NOVEL 21
news
Bake’s Bakery has moved in to one of the 2 lower rooms of my more downtown Teepot apartment. The demon hot beverage dispenser remains, ha ha (he he he (ho ho ho ho)).
Just around the corner (hu hu!).
Also: the important bits of the attached apartment remain. Like this now 5 day old pizza in one of the 2 upstairs rooms (hi!).
“We better get down to business, Jeffrie. Let’s talk about Audrey.”
“Okay, um, *doctor*.”
news 02
“I don’t know how long I was a mouse but it was a long time. I lived in the richest house in town but we were still dirt poor. Like all the rest. Audrey lived 5 doors down. There were no houses inbetween. Just doors: upright, as if still serving a function. And perhaps they were.”
Jeffrie Phillips was becoming impatient with the doctor’s rambling story. Why was he the doctor now? What happened to the old one? He asked these aloud.
“I’m trying to tell you, Baker Bloch.”
Baker Bloch? Jeffrie Phillips thinks here. But then he realized the (new) doctor was right. That was he. And this was his bakery. Bake’s Bakery, with the demon hot beverage dispenser to complete. It didn’t work without the vending machine. He decides to ask the doctor about it next.
“So tasty,” Doctor Mouse compliments. “I had a, let’s see (he checks his inventory), a Jedi tea. I suppose that’s something from Star Wars.”
“Star *What*?” Jeffrie Phillips had never heard of Star Wars. “Do you mean Star Trek?”
“I do not,” the doctor measured out. He keeps thinking back to the drink, and how it vanished into thin air just before he could take the last swallow. Oh well: delicious still. No need to ask for a prorated discount from Baker Boy here. The Boy.
He first met him when he was this Mouse. He tells Baker Baby Buddy Boy this here. His old nickname. It rang a bell.
news 03
He was remembering more. “Pansy. That was your name! Pansy Mouse.”
“Correct.” He points to the planchette on the crate in front of him with the board, another demon device. “We got it from this.”
“And that’s where…”
“Correct.”
He changed. This was the past. Pansy = Pan-Z. Jeffrie Phillips instinctively grasps his glowing red tie, a long held habit. He knew *they* were still in there. So many — well, five.
The now squeaky voice continued. “Audrey was in it all along. She *caused* it.”
(to be continued?)
NOVEL 22
hilltoppers 01
Sally and Jack celebrate the establishment of their Phantom Hill Horse Farm only 3 week prior to Halloween by dancing amongst the breedable horses, the colorful blue mare in background also being named Sally, as it turns out. Accident?
No one else is allowed on that property or I would check further. But at least Sally will return from Phantom Hill back into the land of the living a bit later in our tales. A person or entity named Nugent might be involved, but not Ted. I don’t think.
I must tell the story of of how Sally and Jack met at a fancy dress ball sometime. That’s actually how they became the ghoulish figures you see strutting their stuff in the picture above. Costumes they are. Outfits for core avatars to wear and then discard, normally after the end of October.
Dr. Nugent Mouse looks down from his castle next door, considering how he created these 2 misfits and what went so right about something that should have gone so wrong. And I think his first name is Ted. Ted Mouse. Teddy.
NOVEL 23
forth
The next morning, Tickie finally caught up with Jeffrie Phillips, who was scared out of his wits at the events of the night before, damaged beyond repair even.
In the weakness and as a cure, Tickie *merged* with Jeffrie to become something else, unafraid of fear. A new superhero but hopefully not supervillian. Blue Thorn, perhaps the Blue Rose Thorn but with the Rose dropped because of fear of copyright infringement (see: Santman).
Blue Thorn looks around with new eyes for both, sensing that Knob Noster was not here in the Inbetweenland. Never mind Mr. Platinum/Operator/Undertaker/Zero Hero, because he was a different animal altogether. Blue Thorn could change back into Jeffrie Phillips (and Tickie, I suppose) after he had nabbed the similarly blue beast and brought him (or her) back home to mama (Charlene Brown the punk, who we know now is a type of bigfoot *herself*) for detailed study. She could finish her cryptozoology dissertation that way. She could become a doctor herself. Maybe then Jeffrie could find a way to finish off the other doctor he knew well, the one who could turn into a mouse (Pansy). It was all coming together if it wasn’t all falling apart. And actually it was both. The Blue Thorn stepped forward away from the now closed portal into the past.
NOVEL 25
00250104
“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.
reverse mode still
I got out of the car the black dog was driving. He exited too, went over to the skeletons playing cards with themselves to sniff for more clues. I was told to touch something. I tried and tried and finally found the right object. Everything swung into place.
So that’s where the magic will happen, I thought while staring over at the chair. Or un-magic; removal. They’ll start with the head, they told me. Remove the black until I am white as a flower, menace no more. But did I believe them? I could call the black dog back over from the skeletons and high tail it out of here if I wished. I still could back out; I had that option.
—–
“Jenny,” he exclaimed, looking over at the crashed ship in Wallytown. Better phone up Wheeler and tell her the bad news.
—–
“But Speck and Crazy *saw* it,” the tinny voice came just later over the phone. “It landed at Castle Town.”
“Nope,” I countered. “The witnesses were wrong.” Just like with us.
—–
The wrong one walks into the Castle Town bar to meet her mates.
00250601
I recognized him immediately, even though I’m not sure I wanted to. Not the man on the bike also staring over. That would be the long sought after Dr. Mouse, shortened over time from Doctor *of* Mouse, as in Mick Mouse, as in Pansy Mouse which Mick changed into after the operation to remove all the black and fatten up the face and body. No, I’m talking about the shadowy man in the window with the red eye, presumably with a matching one hidden behind the grille of the window pane. I’ve seen him before: the house on the hill in Pickleland. This is Schuman; Schuman is interested in what I am doing. Endlessly inventive, he has found a new guise.
I also think about the “red eye” of the 1st Bogota collage, there the color applying to a lightning bolt design highlighting an eyeless socket of a skull, a facial tattoo made famous by pop musician David Bowie.
And to further this, I’m reminded in one of his last videos called “Lazarus”, Bowie had bandages very similar to Schuman.
So is this Schuman or is this Bowie? Perhaps a game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe would be appropriate here.
Corton 02
Jeffrey Phillips stands on the edge of the larger of the two Corton islands, staring across the bridging log at the lesser one. Meeting place, he ruminates. But who with? And where is Wheeler?; she was just behind me.
—–
Alone at the center of the second he morphs into a Mouse again. The Gods look down from above.
“He soo wants to change. For Charlene the Punk. For others perhaps. He wants to be a good ruler (of Collagesity).”
“He understands his roots in Twin Peaks’ Phillip Jeffries and that’s a good jumping off spot or point,” spoke the other, maybe a female this time. Let’s call her Ayesha.
“If he puts on the red Judy shoes that would help.”
“The slippers,” agrees Ayesha. Let’s say the male’s name in this scenario is Walter. Walter Westinghouse. From Homerland.
“All he has to do is click the heels three times and he’s home,” says Walter, who should know. “He doesn’t have to go through all this pain and sorrow. He doesn’t have to pass through Gormania, West Virginia.”
“All that has been taken car of,” spoke Ayesha, thinking about the bike and then the inability of Jeffrey Phillips to fit into the rest of his band of pink punks. He had his “revenge”: Syd to SID. And then, collaterally, TILE to Tyle. Mercury X. Rising at the center of the labyrinth remains in love with his car. Phillip Jeffries as snow white Pansy looks on.
“He’ll get there,” reinforces Walter. But not tonight, both knew, watching him revert to old form. Jeffrey Phillips walks away from the center of the second, intent on finding Wheeler back in the small woods of the first. Maybe I just inadvertently skipped over a post, creating a plot hole (‘nother one).
—–
“Yes, see there, Wheeler?” he said, pointing with his cane. “A hole in the terrain, or the real plot (of ground) showing through the facade.”
“Who are you old man?” spoke a concerned Wheeler just out of camera range again. “And what have you done with Jeffrey Phillips??”
NOVEL 26
more airport 02
She stood as if in the middle of time, taking it all in. This Hitgal, I believe. Selling corndogs for the pick’n. Or was it cornogs? And whatever happened to that vow to have less questions in this here blog? Hmmm?
Someone approached her, slightly hobbled. “I lost my cane. Can you help me find my cane?” Dr. Mouse.
almost over the edge
“Jasper, take a look at this photo one of the drones took over the Amazon and settle a bet with us. Does that look like a beaver to you, because Marion says it’s a propeller.”
Jasper studies the photo. “Where’s his head?”
“Well, it’s underwater obviously. And you have a tail and and two little arms sticking out plain as day.”
“And how about this picture of a swimming pool while we’re at it. Do you think that’s suppose to be Vermont, or New Hampshire?”
—–
She floated on the two lips joined together in the center of the pool. She kept glancing anxiously over at Dr. Mouse and his greatest creation, Pansy, conferring about the deal at a table on the cement’s edge. She wondered how it was going. Copyright infringement? Trademark protection? That’s how it all started, this conference in the Amazon. A River runs through it, Source to Mouth. Or Lake. George had traded places with a girl, Hitgirl to be precise, not selling corndogs any longer at a Southwest Airport. Or cornogs I suppose I should say. But hot dogs remain in the news. 6 dead now in in Slaashsides over in the nw part of Nautilus continent, with the last squirted with both mustard and ketchup, indicating his kind. That brought it to the attention of Dr. Mouse, who then asked Pansy to enter the picture for more visiblity. He was planning on a national campaign. The Pooping Pigeon was going to mean big time money, big time power. It was a built in headliner.
“A chain of restaurants,” shot back the doctor. They were exchanging ideas rapid fire.
“Chocolate. No: vanilla,” came the squeaky reply. “Like the color of the…..”
“Poop. Just say it, Pansy. Don’t be afraid of the word. It’s going to make us a fortune.”
(to be continued?)
Mouse Island, etc.
“Beaver,” decided the littlest mouse perched between Pansy’s ears, noting the flattish tail.
Smoking and toking Lemmy on his back had nothing to say about the matter, facing away. Pansy knew this was an important decision for the future of his franchise — *their* franchise, because he had to keep the creator in the picture for all those photo ops later on. But Dr. Mouse had, how do I put it delicately? Let’s just go with Brain Damage still to seal the deal. Endless triangle, endless loop, the yelloo sun far far away, hidden by night. Jasper knows. Jasper knows this is a beaver. His head is just below the water, right Jasper? Sorry: “Right Jasper?”
“Yeah boy.” Jasper is the littlest mouse between the ears, with the primary speaker being Pansy himself, who combed all through those drone shots the day before and the day before that, looking for any anomalies. They could get no closer.
—–
It was a place of wisdom, of learning, this Amazon or Amazon-like environment. 12 sims total, just like the river tiles of Carcassonne (game).
“The Source is missing,” corrected W, again just over there somewhere, just around the corner or out of sight. I still can’t see her secret, schweet smile. “12th,” she clarifies. “Find the 12th. Or at least have fun doing it. See you later!”
—–
“Yarrow,” spoke wise Dr. Mouse, or so he thinks. “Spirit of Yarrow over the head. Delete it and you’re lost. This island…”
“It’s not an island,” one the “pupils” dare speak up, I think it was the right one.
“You over there!” shouted the obviously mad man now. “Against the wall! It’s the kane for you again, pheh pheh pheh.” Dr. Mouse was panting he was so mad. Both mad *and* mad: both kinds. The worst possible combination. Whack whack whack! came the stick to the pants. The right pupil was obviously wrong. And later he became left behind in 5th as the other pupil or pupils graduated to 6th. It was Paul’s switch all over again.
—–
“So you’re the famous or infamous Dr. Paul Mouse,” spoke Duncan from the opposite stump later on, as if between 2 pupils, 2 ears. “Knew it.”
“Glad you could make it tonight, W.” But her schweet smile still remained hidden since Duncan didn’t have any teeth behind his lips.
Duncan’s hidden
Go to the temple of the tor now, she commanded again. Would Alysha listen this time? Before, she had teleported directly into the ship, enthralled by its shadow. But maybe she could escape the shadow this time and come into the light. “Jasper,” she spoke. “The turtle’s name is Jasper, not Meanie,” she said later on when the shades were drawn again because of the intense sunlight. Too close to a Star, dancing to the beat of a different drum. “Maybe a Moon this time,” said Dr. Paul Mouse, still with switch in hand, if not a kane. Close enough. And a reddish rear was nearby too, plopped painfully on a central log and not facing away from a wall no longer. He will get his revenge.
Peter Oesso strolled down the beach, looking for shells. Shellman some called him. Then he found a miniature Venus of Willendorf and we were on our way…
—–
“That’s not a beaver down there, Dr. Mouse.” STOP
“Oh yes it is.”
lost and found
“So (the phenomenon) all started in this here diner. Pansy?” START Dr. Mouse looked around but no actual or at least anthropomorphic mouse could be found. Had he turned into Jasper the littlest formerly between his ears and scurried away to safety and obscurity? Possibility.
—–
“Theories, W.”
“Well… I think this diner is obviously the first Pooping Pigeon, start of a chain. Obvious, right?”
“Possibility,” I said again, not ready to pin down that particular reality to this here blog, 25 in a series of… I mean 26 in a series of…
“Probability at *least*,” she countered. “Probable reality. We must go down that path, that avenue.”
