December 13, 2021 · 10:10 am

Mother.

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)

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December 13, 2021 · 9:44 am

preservation

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…

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December 13, 2021 · 9:10 am

Paper-Soap National Park

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)

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December 13, 2021 · 7:34 am

003005-One

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)

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December 12, 2021 · 12:31 pm

00300416

“You must love me exactly as I love you!”

And so we’ve returned to Black Lake in a very unexpected way through Misty and her partially submerged beau, soon to be husband (??); circled back around. We have similar choices that we did before here, then. Return to Paper Soap from Paperweight using the resonant keyword Paper? A painter paints, a complainer complains. I’m no painter and I’m no complainer. I can go with the flow, even if it doesn’t involve oiling it up and applying to canvas. Joey Avatar knows how comfortable canvas feels now (!). I don’t need to break a couple of nails to understand, but I do need to hammer a couple. In our fence. I’m looking out our Real Life window now. So many people outside, though. If only they would go away for at least that one special day of the year. Hmm.

And I still have a foothold in Paper-Soap, with transfigured Moes’ pink welcome mat seen here back in the sewer tunnels behind sitting old Keith B. I always seem to have to brighten up the place considerably with “Phototools – Lo Gun Light” sky to snap a proper enough picture. But the dark, conjoined sims seems very important still — moving down the road. Photo-novel 31 should start just after Christmas or around the New Year. Omicron’s moving in from the north west east south too. Soon we’ll be surrounded on all sides, blocked in. I need to keep my options open. I’ve had a good run at my job. I’m saying goodbye to the school as a whole, wrapping things up. I know where my mentors are, the painterly ones, the ones that draw as well, were able to bridge the gap between the two disciplines, like Paul Clay. I was relaying to a student I was working with the other day about not liking clay, as in pottery. Foundation classes were cool, but when I moved on to the specialty courses, like pottery, like *weaving* — not a weaver — I lost interest. I dropped out. I returned 6 years later under the good graces of the college, completed my art degree. But, as stated, I’m not a painter, even thought that was my declared emphasis. Never was. I’m not a Warren. I’m not a Dennis.

But what do I have instead? A canvas true, if a map can be considered as such. It’s the world as a whole but it’s very focused in on our US of A. And within that US of A: Iowa. Ringgold County, even — just one county. And at the center of that county: a hypercube; there can be no doubt. You look inside the translucent layers, like paper, and see the bottom writing on the walls. Everywhere.

We continue…

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December 12, 2021 · 2:29 am

hats off

“I must ask Horace Wise how we got here when we go back. We must be dreaming — perhaps this fits into his post-R.B. Hayes theories of alternate US realities somewhere. Wake up, I say to this witchery of yours. Wake up!”

“Oh shut your gob,” Misty spat out to her thought-to-be future husband Septimius Felton, not worried at all that they were back at the painter’s place. A painter paints, a collagist collages. Paperweight is both. But here… *here*.

“Time to jump back in the lake,” she commanded.

“Again?” Wake up, he said in his head this time. Wake up! Down they go.

But he must admit it was pretty good fun for irreality.

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December 11, 2021 · 4:59 pm

A Fleabug’s Life

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December 10, 2021 · 9:57 am

marina (new killer star)

He figured this was his boat since he had the keys. And the Maebaleia battle flag. Was he finally heading home, away from *here*? He needed to get off this island at least. He knew that. But where? So many ports of call on this aptly named continent of Nautilus. He might as well be a submarine and attack it from the rear. But he was a woman’s man, he recalls. He had a sister.

She let him go. She’d read in the script she was suppose to do this but he didn’t know that, not quite yet. He’d received the pink April copy that morning in the post and she’d already gotten the July blue, with white between them. He wasn’t even in-between, as if stuck on one side of a flag. At least he wasn’t sitting in back and it flapping and slapping him, like poor Zach Black, still without his Jazz Attack, also thanks to Fern. Fern was *real* smart if you didn’t get that part, that role. Because you probably couldn’t. I’d give it at least a 145 to comprehend and play accurately. Sarah I think was the actor’s name, with Jody playing Marilyn, a somewhat lesser challenge. But that was all a long time ago now. I was a different person, a mere child in comparison.

The old and white man had a task, he knew this. To get the hell out of Dodge. West might be best since East is least. Little did he know that Fern Stalin would be waiting for him there as well.

(to be continued)

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December 10, 2021 · 8:48 am

a state of being timeless

“Avalon,” he said without turning, remaining old and gray instead of black and white. The Room would always be his center, another Box come to think of it. Trapped.

“Yeah,” ditzy blonde Marilyn says back to him, still cleaning that glass, almost wearing it out like with sandpaper now. She should think of another task to perform. She’s stuck as if in a rut. But at least her mouth, her *mind* is still working forward. As well as backwards. “Some say Our Second Lyfe started here — in Dex — instead of Babylon.”

“Whore of Babylon,” he responded. “There *is* no Whore of Babylon.” He should know since he was there. “It’s all… make-believe.” He said it with disgust, she thought. He’s bitter about something else. A hidden truth. He could have done the deed as well as young Travis, she gleaned. If circumstances were different. She turned.

He assumed the position of a man, she a woman.

“You know, I had a sister once,” he started his confession on that late April day on the 4th of July.

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December 10, 2021 · 8:18 am

Old and White

The wheels in his mind kept spinning. I’m in Dex, he thought rapidly. But in olden days this island, this *town*, was named Avalon according to that map over there on the wall, not too far from (the Isle of) Babylon but also: not too close. A gap between, but Smaller Water instead of Bigger Water. He had to prepare. The past meets the future and it’s not pretty. Pink (or red) does not bode well for a man. He’d been tested. Red it was. The lipstick remained. He could not remove it now, however hard he tried.

“Try again,” W. urged from the side, still just out of sight, of reach. He could only talk to her as if via phone.

She remained black and white as she twirled and whirled, like a rotisserie chicken in the Wild West of Nautilus, he believed, beyond the reach of phone. Hurry up, he thought, rid of the lipstick for now but not for long. This was a battle of Madam and I’m Adam. He turns.

At least Marilyn is here. Sing us that national anthem again, dearest.

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