Category Archives: Angel’s Rest

only a rehearsal

She’d *been* here before, this Sugar O’Cotton, a sultry singer during the 1919 Kentucky Prohibition period. But the setlist has changed, the *colors* had changed. Strawberry wine/ blueberry tart. Red light, green light. Traffic light: stop, go. Did we need this addition?

Monday, this venue will be packed to the brim with screaming fans. But she will not be she. Someone different.

Ruby Alien wakes up, or switches sides (realities), first to second. The inferior one comes into focus. Again the good-bad doctor with the prodding, the poking and rubbing. “Come back to me,” he says. “Don’t die, don’t die!”

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links

“Have you heard, the news, Douglas? ‘Daily Toilet’ says Picturetown is back on the map and humming.”

“Distractions,” offers Douglas Blue Feather, the local sheriff ’round these parts. “Us Angels should stick to what’s good for us. *Dreaming*.”

“But reality beckons!” Douglas hated when Yellow Purse Kimball shouted during a game. And this is the first hole (!). What will the 8th, the 11th, the 16th bring? A noisy snack of Big 60 cookies in assorted vanilla, chocolate, strawberry packed away deep in his golf bag? Gum chewing; finger snapping; whistling; singing, even: “Singin’ in the Rain”? Weatherman Fox Stet, a professor of biology over at Camden Yards, forecasts a good chance of storms this afternoon. Per usual in early May or June or whenever the f-ck it is now. Along with the wind of course, the constant evening billowing.

“Better finish by 2,” Douglas says, looking up in the skies. Clear sailing so far. He glances over at his golfing partner already swatting away. “Maybe, Yellow, we should save the putting for the actual green and not the tee.”

“Hey, I’m just practicing!” The shouting again. Oh looky, there goes the first piece of gum into his mouth. It was going to be a long round of golf. The only reason he’s doing this in the first place is get the scoop on Picturetown, because Yellow Purse Kimball has inside stuff. But he mustn’t be too obvious about the prying, the digging, the scooping. “Vanilla and chocolate,” he imagines saying to Don the ice cream vendor between front and back nines. “And top it off with, let’s see…”

“Strawberry?” guesses Don, still 9 holes away in dream-reality but already scooping away at the brown and and then white filled buckets below him in his imagination.

“Let’s go with lime.”

——

“This is absolutely the longest f-cking round of golf I’ve ever played, Douglas thinks after 2 pieces of gum, 5 whistles, and 15 hums by his count. And we’re only 1/3 the way through! Don and his delicious, home made ice cream, sorbet and sherbet is still 3 holes away. Can he hold out for his just reward? But he’s already got some scoops, so to speak. Information, that is. White Palace, Toddles the precious precocious child stuck exactly halfway between 23 22 and 22 23. Male and female. This information definitely didn’t come from the “Daily Toilet”. Inside stuff indeed. He looks over: at least Yellow Purse is on the green while putting now. Can you take any longer to make a shot? Oh, there’s goes the humming again, the stalling. He’s recalculating his line. Might as well dream about ice cream again, pheh.

(to be continued?)

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The Fawcett Bros

“I’m *freezing* in here, Mr. F. Why, um, why don’t we close the windows?”

“I like… the billowing drapes,” he said coldly, without emotion. “Allows… me to thiiink.”

“Sure, sure,” I spoke back, shivering as usual. I guess they didn’t name him Mr. Frost for nutt’n.

“Torchboy,” he spoke to me, using that nickname I hated so much. “Turn down the space heater.” He pointed to the floor at the softly humming device. “You’re ruining the effect for me.”

I guess it would help if I put on a shirt, but I liked to show off my scorch’n tattoos. Over there is a tiger, and then there is another tiger, and then another tiger over there–

“I’m going to interrupt you here, baker b.,” said W., coming out from behind a curtain. We need to return to Picturetown, Canada. It’s the only way to properly end.”

—–

They sat for hours like this, one still too hot and the other too cold, despite the hot body art. “Torchboy” had caught on. The wind speaks!

“Has the wind… ever called itself ‘W’ to you?” he asked at exactly 1/2 past 6. Maybe they should eat something, but neither could pry themselves away from the mesmerizing voice.