“Hot Dog, the 6th victim who became the most famous, on the wall in back, true,” I admitted, starting to see the light at the end of a long, long tunnel.
“Ketchup on one side,” also observing W spoke. “Mustard on the other. Two squirters who are also squirts. It was a great marketing tool.”
“Funny how they hold his buns instead of him… as Hot Dog I mean. Emphasis on the buns.”
“Right. See how this is working out? No need to stop.” STOP
—–
“I can’t name the Amazon Amazonia, W. I have a tag of that name.”
“Trivialities. No need to bother the reader with such. START You need to find the 12th (Source tile), like I pointed out before.”
—–
Wendy went away from the register and approached the counter again. “Who let you in here?”
“I let myself in,” replied Duncan, seeing the game beginning again. Long, long tunnel.
“Yeah, don’t lean into me like that. Pansy!” she called back to the register. “A little help over here!”
Ah ha!
finger pointing
“They called it McIntyre’s Switch because it’s in McIntyre (sim) and it’s where people and people-like animals came to get turned on. Obviously Lemmy is a pusher.”
“That’s pretty good,” W admitted, just around the corner. “What about Sweet Lips (then)?”
“I’m getting to that. And: thanks!”
—–
“They called him a racist rat after he had established his 1st diner in McIntyre’s Switch. But for a white supremacist, he was pretty hip. He enjoyed black music, and that turned him around. He said it was just a club for socializing, this whole… *persona*.”
“The whole white rat thing,” said W, still into it. “So tell me about this, um, Social Circle.”
“Thanks again. He was a reborn white supremacist because he had gotten rid of all the black thanks to the good doctor. This was, of course, long before he himself became a Mouse, as in Dr. Mouse. Back then he was mere Paul Black, a vet studying to be a dr. and desiring to move from animal to man status and get out of the shadow of his more successful brother.”
“Brothers,” chipped in W.
“Okay. (pause) So that kind of clears up the doctor’s origins.”
“But they rejoined forces later on, this doctor and his mouse, his greatest creation as it turned out, much bigger than the Bendy thing.”
“Another removal of black, yeah. And — here — you can *see* Sweet Lips (sim) just out the window of the establishment. This proves it is directly linked to the Oracle.”
window to Sweet Lips
“And Paul’s Switch. That would be sometime in the 60’s. Well, obviously, at or around the time of Penny Lane.”
“And Arnold Layne.”
“I think we have all we need tonight.” W started putting things back in her pocketbook, viewable from just around the corner.
“I forgot to mention that Lemmy is also a mascot.”
“Yeah, I gathered that.” She had almost finished gathering up her stuff. Lipstick. Toothpick. Mascara. And a little special toot for later. McIntyre’s Switch indeed.
“No, but you see, Lemmy is also a tree… tree mascot. Greentree.”
“Gotta go. See ya!” And she tooted on the way out, being good at hiding it. Good at hiding in general.
(to be continued)
newest incarnation
She listened as they talked about her outside.
“Found her up in the hills,” Dr. Paul Mouse spoke in his now kindly voice, changed from before. Another operation, this one performed by a colleague, not that he was opposed to working on himself. He’d done it before, Las Vegas style. “Can’t say where, exactly. Might be a crashed alien spaceship involved, might not,” he cryptically added. Texarkana Ritter was mesmerized. She saw a prize winning surgeon before her and knew he would do the right thing. Turn the alien in! It was the unwritten law of these here parts. You turn the aliens in, you subjugate them to tests, and then, when you’re done, you turn them loose up in Upper Austra into the wilds where they and their kind belong. Let them run over some distant, kind-of-alien village of its own up there. The up, the north, the wilds. Lower Austra hated Upper Austra in general. Where did it all begin? Roads, most likely. Lower Austra had them, two of ’em in fact. Upper had none and that started the whole wild aspect, she supposed. Limited transportation, limited communication. And now *those* aliens had the real deal kind; our infestation becomes their infestation. She was saying some of this stuff aloud to Dr. Mouse as well, which young Ruby, still without clothes gosh darn it, overheard of course. Her sharp ears pricked up as she sat up. She better get use to being up, since she’s heading that way. After the tests. They might have brought her to the good doctor anyway of course, although he was new to this dealing of the civilized south, the down, the lower. All aliens go to the doctors for checking and inspecting and making sure they don’t have any tracking devices or internal, hidden babies or whatnot and then: let ’em go up north. They don’t usually make it back. The border patrol makes sure of that with their guns specially loaded with alien poppers, as they called them. That was a concoction they learned from the midlings, the ones between the human and alien avatars and had knowledge of both and could swing both ways. Well, the ones that swung toward the human side told them of the alien side secrets, the weakness, the vulnerabilities. Achilles heels. Right as advertised. The old myths and legends were based on truth, just *extraterrestrial* as it turned out.
Ruby reached down with her long arm and scratched her right heel anxiously. She could feel there were bad days ahead.
(to be continued?)
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)
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!”
00260611
“You have to let her go, doc. She h’ain’t human. Heck, she’s hardly animal at all. Green blood instead of red, two hearts instead of one. It *doesn’t* take two to, you know,” and here John Frank Baum Ritter, husband of formerly heard from Texarkana Ritter, thumps his chest bigly for Dr. Paul Mouse. “One’s perfectly fine for all the pumping and such.”
Dr. Mouse thinks back here to his estranged wife, out in the beige hills even above Collagesity a bit. Only a shack for her now, but the one eye sees fine. He was looking for her the other day when he spotted the smoking, crashed saucer with the red and green lights in a small hollow to the west, perhaps in Baddest. And then Ruby laying beside it in a tall heap. 8 foot? he was trying to guess the height even from a distance. He gets closer, the bug green growing more metallic with each step. A bug, he though. A bug will fall her. Even then he knew, because he was also an alien of sorts, also psychic to a significant degree. Thus the rather frequent sightings of his mouse pal Pansy, the famous rodent who was never famous and instead replaced by another. The Pooping Pigeon was suppose to be his revenge. Now he will get his own through Ruby. He *will* discover a cure.
(to be continued)
00260615
Some planes took off and never made it to their destination. But some planes never took off and still made it there just fine. It was a central theme of this here photo-novel, 25 in a… 26. And here we are, just beyond the (Collagesity centered) 5×5 appropriately enough, trying to look inside. This must be a Michigan ship.
Kolya had been meaning to report the crashed craft for the longest time, but he couldn’t remove his feet from this oh so comfortable, warm pool to go over the the green phone and make the call. He tries to calculate in his mind how long it had been there. It had stopped smoking some time back, so maybe 3 hours? Make that years — he truly couldn’t recall, and that hurt his chances for a call. He does know noone is inside still, at least after the doc took that basketball player type girl away still in her green uniform, as green as his phone should be. Perhaps she had just come back from a game; could be she was even a professional player what with that height. But why just the single person on board, then?
TWO TO KNOW weighed on his damaged brain, thanks to Marty, thanks to Roger Pine Ridge. What they did just north of here in Leemington will not be forgiven. 59.
—–
secret schweet
And so we end where we began: on No Tor hill in Leemington seen in the distance in that last photo, following young Alysha around again searching for that ship of hers.
The hill is like an ant to her, in that she is her ant. She crawls forward, scrambling to the top, eager to have a better perspective on which to build further, view farther. Let’s zoom in.
Just gotta get up over this rock, *ugh*, and smooth sailing.
Good. She’s at the peak. Now to ratchet out the draw distance to the max and see what we have. MAX
She’s happy she can peer beyond the Green Between from Lower Austra into Upper Austra, most likely where Ruby Alien will be released day after Wednesday’s yesterday. I believe it will be the 5th. Doctor Paul Mouse will cave into local pressure and bring her to the proper authorities, meaning the actual, qualified doctors who are able to deal with such things. Check her out, let her go. Maybe she’ll make her way into the great, empty city of Perch-Mistletoe, she thinks it is called, a doorway between dimensions where one kisses another and won’t let go. She knows this is the two sides of herself, 13 to 13, evened out now; Nautilus (continent) complete. But it won’t be in this photo-novel.
Perch-Mistletoe
The continent remains a conundrum, a mystery. 32×32 sims, 41 times the size of Collagesity’s localized 5×5 we just exited back there. And that 5×5 is hard enough to understand as it is (!).
Alysha and SEAN Green, Mr. Michigan, look to one of the far corners filled out in the past two novels, with more Nautilus fun to come. NW NE SE and, with this one, SW. Jeffrie Phillips in a Santa outfit floats on Little George Lake — or just Lake — waiting for 2 blue eyed pools to become one blue eyed pool so that he can proceed with the examination of the Arkansas book, which appears to be the same as the Oracle. He’s taken it back to Collagesity still in the middle of it all, or at least Lower Austra. He’s starting to study it intently, with help from sometimes wife, sometimes girlfriend, always lover Charlene the Punk Brown, currently rocking a hot pink babydoll for him. They’ll probably remain childless though; he has too many mistresses on the side, which Charlene allows now, or rather puts up with. *Barely*.
She takes off the babydoll, intent one more time to get Jeffrey to forget about all those others.
END OF “COLLAGESITY PHOTO-NOVEL 26”!
NOVEL 27
ears for hears
As soon as I found a correct location to teleport in and sat down at the first table I saw, I realized I had not only visited here but I *lived* here. I recall Burro Alley. I recall the policeman, perhaps named Brown or maybe just living in a brownstone apartment. He was *after* me. He was asking two hookers about my location in an alley across from the alley (*The* Alley), but the one who cooperated didn’t actually know anything. The other did, but she was from the country. *My* country.
I was part of the Black Lake Bunch, also known as the Black Lake Gang or Purple Bunch. There was one in it who didn’t like me, didn’t approve of me. She said: why don’t you appear as you really are in this Second Lyfe of ours. She also mentioned the plug. I said the plug covers an avatar defect. I said it monitors the surroundings, giving me indication of friend or foe. Right now it was hurting like a mother fo. Red. Indication of foe. I moved away from her, unfriended her, even though we were never friends. Blocked I think is the word, yes. But the other remained kind of a friend, like Thatch. She was helping protect me. Red turns to green. The Alley is just across the way. There we find PROBABILITIES, exactly what I was looking for. An ESCAPE.
“Helloo Wanda,” spoke the woman nearest me after she turned. She had a mocha cappuchino in her hand, made by Stenson the nice black lady that I also recall. The woman with the cappuchino was named… funny I couldn’t recall, although I’d seen her face a lot. Gertrude. I think. Jacksonia Andrews approached from the west, bringing me a pink drink that I realized I ordered all the time. It was a given. “Thank you Jacksonia,” I said as she handed it to me, cool as glacier. “Just what I needed for my aching feet.” “Haven’t you got a transplant yet?” she asked. “You’ve been talking about a transplant for forever, Wanda. Also: hadn’t seen you around in a while. We figured… we figured you were back at The Factory.”
“Feet,” I said back, trying to remember what she spoke of. I remembered her name at least. Now to the details. *This* was a factory as well, I remembered. But faces, not feet. Alice over there, sitting with new hands on old knees. I then knew, I then recalled. Not just face: feet, hands, any body part could be remodeled and redone and revitalized. I was here because of my feet. I stayed in a brownstone apartment, but not next to the officer who was looking for me. I was on a waiting list. Jenny said they could fix me up.
I poured the cool, glacial water on my feet. I had just added 5 more minutes to my stay, with a total at 7 minutes now. I had time for a couple more angles of investigation. I knew quite a bit more already. I decided to talk to Alice. She worked at the airport as some kind of receptionist. A lot of people around here worked at the various airports dotting the continent. Planes kept this landmass alive, vital. It was at the crossroads of everything.
Then I remembered *The* Crossroads, like this place had *The* Alley. 61 and 49, green and gray. Back there at the Airton airport on the mountain that is also a hill there was a gray grey laying next to me. My duplicate was being formed, but they couldn’t figure out how to move gray into green by gaining 12. They weren’t working in base 12 and remained in base 10. I had been saved so far by their more primitive mathematics. But still: time was running out.
—–
The doctor got out of his car. He had been there all along, observing and listening, taking notes, just like me.
“I heard something about numbers. Should we be working with different numbers? Would that solve the problem?”
I hate when people get in my head like that. (to be continued)
still life with lemons
“You see, once I get the location and then the proper people it all flows pretty freely. I usually can’t go back and edit, and if I do I usually revert it to the original language. Just clean up stuff is usually all that’s permitted, some tense correction and such — sometimes.”
“Fascinating stuff,” replied Dr. Mouse in his always slightly sarcastic tone to Collagesity town leader Jeffrey Phillips — *still* leader, despite the recent death, thanks to Wendy and the wedding vows, which have been renewed several times since. It is good that he is attached to her. “But we’re not here to talk about how you create blog posts in this here Sunklands. Instead we need to talk about the *girl*.”
Jeffrey Phillips tried to figure out which girl. He didn’t want to embarrass himself (again!). “Yes, she *is* a problem,” he decided to say.
