… for a twisted man.
And/or woman.
Category Archives: Lapara^
planted
Soon after Nancy put on the Owls Head ring, Danny had a set-back at the hospital despite the successful stomach pumping and blood transfusion. He died on September 10th at 8:57pm. He was buried across the SLRR tracks in a family plot tucked within a long strip of Linden eucalyptuses, ironically the very same kind of plants he ran away from all his life. Danny’s parents Richard and Linda Defiance, a well respected Lapara welder and psychic respectively, had been interred many years before on either side. He was with loved ones now.
But what would become of Nancy, who maybe didn’t love Danny but liked him some? At least they had had a physical relationship… of sorts. Nancy wanted more. She desired a psychic relationship as well but Danny shied away from it because of his mother’s involvement with the subject. He never understood the tarot card and tea leaf readings which repeatedly warned that running away from plants all his life would eventually catch up with him.
Nancy didn’t even have anyone to share her grieving with. No relatives remained; Danny was an only child and so were his mother and father. Bettie and Buster were still missing. Rocky had to run his market — he hadn’t hired that extra hand yet. Perhaps Nancy should go work for Rocky. Or there was always Wheeler for it.
Wiping her eyes, Nancy then lay on the roof of the train stop shelter just across the tracks, looking up at the blue sky and pondering future things while fiddling with that cursed ring which most certainly was not finished with her.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0505, Heterocera, Lapara^
marked
“What happened to your mushroom house in this spot, Rocky?”
“I don’t know. I have my market now. What happened to your Bettie?”
“She’s still around. I think.” Nancy pauses, looks across the street. “Who lives in that house over there, Rocky? The one with the rams in front.”
“Dunno. I’ve seen people.”
“People?” Nancy parrots.
“People.”
Nancy looks down at her white hand. “People people? Or, you know, animal people. Like you.”
“People people,” Rocky responds.
“Normal sized?”
“Pretty normal, probably. A man and a woman one time. Then another time: two men. Then another time: two women, a man, and another woman. And another man.” He puts his paw to mouth. “Let’s see, I think that’s it.”
“Let’s go take a look.”
“I don’t like to pry in other people’s lives,” replies the raccoon.
“Oh sure you do,” Nancy says, and gets up to cross the road. Rocky follows.
—–
“Hopscotch, Rocky. Go ahead and try it out.”
“Alright.”
“Baaaad,” the closest ram opined. “Rocky stepped off the hopscotch animation and moved toward the creature.
“Baaaad?” he asked back. The ram stared at him. The matching sheep kept grazing on what little grass was left in the yard.
“Bettie told me once that Ram dies with Lamb,” the anime girl says. “I found it curiously puzzling. Have you heard that (expression)?”
“Nope. We might as well go inside while we’re here.” A chill filled the air. Something was different in Olde Lapara Town today. And it wasn’t just the new fall foliage. Something else was fallen here. Rocky opened the front door. They entered.
—–
“I don’t really feel comfortable being here now, Nancy. This may be the home of the town owner, Levi Clownski.”
“Check the files on this computer, Rocky.”
“I’m not doing that Nancy.”
She walked toward the kitchen in the back. “Suit yourself. I wonder if they have any meat here? Or if they’re vegetarians like me?”
“You like fish, though. I think that makes you a, what do they call it, a Pisces something.”
“Pesetarian,” Nancy offers.
“That could be it.”
“It is it.”
—–
“Come here, Rocky. Bread. I made two more slices for us. Nom nom nom — pretty good. Hands free eating.”
“I see. But we better leave. I need to get down to the market and open back up. Night shift — until I hire someone else. I’m trying it out.”
“Oh. Can I come?”
“Oh why not.”
Then Nancy spotted it. She indicated the formica table between them. “What is that over there?”
“Um, that’s cookies, my dear. But you’ve given up sweets.”
“No. The green and gold thing behind it.”
Rockky saw the object too. “Looks like a ring from my angle.”
Nancy then made the unfortunate mistake of putting it on her hand. She shows Rocky. “Pretty?” she asked.
“Pretty weird.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0504, Heterocera, Lapara^
Tabula rasa
“Alderaan?” exclaims Paul. “Where the heck is Alderaan, Wheeler?”
No answer.
—–
“Sure are a lot of clowns on this tv.”
“Clowns are everywhere,” she says. “Everywhere,” she reinforces.
—–
—–
“We’re going to have to look for Mary again sometime, Wheeler. You can’t just have this doll substitute sitting beside you forever here.”
Wheeler begins to sob. Paul joins her a bit.
—–
Peter SoSo returns from The Above. “What are you guys looking at?”
“What else?” answers Paul, sniffing.
