Randy reads captioned synopses of potential shows to watch while eating his dinner (pizza). “Mystery Theatre, ‘House on the Hill’. Estranged sheriff’s niece summons nervous deputy back from the grave to help solve his own murder, no no no (*click*); Self Help Channel: ‘Taming the Banana Within’, nope (*click*); ‘Attack of the 50 Foot Man’: that might be good. Hmm, stars the same guy as the first. Oh well, here goes!” (captions off)
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He stayed close to the green phone on the bar the rest of the evening. Just in case. Smoking hot Trudy Trickster was studying the back of his head, wondering how the holes got in. Toby Tangerine was mixing up another drink, perhaps a martini, but if so, doing it wrongly. Trudy was definitely not having any of that. Although a brilliant neurosurgeon, currently out on bail from Prison Hospital, Tobias, as his friends call him, was a botch of a bartender and had trouble making cornbread milk for his oldest and least complaining customer, nonagenarian Margret Thatch, due to turn 100 in June. “I’ll get a proper bartender to make your birthday drink that day,” he promised, thinking back to mentor Ted Bruiser and his prediction that he’d save as many lives as a doctor as he took away with the drink. “Balance, my pupil,” he spoke into his eyes, deep as pools, taking it all in. “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. *You* are The Lord.” He took his alternately skillful and skill-less hands from his side and held them up to his receptive face. “With these.”
Tobias Tangerine knew he wasn’t the Lord, but gosh darnit, if Margret didn’t enjoy that drink. At the same time, patient Gail Gordon died in Prison Hospital, operated on by the proper bartender who couldn’t make it.
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“Place the call, I.P. As — soon as you’re done with your soda.”
“Oh I’ll be done as soon as I dial these numbers don’t you worry.”
“Don’t — forget the 4.”
“Nah. Never.” All the numbers were dialed. Soda was running out.
“Hallo?” came the voice on the other end, a familiar one. Soda: done. I.P. could talk freely.
“Send them over (*click*).”
—–
Kolya hangs up the phone; moves from bar to stage. “Guys, I hate to interrupt rehearsals but you’re needed down at the bay.”
—–
Part of the band remained. The ones that weren’t real.
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—–
He recognized her immediately upon entering his pizza parlor, despite the black and white checkerboard makeup. Wheeler. She, of course, knew him as well. Knew he was *dead*: killed by a monster way back in VHC City in the olden days, before the coming of Mud and the parallel need for Soap. He took off his crown. He dared to sit down, confront her.
—–
“H-how?” she uttered about his resurrection. I mean, she’d seen enough of them in the meanwhile but still — a bit of shock. He was stone cold dead laying on the floor when she found him. Heart attack. Couldn’t reach the pills in time. Surprise crocogator appearance through a thought-of solid wall did him in. They’d walked through the Fate Gate together, even, she escorting him to the afterlife. This is what he told her; she wasn’t physically there at the time; left when she found the body; alerted the authorities; cried her eyes out way into the night, The Musician, her other boyfriend at the time, seething on the other side of the bed, green with jealousy. She loved *him* more than *me*, he thought, although she was still with him, didn’t run wee wee wee all the way back to Collagesity like a broken piggie, even though she had supreme power there and not in VHC City. And now — The Musician was long back in the rear mirror, yielding to Axis and Opp both, take your pick. And now her new husband, she as Wendy Wilson Wheeler that is. Not really Wheeler any longer. All the old avatars had packed it up and moved to the White Palace, as Hucka Doobie liked to put it. But really: storage. Old yields to new. Continually.
“Jeffrey — Phillips?” Old Man Allen Martin, the resurrected one, didn’t like the sound of it. Then again, he wouldn’t like the sound of any of Wheeler’s lovers past himself. “How many down the road from me (and The Musician)?”
“4 — something like that. It’s complicated.”
“I bet it is.” He blew out air. “Well, yeah, I *died*. But then Soap cleaned me up, wiped away all the grime of a dirty grave. Plenty of Suds and Bubbles did the trick.”
“They *are* uplifting,” opined Wheeler, having caught the vaunted dancing troupe’s act in Collagesity 02 not long ago, Peter Ladd on his soapbox between them. The contrast of talent almost balanced out to mediocre but not quite. Skippy Bittman.
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“‘sunburn by noon, clammy at night, cracks in the earth, pavers delight'” She stopped quoting the poem she’d spontaneously made just 15 minutes ago while studying the damaged cement before her out of boredom; paid attention to a potentially paying customer approaching on same. We’ll see how this goes, she thinks.
“Yelloo!” Stu Umbriel said in greeting.
—–
Earlier/later:
“Yelloo!”
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“New bar in town, Chief.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not an Indian any more. I’m an *American*, dammit.”
“Sure you are Chief. Anyway, Gus and I…”
“Gus? Since when did you start calling yourself Gus, Ben?”
“Since, I don’t know, yesterday?” Distant but distinct.
“*Forever*,” countered Stan, formerly Stu. “You’ve always been Gus.” He turns to Chief. “He’s *always* been Gus.”
—–
Slowly but surely, they traced all the confusion back to that birthday party where they summoned The Devil.
“Oh yeah,” spoke Ben at the time. “Guess that could have done it.”
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“Ahem. Gentlemen… and women. As you can see. We have a problem. With the Portal.”
“Why is it called *Moster*… sir?” Officer Jetski in back. He’d just checked the description, which most of the others sitting around the conference table had already done and came up with the answers themselves.
Chef-inspector Petty was trying not to turn around. The effect could be blinding. “Typo I suspect. Someone probably drunk when creating it. Or possibly a misleading name… can’t be traced back that way.”
Silence for a second except for the steady humm of the… well I think it called itself Dinah earlier on, or that’s what several of them thought they heard upon its appearance. Like an announcement: “Dinah: front and center.”
“I can’t get through.” Agent 47 up front.
“Me neither.” Agent 23 across from him. “It’s jammed…”
“… the system.”
Whatever followed Petty through the Portal to this sheriff’s office was taking over the whole of Soap.
(to be continued)
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Sunklands 