“Problem?!” spat back Mouse. “Salvation more like it (!).” Dr. Mouse waits a beat, allowing Phillips to deliver his next line. He looks over at the top of his cane resting against the table edge. He decides to slightly suck at the roughage sticking to his teeth. Hydroponic vegetables — not his dish. Give him some red meat and a side of something else with meat in it any day. Jeffrey Phillips has obviously forgotten his lines. He glowers a bit at him, even. Shoot, he’ll have to improvise. I doubt Ronald would want to reshoot this late in the day. “Yes, like I said: *salvation*. We’re obviously talking about Ruby Alien here.” Dr. Mouse keeps staring and the actor (Jim Hayseed) through him. Go ahead and bring up *Alysha*, he simmered internally.
“I…” he sputters, “think we’re actually then talking about…”
“Alysha, right,” answers Dr. Mouse for Jeffrey Phillips. Finally back on script.
friend… we hope
Gee Cat had doubts at first but then realized he was exactly where he was suppose to be. At this spot.
He waits patiently for someone to emerge from that tunnel, perhaps a friend but also perhaps a… fiend. Time will shortly tell.
A painter soon arrives. “I was just — Soap Lake,” he started with the broken sentences to add to the plot confusion. “Suds — Bubbles — took care…” He collapses at Gee Cat’s feet. Lordy, the big orange feline thought, have to drag him over to The Asylum for more rehabilitation. The body is back but the mind is still, let’s say, lacking. Dr. Mouse will fix him up, but he won’t be happy to see me.
Better get to work.
Mouse Tales
I: How did you come to Paper Soap, Dr. Mouse. Paul, isn’t it?
DM: Yes. I came the way most people come. Through the tunnel. You have to find the G Spot to get in of course.
I: I think I see where this is going.
DM: Yes. It’s all Fraudian (laughs).
I: How did you become head of The Asylum? I know this has something to do with Filetown — helping you out there.
DM: Well I certainly had a lot of *files* to bring through the tunnel with me after getting the job.
files
But seriously, it indeed started way back in Pennsylvania as a file clerk. Filetown is what I personally called the place I lived. That’s where I met Alpha. And Wendy.
I: Tell us about your relationship with Wendy. And Alpha if you wish.
DM: They are (actually) one and the same. Alpha hides what Wendy is. She’s right here — right over there (he points out the window with his cane toward the conveniently placed big banana sticking up from the pavement next to the all day all night theatre, currently playing a “Spaceballs” loop as I recall).
She can serve you up a (frozen) banana quick and easy. We’ll go after the interview.
I: Sure sure. But — helping you along again — Wendy was your wife.
DM: For a little bit. She was an attractor to being here. (note: DM seemed reluctant to talk much more about Wendy and his relationship with her)
I: Alpha is, then, transparency I’m gathering. Like if I wore a full body transparency and took off my clothes, then no one would be able to see me.
DM: Correct.
I: Okay, let’s move on to the (town) Anomaly and your role in causing it.
(to be continued)
assimilation (growing the behemoth)
Later:
“Tell us about the failure of the Pooping Pigeon (franchise).”
—–
She was in enemy territory and she knew it. If only the good doctor had been able to successfully remove the black. But it is what it is now.
Oh no! Not Pooh too!
98 to 48 is 50
“Oh he was one Black Hole of a guy, sucking everything in in his way,” he spoke despairingly later about his much more famous sibling of sorts. Some say they are the same — he begs to differ, this *Kelly*. History changes and the Whites don’t like it. Buildy Bob assumes a cone position atop the truck again, showing his true colors. He cusses like a mo fo and doesn’t turn red, because there was only black and white for him. And he smelled a skunk. And he could read the newspaper headlines in front of his crude face with his rude mouth. “Dewey (F-cking) Wins”. It was all a big fat (circular) lie — yellow journalism. We better get back to Paper Soap. But first…
“Hey, watch the f-ck out!”
—–
“We meet again Yoyo or Dada. Better let me speak with Claude or Claudette. We’re getting kind of near the end, need to start wrapping things up here so we can move on to the 28th. Some months — well, February — only have such. We’re becoming a whole damn month Yoyo-dada. Better move aside, let me talk to the golden cow.”
“Assure you here he not is,” rasped YD. Dr. Mouse hit him with his own cane to sweep him away, clear path ahead.
00270609
“You know, young laddie, I was going to be big. I don’t mean psychiatrist big. *Big* big, as in owning my own franchise of Pooping Pigeons. Well, someone decided to drop a big big *poop* on that idea. Came back on me, all my past, all my *medical* doctoring. I had to switch doctors, in that I became a psychiatrist instead of a physician. It was just that dramatic a change.” He pointed his cane in the direction of the tunnel and the train station now, past the statue with the pooping pigeon on its shoulder that triggered this whole soliloquy.
“Gee spot — right over there. Came in the tunnel. The Asylum sits on top of it.”
“Did you know,” young Peter File spoke absentmindedly, not really paying attention to the doctor’s ramblings, “I can balance this little paper hat on my nose?” He blew at it with his mouth; the object didn’t move. He sat up, looked at the doctor as if just waking up. “Paper,” he spoke more seriously, taking in the landscape. “We’re in *Paper*.”
“Been here for a while, yes. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Things *changed*.”
00270610
(News)papers whirl together with leaves in a perpetual dust devil down at the tracks near the tunnel, reminding us of yellow journalism…
… in association with perpetually clapping *Kane* at the all day all night theatre just on the other side of the square with the “Pooping Pigeon” statue, as some locals have started calling it, blocked from our view by a mossy double oak with ivy in that picture up above. Or make that here:
And here’s Kane’s hands in the theatre, not to be confused with canes in hands, as in Dr. Mouse’s.
Checkered face Wheeler with him now, out on break from the banana, Mouse points again, making the connection.
res(e)t
“Alright enough of this mumbo jumbo hoochie koochie stuff, Minister (same as the funeral home director, conveniently enough). Let’s just get it over with and open the coffin.” Petty was inpatient to see what the Anomaly of this amalgamated town, Paper-Soap, was actually like. A plasmic entity as the sheriff suspected, one Wilbur Marshallford of Pennsylvania, Indiana? A luminous, demonic birthday hat as Koyla, Stu Umbriel, and now black-not-Indian Chief thought, product of that ill advised party and decisions made there? Probably glowing then, wouldn’t you think?
“Just as I suspected,” Chef-inspector Petty continued after the coffin lid had been raised mentally by all attending. “This plot is empty; Ruby is no longer in this world. Only a figurative diamond remains. But to whose hand? Who is wedded to the grave?”
NOVEL 28
00280108
“It all begins with windmills,” he declares…
“… and Mouse.”
“Hi, I’m Windmill Man and I’m proud and pleased to be adding my story to the flow of this photo-novel, which I believe is 28 in a series of… well, something or another. Kolya is a friend of mine, we can say; shared a room together at Mouse Manor, haha. Expression never changed, poor lad, no matter how he was feeling inside. Couldn’t smile, you see. Well… I *can*. See?
“Where to start, where to start? Windmills… oh I already declared that. Bottom of one of the newest subcontinents, you know. River in the center running all the way to Maebaleia; connecting East and West at last, and put in there that I capitalized east and west to emphasize that they are hemispheres: 1/2 worlds if you will. This was *important*.
“Brady Stream was the sim I’m talking about. Start of this new land, this finishing connector. Now I’m sure a lot of you readers from the outside world are shaking your head and saying, big deal, it’s just a virtual reality, one of many now, right? This one’s a little different, though, in that you have *two* worlds secretly combining into one. You’ve read about it here many times now: the simultaneous (as it were) beginning of Lime World and World of Lemon, one — the recognized one — coming from the West and the other, the one not fully known but actually more powerful, from the East. And now these two directions are linked, see.
“Windmills… let’s just go back down into the world and start at the stream.
“There I am. At the most central one.
“And also in the center of the sim. This is where it starts.”
(to be continued)
correspondents
My dearest Fern. Thank you for the recent email. It was so nice to hear from you again. Yes, I’m still stuck with the apples (bleh!), but the chafing has gone down thanks to Dr. Lice (he’s so nice). And Dr. Maggot has helped out as well; reduced the mass. But enough of me; how are you?? You said you were in this place called Paper-Soap now. Is that 2 sims rolled up into one? Resurrection of the dead, eh? Sounds like you have your hands full analyzing the place. Good that Dr. Mouse gave you a room at the asylum from which you can better study the incoming patients. They all must have fascinating stories, what with being recently dead. Lots of memories to rehash and recall while there’s still time, as you put it.
I miss you so much. You are a part of me! My white VW Beetle (white as my skin!) is still running swell, thanks to Dr. Armadillo over in Beat-town. All my doctors are so swell! CC is a wonderful place to hang out. I just discovered a Bellisseria Welcome Center here. Of all places! My art is going great — trying not to use swell again in a sentence. You warned me about repeating my words; shows symptoms of lowering IQ, and that as we get older we lose brain mass. If only I could apply that naturally to the body (apples) as well! That would be swell, haha.
Well, better end. I’ll write again soon, I promise. Good luck in Paper-Soap! Send me an im when you’re settled in and we’ll catch up in person.
Harrison Jett checks spelling and a bit of grammar then hits SEND. Done. Back and forth contact fully established with the person who means the most to him in his life so far. That is, before he met Bluebird.
(to be continued)
end/beginning
He turned one last time to the door before leaving.
—–
“No more shells,” he rather commanded to Alysha in a role switcheroo, fed up with being treated like a toddler. “*I* am real (this time).”
“Okay.” But of course the holes remained. Glory could only be glimpsed, but maybe it was worth it. Afterwards his neck hurt like a mo fo, but he doesn’t think it is about what they did.
Alysha ponders afterwards: Kolya *can* get better. If he changes into Windmill, hmm. Bit older, but what can you do? And then the diagonal can be traced all the way to Maebaleia — where we are now. Self image.
—–
Boos (narcissist 02 (abcdE))
She finds herself in a place doing realistic things, like blow drying her hair. But this is the morning she finds out she is actually a man. She stares into the mirror, looking at them after the removal of the false, the fake. How deflating!
The mayor’s nose keeps growing. Guy visits the doctor again, still working for the resistance. A new strategy is being hatched. Stealing the golden goose egg *has* produced results. He’s straightened out, elongated: the I of TILE revealed.
(to be continued)
00280511
A rat scurried across the floor in front of red clad Greg Odgen. Mouse tried to ignore it but couldn’t. Anything bigger than himself, if only in name, spooked him. But it was safe here; that was the point. No one came down to this place beneath what they called the mayor’s house.
Norris spoke up. “You promised me information about the Red Room, and a “Return”. I haven’t seen the Red Room yet, not hair nor hide. The Red Room,” he insisted in his deadpan way. Face bleached out to disguise who he really was (mayor?), this man had observed a lot in his day from this couch and that couch; seen dancers come and go; seen prison schematics but couldn’t talk about them; observed maps of strange, unknown places — other ones — and memorized them as well. He had *information*. But the Red Room remained off limits. He wanted to know why. Casey One Hole was still tracking him down. He figured he’d go to the end of the galaxy to do so if needed, the far corners of space itself. This means even Muff wouldn’t hide him forever, disattached to Bermingham as it were. “I have the WIS map; I’ll trade you the Red Room for WIS.”
Mouse knew this wouldn’t fly, as a bat ran into the back of his chair and became like a rat, scurrying around once more with radar momentarily lost. He pondered again the palindrome nature of that word: radar. He thought of Norris hiding on Muff. Wouldn’t fly.
00280512
“Who do you think that is over there, Greg Ogden with an extra G?”
“Just in the last name,” he modified. He lowered his voice, leaned forward. “And stop pointing over there.”
“Oh she knows we’re here,” said Dr. Mouse in reply. “She knows what we’re talking about; she *knows* what we’re thinking.”
Hatti the witch still didn’t look over, trying to ignore them. She was thinking back to when she left Valgate (= V-gate), her old beloved house that was her castle, left the NE corner of Nautilus continent behind. Got tired of the devilry. The boars! Booor-ing (in the end). She looked at her cyan blue nails — anywhere but over *there*. When’s our, *my* expresso going to arrive? she thinks. I’m about tired of *this* place as well, this Paper-Soap, amalgamated from 2 former school districts. The kids control all now! Thoughts can flow freely between subconscious and conscious: dream becomes reality. The burning of the Biker Bar and Grilling that killed our beloved director Penn Mann (etc.) — could have been their doing (easily enough). But personally I know it’s Claude.
Weary, she stares over at Mouse. “Looks like they’re actually closed. Wanna grab a burger you 2?”
00280513
They had finished their burgers — vegetarian for the doctor; basically raw red meat for Wheeler, er, I mean, Wendy — and were sitting outside in what they called the kid’s area. Greg Ogden was riding a coin operated horsie across the way; no food for him, just play. The 2 “grown ups” took the opportunity to talk, core to core. Mouse was asking a lot of questions, so Wendy plopped out her laptop for some quick google searches when needed. Or so she said.
“Claude,” he spat out. “Friend or foe?”
“Friend,” replied Wendy quickly. “But a mechanoid so basically useless. And he indirectly blew up our director so we’ll have to mark down for that.”
“Kids?”
Wendy stared at him. They weren’t suppose to talk about the children. He remembered that with her prompting and moved to the next.
“How about the swamp? How about the bars?”
“Bar None?”
“Um… not sure.”
“Both have black mold thanks to the you-know-who. Both lack bathrooms, hence Stu Umbriel in jail for the urination and such. But he just likes peeing in public, don’t get him wrong. He’d do it anyway. That’s just what his lawyers are going to say.”
