“As you can see, young man, my black piece — the bishop I believe, unless it’s the rook — is turning into a white piece. This is how I propose to win the game.”
“Forfeit?” I guessed, knowing the overwhelming odds against him.
“Hardly. Look at your hands.”
“W-what the??”
“Your — move.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0033, 0208, Nautilus, NORTH, Slaashsides
“It was the black nun again,” relayed Fisher Rig about his dream. “Or… black… something else.”
“Lady in mourning?” D’Eddy (Daigle, Eddy) guessed correctly.
“Maybe,” Fisher said back. “Could have been evening.” D’Eddy had to chuckle. Poor, dim Fisher Rig. But he knew he was right.
“She bowed,” Fisher then said. “I was in my prison outfit. I was chained to the couch or bed or whatever I was laying on. I felt… exposed.”
“Go into that more,” requested D’Eddy. They had nothing else to talk about, since both were incarcerated because of the break-in. But that Poop Pool file was gone, much to D’Eddy’s relief. Probably worth it, then. 5 more days and they’re out. Ever-running neighbor Tommy Abbott promised to stop long enough to feed his cat Smiley and his goldfish Mister Mischief.
“She had that cross over her head from my angel.”
“Angle,” D’Eddy corrected again. “Go on.”
“I didn’t see the (backing) Abbot until later.”
Abbot, D’Eddy ponders here. Like my neighbor. “Spell ‘Abbot’,” he requested, and Fisher Rig did… with the two “t”s. Could have been Fisher’s dimwittedness showing up again but maybe not. He was trying to put the pieces of the dream together to make a whole, just like I’m doing with Nautilus in the overall world I live in, real or virtual. Enzor (sim) here represents the latest part of the puzzle, somewhere between Lips or One Pink and Helicon. In fact…
“I’m going in there Fisher. Do you see me?”
Turning, the lady answers instead. Just as I suspected. Helen (in disguise). On her way between the two still. But what is she mourning? Maybe it just means morning after all. Dawn breaks outside. The monkeys behind me, male and female, start to chatter in excitement. Sun is coming, they seem to indicate with their whooping and hollering. Darkness over!
“Darkness overrr,” the voodoo skeleton creature hissed beside me, light coming into his eyes.
They had to talk in code because of the presence of the (righteous) nun to their right, obviously some kind of spy and listening in. “Daigle, Eddy” felt he had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other: Fisher Rig to his left, fresh from helping the beasts with another killing spree. “Beasts must have their feasts,” he says, rationalizing his actions with rhyme. “Besides, I’m not part cat like you,” he might add to D’Eddy here (as he also likes to be called sometimes). “I don’t have protection.”
“You don’t have to *stay*,” D’Eddy could reply here. “I *do*. I’m married to this place,” he might continue.
“Because of the pool?” Fisher Rig would say here if so. “I thought you deleted that file, those (particular) actions. Like Schitt’s Creek, nobody needs to know the proper name. Like, well, your *own* name. Edward.”
“Don’t call me that,” he would certainly command at this point, perhaps pulling a small gun out of his pocket and pointing it for emphasis. “Don’t *ever* call me that.” For Fisher Rig, he preferred D’Eddy, simply because the simple fisherman had trouble grasping the comma centered moniker he chose in the 5th grade, after his cousin had humiliated him in a… well, better save part of the story for later.
(to be continued)
Oh what the heck. It was a game of TILE, then just called Alphabet Soup. Edward traversed the alphabet three times before his cousin finished one. Full alphabets were especially important for Daigles of whatever first name, including Pierre, including Bradbury. The Oracle demanded. And since Edward was *also* named Edward, the humiliation was increased at least 3-fold. Probably more. He had to get rid of it as best he could according to the laws of the land.
In a place run by cats, there were always a lot of naptimes to get the information he needed. Like the actual scoop on the Poop Pool, as it was called locally, at least behind closed doors, often in the middle of the night when a faint whiff of the former smell could be caught by those who’re perceptive. Deputy here had been out since about 8 now, hugging her little froggie toy until the wee hours of the morning. Eddy Daigle, cousin to our Edward Daigle already met in part one and originally sharing the same name, sniffed the air. Faint but perceptible. He hit delete on the sheriff’s computer and the file about it was permanently gone, as if the problem never existed. Much like Edward from his name, revised and revamped to the more colloquial Eddy after 5th grade when he also switched first and last names to hide the connection even more. “Daigle, Eddy” he liked to be called after that, 2 steps or functions away. And he was from Montana, not Louisiana or Maine or, especially, Illinois. Unlike that John L. Brown we’ve yet to come across in the current novel but who played a part in the last one, small but effective, like a rat silently and stealthily tearing away at the insulation in your walls, leaving you eventually laid bare to the elements. John L. Brown was a bad one, and deserved to be behind the bars of this here law enforcement establishment.
Uh oh. Deputy’s rolled over and lost her grip on her little, favorite toy. Sheriff’s snores on the couch over there are getting a little shallower and further apart, REMs decreased. Soon dreaming will be over for the fellows, Eddy knew. But he still couldn’t find the second file he wanted. Best to pack it up, come back tomorrow. Or after, actually, the next town animal banquet when the ferocious gazelles would bring more fresh kill from the beaches and the water. Snorklers this week. Could even be some deep sea divers mixed in next. That would put them even more under for his clandestine night operations; would allow him to get more work done, dig deeper.
“Daigle, Eddy” knew he wasn’t kosher and that saved him many times from being on the wrong side of one of these feasts. 9 times he had been saved in fact, making him part cat himself. Thank you great great grandma on my father’s side! He licked his hand softly as he does instinctively every now and then and shuts the laptop off and heads home.
No one in the cell right now except a member of the Bad Katz Gang, who was turning her back to the illegal nature of his visit. He hoped to change that soon.
“”What’s wrong, honey? (no answer) Oh dear, are you channeling again? (no answer) Is it… the triangles?”
She sat there all glassy eyed for a while like 2 marbles were planted in her head in place of eyes. Then…
—–
“What you cooking today Eddy?!” shouted the runny man, passing by.
“Hot dogs!” he called back. “But made with veggie stew!”
“Cool! Catch you later, then!” Tom shouted, his voice receding in the distance as he headed toward the far corner of the strange, rectangular green pool that centered the apartment complex they both lived in, this Paradise Town as it liked to call itself. The pool begs to differ, because it also has a name, usually unspoken. Tried to be forgotten.
—–
Common denominator: umbrellas.
