Tag Archives: Herbert (Mssr.) Gold^*++++++

June 1, 2024 · 3:12 am

00430116

“Well I’m glad you threw on *some* clothes. A bit of bosom still hanging out there I see. Can’t resist.”

“No,” she said nonchalantly, and purses her lips even more in disdain for the discourse. “Whadda ya want? Tobacco? Because that’s all I have to offer.”

“I *want*… to know why Clarence the Spy was here in the first place. And what the assignment is. You’ve already been a model in Aisle of Palms. To the painter Greg Ogden, remember? Why did Clarence approach you about going back?”

“Because he recognized me, I suppose. Recognized talent, like the first guy.”

“Well tell me about the 1st guy for criminy’s sake.”

“Bald. Old. Reformed stealer of art he told me. Gold I think is the name. Remembered me and the girls called him Old Gold after that, yeah. ‘Is Old Gold gonna pick you up in his Oldsmobile this evening?’ Stuff like that… silly girl banter. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh I *understand*,” replied Fern, feeling slighted about her superior brain power. “First you put on a bathing suit, then some revealing red lingerie, and now this, about as fully dressed as you can get, I suppose. I know your type. You didn’t like being *abstracted*.”

Redd said nothing to this except, “you done?”

“Yeah, I suppose I am.” She knew who “Old Gold” was, of course. She couldn’t talk to the wife about this for discretionary reasons. But maybe Greg would know something.

“One more thing. Do you know where Greg Ogden is now? You know, the painter. We haven’t seen him since he finished your so-called portrait. I’m speaking for all the members of the Baker Bloch family, extended and otherwise.”

Redd looked around then leaned forward, reducing her voice. “Buy me out of my daily requirement of smoke sales and we’ll talk. I’ll be free to leave my post, then. Boss just wants X amount of money per day. You’ll give him that, then I’ll tell you the information you need.”

*Knew* there was something here, thought Fern while she reached into her gray capri pants to retrieve her wallet. Wait… how’d that *pistol* get in there??

She finally wakes up.

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January 22, 2024 · 7:12 am

Beware…

… the man with no eyes…

… for he is death.

—–

“I’ve used the gold coins for what I feel is a good purpose, Mssr. To honor the dead.”

“Good, good. And so now you know who Bulby is.”

Supergal Ruby paused, then: “Davey?”

“The same.” He kept spinning his spinner but there was no yarn involved. Only truth.

His job here done, Herbert Glenn Gold soon returns to the sea from which he came, Special Spinner still in hand. He’d finally caught the Big One or, should I say, it caught him.

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January 5, 2024 · 3:38 am

Humanvillians no more

“So tell me more about this young girl you met. Corvo, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, well you *know* her name. Supergal Ruby. And you know she’s engaged… or reengaged to be more exact,” he tried to reassure his wife. “Her and Greg Ogden had been married before. But…” Herbert Glenn Gold wasn’t sure he wanted to bring up the death of Greg’s interim lover Mr. Babyface in that Korean Channel water funnel. Simply because he wasn’t sure he was really dead.

“But what, dear?” April Mae said in the gap. “Is… is there a problem in paradise?” This was what she sometimes said when she sensed trouble in a relationship. And this one, she felt, threatened hers. She had been quite insecure — and understandably so — since the Merry Goldbusk debacle over in NWES City. And now they’ve returned to the same continent of the indiscretion — probably adds to the paranoia a bit.

“I don’t think so. Anyway, that’s why I invited them both here,” he followed up on earlier conversation. “Greg is happy painting so I provided him with models.”

“Models, hmph. Is that what you call them?” She was usually more tolerant of Herbert’s eye wanderings but her biorhythms were on the downswing today. Perhaps too much tea lately. But Albert makes such a fine pot!

“Now now, April Mae. They’re only cheap mesh statues really. Like all those ones standing outside Baker has lined up for potential use later on.” They were on the wrong side of the house to look at all that mess so April Mae didn’t try. Flesh and mesh, she thought here. Unreal but still tempting, she felt.

“Soo… she was just here to pick up the 2 coins and then leave. And you said she knows what to do with them.”