“Kolya… seems to be missing.”
Wendy stared over at Greg Ogden still jiggling on his horsie. “Did you give him 2 quarters or 3? Because this could take a while.”
bloched
“*Well*. Did you enjoy your frozen banana young man, ha?”
“Sure did!”
“Okay, well you come back real soon. Reaalll soon.”
“Oh you can *count* on it.” He finally moved away, not even needing his cane to locomote in the present, the moment.
—-
But Paper-Soap had much bigger issues to deal with than these 2 stepper outers. Wars: Paper vs. Soap. Because many wanted the amalgamation to end, and all the psychic rigamarole with it. We’ll see.
go fourth
The Paper Kings dropped a Big Baby behind enemy lines and Claude Sit-on got sat-on. His son Claude Jr. carried on the family name, obviously. In retaliation he tried to wire the school so that it would blow up at 4:20 o’clock on [pick any day], but the kids foresaw this and blew up Claude Jr. instead. With their minds of course, no primitive physics needed. End of mechanoid aspect of our story, but later the Claudes, jr. and sr. now conjoined and united as one Claude in the minds of people who couldn’t remember the originals, became martyrs to the cause. It was here that Dr. Mouse entered our story again. “He died for *our* sins,” the fanatic was telling him back in their secret basement lair underneath the mayor’s house, now run by Jim Turbine the plastic surgeon. He surged, he won. Former mayor Longnose went back to Yayaland where he came from and started wearing a different face (at times) and leading the resistance to his own cause, which eventually recruited Guy Benjamin from Kowloon who eventually was able to steal the little yellow fellow, the Rael McCoy, from the other 3 while they had their backs turned. And this is where Dr. Mouse enters our story once more (!), for he was asked to perform a special operation to straighten out the racist lad. *Not* remove the color this time, which should remain glinty gold or close, they insist, just like Claude down in Sittontown (Meatside renamed). “What, then?” demanded Mouse, afraid he would see a rat in such a remote place and eager to get outta here. “Turn him into an *I*,” they said, and left it with him.
Dr. Mouse went back to his basement lair, told the others what had happened. A plane crashed outside in front of the cave that sheltered Sheldon the Initiated, Fern Stalin in disguise once again — I believe this was 42 by this point. On the other side of Paper, Swamp Lake had been drained by the resistance *here* in an attempt to stifle the efforts of the kids. The Asylum was filled with those who weren’t really loonies but were deemed so nevertheless. And Dr. Mouse was the stamp-maker. He wore many hats, but there was only 1 he wanted to live under. Hatti’s.
“What do you think? First attempt, mind you.”
Greg Ogden was stymied. “Is that a… banana?”
no rats
Yeah, in staring at the sign again, Dr. Mouse realizes he’s never been on this Paper-Soap property. Wonder why.
He’s a bit drunk tonight but still resists the urge to explore the offerings of the Lucky Motel, because he knows it is really not that atall (*hiccup*). Plus he’s kind of got a relationship with the ex Wheeler/Wendy again. Moving on…
—–
Let’s go back to the big Nautilus continent map and see where we are. We started in Center (01) with the visiting of the Ur-parent’s graves, and worked our way up to the Aviary (02) where both Alysha and Hidi testified against Kolya as it were, almost eliminating him from our story, then quickly followed by Rooster’s Peninsula (03) where a nifty castle was established that may well replace Collagesity itself in our continuing Second Lyfe adventures. As you can see, these three basically equidistant locations form a line essentially running directly north, right to edge of the map and thus the continent.
But in the second half of the present photo-novel (XVIII), we have focused away from Nautilus to other, mostly non-mainland locations, like Paper-Soap. It’s as if the establishment of the castle provided us with a new anchor and then we moved on. So the question is: Is the more southern Collagesity now *toast*, at least for a while?
We haven’t even seen Collagesity leader Jeffrey Phillips in the current story yet. Perhaps that should change; he should have a say in all this.
(to be continued)
—–
scenes from a hat
He woke up in a fetal position on top of yet another fox. She spoke without turning from the even redder couch, wearing an even redder dress.
“How dare you think you can come to the White Palace in the skies and not alert *me*.”
He was groggy. He couldn’t make out exactly what was said. He raised up off of the plush fox, so soft. Like a blanket. He wanted to sleep forever, he realized. But… he must remain alert. Danger! He recalls: danger.
“You can leave Sepisexton,” she spoke over to the robot guard more in the background. “I want to talk to the *boy* alone.”
——
“It was always destiny that I come to this Misty MO and find love, Hucka.”
“Hucka?” He wakes.
“Charlene.”
Groggily; just waking up as well: “Yes?”
—–
“Okay you must tell me what you did with Jeffrey Phillips, shirt-less boy. *Now*.”
The green door opened. A presence was there.
—–
Trying to ignore rats, Dr. Mouse stands before the green door. The green phone on the front desk rings. It’s Claude.
—–
Geez I think my ears are ruptured.
There. It’s fixed.
BoB
“I’m not dead!” he cried to all those sitting and standing around the grave site looking down. “It’s *just* a ring.”
It all came together at the end for Mouse. Too late, of course.
—–
“So this is it,” Man About Time exclaimed mildly. As usual. “The thing that did him in.”
“LOVE, yeah,” answered Jeffrey Phillips, wondering how he himself could talk again. He died as well (!). “He… couldn’t pass through the O, got stuck in it. Spy Guy Benjamin tried to help, but…”
“… got stuck himself,” completed MAT for Jeffrey, having read the story up to this point too. What was the point? Just close the damn coffin lid why don’t you.
“He can’t die in Vain.”
“He didn’t,” answered MAT truthfully.
“Good for you, MAT,” said Jeffrey Phillips. “I didn’t think you would take this so swell.”
“It’s just a game. Endtime.”
“Yes, death will do that to you. Lure you in, like a fish. And when you land on the shore — it’s *only* when you land on the shore…”
“You see the water,” completed MAT again.
Next door (sometime in the past):
They say the doctor before this new one, Jr. — he was married to an alien woman. Found her spaceship crashed up in the hills.”
“That’s — not — right,” the littler golden robot squeaked back.
“You’re right, Jr. It *wasn’t* right. He should have turned her *in*. And now he’s paid the price: banishment. *Now*, are you ready to go inside and let the new doctor, this Diper fellow, take a look at those gold plated tonsils?”
“Guess — so.”
“You guess so.” Claude Sr. blew out air from his mechanical lungs. “I had mine taken out about the same age as you are, in fact, the exact same age.”
“12 — I — know.”
“That’s right, Jr. 12. All mechanoids have to have their original tonsils taken out, then. Else: viruses.”
“I — read — the pamphlets.”
“Nice.” But Claude Sr. knew it wasn’t tonsils that were taken out. The pamphlets lied. He’d find out soon enough. Just like with Santa Claude.
They head inside for the operation.
NOVEL 29
two wor(l)ds
Axis-Windmill watches Lester and Custer cross the road to the motel grounds. He looks up after they disappear behind its sign from his perspective, ready to erase another “S” to appease the new or soon-to-be new King of the sim. Paper fully separated from Soap; (fantasy) party over. So it will happen (!). That could explain the presence of the motel here, which Axis-Windmill recalls blew up just last month. This Thanksgiving becomes last Thanksgiving, a time burp as some put it.
Axis-Windmill turns from south to west toward another missing letter, this time a “G” down at the train tunnel, missing from “Missing Mile” (thus: “Missin Mile”). Gaining another perspective remotely he ponders the possibility of a Miss Square. Back to square one? He decides to ask the homeless person sitting in the street down from him.
“Miss Square?” he utters, causing the man to become aggressive.
A 5 minute rant about the sorry shape of the town follows.
And I suppose Dr. Mouse is back at well, killed in the motel explosion that didn’t happen now. Perhaps he’s next up for a visit.
(to be continued?)
airport too
Hitgal, still manning her cornog stand at this same Half Moon Airport in Southwest Nautilus, watches a tulip plane coming in from out the front windows, 2 of ’em in fact. Lips are like one pink. She recalls a dream last night where she was floating in such, on a pool shaped like Vermont or New Hampshire, pick your camera angle. Two people sitting and talking at a table perched on the far side of the irregularly shaped cement pond. A mouse. A man. A cane between them, linking them together in the irresolved distance, as if by magic. Someone lost their cane. “Excuse me, miss,” he said after approaching, and then told her what was amiss. He walked with a limp but not badly. Hitgal pondered if the cane was more symbolic than necessary, a symbol of power, an emblem of a man who can point to what he wants before he takes it. She overheard whispers of a restaurant that would manufacture hot dogs out of pig lips. Hmmm, lips again. She speaks to him with her own.
“Over theres.” She points behind her to the left. “Mae Baelias.”
“Maebaleia?” he repeats, wanting to get it right.
“That’s right. Just over theres.” She points again. There could be no mistake. But of course a bigger mistake hid behind this lesser one avoided. Dr. Mouse would spend the rest of the year and then 3 or 4 months of the next searching for his cane on the Satori continent, which airline reservation agent and sometimes lost and found negotiator Mae Baleia directed him toward. The tickets were free and so was the pain. He needed a vacation anyway, but it was not what he expected. Chickens — always the clucking and pecking around, the incessant pecking and clucking. But Dr. Mouse found his cane upon return. Hitgal kept it safe below the cornog roaster at her stand, awaiting the closing of the loop. Tulips are like one pink, she knew, and the plane he took to Maebaleia/Satori would be arriving at the same time he departed. There would be no gap.
(to be continued?)
NOVEL 30
00300314
Ah yes, much better match. Even if she did wear an ill fitting mask. He’d give her a lecture later on, after they knew each other a little better. Ah, heck. He’ll do it now. It’s the holiday season after all. She’s trying. She won’t be offended, he figures.
“Phyllis?” he starts.
“Berta, actually. Remember? Phyllis is my twin sister.”
Shoot. Wrong holiday girl after all. Back to the drawing board.
“It’s okay,” she says to the obviously downcast Chet. “We’re really clones, you know,” she confesses. “Basically one and the same. We just use the sister story to throw the police off the track of…” She hesitates. She doesn’t know him well enough to talk about Dr. Mouse yet. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.
(to be continued)
Paper… Soap
An expert at 4 was called in to help with the transition from whole to half: Dr. Rabbid Baumbeer, last seen wheeling this dark baby around NWES City over on the Jeogeot continent one last time before putting it in storage. Stored no more; out and about again. Thanks to Zoidboro and the magically pronounced words.
Mr. Yellow glances in at the *plant* sitting beside him in the yellow chair, the cheese being also known as Marilyn but seldom seen in that guise except for the gifted of sight. She’d even given him back his attached rats to make him pure rabbit again, although he didn’t know it in the moment. He talks to his supervisor via phone. Dr. Mouse. Dr Mouse? Yes. Dr. Mouse.
“Good, good,” he says about the setup over at the new rental beside the old parsonage Zoidboro was kicked out of just yesterday’s today’s tomorrow. He knew now he was (also) fully back to life. He imagined he could throw a stone from his asylum and it would hit the roof, perhaps rolling down to knock his agent on the head. In fact, I think he went up to his own roof to gauge if this were actually possible. Let’s take a pic of it.
No: a bit too far still; trees kind of in the way. He can’t help but point with his cane at what irritates him presently, old habits dying hard.
—–
another one?
“Why aren’t you guys sitting across from each other still? *Anyway*, we know the Anomaly is the same as this beanstalk being mentioned around this here town, Paper-Soap still, despite the attempts at division. It doesn’t jam our systems any longer — a situation we should toast to sometime (come to think of it) — but its presence is still around.” Goober gobble. “Reports now. Whatcha got Agent 47?” he speaks to the closest one. “Er, 23,” he adjusts, seeing a hair on the upper lip. Male this one is. The other: female, despite the baldness and otherwise seeming identicalness. More experiments of The Mouse.
“We’re monitoring situations of a bust,” he metered out crisply, almost like a robot but without the needed metallic squeaking of the inner mechanics. Like with the Claudes. “A painter. Paper.” He glances over at Agent 47, noting the hairless lip and the current desire to kiss it. When did these feelings start for 23?? He guessed that birthday party. Where they summoned The Devil again, pheh.
“A ring,” continued 47 on the same case. “Within…” he looked back.
“… a ring,” completed 23 for him, contemplating whether to blow him (*a kiss*!).
“So you’re saying to me, people, that this bust involves a ring (*brinnng*). And not only that, another ring within that ring? (*brinnngg*). How deep are we?”
The phone rings for the third time at the far end of the table. It’s one of the Claudes, which is always bad news.
Jim walks in (*brinnng*). “I’ll get it.”
“NOOOOOO!!!”
NOVEL 35
00350707
It was at the end and not the beginning but the marriage finally came through.
“Do you have a problem with this?” Newt ask in a low voice as the I do’s were being said. “Speak now, you know.”
“Why would I have any problems with this?” said Wheeler back. “Shelley would just run around with other men behind his back if she married George. This way she’ll be happy. Or at least have a chance to be.”
“Do you, Shelley, take Lemont slash Arthur…”
“And there’s always Liz,” whispered Newt.
“Yes.”
“Should we end there? Again?”
“Why not.”
“You may kiss the bride.”
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2022 LATER”!
