wells handsomely and was on his way again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0501, collages 2d, Crisp Sea, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Paper Soap, Soap, Wild West, Yaya Land
“MO like on a ship?”
“Plane. But a plane is a ship in the sky.”
—–
We land in Misty MO again. Someone steps out of the plane. I believe it might be Jennifer M. Friend but I’m a little discombobulated tonight admittedly. I’m on a straight diagonal toward Endgame but can I reach it? I had a sister.
I had a sister.
—–
He looks away from where he’s been and thinks about the present.
—–
He wasn’t happy with his latest painting — “Parasols” — and he’d run out of green paint as well. Irritation tonight. A big black fly zoomed around the room, sometimes landing on his painting as if it were a window outta here. And perhaps it was.
“Jerry?” he called over. “Wanna go on a walk?” He was trying to be as cheerful as possible, given his mood.
Jerry, she thinks. Is that who he believes he’s sleeping with? The *ex*?
“Hardly.”
He recognized the voice. “Flo?”
“Jerry… went home.” Flo wondered if he still had a relationship with “Mr. Green,” given that he had none. She couldn’t tell if the painting was dry or not. She went into the other room of the Greek village apartment, hovered over him.
“H-how?”
“Tell me if that’s Wet Glaize. Or Dry Glaize.” She stood her ground, allow him to absorb the shock of her presence here on this romantic isle in disguise. Instead: trap.
“Wet Glaize *is* Dry Glaize,” he uttered automatically, bringing in more memories.
—–
She couldn’t tell. They next went outside to drink and catch up and look at the view. She turned away from the blue, not wanting to be reminded of crosses. Because she remembers. Greg Ogden was… well, she didn’t want to think of it right now. The bastard pirate!
“Do you even remember Ruby the green alien,” she complained after finishing one glass of wine and beginning another. I believe it was her 5th. “Where did you *leave* her?”
Green, he thinks. Where did I leave green?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0415, MISTY MO^^, Paper Soap, Soap, Yaya Land
He turned one last time to the door before leaving.
—–
“No more shells,” he rather commanded to Alysha in a role switcheroo, fed up with being treated like a toddler. “*I* am real (this time).”
“Okay.” But of course the holes remained. Glory could only be glimpsed, but maybe it was worth it. Afterwards his neck hurt like a mo fo, but he doesn’t think it is about what they did.
Alysha ponders afterwards: Kolya *can* get better. If he changes into Windmill, hmm. Bit older, but what can you do? And then the diagonal can be traced all the way to Maebaleia — where we are now. Self image.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0217, Bellisaria, Continent 03, Continent 04, Maebaleia/Satori, Nautilus, Paper Soap, Rim Isles, Soap
Ripped Windmill Man, as they called him, was assigned the role of night guard for Ruby the green grey Alien, currently holed up down at the fire station for further protection from those darn psychic kids. Half policeman half army man, he was more than equipped to fulfill the duty — overqualified, Ben Bolt said, eager to get the job as well to support his own troupe of kids, 2 psychic and 1 mundane from an early marriage (the former Mary Bolt, now married to Alfred Reynolds the shoe cobbler). His ripped body wouldn’t fit through some of the doors there, he argued. His half policeman half army man training made him all bastard, he tried. Jim Wells, father of Alice Wells who Ben was also trying to woo along with the job, would have none of it. “Windmill’s a fine man. He has 3 ripped bodies that he can strip like a snake or lizard or something if needed to fit through any door. It’s *just* a night guard job, Ben,” he said to a potential son-in-law he didn’t want. “Maybe you should aim a little higher, hmm? How about — manager of the day care; help keep an eye on those psychic toddlers, make sure they don’t get into trouble *too* early.” Because Jim Wells knew it would come to trouble later on as they aged a bit, spontaneous fires being only one potential hazard. “The firemen, the policemen, heck the *army* men can’t do anything about them once they reach a certain age, some say 5, others: 7. Jim Wells realized he was making a case for ripped Windmill Man to take the day care managerial job instead of Ben Bolt and stopped. His future son-in-law — if it came to that — would *not* be a night guard at the fire station, no way Jose.