“She knows. But she just has to remember. There’s 2 directions here,” he says as he cuts another piece of pizza and gobbles it down. “She can pawn off the golden coins for quite a small fortune actually.”

Unwise, April Mae thinks here about his earlier actions. Risky and unwise.

“*Or*,” he continues, “she can use them as *evidence*.”

“Atlantis, right.” She cut her own piece, she accomplished her own gobble. “And what about Bermuda?; you mentioned a Bermuda. From the way you described it it sounded more like a person than a place.”

Thinking of her newest dress with all the parrots, Herbert Glenn Gold decided to deflect here again. “No, it’s a place. A triangle, actually.”

Another funnel, he then realized.

—–

“I’ll take everything you have,” she said shortly after entering the store and the introductory chit chat was over with Hector Big Parrot Bird Guy. “Including these 3. Including *you* if you wish, she thought but didn’t say out loud. There had to be limits to all this silliness.

“Molly, Polly and Folly are *not* for sale,” he returned in a haughty voice more human than bird. “They’re my friends. They keep me company. I can’t be entertained by reading all the time.” He finally looks up from the book about non-parroty things, stares into her eyes. “But the rest are yours. Take them, I don’t care. I’m just an unpaid employee minding the shop while the owner is away. I don’t know when he’ll be back. He’s been gone for days, maybe years even. I don’t care,” Hector reiterates.

“Free?” she said.

“Free.” I can replenish the stock in a blink of an eye. *Those* parrots aren’t real; mere 2d replicas. Only these three here are real. My friends, as I said.”

Molly emitted, “You’re darn tootin,” to this.

Polly squawked loudly as if in agreement.

But, without chatter herself, Folly just looked around from her own perch at everyone involved. She personally had her doubts that *any* of this is real, pet shop and all. And where was Victor Ratt the owner? Rumor has it that he’d been kidnapped by pirates.

Only the unreal parrots in back knew for sure and they weren’t talking either.

(to be continued)

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January 4, 2024 · 11:03 pm

00410415

He paused in his magical spinning to admire the ocean view. Back on Jeogeot, he thought with satisfaction. It seems we just left.

A knock at the door. “Dear,” spoke over interwebs watching April Mae Flowers, the wife of many years, “are you expecting someone?”

Actually, he was. She’d caught up with him, just as he’d planned. He said to his wife: “Yes. It’s an acquaintance from Corvo. She’s cool with the gold. Go ahead and let her in.”

“Albert, if you would,” requested April Mae to their Selenite butler behind her, always at ready by the fireplace with whatever the elderly couple needed, mainly tea but occasionally other tasks. Like now. “Certainly, mum,” he said in that trilling, alien voice of his, laying down the tea tray on the, let’s see, fireplace mantel and proceeding to the door.

“Welcome,” he issued to the stranger outside. “Mssr. Gold said he’s expecting you.”

“Indeed he is,” she said.

“Hi Supergal Ruby!” he called over in the waning light after opening the other door remotely. Time to turn the lights on in this interesting new development.

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December 16, 2023 · 4:50 pm

00410314

Supergal Ruby had given up fishing but mate Greg Ogden hadn’t. He’d been lucky enough at the sport to distract them from the golden coins and other Corvo mysteries, sucked up inside the mundane for a while. “2 sharks, a mantra ray, and a swordfish in one day!” he exclaimed to Ruby over a fish highlighted supper, perch salmon or cod (another reader’s choice). It was only afterwards that Ruby recalled the coins, and the fact that they had missed the last ship out of Corvo until Munday. Oh well. At least *Greg’s* happy, she consoled herself. And it will give her time to talk to Mr. Gold.

But she never saw him again, nor his spinning wheel nor the big ball of yarn down the beach from him he was supposedly working on. Dare I say he was a figment of her imagination? Eventually the coins became that too, we can follow. As the island had planned all along. In the immortal words of famous philosopher and, later, box company worker John Locke: “It’s not an island.”

Supergal’s second album, “Atlantis Forgotten,” was fittingly titled. There were more things to dwell on than lost civilizations now, like growing fame, more immediate and materially tangible. The Portuguese government working through the music industry had a hand in that as well; suggested “safe” words to use in her lyrics to downplay the supernatural, “lost knowledge” aspects found on the first. The oh too commonplace selling of the soul.