NOVEL 36
2nd crowd
He looked in on the proceedings with his 2 hats and his 2 perching birds, thinking: busy, good. That means the doctor, the practice is good. Here’s someone I can talk to and learn meaningful stuff from, this Mouse fellow. Never mind the failed Pooping Pigeons franchise, he follows. A bad businessman does not make for a bad something else.
He steps inside, jumps ahead of everyone else knowing they wouldn’t mind. He’s just that important.
The door was locked. The only way in, it appeared, was through this hole at the bottom. Luckily Albert brought his own Mouse costume, except his was a rat, small enough to get away with the deception and do the job. Mouse was just finishing up with another one, synchily enough. Rat named Map who use to be a member of a gang called Willard.
“Come in, big man,” he squeaked up to high-as-a-kite Albert. “If you can make it.”
“Oh I can,” he boomed down. Map Rat disappeared. Albert took his place.
(to be continued)
restored/inside
“Sorry about the hole, Mr. Johnston.”
“Please. Call me Albert,” insisted the tall, black clothed man sitting before him, seeing each other not quite eye to eye like before but getting there. He wanted to make sure he was up close and personal with the troubled man, try to soothe his rather frayed nerves. Yes, Albert had issues. He moved from behind the desk to here, perched before him like another one of his birds.
“I have to separate the wheat from the chaff,” he explained, gazing into his face from slightly above. “As you probably noticed, all I have out there waiting any more are dummies, complete idiots.” Mouse looked down, trying to phrase his frame of mind in a more polite way. “I don’t have time for that any more,” he said, deciding to end that way. Albert’s turn now.
“I… understand?”
“You’re a real life person in this afterlife sort of situation. I appreciate that. You are tall but you can become quite small. That proves you are human. More effective than picking out chimneys on a house or signs on a road. This is not the DMV if you see what I’m saying.”
“Understand… I?”
“Yes, I know how you feel, I certainly do.” Mouse rubbed his chin thoughtfully, as he sometimes does to impress a client, especially an important client like this. Albert was here to talk about the girl: he knew that. But which one?
(to be continued)
00360108
After finding out which one, Dr. Mouse has him lay on a gurney ready to go deeper into the bowels of the place.
“All the way back, Mr. Johnston,” Nurse Porcupeople urged. “I have you.”
“Wheel him away,” said Mouse, studying the newest form and seeing it is good. Ready for delivery.
00360109
The Nautilus map in my skybox is lighting up again. Jem’s Dodgey City in the northeast corner, along with neighboring Blacking where Midge critically observed it across the water from her colorful beach towel. Yd Island and Darla and her Umbrella Club to the southeast, also observed from a distance by prevert Albert. Then Fordham in the lower center, the old Collagesity location which is now surprisingly acting as a hideout of some kind for Franklin aided by greenie friend Apples and the sentient tree known as Unch — you remember Unch don’t you? From the Rubi Forest? Think back. And then in the center center that mysterious place known as Perch-Mistletoe where we also see Franklin, this time interacting with Albert directly but who then turns into or reveals himself as Baker Bloch instead, with Franklin likewise realizing she’s Wheeler Wilson. The 2 main core avatars of my blog and attached photo-novels in other words, the great male-female (or female-male) duality. What it all revolves around. Then in the main arm of the Starfish Lake or Sea to the northwest of that we have Dr. Mouse’s practice which Albert also visited and turned into a baby apparently, a symbol of rebirth. Another pin is lit up beside it but we can’t speak of that yet. Place called Dub — displaced actually. To this couch so we can talk with him/it.
Another form:
Another:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub,_Arkansas
Then moving to the west and the south again, directly below Dodgey City we have another mystery area centered by a place called the Art Box which we’ve visited several times before in our blog chronicled journeys, and which will surface again soon in relation to the missing file or files mentioned by Midge. Then to finish up for now, in the north central, we have the location of the map itself, my Lebettu Castle on Rooster’s Peninsula, my new home as of the middle of photo-novel 33 back in the late spring now. It’s been a perfect match so far. There’s no question I had to downsize.
Collagesity back in the days
numbers
He thought about Back as he lay on his back and she turned her back to him.
“Where are we on The Moon again?” she asked dreamily while studying, lingering effects of the box.
George/Musician sighs. “We’re not *on* The Moon, Shelley. We’re in… Mortons Gap. I think. At least the Ant Castle, old style, is playing on a continual loop on our TV over there.” Ropes, George/Musician thought. Aah the good old days when marriage meant something and everyone knew their place. He sat up.
Back ruined all that, pheh. Better get back to it while I have time. 7:04AM. Soon it will be 5.
Yeah, there it is. Too late. Next! (as Wheeler might say)
NOVEL 38
Vowells
And so they were wedded that June. Something about substance over style in the vows. Something about quantity over quality. Substance and quantity over style and quality? Something was wrong here, really wrong. What does this wedding have to do with Constantynople, our newly minted darling of the blog? And why do we have the returned, purple gowned Wheeler in Alpha with Baker Bloch? Marriage of convenience? Let’s back up, have them eat those words for now…
We are at the end of 32, sliding into 33. Wheeler wasn’t joking. She’d won the Tic-tac-toe game fair and square. “We will be married to each other and also the town,” he now recalled about what she said at the grated white table in Ontario above the completed board, food shunted aside for the moment. Town, he contemplated. Wrong one. *Really* wrong one. He was falling into a pit, deep and dark and dank and dingy. 4D. No returning to kaput Ontario to the scene of the crime. We’d have to resolve this situation elsewhere. He lost his hat.
Someone stirred in the blue and yellow glowing teepee.
Fall over, Pitch Darkly stepped out of his dark (etc.) house and into the blinding white light. “Hey you blippity bleep bleep kids stop playing around with that statue!” he cried from the porch.
NOVEL 40
00400515
The weight of the past…
… finally collapses the present into a hellscape sinkhole of no return.
Over and over…
… and over.
—–
“As you can clearly see, Dr. Mouse, the darts weren’t the cause of the death.”
“As I suspected,” he said in his superior, haughty way. “What did the extracted bodily fluids reveal?”
“Dr. Rabbid over at the lab is still working on the results,” answered Dr. Brown. Dr. Mouse was thinking he’d have the results already, would *cane* them out of a subordinate if needed for such an important case. All Millbank is depending on a correct diagnosis. For its own survival.
Sensing the tension, Dr. Brown put forth another option, since he didn’t have much faith in science to figure it out by this point. He acted as if it was his own idea instead of Dr. Rabbid’s but would quickly point the blame finger at the non-present doctor if Mouse didn’t like the proposal.
“Seance?!” Dr. Mouse responded to it, initially seeing only the negative of the thing. “Here? In Millbank?? Are you mad??”
Well, a little, Dr. Brown thought, but then answered: “It could be elsewhere. The other doctors wouldn’t have to know about it. You could be a hero, sir, swooping in from the outside to save the day.”
“All Hallows Day,” he specified. “All this,” and he looks around the room that represents the entire sim in the moment, “wouldn’t have to go back into storage. It could be perpetual, a permanent fixture. *If*…”
“… we could just figure out how to affix the past to the present; make it stable and unfluctuating,” finished Brown for the higher up doctor.
The phone in Dr. Brown’s pocket rings in an ancient way. He answers; he acknowledges; he hangs up. “Dr. Rabbid’s results indicate formaldehyde, 37 percent.”
“Formaldehyde?!” shouted the superior doctor even slightly louder. “Then this *is* about preservation.” The seance was a go, at least in the eyes of Brown.
00400608 (Dr. Mouse)
“I know files are your department, Dr. Phile, but I had to make sure this was done correct. See? Come over and look.
“I’ve created 3 files on your computer system, you’ll notice, one for Marsha ‘Pink’ Krakow — that should remain the top one — then one for Shelley Johnston Struthers — think it’s Johnston instead of Johnson… I’ll let you check on that — then a 3rd one for Frankie Beige Brown… or Frankie Brown Beige, whatever. She’s not the important one, or at least the one on top or even in the middle. Put her at the back — we probably won’t be referencing her much except to determine if she’s only *in* there for the gestures or a bit more, perhaps some kind of conscience. And — here’s the trick — we’re going to take those 3 files, front to back as I’ve specified, and then combine them into one overarching file called, I don’t know, let’s say ‘Unknown’ for now. Or maybe file it under ‘Miscellaneous’. Filing is your department and I’ll leave you with the overall labeling on this *3n1*. Yes, I said it. It’s the rarest of rare type of file, you see Dr. Phile. 3 in 1’s don’t come along but, say, every once in 3 years. Or maybe that’s 3 centuries. I’ll let you work it out again. You’re the file doctor,” he deferred for the 3rd time trying not to step on the younger doctor’s toes.
But in pivoting his chair to make a point somewhere, he realizes he’s done just that.
“Oh. *Sorry*.”
00400609 (Perch)
The slideshow they had prepared was *bore-ing*, but at least she wasn’t in Rockaway Beach Municipal Prison any longer, thanks to her mother. But it was thanks to her mother, she reminded herself, that she was in there in the *first* place. What did she do wrong except be adorable, she couldn’t help laughing at herself.
She looked out the window, at the large, altered American flag flying out there. At least they also like Obama, she thought about the face superimposed atop the stars part. But maybe this is just an older parcel and he was still the president when all this was formed, this *reform* camp. Land description does say the owner is not that involved in Our Second Lyfe any longer. Would explain why the mug of Trump isn’t around, because it sounds like the guy, from a glance at his other interests (suggested open gun carrying in Our Second Lyfe? say whaaaat?), might be a follower of *that* cult. Cults attract cults after all, refuge for the causers.
And what’s all this stuff about worshiping Venus?
This is what you get for following a Head without a Body.
00400610
“I try to meet our new, ahem, students at least once but I hope in our case we encounter each other again and again, Ms…”
“Krakow,” spoke Marsha to Dr. Paul Mouse, head of the organization and secretly working for Head, often known as Perch.
“Yes, Marsha Krakow, hmm. And with an additional name if I remember correctly. One only friends can say.”
“Correct, Dr. Paul… what was it?”
“Mouse,” said Paul Mouse.
“No. A middle name.” She smiled wryly.
“Oh yes — clever. I’ll give you mine and you’ll divulge yours. Well, mine is [delete name].”
“Never heard of that. Well mine is Pink, spelled like the color and not the cologne.”
“Not p-n-k, then. I remember from when my wife got me some a couple of Christmas’ ago. Still sitting on the shelf above the medicine cabinet, unused.”
“But other people swear by it. Man of your,” not age, she thought — *distinction*, “*distinction,*” she said aloud, “– might be handy is all I’m saying.”
“So you believe in its love potion powers. You are a true P-n-kie.”
“Look at me,” Marsha spoke about her appearance. “I use to sell it. I had a hot pink car before I traded it for a yellow. Got tired of seeing putrid yellow-green as an aftereffect all over the road on sunnier days.” So for the first time we understand the color.
“Interesting. But do you *really* believe–”
“That is for me to know and you to find out.” Could she wield her considerable powers over *him*? This is what her mother feared, why she was put into that totally colorless black and white cow costume and forced to forget. Venus power. All this, she realized, all this organization must be about her.
He realized he was staring at her uncomfortably. He pretended to organize his files about her before him, shuffled Pink on top again from the bottom. This was no time to bring up the 3-n-1 and the presence of Shelley Johnston Struthers (I was right!) and Frankie Brown Beige (or Beige Brown!) within as well. Pink on the surface; Pink she is. If only Marsha to him still, not counting as a friend. Yet.
(to be continued)
00400612 (holiday rotting away)
A homeless person in Millers Pond looks across the sim line and takes pictures of neighboring Millbank before it’s too late and all the Halloween oddity over there goes away for another 10 or 11 months or so. Specifically, he’s recording a supposed secret meeting between Dr. Mouse and Dr. Brown not far from the mortuary and mental asylum where we first saw them in this here photo-novel: 40, fast drawing to a close itself. Which will last longer might be a question to be asking, Millbank or this?
Two went in, one came out. Murder. Most foul.
—–
“Pretend you’re a woman of that type, Dr. Brown,” Dr. Mouse said within, “with alll these temptations just sitting there all around you. Would you stay on the grounds?”
“No red blooded man *or* woman could resist,” spoke Dr. Brown, knowing human psychology and physiology all too well. Convex and concave — attraction. Irresistible, especially in that overall climate. And he didn’t forget concave to concave; applies here too. The institution Dr. Mouse set up will not hold the girl, a true Venus.
“Serenity Lane, yes,” spoke Dr. Mouse about the fairer sex aspect of the situation, having studied the combined files thoroughly by now. “Drugged her, then drugged her over to the prison, the mother mayor’s magical cuffs in place. Serenity loved Marsha just as much as she loved ex-wife Shelley before; would keep her around at any cost. Shelley… Johnston — Johnston, right?”
“Yeah. Think so,” answered Brown.
“And the other?” Dr. Mouse tested.
“Brown,” answered Brown.
—–
Mouse couldn’t take a chance on the name synchronicity. He’d have to find another second hand to go along with his first in the aberrant bomb clock of time that is their story. Tick tick tick goes the sim of Millbank. Tick tick tick goes the text of photo-novel 40. Oh what the heck, let’s just start with this house to destroy the evidence.
