I was there. Up on Grandpa Cliffs. He didn’t like it as much tonight. I was a Bad Kitten.
She laughs with 4 vowels and skips the 5th.
Her feet got twisted up and she was somewhere else. Astronaut AB; First Woman. Hidi(ng) no more.
I knew what needed to be done.
“I’m tired of being a Menace, Grandpa.”
“Grumpy, please,” insisted the octogenarian soaking beside him.
“Right. You’re sure they didn’t see me.”
“No one can see you. Now.”
“But you?…”
“No one takes heed of me any more. I’m *ever-present* you could say. And I never do no talking. Being naked all the time has its advantages. No one takes you really seriously.”
Mick looked over, noted the substantial package Grumpy was obviously protecting from harm. Star in his days, he thought. Still thinks he can make a comeback in that industry; still able to keep it up for 20 or so minutes at a time. With aid from the red and blue pills. “I’ve chosen a disguise,” he says over to his one and only true, non-goofy friend in the world, now that the wife has passed away. But he doesn’t like to think about the farming accident with the tiger and the grenade down in Bellisaria. “The doctor has arranged it. He will be known later on as… the Doctor of Mouse, and then, maybe, perhaps, simply become Dr. Mouse. He will do it. He has assured me it will work.”
Grumpy Grandpa thinks back to the days when they were trying to talk him into an operation to change a body part. Too big, they exclaimed to him, catching him in the shower with it one day. Perhaps his mother, perhaps a brother — but word got around. Drew has a big package, everyone found out. The girls at the school started taking more notice of him, a lot more notice. The boys respectfully bowed their heads now when he was around, instead of taunting him with jeers about his weight and such. He had found his niche, even though he didn’t know it at the time. No more residing between a rock and a hard place.
Mick brought him out of the past. “They’ll start with the head; get rid of all the black. Just like Bendy: you know Bendy, the attendant up at the gate house.”
“No.” But Drew “Grumpy” Cleveland, aka Grandpa Cliffs, knew all about Bendy and what went right and also what went wrong with *that* operation. Disguises all around in this here Castle Town of Southern Omega.
On a break, Fern rolled the prophecy cubes and then wondered who Tessa was.
She better get back to her shift at the cafe…
—–
“I wish I had better news about the twins,” Fern Stalin later exclaimed to Lichen Roosevelt at the Yalta Bar and Grill down more in the innards of Castle Town. Actually, where we saw Barry De Boy last, taking up pen and paper for the first time and setting down his palette and paintbrush. Actually: both; he’s both an artist and a writer. Just like me. We return to the present conversation…
“All in this spell book?” Lichen exclaims back, surprised at the results of the equation. Q, she thinks. Barry knew all along.
One of the twins walks in. I wish I could say it was the right one but I’m not sure.
Actually I am.
“But I *saw* you there,” Tessa later insisted at the terminal cafe with the great view of Grandpa Cliffs. Devil Dave waves at Grandpa sitting at the far table and Grandpa waves back, realizing he was exposing too much while locking his knees.
Devil Dave returns his attention to the just arrived girl. “No, Tessa. That was a doppleganger. I have experienced much the same thing here. Our Second Lyfe is breaking down… *has* broken down. The only thing holding us together right now is Collagesity. So we must *choose*, young lady. The waffle house could have manifested in Collagesity but it didn’t because you were led back to Fryburg and the missing junk ship which you had already taken to Castle Town: here. Someone is following in the green one left behind.”
“*That* old piece of crap?” she exclaimed while shaking her head. “They’ll never get it off the ground and in the air. I *tried*.”
“Nevertheless, that is another doppleganger, a ship in this case.”
Fern arrived with their food. Yet another one.
It’s just as I suspected. Dopplegangers everywhere, *twins* if you will.
We must follow Tessa to this Castle Town in the South or else: be lost forever. There’s the green ship remaining, a basic duplicate of the one Tessa took to reach her destination. Now is the time…
—–
“Final f-ckingly. Set her down easy!”
Devil Dave was waiting. “They have arrived, sir.”
“Thank you, er, Bendy. Bendy is it?”
“Yessir.” Devil Dave thought he was blacker — because of the poster.
The path through the gap between the two mountains was so inviting on the ground. Dream Tessa was sooo tempted.
But the air held a different slant. Red bridge. Warning, do not cross! DANGER.
—–
Tessa woke up in the treehouse, determined to fix one of those two old, docked junk ships down at Fryburg. She must resist till then!
But she ended up spending most of the day watching a man working in a small office on the other side of the burg, across the forbidden bridge. What could he be up to? He never paid her any attention. Red as a rose he was. Death itself, some would say.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0024, 0506, Mountain Lake^, Omega^^, Southern, The Cross^
She should have never gone into that cave. She was out in the open, the fresh, clean air with the star studded sky spreading out above her, and then she wasn’t. A path, but not leading to clean, fresh water. Dank, dingy, green, algae congested. Atrophied. Some say her life was atrophied when she got hitched to her twin brother Toothpick/Philburt back at the end of photo-novel 22. Only the Free Tilists, with close ties to the Deep South (of Black Ice), would marry them. “Amoral,” cried to Pentagonists, worshipers of all things 5 sided and 5 pointed and originating on Mars. “Blasphemous, a slap in the face of Our Lord God of Heaven,” bemoaned the Trilogists, better known as our Christians. Only the 4-square Tilists would touch it, but only in Catalpa outside the direct influence of the city council who had ultimate judgment in these matters and could expel the couple if the ceremony was held on their grounds. Instead: All Orange, between the wine red apples of Apple’s Orchard and the slick yellow banana symbolically lying at the center of Black Ice, which all revolves around like a Beanstalk or Pope to a helmet wearing monkey (crook) with one upturned and one downturned eyebrow. It was only in All Orange where it could happen. The 5th, but in a good way this time (we hope).
Barry De Boy settled back in the rocking chair with the maple leaf pillow and felt it was good. I have acquired the power of the three now, the scissors to begin, then the paper, then, lastly, rock (in the middle). Rock solid I am. Jeffrie Phillips I am. He he he. He he he he he. Ho ho. Hu. Huh.
“Hi!”
It was Waldrip. Or was it Waldrup. Waldrop? …drep? Anyway, I could feel his presence even if I couldn’t see him. Like a mouse.
He stopped rocking, stood up. “Who goes there?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0024, 0415, Canada, Canada/Picturetown, Mountain Lake^, Omega^^, Southern
“She comes here every day, and every day a different game. I haven’t seen a repeat yet. She must be testing the atmosphere, maybe making sure it isn’t poison. 4 games left in the cache. I predict an actual, breathing human — *not* a mascot — will be arriving in the week. Wanna bet on it?”
“No, I’ll take your word for it. You’ve been here a lot longer than me. In this Castle Town. Isn’t that what it’s usually called?”
—–
We were taking a break from strategizing. I turned away for a moment, tired of looking them in the eye. I’d figured something out. Mascots — that’s what they were. Only mascots. Not real atall. Only symbols of a writer… and an artist. The two aspects of *me*. Maybe it *is* destiny that I take Baker Bloch’s place as leader of the blog and allow him to ascend to the White Palace to rejoin Hucka Doobie. I’ll have to talk to Charlene about it. But I’m kind of finished with these two.
He takes another sip of wine. They hadn’t even asked for anything to drink, not water, not booze. Nothing. That was the first big tip-off.
—–
“It’s time to play rock, paper, scissors, Barry, to see which one of us goes to Castle Town.”
“Oh all right,” answers Barry.
“Ready? One, two…”
—–
“Oh, and also a pad or something that I can write on, thanks.”