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December 11, 2023 · 12:11 pm

00410306

With part of the money she made off her successful debut album “Atlantis Rising”, she decided to take an extended trip to the Azores themselves, starting with Corvo, the smallest and least populated of the 9 island group and known for a huge stone statue of a pointing man on a horse perched atop one of its high ridges, supposedly dismantled and moved to Lisbon by the Portuguese government around the start of the 16th Century and then lost. Or so the legends go.

She tried to get into fishing while there… and failed. She’d settle for fishing out mysteries. She asked around about the equestrian statue, but tales were numerous and often varied wildly from each other. Some say the Portuguese themselves erected the horseman shortly after they discovered the island in the 1400s. They say the supposed inscription on the base of the statue, “Jesus, go ahead”, proves this, although it was originally claimed to be illegible. Some credit the Carthaginians who may have been in the area during the first millennium AD. Some dare to go even further back, before men as we know them began sailing the seas of the world. Pre-men known as Atlanteans. This is what she wanted to mine.

Another popular Corvo legend has it that a stash of coins was found in the cornerstone of a washed out house during the 1700s that predate the Portuguese, including many that were gold. No one on the island seemed to be an expert on this, but several directed her to a pawn shop on the neighboring island of Flores — in the City of Cass that we know pretty well now through these blog novels. But more appears to be there to explore and contemplate. One local even hinted to Supergal Ruby that the pawn shop owner *herself* had two of these gold coins stashed away on the premesis, but he seemed pretty mad to her, furiously producing thread on his oddly placed spinning wheel at Crow Beach in order, he said, to add to a giant ball of yarn she then found located about 100 meters further down the same Corvo beach. Guy who had the curious name of Gold himself, she noted, always paying attention to name synchronicities. We will return to him.


spinner…


… and ball

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September 3, 2023 · 12:53 am

00390616

“Such an interesting light show, Al.”

“I thought you might like this spot. Sarah.” He turns, leans in for a kiss.

In Coyote Canyon in the middle of these Western Hills of the 1st Bellisseria continent, Mid-Hazel prepares to die, as she’s done the past 100 years it seems. But, as visiting Herbert Glenn Gold speculated earlier in the present photo-novel — fast drawing to a close — this time it might be for real. Pre-Abyss Absorption here I come at long last, she might be thinking in the picture below.

She is not alone at her wannabe death bed trailer.

Hand in hand, the couple walks toward Opaque Lake in decreasing darkness.

Wait a minute: *pumpkins*??

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August 19, 2023 · 8:43 am

00390505

“Are we going to go ahead and sacrifice Willy Wonka, this *new* clown?” knife welding Preacher Stefan cried in the church immediately bordering the joker’s property, channeling the anger of Constantynople’s townspeople as a whole. Their buildings, their homes, had been called *junk*! Outrage spread through the village. Thus this meeting in the church they all loved. At least he didn’t pick on *this* particular low lying building, the most sacred in all the I’s land: St. Merry’s. “*I* want to speak,” said Pitch from the front, who was, after all, their default leader, the me closer to me than all the rest, being the same as Baker Bloch in essence. “Go ahead, dear,” urged wife Mary by his side. Always. Preacher Stefan acted fast before the townspeople were persuaded otherwise with a stab and accompanying spurt — right on Pitch’s just washed suit, blood splattered again so soon. Pitch looked down.

“Aww *damn*!”

“*Honey*. Not in *church*.” Laughter all around; bloodlust satisfied. Pitch had no pitch here.

“We’ll work on getting it out later,” she added toward the end, wiping up all they could in the moment.

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August 1, 2023 · 2:44 pm

mayor

He remembers that island, small in size but big in passion. Alysha. How did I measure up so short?

—–

“Thank you for the huge bowl of patriotic soup bowl, Herbert. It does cheer me up, warms my heart. Whatever was left of it after the Abyss Absorption.”