00400613 (Yellow again!)
Marsha thought they could talk freely here during the night in the park between all the buildings of the compound. Little did she know the trees, the birds, the flowers, even the bugs: bugged. Dr. Mouse would analysis the recordings later from his various sources. Eddie looked up at the big fat full silver moon before starting his soliloquy, “I love you,” being the summary sentence.
“Run away?” she said about one of the other parts, the “plan” we’ll call it.
“Yeah,” he said at the time. “Look over there. Between the bushes. I brought you something.” Broad smile. About time to say the “love” part.
Yet another bug, seemingly a different kind this time. But it was miked up as well, along with having an attached tracker. And perhaps even another one of those explosive time bombs, but definitely the first two. And maybe even Eddy, her Edward, put them there, in cahoots with the good Dr. Mouse by this point. Maybe he knows about all the bugs here. Thanks to the mother once more.
00400614
Once Mouse started blowing up stuff in the sim he couldn’t quite seem to stop. “There, that’s gone,” he said, pushing the red button in his secret monitor room atop the Charles Village Anti-Omega Rehabilitation Center and remotely watching the incinerator snow globe explode. “Gone gone gone,” he continued, blowing up the forest cemetery, the Chthulu possessed skyscrapers, the Millbank Mortuary and Mental Asylum in rapid order, including patient 00 in the latter, drugged with darts in his eyes and formaldehyde in his veins and arteries. He finds the final target on a screen, trigger happy cane again hovering above red. Haunted Trailer Park Welcome Center. Once he blows this up… oh, he forgot the cabin more in the center, the one where Rock found his true calling with the revealing of a middle name Roll. Is rocking “Roll” Ramby still playing within, unable to unglue himself from the old upright piano, former spider occupants all scurried away to other parts of the structure? Do Toddles, Vain and Artery Boyy, Alice Farrowheart remain as well, ears and eyes and brains hypnotized by the brand new style of keyboard banging music?
Rock stopped his frantic playing mid-bang. “I sense something.”
Then just in the nick of time, arrow shooting municipal agent Prontus Archereus barges into the monitor room. “Hold it right there Mouse!” he commands in a mysteriously strong, masculine voice for such a crudely drawn cartoon. The doctor freezes, fearful that another arrow might take out his cane.
“I’ll… cooperate.”
00400615
In the morning it was all smoke and ashes anyway, the central cabin never standing a chance surrounded by a burning ring of fire. Millbank was dead, at least for another 10 or 11 months or so. Rock and his entourage found a secret portal inside the spiritually juiced piano he was playing so they’re okay. Zapppa is the key. Zapppa.
Marsha “Pink” Krakow looked up from the text she had just typed, thinking: Did all this really make sense? The reference to Zappa’s Civilization Phaze III again and people living inside a piano that he was so eager to explore toward the end of his life? And what happened to my Oz novel everyone here was so keen on? That’s it! she realized. They didn’t come out in Big Sandy but in Oz. And Alice Farrowheart the precious precocious child’s grandmother along for the ride; not being excluded this time.
In fact let’s go back in time and change something else.
Quickly twirling and catching Prontus Archereus (Archerus?) by surprise, Dr. Mouse uses the power of his cane to instead open up a portal in the wall which swiftly sucks up the bow and arrow into an oblivion of no return. De-armed, crudely drawn cartoon character Prontus was powerless before the menacing man of action.
Marsha ponders removing Prontus’ actual arms in the picture above to continue the joke but decides against it. Too late in the night to start all that.
00400616 (Dolores)
And so she was back in NWES City Big Sandy, Dr. Mouse having come through the secret door just before. “Bye Prontus!” he said before leaving his beloved Anti-Omega monitor room, following bow and arrow into oblivion. He’d have to trust the door would take him where he needed to be. And Marsha: the same with her likewise cherished yellow bug just outside with Eddie, her Edward in tow.
They were all waiting on someone or something to appear on that purple ottoman over there, including the “housesitting” little demon locally known as Wilbur holding the bowl of patriotic soup that can make one grow large or small, depending upon the situation. Suddenly, something began to form on the ottoman. A spirit.
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2023 LATER”!
NOVEL 41
00410201
The day after Thanksgiving. Normalcy returns to the small virtual village of Amiable with plenty of leftover goodies from the festival, a huge success. Corn shucked, weighed and balanced, and then baked into bread and other products; sweet roots based music produced aplenty; sweets and refreshments served all around.
—–
“Offer you a drink, Doctor?”
“Not now Victoria.” He wanted to keep his eyes glued to the front of the club, for Dr. Grayson was waiting on someone, another doctor he assumed. The place: Cass City, queen burg of Satori’s Deep South. The time: 1939 apparently. Just before the great war that never was. Thanks to the book.
Dr. Mouse walks into the Serapis Club. “Check your coat, Doctor?”
“Not now, Victor.” He had a mission to fulfill. Bring what he assumed was another doctor up to speed. And then have him take his place. Hopefully.
(to be continued)
00410202
Mouse leaves the scene, happy with the results. “Taxi!!”
—–
“Someone’s coming,” spoke the top.
“Must be that girl again,” said the girl of the two.
The girl entered the chapel.
Going Back
The name of the city had changed from Cassandra to just Cass. What she knew as the Seraph Club was now the Serapis Club. She had to look that up. Old Graeco-Egyptian god associated with a Jesus-like cult. But in Our Second Lyfe, well, an interesting topic. Cult in that case headed by a doctor — looks like a Mouse. Make that: looks like Mouse (for a name (according to an attached notecard she found)). And this Cass City? Azore Islands alternate or parallel history. Pyramid, hidden from the public eye after a brief exposure. Atlantis at the bottom of everything and sloowly making its way back to the top again. She’d seen the Abyss inside. Abyss, she repeated in her mind. Dr. Mouse and his Serapis might have a point.
Better get some human clothes to go along with a human form asap. This situation needs investigating!
00410208
Berta was conveniently on her lunch break but Keith B. timed it that way. Drugs in Biff Carter’s last coffee and also last donut just to make sure — he’ll be snoozing for a while. Time to take a gander at that 3n1 file he knew Dr. Mouse dropped off just day before yesterday on a visit to his old detective pal. Said to him: find this girl, before she separates out again and all is lost.
Entering the downtown building, he couldn’t see the evidence right in front of his face. A spacer this one is, always thinking about the next operation in a broader sense of the word. He’d just met with Dr. Grayson uptown at his Serapis Club, a potential replacement. Dr. Brown is no longer an option, since he perished in that Millbank haunted house explosion back in the last photo-novel. By Dr. Mouse’s hands no less. Brown maybe knew too much about the 3n1 since he had the same last name as one of the 3 components (Frankie “Beige” Brown) — he couldn’t take a chance. And all that talk about preservation and Halloween being a perpetual holiday from him. Nonsense! That would cut out his favorite one of all which was of course Christmas, Xmas as he liked to call it, not being a practicing religionist. Science is instead his thing of worship. If there is a God, he’s determined, he’ll have on a lab coat when he meets him at the Pearly Gates, with a beaker in one hand and a test tube in the other. Maybe some kind of Adam-Frankenstein laying on a nearby gurney. And of course an Xmas tree in back adorned with more beakers and test tubes. He’s pictured the scene quite a few times now. Makes him merry.
He feels like he has control of the city but it’s just an illusion caused by a game. An in-disguise Marsha “Pink” Krakow enthusiastically claps from across the midtown diner after he breaks the jackpot once again. He turns.
In fact, I don’t think there’s any way he could have missed that Pink Pawn sign and made the connection. Marsha did that as well. She’s covering her tracks. In fact, this is what she looked like to Dr. Mouse when he turned from his still dinging and clanging and whooping machine.
“Alice??” he exclaimed. His daughter.
(to be continued)
shapes of things
She found a half programmed “Victoria” — or what she knew back in Paper-Soap as a Claude (or Claudette) — in the old Big Dick’s Halfway Inn building next door to the diner, proof her father was up to something. Why bug a robot if you don’t have a purpose?
And then there’s the mutable wall glyph…
Based on what’s out the window, she thinks it has something to do with the movement of time. 50 years. What changes in such a span?
—–
“She’s here.”
“Damn cold,” *sniff*.
00410210
“She’s gone now.”
“She certainly had important information to relay to us.” And lo and behold his 50 year old cold was gone (!).
Time to move back to the present as inevitably as red turns yellow turns green turns blue. 1936. Or thereabouts.
—–
Dr. Mouse confessed to his daughter Alice about what happened. “Why didn’t you just pay for an abortion?” she queried in the diner the next day. Mouse had to run off to an appointment the day before or certainly they would have caught up then. Interview with another doctor, a more promising one than Grayson and especially Brown so he couldn’t miss it. Apologized and was on his way, leaving Alice to the pinball machine herself; left alone in the city once more. She peered up at the last score before inserting a quarter: 28064212. Lunar month. Deception. The Sun nowhere to be found. Gloomy day.
The huge Arabic number disappeared as her own scoring began.
Sunnier now. A boy in the far distance stops revolving around 10 to 13 to 10 etc. etc. and becomes 18 for a spell. He asks out the girl down the street he’s had a crush on forever. Now that he can speak to her eye to eye he figures: why not. Forecast doesn’t call for rain until Thursday. And today was Munday; time for maybe even several dates with tall, blonde Sarah. Or was it Nikki?
Back to Mouse and daughter Alice in the diner booth. “Octavia,” he hesitated, “… we had a different relationship than…” Did he want to say “clientele”? He just decided on the “others.” Her other men, her other clients, Alice understood. “She knew the man who owned the swamp, the one the psychic children in town were always altering and changing. This made her special in my eyes. The man’s name was…” He suddenly couldn’t remember, although he’d thought of him a thousand times since Alice’s conception on an old mattress in an alley back of Greene’s Motel (he assumed). “Robert,” he then recollected. He tried the name out on Alice.
“I don’t know that name,” she returned. “Do you mean Bob Levarbe? Leverber?” she tried again herself. “Levargee.”
“Bill,” he suddenly recalled. And a last name. Lavosier! He felt the air around him become heavier and more combustible. BOOMB! he recalled. He got too close.
00410211
She learned the truth about the chest that day. Octavia’s.
Borneo chest. Square. Iowa. Flying — planes (and lines (and points)).
He was… fascinated with that chest! she realized. What’s inside? Pictures of Octavia. Letters of love. Notes: “don’t forget to pick up milk at Speedy Mart before our rendezvous tonight” (etc.).
—–
She went back to her old home in (Paper-)Soap to check Mouse’s new info against her mother’s.
“Greene’s Motel,” she started. “That’s where the doctor — my father — said I was conceived.”
“Well there’s a green *door* inside. Along with a green phone. Maybe that’s what he was referring to.” Her Maw, Octavia Tart III, wondered if the old man perhaps was getting senile and confusing names with each other, overlapping colors where they shouldn’t be. Always fascinated with hues the good doctor was. Maw Tart wasn’t surprised that her old lover was involved with fellow doctors named Gray(son) and Brown, for example — fits the pattern. “Blue?!” he said one time to her, rubbing off the rouge she just put on that morning thinking it would please him. “I said red!” he said. Purple at the least, he thought to himself. She believed that was the day Alice came along. The door to her standard 104 room was locked for some reason — had to do it out back. Perhaps it was occupied, she realized now. Yes, Daisy was working that day as well. Made sense suddenly. Alice was conceived in the alley because of Daisy (she imagined). She’d have to mark it in her “Little Book of Vengeance” against the fellow hooker, now going on 12 (or 32) years at the Lucky Motel. 12 (or 32) years is too long — can’t call her Lucky now. Her: 6 (or 26). She still has some luck left but it’s running out quick. Mouse was a way out but wasted. No luck with Robert either, the owner of the swamp. Or so she thought.
“What about Claude? The golden robot?”
“What *about* Claude?” Maw Tart got tense all of a sudden, felt a surge of the unknown and probably unknowable coming, like in the Dark Days. Before the Coming of Jesus into her heart.
“Well… I mean, he — I mean, *she’s* in Cass City now. And he’s fiddling with her.”
“I bet he is,” spouts Maw Tart through the fear. Pleasure robots, *pheh*.
“No. I mean, he’s tinkering with her. Like in her parts.”
“My statement still stands.”
“*No*. Like… *reprogramming*. What do you know about the numbers 1886 and 1936?”
“I know they’re *years*.”
“50 years. Between them, I mean.”
“I’m counting, let’s see, 3822,” Maw countered, showing off her math skills and being difficult at the same time. The fear was standing just behind her now, threatening to reach into her chest with its shadowy paw and pull out her savior.
“He’s interested in hues. Red to yellow to green to blue. Or something.”
“Hues, *huh*.”
“He’s doing *something* to that robot. He’s spying on his prospective replacements, Maw.”
“HUH — wish *I* had a replacement. Then I could go work at the beer factory they opened up in Barrow County; become like Laverne and Shirley like I always wanted to.”
Alice didn’t have the heart to tell her mother. Barrow County was no more. She’d been sending her postcards from the Void.
(to be continued)
00410213
“Why didn’t you tell me about the chest, father?” she imagined asking him later at the same motel, mother with a new client by now. Father Pritchard, a different kind of father, one with a holy vest chained to a cross he never asked for; was just in the family business, his father a father, *his* father a father, so on. This is a way to exact his flesh, pound-for-pound.