Ripped Windmill Man stripped his 2 outer ripped bodies so he could fit comfortably through the door and look in on Ruby. “Everything all right in here?” he asked, checking the corners of the fire station’s storage room again for bugs. He was sensing something but didn’t know what.
“Tell him everything is okay,” commanded unseen Billie Jean Kidd from the side. Turns out Ruby had already been compromised and the firemen, the policemen, the army men couldn’t do a darn thing about it.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0201, Paper Soap, Soap
Cory watched the flames licking out the top of the building, thinking it didn’t have to be this hard. Why I could have blown the place up with my mind easily enough, he thought from his position at the corner of the sandbox. All I need is a pretty good night’s sleep (for energy). Indeed, most of the kids attending Paper-Soap school, merged since ’71, were psychic to a high degree. They didn’t need primitive *physics* to destroy anything. Claude Jr. was behind the times, but he was a robot after all, mere mechanoid. The other kids tried not to make fun of his clunky, nay *dense* ways of thinking, but it was difficult, being kids too after all and not having the moral compass of a fully mature adult. One of their “sloooow” projects in class, as they called it, was the atrophying of the swamp down in the town’s southwest corner. In fact, Cory’s study group had brought up the swamp from lake to sea back down to swamp a good number of times now, and recorded the reactions of the residents living around it. The kids were experimenting on the adults. The kids were in charge. As a sea it flooded the sewer tunnels. Dinah’s bartender Stumpy wondered why he could never get rid of the black mold in the bathroom down there. He ended up just having to derezz the thing.
“Can you point me to the restrooms,” a somewhat tipsy customer asked him in tomorrow’s today. “Just go in the sewer outside like everyone else,” he commanded, wondering if he should bring the issue up to the town council, a council also controlled by kids of course. Their powers were ever-present.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0112, Paper Soap, Soap
Sugar McDermitt should have seen it coming. In fact, he did. “Those *kids* are up to something over there,” he mutters to himself, standing outside the soon-to-be destroyed Lost Boys Bar and Grilling. “They keep glancing over here and snickering. Damn kids,” he cussed, sorry he had 11 of his own. He doesn’t even give them names any longer, just numbers, starting with Ten. “Ten come here and polish my boots; Ten come here and wash the dishes for your old man.” That kind of thing. He and the current missues (a number herself by now — five) told the prying neighbors who watched him toil and sweat away the day, unable to play with their own kids because of constant work, that he was named for an Aunt Tinny. But really it was just pure laziness and convenience. “Albert!” loudly insisted wife #4 before she ran away to join a circus for clowns. But then the 5th that soon followed on her heels didn’t care — preferred numbers for better tracking and convinced Sugar of the same. “Why don’t we just smack a bar code on their rears and keep up with them that way,” she suggested one day in early May after 2 breakfast daiquiris and 2 brunch tequilas. Prisoners, then, they really were. Number Eight (formerly Jack) would soon have his revenge. He had a robot friend whose father Claude Sit-on was an expert in building demolitions.
Meanwhile at the playground:
“By the time I get to the bottom of this slide,” spoke the friend Claude Jr., golden hued like the playground equipment he perched at the top of, set to go, “something will happen. Ready? One, two, and sliiiiiiiiddde”. BOOOMM!!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0111, Paper Soap, Soap
Hank Graphite rode into town yesterday’s tomorrow for this important meeting and brought his ghost gorilla for protection — just in case. “Take me drunk I’m home,” he recites upon turning around and facing his competitors again, the “Lost Boys”. “Hadn’t heard that one.”
Ted 02 sat at the bar taking it all in. He’d been here before. Omega continent comes to mind, bartender himself.
“Whatilitbe, bud?”
He’d said that before as well. Many times.
“Gimme a Bud… bud.” Familiar too.
The establishment exploded.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0110, Paper Soap, Soap
Sunklands 