“AA,” said Herbert Glenn Gold to this. He remembers it more by the initials. He only learned the meaning of the initials at age 17, after all the really spooky visions of the event had faded along with his imagination. Spiders, spooks and goblins he dimly recalls through the Age of Newton that had taken control since. Hard to go back to Jasper once it’s done and you go through the secret, basically invisible door. To adulthood — manhood. And I mean that for everyone. Because of the whole Newton angle. The giving of the big bowl of soup was the equivalent of giving a teacher an apple for, hopefully, good favors ahead. A is for Apple after all, and an A++ is a really big one — full of steam, it seems. He had done good, he felt. He deserved what he wished for. Promotion. Alysha back. The works.

“I recall — you like the initials,” said Mid-Hazel, about ready for the big reveal. “Helps to cope with the reality. I wish I had that luxury.”

“I only wish you the best moving forward,” Herbert Glenn Gold said rather naively, rather transparently. Mid-Hazel, in her almost infinite wisdom thanks to, ahem, AA, could see through it pretty clearly, unlike the bottom of an opaque lake. She notes the (anti-)name as a good place to take a rest and maybe a picnic in the afterlife — nice ring to it; easy to remember. Sometimes she desires not to see bottoms. If man (everyone) was meant to view that man would have been born with eyes on his fanny (etc.).

“I’m… dying, Herbert. No no no: no pity.” Herbert fakes a gasp then stifles a yawn. He’d known about this for days, almost centuries he felt. The Big Reveal dragged on and on… and on. This was about the 100th, nay, 1000th time she’d said this to him. And still she keeps on keeping on: doesn’t change much in appearance when he returns. Why does she keep telling me this? he wonders.

But then he takes another ganger. Big, goofy eyes this time. Sewed up mouth. He recalls way way back. Yes, this was an original form. He’d only seen it in pictures. Just after AA, he realized. Maybe the old hag was really dying; not crying wolf again.

Opaque Lake, Mid-Hazel thought, staring at the golden figurines before her. Pre-AA here I come!

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July 19, 2023 · 8:26 am

00390211

“April May June passed so fast April Mae Flowers. Now it’s July…”

“And we’re resurrected, yes,” replied Herbert Glenn Gold’s wife of 47 (?) years. “Waiting for action. ‘Annnnnd…'” she attempts to joke like a director. “Remember what happened last time.”

“Um hmm,” Herbert murmured while nodding, wondering where his pudding is. How could he eat his pudding without his meat, though? Strange thought.

“So much promise over on the Jeogeot continent. So much disappointment. House *deleted* after, what was it, 1 month?”

“At that,” Herbert Gold replied, even a bit more disappointed than April Mae over the affair. Speaking of which; he should bring this up now, before we get too far into the story. “I saw Merry Hill Gouldbusk the other day. Supermarket,” he continued. “She had 2 apples and one banana and then excused herself to the cashier and got one orange and slotted it between the 2 foods before the whole thing was rung up, all the items in that order. She was trying to tell me something. She didn’t seem to recognize me, though. I was shocked.”

“Gold face still in place?” April Mae only asked with a little venom. She was use to such sidetracking. After 48 (48!) years you learn to put up with a lot. And fantasizing about a woman half your age is not at the top of the shit list, not any more.

“Yes. Red hair still too.” Herbert stopped here, thinking back, which April Mae spotted. Still worth a hundred dollars? she wanted to ask but held her tongue. Long time ago now. They had bigger worries now, like how to cope with growing old. They had to stick together on this one. She’d seen Mr. Platinum, she’d seen the future. They could not turn back the clock.

“When did you get so tall, dear?” she diverted. She looked right. “And where is our favorite painting on the wall, the Blue Panther? The one we stole from… oh, I can’t recall, hmph, I can’t recall them all.”

Herbert slouched down and then answered the second. “I believe the farmer boy is bringing it over later.”

“What farmer boy?”

Herbert reconsidered. “No, I think it was repossessed. By the Blue Panther and his, erm, agent. Back at the end of novel 36. They came huffing and puffing up the hill to the house. Hill House we wanted to name it. But not after Merry.”

“Of course not,” April Mae waved the idea off. She tried to remember the repossession.

—–

Later in his study he remembered it was a gardener and not a farmer that his wife had had an affair with.

Later on the john, April Mae remembered that the art was destroyed instead of repossessed.

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