Tag Archives: Kactus/Donald^*=====++!

Ichetucknee

“I really like it here, Eddy. The motel, the view of the Ichelus Volcano over there. Look! It seems to be erupting again.”

This made Edward, her Eddy, think of another eruption earlier. Couldn’t wait. “Hmm,” he said, also looking, also pretty impressed.

“Have you had a chance to crack the book yet, Eddy? I know we’ve been awfully busy,” and she winks here, “but I did go to a lot of trouble to get it for you.”

“Tessa,” he replied, starting to think of his cousin, 1 in a set of 3. The other…

“Yes.”

“I started reading the first chapter,” he said, which was truth, or at least he checked the title of the chapter to make sure it was the right book. ‘Marbles Fall, Marble Falls.’ He could have swore it was the other way around, but probably just a faulty memory. Close enough — it was the same, he determined.

“Newton,” she said, recalling her own reading of the cursed thing. “Physical world, mechanics. *No* dreams. Right there in the first chapter, stating it all plain and simple up front. We *live*… in Newton.”

“But we need Jasper,” he completed her thought. He tried to recall his dreams from last night, after all the frantic activity was over, like a volcano shutting down. Took some time. He remembers the lava turning cool and changing colors from orange to blue. Ichelus in reality, but in the dream it was something different. Itchy? No that wasn’t it.

“Be careful of the marble rolling off. We’ve already lost one.” I was just kidding about the cracking, she wanted to say but didn’t have the chance. Open *gently*.

We? Edward thought on his part. Why did she say that? “Right, I will.”

“Miss Ouri has it.”

“Yes. I recall.”

“We don’t want Miss Ouri to be involved again. Cactus doll.”

“Yes,” he replied. That ravenous, mutant cactus doll. Brought to life by library voodoo. No, we don’t want that (again). Stick with Nauty if you want pincushions. *Under* the library — around it but not inside.

“I would really like to see the volcano today,” Jem requested. “I mean, up close and personal,” she clarified while looking out the window again. “Not like this — from a distance.”

“I understand,” and then another memory locked into place. He was tubing in the lava that wasn’t lava any longer.

(to be continued)

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sideways

The front door to the investigators office had slammed hours ago, it seemed. Tessa had basically given up, when:

“Yes, here it is, Ms. Daigle. Thomas Mantell. Born Franklin Kentucky 06/30/22, died Franklin Kentucky 01/07/48. The famous UFO case of course, hidden amongst these more ordinary court cases and in a darker shade, which is why I overlooked it before. My missing partner.”

Tessa Daigle, divorced from her first husband for 3 years, looked up. “Your missing *what*?”

Psychic-detective Laura Roberts turned. “My missing partner,” she repeated evenly. “Robert Franklin, the beginning, the end, and everything between.” She sat down at the table with the confused Tessa. “*And* I think also *your* missing partner. Black Bart wasn’t it? Donald is never wrong. He predicted the going, he predicted the coming back to Earth in the cursed ship. Black Bart… Black Jack. The plane crashed in Black Jack.”

Tessa knew the case as it turns out. And for a specific reason. “But… you said he died in Franklin. Born in Franklin, died in Franklin. Hence: Franklin through and through it seems.”

“Yes.”

—–

Tessa scratches her head. “Black Bart has risen from the grave, the one just out there, beside the Junk Yard and…”

“And?”

“Auto re-pair, yes.”

“Good.”

“Both are dead now, the junk purveyor and the, um, jalopy mechanic. Done in by Black Bart, whom others know as Arthur Kill.”

“Soon he will acquire a new name, ” spoke the prescient Roberts, jotting down something. “Here — here’s an address he may go to next. Or this person will eventually be involved — probably already has been.”

Tessa looked down at the almost illegible scribble Psychic-detective Roberts handed back to her on the sticky note. She finally made it out. Wheeler… Wilson, yes. Wheeler, Wilson. Who’s that?

—–

“You cannot return here, although we may see each other again. Goodbye.”

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honest?

Where *are* they, Baker Blinker thinks from her position across the stream from the cemetery. Oh well. Guess I can use this opportunity to go to Sugar’s Shack, perhaps meet with others there and gather their stories for future posts. Let’s see, Lucy is gone and Zapppa is gone — *that’s* why he isn’t at the cemetery. He’s already dug up Franklin, he’s already found no body or nobody in the grave. Keep up, Baker Blinker! But there’s others around still. Vanessa and Tatiana or Tiana as she likes to shorten it. But that’s just more ouroboros again. Sugar’s at the center with Donald still (different from the Donald up in Towerboro). Venus, Mistress and Bluebird remain around, I’m sure. Ben and Benny: *yes*. That’s probably who I should be talking to, either or both together as one. Sugar’s Shack? Why not.