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sticky point

“Why are we here, Summerhill?”

“You know why. Because it’s the only place I absolutely *can* stand in this here flat piece of–”

“Summerhill!” interrupts high priest clown Amos Sandman, her colorful opposite in ecclesiastical matters. If only the *owners* could hear. He peers around nervously, as if the bushes and trees and flowers had eyes. Perhaps they do. “Do you know how much *rent* is around here?”

“Arm and a leg, I know. Angel’s Rest indeed, pheh. More like Devil’s—”

“Now, now!” intervenes Sandman again, eager for a break in this line of talking. Perhaps they should resume walking. If the vegetation has eyes and also ears, let them hear leisurely chatting of a lazy summer afternoon, see random smelling of roses and thistles, and the occasional prick of a thorn or needle despite carefulness, for there are so many around. He stares at the wienies stuck on a finely waxed, hand crafted stick between them, hot dogs if you speak uncouth around these here parts. Maybe that could be a new topic.

Summerhill Nova, white as Elmer’s glue (that was the point), shuffles her feet on her own luxurious forest rug before her. “Can’t *stand* it.” She stifles an urge to stand to emphasize her point. She too now stares at the wienies in their midst, recently roasted to a delicate crisp. Not too languid and limp of course, but also not too staunch and rigid. On a scale of 10 to 13, about an 11, then, or maybe a 12. From her perspective the two objects perfectly cover the head of the clown priest except for the eyes that see and ears that hear, albeit the latter hidden in thick, curly red clown hair. She ponders the meaning of the juxtaposition. Does the vegetation lushly lying around them also know that Sandman is full of unknown ingredients of dubious origins? That must be it. I see you for what you are (etc.).

Sandman catches her stare and makes his own interpretation of the framed overlap, opposite in direction for him. “We are like two peas in a pod, you and me.” He points between them and then they are perfectly done.

Summerhill has to accept that.

(to be continued?)

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neutrality

She looked toward the northern mountains from her home not away from home, her *real* home, in the dreamscape, or what we would call the dreamscape, as close a name as we have for it perhaps. This angel from above, this demon from below. *Both*. She was here to make a difference. “*There*,” she exclaimed to herself, pointing. A craft in the V shaped gap. Her original mother and father, or perhaps a prominent relative, like Uncle Stu or Aunt Zafflemorph. Always the red-green-red message. She was not alone.

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angel manners

She had no book still, red or any other color, so the only thing she had to read was her palm. Heart line equals head line. Good fortune ahead, and a lifetime of happiness. Bah, hand! The wrong hand obviously, just like she had a wrong foot, a wrong heel. The right heel was the one. The right hand was the one. She’d have to reverse the picture to make it fit.

Yet she was still physically in her bed in the small doctor’s office not 400 meters from the center of Collagesity, this newly moved in Dr. Paul Mouse, formerly of the Hope Clinic over in Black Diamond Lake. She had the power to be in two places at once, since the dreaming realm was also real to her. Powers this new incarnation of our old friend Ruby had!

And now the show was about to begin. Big star arriving soon. It was her! She was a singer in a band of unknown design before and of no design now. She was on her own, yet she was not alone. Fans! More than ever before. She felt her right heel beginning to itch again. Time to switch over to the other reality; someone was prodding her slender Grey body, the color of insect green just like the stage before her. And she was about to go on! Oh well, there was always the return times.

Dr. Paul Mouse was asking her to wake up while softly shaking the top of her long arm with his hand. He knew she was on the other side, and he had to be gentle. Thus the operation; thus the establishment of this clinic in the backwoods of the south, far enough off the highway not to even count. The bonafide doctors here had to pass efficacy tests in order to test themselves, sometimes the aliens but not a lot, since the flow had died down due to the epidemic, which may be a bonafide pandemic since it had spread to the outer isles.

She wakes up to the other reality, the second one to her because it is not so good. The first will remain there; the stage is set. She has her setlist, with the top being Plastic… Plastic… she can’t recall. She stares deep into the doctor’s eyes, wishing she had the second part of the name. Something about a bug.

(to be continued)

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