He made googly eyes with this, which gave her the answer. He was thinking about the past even now.
“Ahh, so… mmm…”
“Boyys,” he issued. “I worshiped the boyys. They just made me… blow up (!).”
“Combustible. Like oxygen.”
“I suppose.” He was clear for one minute, now muddied again. The whites of his eyes had narrowed into slits like snakes.
“So you *couldn’t* be my father.”
“No,” he admitted. “No, I couldn’t be.”
Must have been *Robert*, she realized. She said this to her father who was now not her father, at least biologically. Psychically perhaps “yes” still. She hadn’t given up on him just because of the Big Reveal — opening up the chest. He was with her mother just not in a strict biblical sense. Not like Father Pritchard now. More on-the-spot irony.
“Swamp Fox, right.” We better end there.
00410214
They continued their imaginary conversation at the purple shack over at Bill’s swamp. The chest was still there with the photos, errand notes, love letters, etc. stashed safely within. She had to take Mouse’s word for it because she still couldn’t get inside the thing, couldn’t find the key anywhere on the premises. She kept thinking about the huge Arabic number back on the pinball machine in Cass City as if it was pinned to his chest. Deception, she knew. Lies.
“Swamp Shack Purple here use to be Swamp Shack Brown,” she said while she was eating provided soup and he was drinking the house wine. “Explain.”
“You’ll have to ask Robert.”
“O-kay. Then where’s the key? To the chest I mean, obviously.”
“Did you check the sink? Sometimes things get caught in the drain. Doris Drain.”
Why did he say that? she asked herself, but got up to check anyway. “Wait here,” she requested with more seriousness in her tone. “Don’t *move*.”
“Why there’s not even a drain to this sink!” she exclaimed through the wall at him. “What gives?”
“She must have had it removed!” he answered from the living room. Then was gone.
“She had it *what*?” No answer. She rounded the corner. The imaginary visit, so vivid in the moment, was over. She sat back down, finished her soup. No Mouse no wine no cane opposite her, no nothing. But the numbers remained.
Combination! she realized. Eureka appeared as if from the blue but actually it was red. Eureka could shift her form into any shape. And she chose Robert, the lead mystery man.
“You!”
(to be continued)
one last sensory experience
“There. That was me, Alice. A wolf caught in the bright headlights.” CHANGE
Lazy girl Marsha “Pink” Krakow had seen and heard and felt and tasted and touched enough in Paper-Soap. Back to Cass City to wrap this section up, she said in her mind. Just after she finishes nomming down this delicious sewer popcorn.
00410216
Her new hair made her doze a lot but she figured it was the only way to get rid of the gargoyle dreams. Wanda in a hot tub there, Wanda in a ballerina dress over there, Wanda in a… well you get the picture(s). Biff Carter walked into the shop, interrupting her latest non-gargoyly dream. No more Wanda for a while. She even got rid of the green phone so she couldn’t call him first thing in the morning. She’d seen enough in the mirror. Greene’s Motel, she knew. There was no Greene’s Motel, not any more at least. Just a green door left of that color which led into the role playing room behind the main desk. The one she just used last night for that purpose, non-gargoyly indeed. She had to go back in time and make things right again. Dr. Mouse was now truly Alice’s father, thanks to the lucky Irish whiskey imbibed just before. She talked him into breaking the code! Swamp and sewer lesson learned.
“Pink — oh sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt–” He was embarrassed about catching her sleeping on the job but then realized it *was* her shop. No one else to answer to.
Pink stirred, tried to focus back into this reality. “Biff,” she recognized. “*Andrew* ‘Biff’ Carter.”
“No. *Wendell* ‘Biff’ Carter.” Is Pink drugged instead? He imagined her mind being a prison.
It’s also here he noticed the hair as her head continued to rise from the table and fully separated out from the rest of her outstanding pinkness. She now stared directly into his eyes. “Biff — yes, of course. *Wendell* ‘Biff’ Carter.” She looked around the almost empty shop, remembered her job, why she came to Cass City in the first place. Certainly not *this*. No she had a much bigger mission in mind than to carve out a Southside pawning niche. She came here because of the man standing in front of her… gawking.
“*Boy*,” he said. “That’s *different*. I *like*, but it’s… um…”
Marsha “Pink” Krakow reflexively reached up and felt her new doo. “I’m just trying it out, mind you. It’s called Victoria.” She gauged his reaction closely.
“Like in the Age? 50 years?”
“Er, kind of I suppose. Victoria,” she said again. “With a modern twist, a *Pink* twist.”
“Okay, um..” He couldn’t stop staring at it. Something about that hair.
(to be continued)
art
“That doesn’t look much like the landscape out there,” I opined from behind.
“I paint what my cane tells me to. I mean, my *brush* — force of habit there with the mention of cane. I may not need it any longer,” he furthered. “Getting an update from the person who created me. The heck with the other doctors. Dr. White, the last one I interviewed, turned out not to be even (named) White. And maybe not even a rabbit as advertised, pheh. Looked more like a rab*bat* to me. No, I’ve decided to simply replace me… with myself.” He checks his Diamond Rolex watch, dropping some cerulean blue paint on his gray-black Ralph Lauren dress pants in the motion. “Shoot,” he cusses at the stain, but then realizes the pants will be gone soon, along with the body, the skin, the whole kitten kaboodle. “Gotta run,” he says in parting. “Mind finishing this for me?” And grasping his brush while he did the same with his cane, I sat down and went to work. I can do realism, I said to myself as I added more waves to the sea.
00410304 (104)
Couple of battered suitcases left behind but nothing in them as she checked. Clients should be arriving pretty soon; better make herself prettified, as she liked to say. *Remember*, the taller, richer one *doesn’t* like the blue rouge, she reminded herself. And of course that code he goes by to sanctify all this. Oil me up, I suppose.
She’s staking her claim to the room. Daisy Chain can go to hell for all she cares. Pills in her staff meeting breakfast for a knock out punch, BAM! She can works hers and Daisy’s together. She’s not that old yet: only 18 going on 38. Now if she could only remember the year. ’36? ’39? She decided to split the difference and settle on herself. Still before the Axis took control.
Town school superintendent Axis walks through the 104 door, taking control. “Mouse here yet?” He’d checked in his copper red hair at the main desk with Wilma the day clerk — no need for that inside. He could be who he was here. An older, balding man destined for chancellorhood, he felt.
“Not yet,” she answered. Octavia always fancied Axis among her townspeople clientele. Certain a step above, say, a baker, a farmer, a grocery store owner in the swampland. He owns an actual, bona fide *house*. Mouse — that’s the other one’s name: Mouse — might be richer and also have a house but he’s not as devilishly handsome. And the emblazoned cross across his chest he bears helps with this judgment too. Man of God he’s said about himself. Mouse was obviously devoted instead to science; even brought a beaker and test tube along for one of their sessions, and not to decorate the tree in the room, he said. “This time,” — like he was going to bring them again during the holiday season which was in full swing now, hmm. What does he suppose he can test with all *this*. She didn’t like to think about it; didn’t want to ponder the possible weird requests that could come along with such things. Daisy’d warned her about stuff like that. Maybe she was too harsh with the drugs; maybe she couldn’t pull off this 2-n-1 thing she planned today. If it wasn’t Mouse and his eccentricity she figured there was no way it could work.
—-
“I’ll finish up here Mouse; you can go back to your house now,” still-in-control Axis said later on. Octavia needed more than the doctor could provide.
—–
“We’ve gone back and changed time, Marsha,” said Alice, seeing the results, “but now *Axis* is instead my father. Villain of villains!”
“He’s not that bad.”
“I guess you’re telling me *Hitler* wasn’t that bad.”
“He invented the VW Bug — or something,” she attempted to justify, then realized this was wrong, all wrong. And where was her yellow Bug? Still orange? Still in Amiable? She made a note to herself to check. After all this dialog here was worked out.
“We have to go back. Daisy *wasn’t* sick that day in April’s May.”
“I believe that would have to be November’s December, Alice — holiday season and all. The beakers and test tubes on the tree. Remember?”
“I don’t remember *nothing* because it didn’t *happen*. I’ll MAKE it not happen.”
“Again?” Marsha said, staring into the other girl’s eyes who was still wearing the same “I’m not a Demo” sweatshirt as herself, same holey denim jeans.
“Again,” she said back firmly across the gap, closing it for the second time.
00410307 (the 1st Haze County entry (!))
Station attendant Ginger directed Marsha to a large square map hanging on the back wall. “So it is Lucky,” she said to herself, looking at the name of the nearby motel on the map. Just down the tracks as it turned out.
But in the unaltered reality, it wasn’t.
Mouse was right all along.
—–
“NC,” she said, staring up again. Could be either one still.
And then she walked inside the property to see what up. A considerably younger Octavia Tart awaited her appearance.
(to be continued)
00410308
“You’re going to have to leave soon, darling. Clients showing up, 2 of them. My partner in crime Daisy’s sick today. Darnit,” she faked, since she was directly responsible for the sickness as stated. “It’s just a blasted shame.” She stomped out her cigarette on the leaf strewn patio floor. New habits haven’t changed.
“Just a couple more questions if you don’t mind.”
“I *mind*… but I guess I have a little time left.” She scans the horizon with her 20/10 vision, youthful eyes still in place. Very little smoke had gotten into them yet. She sees no one approaching her from the distance, across the pool, beside the school. “Always come down Twig Lane so I can see you,” she requested to all the men with desires. And she was still quite fetching. Business was good. No need to poach Daisy’s clientele if she didn’t have a good reason.
“You said Greene’s is the name of the motel, but the sign said Lucky.”
“They haven’t gotten around to changing it. Anything else?” She was becoming impatient. Who was this stranger in town with such curiosity? Said she was a relative of mine, a cousin. Just distant enough to not easily be identified. Who doesn’t have some kind of cousin named Wanda?
“It’s just…”
“Hold on hold on,” Octavia says, formerly smoking hand held out like a stop sign. “Someone’s coming — looks like a Mouse. No, make that, looks like Mouse. But you didn’t hear it from me. Now…skedaddle youngster… Wanda… *whoever* you are.”
“I’m your cousin,” doubled down Marsha disguised as a fictional one named Wanda but who inside was actually Alice Tart, moved back in time to the day of her conception. She’s aiming to change the aimer. She doesn’t want a father who’s a villain of all villains. Better it be Mouse. *Has* to be Mouse.
“And… there’s the other one… not far behind. Get outta here. Git git git!”
Marsha had no choice. *Alice* had no choice. She, through Marsha’s body wearing her clothes, moved away from her mother back through the gates, intent on finding a room to stay in.
WAIT. She turns. She had to see her younger father through the eyes of Marsha. Prefiguring his need for a cane, he points to what excites him in the moment.
Axis walks into the main office, intending to check in his copper red hair with Wilma the day clerk. Now was her chance, she realized.
She could… shove him through the green door over there. Yeah, that’s it.
Or hit him with the green phone (reader’s choice).
00410309
“Wait, wait! I want a ride!” Dr. Mouse didn’t *desire* to walk all the way from Southside to Northside through what he considered tough Midtown, Chinaville and all. Desire streetcar conductor Dennis Martennis spotted the important town figure just in the nick of time. SCREEEECH.
—–
“Drop me off at the Serapis Club, Dennis.”
“Another doctor meeting?” pried Dennis, known for such things. Few joys in being a lifetime streetcar driver in Cass City and knowing a lot of gossip/dirt about the place was one of ’em.
“Finished with the other doctors, Dennis. Just having dinner with myself tonight. Afterwards: me and Victoria and a couple of stiff drinks at the bar.”
“Nice. So you two are , erm, dating? I mean, there’s rumors in town. Just stuff you hear, mind you. Like, aherm, you created her for that purpose.” He slowed down for a rat crossing the rails. Whoops, there’s another one. And another — must be a family. Or a pack. He’ll named them Frank, Dean and Sammy, ha. Kind of dirty but also kind of cute. Kind of like him, he realized. He’s sort of giant rat himself.
During all this, Dr. Mouse kept silent, not wanting to reveal too much. He was indeed tinkering with Victoria for a reason, but what Dennis was thinking wasn’t it. Not really. He looked down at the cerulean blue paint stain still on his Ralph Lauren dress pants, knowing it was almost over.
(to be continued)
00410310
It was still before the Great War II that never was, leaving only the Great War in history books without a needed numeral to accompany it. Axis was not yet in control, and, even if he were, it would not result in war. Only a child (Alice Tart). 1939 would be the year by that time. But right now it was ’36.
They knew her as Clare by now, the Boss’ Girl Friday instead of Biff’s down at Southside. This was Northside or thereabouts, close enough to count. She heard the Desire streetcar pass by below and thought of conductor/driver Dennis Martennis, what he said the other week to her as the rain poured down outside, making it undesirable to walk to work like she usually does. He asked: Are you the One?
“*There*, Madam Mayor,” she said, her physical work probably complete for the day. “Ancient computer’s fixed. All we had to do was change the ribbon.” This made her think of her ribbon dress that she elected not to wear to work today. Instead she chose something simpler, something plain and black and more conservative. Maybe she’ll try the ribbon dress out next week on the public but for now: inconspicuous will do. Until they find out about the coins.