But Baker Blinker soon discovered that Sugar’s Shack was no longer at its former location in the center of Big Woods. Just like that, everything has shifted and thought-to-be established characters whisked away back into nothingness. Wheeler and Zapppa chose the right direction tonight, leaving the female Baker in an inferior position again. Dangit, she thinks, standing in the dewy wet grass before the new ruins. *Just* getting use to being the director again. *Wheeler*. She actually spat here, but only sitting Lincoln over there underneath the similarly new windmill acted as witness to this. He promises not to tell.

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256/256 = 0/0.

We had to go through Gold City and Barry and Stinkerfoot to get back to Zapppa and the Big Woods cemetery. He dug up the truth about Franklin. It wasn’t pretty.

There was no body; there was nobody.

—–

“Black Jack,” psychic Donald said in a related scene from Towerboro.

“Black Jack.”

The TV went to snow.

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MOArd

“If you just *become* Greenleaf for a while — shedding your wings when needed — then maybe we can figure out this whole Ebony-Ivory confusion. I recall the salt and pepper shakers at Starbucanneers.”

“I’m going to stop you there, Baker Bloch,” says Wheeler from her opposite side of The Table. “I have to go see how our Miss Ouri is doing.”

“Oh okay,” he complied, knowing how important all that was (as well).

She moves just across the green.

—–

“Dad-dy. We’re still *here.* And there’s not even a town to escape to now. The castle is isolated (!).”

“Shush babydoll,” he whispers, also placing his finger over his lips. “Daddy’s trying to read.” He returns to such. Almost got it now. MOA is…

—–

She’s heard enough for now through the coke machine. Kactus too. MOA… right down the stairs beside her in the basement of this very building. The key to rebuilding the town itself. Files inside, he said. More buildings. Many more.

Locked away until the right time to spring forward again. Maybe next spring, then.

Unless she destroys it first.

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a series of Daffy Duck films

He’d finished reading the paper (finally!). The phone rang. It was so old fashioned he didn’t know how to answer it. “Jem!?” he called. “A little help here, Jem!”

Afterwards, Jem returned to the computer. No progress on the Miss Ouri front yet, with Tessa failing to turn into the appropriate form outside the library according to her call. She forgot to bring the needed cactus doll! What an oversight, pheh. Back to square one almost. They’d have to erase her presence there from everyone’s mind and basically start over. Would take a couple of days, days she didn’t have much of, she knew, sand running out fast in her beautifully figured hourglass of life. If only… NO. She can’t go there. The cartoons were *lurid*… *nasty*. John L. Brown couldn’t save her and she knew it, despite the promises, despite the plotline of the comics.

And yet… she had Dafney, who may have been named after a duck. Ducks were her salvation according to John’s stoopid, lurid *junk*. Yellow, just like her friend. She decided she needs to phone her up, see what she’s up to after the wedding to George. George, ha. So funny. Always misplacing his clothes. Dafney never seemed to catch on that he was doing it on purpose, just biding his time until the end of the war when his uninjured comrades would come home to roost. They took out a knee but at least they were able to grow his finger back. Good ol’ Dr. Diper. Diapers, she then thought, free associating. *That’s* what the guardian needed.

The phone rang in her pocketbook. She pulled out the banana, put it to her mouth. “Hello? (pause) Hello??” She remembered to put the other end to her ear and then heard this:

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0033, 0606, Jeogeot, Towerboro

00330601

There are other things to see hear on this continent of Jeogeot.

“Yes.”

“We will return.”

“But…”

“… first…”

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Thirteenville 02

How could this video be 4:44 by accident?

Local psychic (some say) and kook (most say) Kactus/Donald/Freddie seems to hold the answer.

“Sweep,” he said as “Heathen” (demo) kept playing on the turntable with Ziggy style David Bowie looking on from a poster. And they did. Almost.

Off by one.

After posting the best record in the NBA, Moses Malone predicted on this day in 1983 that the Philadephia 76ers would sweep their way to the championship when he declared “Fo’ Fo’ Fo’” prior to the start of the playoffs.

Of course, the 76ers nearly delivered on his prediction. They posted a 12-1 record en route to defeating the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals to win the championship. The lone loss occurred in the Eastern Conference finals when the Milwaukee Bucks defeated them in Game 5.

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00330508

She came across him studying the one fully in Corrigan and not split between that sim and Pixy (Pixy!). Eddy and his blue ball, she thought. He’s finally found it.

“So Eddy knows you’re here,” he asked after she spoke a while. His Eddy, her Edward.

“Yeah. Met him recently. We’ve been…”

“… traveling. Me too. Stayed in a place over on the Jeogeot continent called Towerboro — believe it was part of now extinct Middletown at one time.”

