He was getting sucked down into the 3 sim region. Typical; can’t help himself.
Something about ghosts and busting them. Busts! He recalls now. He’s about to get busted for the drug ring he supposedly runs. But it’s really just wrestling on the side, until the money starts rolling in with the art and all. Sepisexton awaits atop the Monolith of Paper-Soap with more pills for thrills. Let’s go there now.
She stares at the crying lady again, another lone, dark figure in the distance. She begins.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0507, Hana Lei^^, Paper, Paper Soap
“I’m as high as you (*wheeze*) now. Let’s trade.” He hands him the chips, he passes him the bong. The cycle begins again.
Having finished chopping the wood for tonight, Greg Ogden plays on his roundabout, also going in circles but in a different way. He’s getting in the mood to paint.
In a darker perspective, rogue clown Sepisexton sits down by the small beach of the same rental unit and ponders a cry, thinking back to when she was just Sepi and Sexton all separated out. She wonders if she should split, depressing party over except for the really serious heads like Even and Steven smushed together over there on the bench behind that painted Martin rock. She decides it should be between sections 6 and 7 of this here photo-novel, 30 in a series of, dare I say it, 31? Because there will be a 7 born from 6 the way things are progressing, fer sure. Just like the last one (but unlike 28, 27, 26 before it).
Let’s see, what else here? There’s Ted, another head, on the swings that won’t swing. He doesn’t care at this point, tripping the light fantastic.
And then of course the Monolith itself towering above it all, which Greg will paint a bit later for the umpteenth time. Call it his new Treasure Hill. He plans to make bookoos of money from the art soon. Very soon, he contemplates. As soon as Agents 23 and 47 phone him back with some figures. But in truth they were just investigating his drug ring, being police and not business agents. They’d have enough evidence for a bust soon. Let’s call them Crack and Whack.
Oh, I forgot about Marilyn back at one of the teepees beside Keith B.’s cabin on the other side of the Monolith from Greg’s rental unit, just across the long and dusty road. ‘Nother one, pheh: currently plucking feathers from a hen for a new batch of arrows while Sylvester the Stallion looks on…
… make that chipping an arrowhead with a chisel and ballhammer. Um…
She turns her back on peeing Keith B. while carving an arrow shaft with a chore knife, the final tableau, wondering why he doesn’t do his business in the woods like all the other animals. The place still stinks but she doesn’t mind — she’s not the neighbor who complained (Suzzy Q, the teepee dweller across the way who up and moved day before yesterday’s tomorrow). Probably infected with the virus as well, wouldn’t you think, perhaps catching it from him. Because they were an item, maybe still are. She reminds him so much of his sister, which is probably not a good thing. She feels safe around him — her Safe Zone here — because she knows he would kill to protect her. He blacks out and another stuffed animal is set up in the woods just over there next to a cave, or perhaps just over here beside a camping tent. Like Mother.
Done (both of them). “Head’s up!” she calls. An arrow whizzes by, just missing his now forward facing abdomen and landing at his feet.
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0505, Paper, Paper Soap
He read well into the evening with Cubby still by his side, still waiting for his mother to return. Although he didn’t speak any longer — the magic had worn off for the time being — it’s as if the cub’s thoughts were transferred to the pages. Magic was not good here at night, thus the return of the virus symptoms for poor, confused Keith B. over at his cabin just beyond the woods, across the road. He had taken the paper pills but they didn’t seem to do him no good. He sniffed the air. No odor from the outhouse, although he wasn’t able to clean it due to lack of suds. Tamatoa the tamed wolf hound had spilled the product trying to put it into his mouth to obey his master’s command to retrieve it for him from the washing machine just over there. Oh to have an actual human servant around for such chores (!). But he wasn’t suppose to think such thoughts. Not after Alvin [delete name], and the beanstalk they found that went all the way to heaven, some say the Moon, some say Uranus. But it ended up being a compromise: Mars. Halfway between the fuzzy warmth of the full white Moon and the bitter cold of Uranus, only perceptible to the sharpest of eyes if they know exactly where to look in a blackened sky. So one could say the Moon and Uranus were opposites, like Keith B. here. He doesn’t even remember how the preservation started. END
START
Mother.
I’m right over here, son. Just out of sight. I haven’t eaten in several days, but I’m certainly stuffed to the gills. I’d laugh if I wasn’t crying. I’ll be with you, though. Cubby. Dennis. Warren — we never decided on a name, just kept calling you Cubby. My bad. Maybe that new guy you’re with, Biffy or something, can give you a proper name. But stay away from Keith. Keith did bad (as well).
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0504, Paper, Paper Soap
He decided to test this reality. He pulled out some wadded up and hardened little pieces of paper from his pocket and dropped it into Keith B.’s hand, saying they were for the virus. “Thanks!” the older man from his childhood said, saving them for later that night when the headaches started. Oh the power of suggestion, Biff marveled, and returned to his book. He was at the end of Paper. He turned the page…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0503, Paper, Paper Soap, Pennsylvania
Biff Carter looked up from the red book he was always reading, wondering where they were. Keith B. was to his right, talking to Cubby the bear cub about his lost mother. “She’ll show up soon,” he tried to reassure, but Cubby had seen her wander off into the Hunting Zone, confused in the twilight’s last gleaming. Many of her kind don’t come out of there, she said earlier to the young bear, her third in a litter of two, although she didn’t know that fact at the time. A magical bear he was; able to talk and converse with the humans — like Keith B. here. “In the meantime, you just stay put here with… sorry, what was your name stranger?” he asked over to Biff, sucking on a piece of lettuce between his teeth left over from supper at Rusty’s. He couldn’t handle the beef stew what with the state of that kitchen in back — he’d seen the health inspector’s rating writing on the wall. Better stick with salad, he decided. No meat.