The mayor was right beside her, just having finished rechecking office files for the missing 3-n-1 folder, another thing the Boss had in common with private dick Biff across town. No luck.
“Clare,” she said, turning. “That grey haired man who came to see me last week… Dextre or something.”
“Keith B., right,” Clare corrected, knowing where the confusion came from. He *does* look like a serial killer, albeit with a code. ‘Nother one.
“Were you here when he left? Weren’t you on some kind of break at the time?”
“Let’s see,” she thought out loud. “I let him in, you guys talked for a while. It was about 12 and he was still in there with you. Yes, I took my lunch break at the time. I didn’t see him leave.”
“And I didn’t follow him out. Got sleepy all of a sudden — can’t even remember the next hour or so. We had coffee,” she said, thinking back. “And donuts… he brought donuts.”
“*I* brought donuts,” corrected Clare again. “Per your suggestion. Said you had a lot of figuring out to do and needed caffeine *and* sugar, a double boost of the grey matter… as you put it.”
“Okay, *you* brought the donuts in.” She stopped, trying to picture the scene. The information was stupendous, almost knocked her off her feet without the needed drugs. Moby Prick is alive and well out there somewhere off the coast of Flores. And pyramids are out there as well! Atlantis; Abyss. She had seen into the depths of her soul and it wasn’t pretty. Dr. Mouse and his Serapis Club may have a point after all.
(to be continued)
Black Ice
Just not rezzing in. Instead: a white spirit. Probable reality not realized. Dr. White.
“Not showing up tonight, not rabbit, not rab-bat,” spoke High Atlantis Priestess to Mouse over in the corner of the room, still not transfigured to a younger form of himself despite his best efforts. “We’ll just have to do without him.”
And I have a name for her. Bermuda. A triangle of utter non-coloredness, no TILE hues involved. Let’s make this shit *not* happen, I suppose.
“Fine,” he finally said in response. “I’ll begin.” And he followed with mundane statements aplenty, making her yawn and, I believe, fall asleep. She dreamed about past glories.
(to be continued)
00410405
By Christmas morning he had collected 3 cans in total. The second that soon followed the first through the portal, some kind of product called Mount and Dwu (?), turned out to be pretty nondescript in his estimation outside the queer name — just a “can” if you will. The 3rd, arriving only a handful of minutes ago after a wait of hours, was more interesting; it was now front and center before his eyes. A soda filled aluminum cylinder labelled 12939 — no ambiguity here that the number was the most important element — with a descriptive line underneath: “on reflection, a better cola”. He’s stared and stared but can find no rhyme nor reason to it. If only he’d played an early, open world game from the 1980s called Mercenary he might have the opening he needs by popping the figurative tab off the top.
Newt’s literal creator Dr. Mouse showed up later in the morning with a present of Old Spice Showering Gel. He’d played the open world game Mercenary in the 80s and a bit in the 90s even. While in Spain in the 2010s he’d also seen a commercial playing on the reversing trick.
“*But*,” he said to his “son” Newt after revealing it, “the number translated through this can is not actually 12939.”
“It isn’t?” Newt said, staring at the central one with renewed interest. The overall meaning was starting to dawn on him as well.
“No. It’s 1939. The same year as…”
“… the year coming up,” Newt finished for him, suddenly wondering what he was going to do with his tree after New Year’s.
Mouse pointed his cane at the can. “This is (your predecessor) Pepi. My guess is that he’s indicating, from the Great Beyond let’s say, he wants to come back… in the best way he *can* currently, I’m assuming. Pepi ‘Can’ Kolya.” Here he points to the 3rd again, then the 2nd then the 1st. The order of the words in the person-in-question’s full name.
Newt reflexively stares out the window toward the crossroads he’d envisioned Pepi standing in the middle of just the other day. And then Mouse was about in the same spot last Tuesday’s Wednesday when he was flagging down that streetcar named Desire which goes all over town, uptown downtown sidetown (etc.). Could he have known even then?
Or was it merely another of one of those what you call coincidences? Couldn’t be, he thought on the spot. Couldn’t be.
On cue, they both hear the streetcar rumbling into downtown from midtown. “Gotta run and catch a ride, Newt. You know how scared I am of midtown, Chinaville and all. Merry Christmas and thanks for the slippers!” And with that Mouse was gone, moving quickly out of the apartment building Newt lived in beside Shenanigans and onto the street once more.
“Wait, wait, I want a ride!” he called.
Valentine Too
“Hold on to your heads, ladies and gentlemen. Here we go!” SCREEEECH.
—–
Well. It *kind of* worked.
—–
“We’re Saints fans,” introduced Dennis Martennis for his gang to hotel receptionist Donald Arm. “Badly in need of a couple of rooms after a long day’s journey.”
“Tourists, eh?” said Donald, noting the helmet. “Well, we get you types in here occasionally.” He glanced out the window at the “parked” streetcar. “Wrong town I gather.”
“Yup.”
00410704
He gives her time to look around the office, check out the maps, the painting, the works on the bookshelf, even the files in the filing cabinets if she wishes. What does he care? Sleep deprivation again we’ll assume; might as well burn the place down, he thinks while yawning for the 1000th time tonight. He finally gathers the energy to enlarge himself again — *just* enough to do the job (no overshot or undershot this time!). He waits for her to walk out, snooping apparently done.
“Find what you need, my fine lady?” he calls over, shocking her of course. It’s here he notices the face scars as she stares over with wide eyes. Too bad: otherwise quite pretty.
“Are you him?” she decided to stand her ground, defend her actions. “Are you Petty?”
“Some call me that. Some only know me as Chef. Or Inspector, depending on the time of day. Or depending on whether it is day or night I should say. You’re here at night. I assume you’re looking for Petty the Inspector, then.”
She approached him, scars looming larger. What *happened* to her?
“I also go by different names,” she said in turn. “Some call me Beautiful, some Plain. Some call me June, some Jane. Right now I’m June — night-time for me as well, I suppose. But the scars are there to remind me of Jane.”
“Yess,” he said. “Wondering about that. How did–”
“I just told you,” she cut him short. “I’m a 2n1, just like you. We have that in common but we have so much more. St. Lemon of Troy — the painting within. Do you know about Dennis?”
“Dennis,” he said thoughtfully. “Let me think…” Let me think of a *lie*, he says to himself. He *knew* he shouldn’t have hung that painting on top of everything else. His brain’s starting to operate better, perhaps because of its change back the correct size.
“St. Dennis, yes. The one that lost his head in the transition. The next time, the next go, he wore a helmet, golden in color. But it still didn’t protect him from the eventual consequence. So he had to be *deflected*.”
She know about that as well, he thinks. “Well,” he says to this. “Saints Hotel is a pretty nice place to stay, nice compensation. And anyway, I’ve heard that he and his *gang* have finally made their way down to the big city, the 8th wonder of the world some call it.”
“Where’s the auto in all this?”
“Auto?” He still couldn’t help play dumb within the flow of truthful revelations. Force of habit.
“You know which auto. You have pins of Yvonne, Dorenna and, yes, Anton inside on the Nautilus City map. Anton from Anson. I understand you were there when it first appeared, or when — I suppose — it first decided to reveal itself.”
“The Bug, yes.” Enough talk for now, he decided. He remembers that he’d locked the filing cabinets before enlarging himself tonight. At least he had the sense to do that. But perhaps it was time to look inside.
NOVEL 42
frog passes frog along historic Route 66 in MO
“Interesting tattoo you have on your back there, Ms….”
“Krakow,” she finished for the doctor. “Marsha ‘Pink’ Krakow.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard. Very colorful.” The records said Shelley. Shelley Johnston Struthers. This was the correct body.
—–
“*There* it is. Up on the hill. At least we know we’re in the right Wayensville this time. Um, Waynesville I meant there.”
“Of course,” said the driver to the passenger who was also his lover. Bullfrog and Aqua Dude, on their way to a meeting with The Mann about the future of superheroes in general. And their whole DC University along with them.
00420204 (evening run)
She’s trying so hard to fight the abstracting, thinks husband Sandman from the porch of their cozy Glynwood Stilthouse in the heart of the Omega continent. She’s run around all 9 lakes and all their 7 unique linden plants 3 times now in the correct order, just as the doctor ordered. It doesn’t mean anything, he spoke secretly to the husband. Just something to keep her mind occupied and off her troubles. Placebo, he admitted, although the exercise and fresh air will indeed do her good.
“So the enneagram is worthless in and of itself,” Sandman tried to clarify when this was illuminated to him. “The shocks don’t count, or are nonexistent.”
“Correct,” said the doctor back, who may be Mouse but perhaps not. But it’s looking more like that’s so.
(to be continued)
NOVEL 48
00480113
“I guess it was inevitable you show up.” He pauses at he looks over at his oft-times wife, now a ratcatcher complete with backpack cage with a couple of rats in it already. But not of the right kind.
“Yeah, I was attracted by the literal version but disappointed. No one home.”
Earlier: *Knock knock knock.* “Hello?! Anybody here?!”
“Soo now… an actual hole,” said Newt. Both stared over at it, Ratcatcher (aka Wheeler) with her useless rat catching devices for the job and Newt with his useless fishing rod apparently, just slung over his shoulder for looks by the look of it.
—–
She waved goodbye to him but he was already gone. Too laggy for him to stay logged on too while she entered. But not the fault of the sim. Probably my modem or something. Router. Anyway… inside.
—–
Eventually she found CENTER.
And directly above — still at center, mind you — a pawn shop named Escape with a browser named not Rat but Mouse. Doctor too.
That might be it, she thinks while peering up into it.
“How much for this red dress here?” Mouse asks Wanda the shop attendant, pointing toward the object with his cane to indicate desire per usual.
In synchronicity, she then spots a blood stained hand poking out from a split bag of trash.
(to be continued)
00480114
Ironically, the only bags she had to offer Mouse for totting his newly bought red dress home were trash too. She unceremoniously dumps the purchased dress inside, draws the likewise red strings, and hands the filled black plastic container over to him from across the counter. Although he struggles with carrying both the bag and the cane at once while walking out, she doesn’t offer to help, doesn’t even hold the front door open for him.
He trudgingly makes his way toward the now vacant Rat Hole establishment from the shop, wondering if his not wife but girlfriend — maybe — will enjoy the gift. Birthday, he ponders. 666 or thereabouts. Hard to forget. Demon inside her too to help him remember. Might as well be stamped onto her forehead.
Wheeler again of course.
Where is the old fool? she thinks after glancing again at her watch still on her arm.
Must rest now, he determined, catching his breath. Hope she f-ing likes it!
00480115 (another one of those Hana Leis)
“Yes, how are you doing Father?” One of them, she thinks privately, because there remains great doubt that this Dr. Mouse, originally Dr. *of* Mouse, could actually be the biological one. *Psychological*: yes. But Axis and the confirmed DNA tests — 2 of ’em — still looms large in the background. Greg Ogden without his copper toned hair, she also knows now. So strange.
Mouse answers. “Come *home*?” she utters about his request as she watches Chet take another dive under the waves. “But I like it *so much* here. No drama, no tension. Just surf and sun and fun.” Immediate reaction, but Alice also knew he was paying for all this. He could cut off the funds. She had to comply with his wishes. “2 more weeks?” she tried to bargain. Mouse answers. “2 *days*?”
“Your mother needs you,” Mouse explained as best he could now. She wasn’t dying or anything like that; she was just in trouble, he said. Trouble but not sick or dying or anything like that. What could it be? she ponders after the click that ended the call. 2 days. She’d have to say goodbye to the dogs. And rock’n surfer boy Chet out there. He couldn’t come along, she knew — started band practice in Caledonia day after tomorrow with the Andersons, bassist Karl and then little Sherwood on drums. Good with the hands Sherwood was on this rock music. And Karl at least looked good on Paper (their “hit” single). Run with Scissors they were called. And I believe we have former runner-of-a-diner Biff Carter as band manager to end that 4 part string. We’ll see if they actually show up again in this here blog and attached photo-novels or are a kind of hard to get, one-off joke like so many others of its type.
(to be continued)
00480116 (fallen)
He stared at the can, thinking about all the repercussions of what happened in UT recently. Some say he invented the object, but that was Can the character — different. And besides, [Pepi “Can” Kolya] had turned into Newt now, hadn’t he?(he thinks) Better. Able to smile and perhaps even laugh. A new centerpiece figure for the blog and attached photo-novels as a whole on the male side of things. Female? Well, still obviously dominated or ruled by Wheeler. Which reminds him… (STAND.)
He’ll return to this Arang 32/225/94 seat for more thinking and pondering later. But for now he’s got to get to another 32/225 spot in a catty-corner sim to wait on daughter Alice, fresh from a land removed from such worries. Her lucky streak has just ended, though, he thinks. Wheeler was not *in* trouble but just trouble period. A little white lie sold to Alice so that she’ll come home and help him deal with her. She doesn’t like his red dress he got from the pawn shop, she doesn’t like the cans of bargain soda he brings home from the grocery store, she doesn’t like this that or the other thing. Difficult (!). Alice was always better than him with handling her moods. And now she’s coming back. Yes, little white lie justified. She’ll get over it soon enough.
“I guess I’ll just stand right in the middle of the road here so she can’t miss me,” he mutters when teleporting in to the second 32/225 of the day. “Just don’t hit me!”
Sunklands 