“Cool.” Of course everyone had heard of Middletown. It was taught in all the schools, young middle old alike. Middletown was legendary, like Atlantis.

“Interesting people,” he continued. “A woman who plays nifty tricks with cards for one,” he says, the memory of that night and her talent with fingers producing a smile on his (one pink) lips. “And then another person, a guy, who was psychic, who was always pointing at something and predicting things that were going to happen. The two knew each other.” He turned to face his 3rd cousin, 1 in a set of 3 and not a 1st cousin twice more removed; I can say this fairly confidently because they were about the same age. “And he went by different names, first Kactus, then Donald, then the last… the last…” He searches his memory for the name that Tessie then provides for him.

“Freddie,” she said. Remarkably, she had had her own encounter with him during a recent trip to Dub’s Jungle (or thereabouts), and from what Edward, her Eddy, described it must have been the same person. Pointing, predicting, like an Oracle. “‘Blackbart’, he said, indicating an empty space in the sea that soon was filled with a flying boat, a sporty one as far away from a sailboat as you could possibly get.”

“‘Blackjack’ for me.” Her Edward became the same as our Edward, identical cousins all around.

“Ever heard of the expression, ‘peeling a lemon’?” she then asked everyone involved.

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00330305

“Dub’s Jungle, eh?” said D’Eddy. But he was looking a different way now and not where neighboring Freddie was pointing, D switched with B. He becomes lost in his thoughts…

“Well guys, I’ve got to go visit my sweetie up in Dairocha. See you soon. *Losers*.”

He hopped back in his Bandit 25R sailboat and was gone.

Simple fishermen Luther and Al, formerly sharing the pier with him, didn’t say goodbye to Blackbart. They just sipped whatever was in their bottle and can respectively, thinking about the Starfish Lake or Sea arm they live on and the differences between above and below. Elbow to hand: White Elvis was all the rage and bottles were still in hand, like with Luther. Bottleball remained more popular than basketball, with its professional leagues not yet desegregated. Elbow to shoulder: Black with White. Shoulder to shoulder, like cans in a 6-pack, ready to be purchased for drink, 6th man included. Let’s see, I think Al has a Sprite, both lemon and lime; green and yellow. And that’s where we need to head next. But first…

“There’s no women left at Dairocha,” opines Luther, then knocks back a long one. “Not free ones anyway, you know what I mean, you know what I’m saying, heh heh?” He elbows Al in the ribs, who takes it good-naturedly and even elbows him back a bit. Must be a different location, Al thinks more logically than his backward fishing partner. Blackbart is hiding something.

Tessa, his Tessie, shows up, breaking his reverie. “Sorry I’m late. Setting up a castle in Lebettu. I guess you’ve heard.”

Eddy takes a breath, resetting himself. “I’ve heard there’s some unsettling stuff about the landscape around it. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay.” She also takes a breath, recalibrates. They become related again, cousin to cousin. Our Eddy; *her* Edward. She takes a seat.

“Just having a daydream about your boyfriend,” he says, looking over at the tree again in the distance. Bud’s. “Talking to some simple fishermen on a pier, one more backwards than the other. In one arm, a fishing pole. Common denominator. But in the other: difference. One was drinking out of a bottle and the other a can. Strange fantasy, eh?”

“It’s the history of the place,” she says. She also thinks of the arm they’re situated more toward the “shoulder” of, Greek village here included with jungle, tame to wild. More oppositions, horizontal instead of vertical in that case.

After ordering a Sprite and a Coke, they talk of Starfish Lake (or Sea) for a while, then: “Oh… I almost forgot to tell you about Manassa.”

“Bull Runs?” Eddy guesses wrongly here. Tessa rolls her eyes to the sky, trying to fit that angle as well in her imagination. Both have wide ones. Yd. Yellow down. She decides it didn’t fit. Not quite yet anyhow.

“No,” she says. “Manassa *singular*. Without the ‘s’ like in the battle place in Virginia I believe.” She knew it was Virginia but didn’t want to seem too show-offy. She also knew details about the differences between Bull Run battles no. 1 and 2 but didn’t say anything about that for the same reason. No need to make Eddy, her Edward, seem lacking in comparison. They must remain even. They must remain as if cans in a 6 pack, 6th man included. Basketball not bottleball, although both involve a lot of cutting.

“Blackbart,” Freddie muttered in front of them, still pointing away from the jungle, though. “Blackbart,” he repeated, voice as even as before; no wavering in conviction. Eddy, her Edward, heard a speedboat in the distance. Blackbart, the *actual* one, had returned from wherever he came.

“Hello boys,” he spoke to Al and Luther from behind this time. “Miss me?” Their backs remain turned to him, as if they weren’t even alive, or were figments of his imagination, another Yd one. Yellow down.

He peels a lemon and is gone, WOOOSH!

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