You know my name, Biff wanted to say back, but instead just said it for him. He looked over. Did it ring a bell? Dirty diner? Always redding the read book? He could tell by Keith’s expression that it didn’t. He felt abandoned by the older guy from his childhood ever since the death of his grandmama, who was practically like his mother, raising him up after the death of his dad Dirk, who had already lost his wife, his mother, to another kind of virus long ago, not long after he was born actually. Dirk thought that the birth may have done her in, or at least weakened her to the effects of the virus, but this wasn’t really true. Or was it? Anyway, Dirk kind of blamed the boy for her death. Her name was… right on the tip of my tongue….
Elizabeth, he decided, thinking back to the book. He raised it to his eyes again and continued. Paper now. Rock earlier. Scissors coming up soon. His mother had some and she contemplated doing his father in once more. Because of the boy.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0502, Paper, Paper Soap
He lamented the Smuggler’s Bay portal being cut off on the other side of the Soap sim from Paper and then realized for the first time that the tunnel looks like a slice of bread. He’d *thought* that before, hmm. Anyway, Phyllis could not be reached. *Pills* could not be reached. Shit happens, but he doesn’t know where now. He must return to his lonely cabin to do his needed chores…
… like cleaning the outhouse today; had to be done; neighbor’s complaining about the smell which wasn’t bothering him as much but must have been that bout with the virus affecting his nose. He can’t tell when Rusty’s fixing breakfast over at the Tombstone Diner any more — could always smell that early in the morning before.
“Tamatoa,” he joked to his tamed wolf hound. “Go fetch me the cleaning suds over on the washing machine over there.” Tamatoa, of course, didn’t respond the way he requested. Or did he?
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0501, Paper, Paper Soap
“Sisters?” she contemplated the question posed by Shelley or Jennifer Lane beside her. “I suppose we have to be in a way.”
“Like Oz? You know, ‘Wicked’?”
“The play?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know the plot. Anyhow, I’m sorry I manipulated your husband into putting all those magazines around your house. We had to have a boy; that was the whole point. I’m sure you see the point now.”
“Julius,” she exclaims, staring up into the grey sky. “First born. I didn’t have a say.” *No*, she wouldn’t get over it just like that, just because she knows the reason. She was manipulated! By this… *witch* (!).
“What about Julia?” Shelley wanted to ask why *that* was allowed, at least later. Then she remembers earlier talk about astrology and the position of the Sun, Moon and Earth relative to each other. Each in its own season. The Moon and Earth had already been equated or something, the black clad, blue haired one said beside her — made the same. All they had to do now was cut the Sun down to size. Sun becomes son. Julius, cooled down by the milk and only the milk. They had to feed it through the navel day and night. It was laborsome. She may never get over being tired.
“‘Julia’ was perfect or almost so. The son, obviously: not so much, at least on the surface. But just underneath the exterior…”
“Self editing,” Shelley/Jennifer said as her lines demanded it at the time. “So what now? Is Bart(holomew) just going to wash up on the beach here, waiting for rebirth?”
“You don’t understand,” she said, looking forward beyond the cooler of Budweisers. “Julius and Julia are the same.”
“You better get back to Liz. *I* better get back to Axis-Windmill.”
She stared up. “How’s he holding up?”
“You know, it’s tough. Staring into the mirror and realizing who you are.”
“Right.” The sky lighted up and she looked away.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0606, Paper, Paper Soap
I asked her when it would end, all these transformations.
“It will never end,” she states plainly back, finality in her voice (obviously).
—–
We were in the shack seen in back of that photo up above, Liz and me I suppose. The Loch Ness Monster could still be seen lurking in the distance. We were in a make-believe land, but not Hana Lei. A plainly stated one: Paper-Soap. I wondered what spirit Liz represented, since we are really all alive and dead at once, at least according to [delete name]. I’m starting to remember dreams a little better. It doesn’t seem that hard, and will have a chance to work on it more in 1 1/8 years. But I shouldn’t wait I can hear [delete name] say. We turn into Jennifer Lane…
“Bad juju over at the beach,” Fook Mi chef Kim Lee explained. “Bodies not washing up properly; turning black too soon; Suds and Bubbles can’t get to them in time.” Jennifer wondered how the word “black” here would affect Liz. She decides not to further this albeit interesting conversation in front of her.
The monster seems to stare back at her. Cherry branches sprout from her frizzy hair. She understands collage a lot better than us. We decide we’ll keep her around (for awhile). Caretaker for the moment Jennifer brings sushi from the bar.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0029, 0605, Paper, Paper Soap
“Kolya,” she gasped, sensing him from far away.
—–
There she is, the Aldebaronian A.O. thought. My perfection, my *opposite*. But what’s this? An *intruder*. Not on *my* watch.
He decides then and there to defeat this adversary to his true love’s hand, hidden in shadow behind that right hand stone in the above photo. Later he uncovers his real name: Jon Deere. “Mow him down,” he reiterates at the time. “Like corn.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0103, Maebaleia/Satori, Nautilus, Paper, Paper Soap, Soap, Upper Austra^
Sunklands 