“Well,” Peter says, staring at the doll and exhaling, “I think I know what must… be done. We can all chip in.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0503, Heterocera, Lapara^
Carnivorous
Nancy finally forced Danny to eat a salad and they had to carry him out of the eatery on a stretcher.
“I’m so sorry, dearest. It won’t happen again.”
“I’m… dying.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0502, Heterocera, Lapara^
olde name
“Thank you again for coming in on your day off, Hoss, to help me.”
“Well,” he answers. “Sounds like the fate of the whole town depends on us finding some facts!”
“So right,” Teebestia replies. “According to this ‘Big Book of Moths and Butterflies’, the name Astarte comes from a particular moth, just like Lapara and almost all sims of the continent we’ve checked. Not a local demon. How ’bout you? Found anything?”
“Still looking through this old book on Malone, the one that told us its most famous resident was Wheeler.”
“Which is impossible. She just showed up there! Still, we should interview her.”
“Hold on, Teeb… here’s a section on Owls Head.” He turns the page, reads a bit further, then utters: “Oh me Godz.”
“What is it?”
“Owls Head use to be called Ringville!“
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0501, Heterocera, Lapara^, New York
Big Reveal
“Omikron City is where I’m from,” a tipsy Teebestia continued for a half listening Danny. “Dancer.”
“Is a full house two sixes?” he asked, staring down.
“David *Bowie* was there. David frick’n Bowie!”
Danny sighs disinterestedly, looks to his right. “Where’d Jackson go? The big blue dude with the gun?”
“Yeah, we were hunting for something for sure,” she slurs, head wobbling. “A *demon*. A demon at the center of it all. Aspertame? Darnit! I can’t remember of the demon we were *all* hunting down there. Over there. Up there.” She points in different directions around the bar. “Hmmm. Why can I not think of… that name??”
Danny turned to her. “Astarte,” he said levelly.
Teebestia’s mouth drops. She even drools a little bit. “What did you say?”
Facing forward, he becomes disjointed again. “Nancy is sooo late.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0418, Heterocera, Lapara^
flight
No sign of Mary still in Grassland. They stood on its edge now.
“Doesn’t look much like an owl’s head,” Teebestia commented while staring forward. “More like a simple cube.”
“There’s angles to it,” Paul explains. “Things may have been added and subtracted down through the years. It’s a sacred crossover.” He begins to hover in the air. “Like I said, you can fly on this side, but once you cross the line — enter Lapara — everything is suddenly grounded. (Thus) the reason for the balloon (props). I use to sit-in, as they say, but now I’m comfortable with flying. Here, hover up to me and I’ll show you.”
“Soon as I touch ground,” the transmogrified Paul declared.
Teebestia wondered what would happen to her. She panicked.
“I… I’ve decided I have to leave. Another client. Still on the clock, you know. Sorry to rush off. We’ll catch up later. Tata!” She zoomed back into the heart of Grassland and reversed rabbit holed up to Audreys.
“Gin and tonic,” she told Bean. “Make it a double.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0417, Heterocera, Lapara^
prelude
“Shouldn’t you be telling the police about a missing person case? I’m just a lawyer.”
“I didn’t know who to turn to,” Paul confessed. “Are you sure you don’t want a beer, Teebestia?”
“Teeb, please,” she admonished lightly. “No, not while on the clock, thank you.”
“I don’t know,” Paul continued. “You seemed like an honest person. (With a) good heart.”
“I appreciate that.”
Paul didn’t look over at her while talking. “I’m afraid Mary… went home. Broken heart. It was just after talking about Little One that it happened. Poof… gone.”
“Little One being the last lamb of Grassland.” Teebestia scratched the back of her head. “Tell me more about your Mary if you will.”
“We met in school. Bennington. She was a dancer, I was a stand up comedian. She was into animal rights even then, her and Peter together. That’s how Lamb was created. Broadway.”
“Lamb is the same as Broadway,” Teebestia attempted to clarify.
“Yes,” affirmed Paul.
Teebestia put both hands gently on the counter, just saying what she had to say at this point. “How did *you* get here, then? And how and why do you change *races*?” She thought back to yesterday, when she witnessed the conversion up close and personal. Right as they crossed the line from Astarte into Lapara.
Paul couldn’t reveal what he really wanted to here, the Big One. So he invited her to Owls Head as a substitute. That way they could also look for Mary, if by chance she was still around the underground somewhere. They shot down the newly relocated Rabbit Hole.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0416, Heterocera, Lapara^
above below
Tronesisia nurses a jigger of cognac and waits patiently in Audrey’s while the others amble about below and beyond. She speaks to the bartender after glancing over at Curled reading ‘Winesap’. “You know, Bean, they should never have named that boy Paper.”
Meanwhile…
Paul finally made it out of that cave.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0005, 0415, Heterocera, Lapara^
Sunklands 