Tag Archives: Mid Hazel^^+++%

February 14, 2024 · 5:26 am

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He invited her to play pool with him and she turned out to be a god damn shark. Never mind that, he said internally. I simply need a sounding board for my evil plans. From Neptune he was, he started the explanation after managing a satisfactory break, sinking his own 10, 14 and 15 but also her 2. The same as the Joker, he said about his hometown, the same as the Penguin also before him. But he was a new type of Waynesvillian. He had managed to trap the most powerful witch of all time named Hazel and incorporate her into himself. Hazel Wood.

“Funny name,” she said, sinking the 6, 4, and 5 in a row before barely missing the 1 with a tricky jump shot over his 11. They were playing 8 ball, his favorite. Until tonight.

“Not so funny if you’re face to face with the ancient hag. Down in the cellar she is. I took away her power, made it my own.” He produced a bit of electricity from his fingertips to demonstrate.

“Not so helpful with pool, it seems,” she then opined, watching him miss hitting the 12 in a corner pocket with those same hands. She surveyed the table and predicted a win in her next turn. She promptly sank the 3, 7, 1 and then 8 to accomplish this. “‘Nother one?” she asked about a follow up game while assuming a victory stance with the pool stick.

“Nah not right now. I want you to come back over to my desk. I want you to see something.”

“Alright. But no *funny* business.”

“Why Miss… Krakow isn’t it? Whatever do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” She’d felt him staring at her while they played.

“No no no, nothing like that. I want to show you the *book*.”

“Oh. Okay I guess.” The mowing became louder outside as Jack edged closer to the house with the John Deere, new shocks in place for a less bumpy ride. Jill’s electric hedge trimmer hummed just beyond the window. Both were hoping to get a glimpse of that book. This is the reason they came back at all after the dual absences.

—–

“Well?” he asked. “What do you think?” The mowing had stopped outside, the trimmer silent along with it.

What *did* she think?

“Biff Carter?” he prompted further. “Does *that* ring a bell?”

“Did you hear that,” whispered Jill excitedly over to Jack. “An actual name from the thing.”

“We have our lead,” he whispered in turn, and they left the scene before being spotted.

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September 5, 2023 · 8:12 am

00390706

They walked away from the peak overlooking Coyote Pass, not holding hands yet but feeling closer than ever because of what they’d just witnessed, the girl for the girl and, likewise, the boy’s death for the observing boy. Deep down, they realized it could have been them. Oh, not by hypnotizing orange trees like with humans Al and Sarah, but something else Mid-Hazel could have concocted especially with mechanoids in mind. And they also came to realized they were suppose to replace these 2, just from the act of being witnesses to the awful spectacle. Tom knew what could come to pass — at the Pass — when he lured them here. “Take a well deserved vacation,” he said to the 2, fresh off their saving of River by turning everything dark and muddled there into light and clear and *clean*. No more chocolate mess. They had worked together there and they would work together in the future to handle a bigger crisis. The pollution of the whole original Bellisseria continent by evil forces of sickening sugary designs much vaster.

“How about the Western Hills of Bellisseria?” he said to them in his office that morning, even providing the pair some scenic landmarks that he said Al had scouted out in his visit there (see first of this here photo-novel). Top of the list: Coyote Canyon Overlook. He *knew*. And so they saw. He didn’t tell them because all lie in a probable reality still, and, anyway, there was nothing they could do about it directly. “Just observe,” they can hear him say as an afterthought in their heads now, after the tragedy was over. Later on, through the pumpkins, they understood something else was involved: alien creatures of a high design indeed.

First up: Butterfingers.

END OF “SUNKLANDS 2023 MORE MIDDLE”!

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September 4, 2023 · 10:22 pm

00390705

“Do you see Mid-Hazel? Is she dancing?”

“No. Can’t see her.”

“How about the pumpkineaters?”

“Still under the orange tree. Like normal. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. Hazel is probably just inside stretching again. You know she has to do it every hour or she simply freezes up, probably dies as a result.”

“Every half-hour, I’ve heard. But no time for disagreements. I see movement!”

“Blue clad Sarah in front of the littler one.”

“This could be—”

“Aww MANNN. I didn’t need to see that. Here, Boyy, you take the binoculars and keep watch while I go throw up.”

“But you have no…” Boyy was going to tell Gurl she has no internal working parts to throw up with but too late. Dry heaves over there, purely an emotional reaction to what happened below. He dares to look. He increases the magnification to the max.

Blood on the ground but no sign of Sarah, with the littler one gone too. Maybe he drug her up in the yard to finish his consumption yeck, Boyy rationalized. And, oh boy, now Al is positioned in front of the bigger pumpkineater. Mid-Hazel is clearly seen behind this time. Gurl comes back and observes naked eyed. “Is Mid-Hazel… *naked*?”

“ZOWIE!!! My turn, Gurl,” and he hands the binoculars to her and rushes to the same place in the bushes.

Al is dead, Sarah is dead. Tom is not going to be happy about the news. Two of his best agents!

(to be continued)

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September 4, 2023 · 8:19 am

yes, it’s bad

She invited them into her trailer for more talk but there was nowhere to sit and they had to just stand and watch her accomplish her stretching exercises, saying she had to do them every half hour on the button (her archaic expression) or else her ancient body would simply start to freeze up. “A bit chained to the trailer, then,” she said. “I was just joking about the being away part before, lassie,” she spoke directly to Sarah. “I just don’t have a dot to be a presence.” Sarah checked the in-world map again in her head. Two green dots together apparently representing her and Al beside her in the sim of Coyote Canyon here. But no third. Mid-Hazel was right. What *were* they dealing with here?

“Beautiful, wasn’t I?” she said, apparently indicating the portrait of a young woman beside her, one of the few objects in the trailer besides the exercise stand and some random decorations. “Toast of Ghosttown, high in the sky it was. But not a skybox. A plateau.” She switched to about the 5th or 6th stretching position. “Almost done,” she excused the necessity. “But I may have to start again if you’re here long enough. Are you staying for dinner?” Mid-Hazel resisted the urge to joke that, “they’re it.” Plenty of time for macabre later on. Henry’s mouth outside was already salivating at the sight of the boy’s featured body. The girl he will leave to Junior (also salivating).

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September 4, 2023 · 7:00 am

no friend

“Do you like him dearest? I gave him my eyes. Well, I gave him eyes *like* mine to be specific. Buttons, see?”

Sarah jumped off the ground, turned toward the muffled voice speaker. She tried not to gasp at the sight. After all, Our Second Lyfe is full of strange avatars. But this one seemed different… realer. Scarier. “I’m… so sorry… miss. We didn’t, we didn’t…”

“See a green dot at the trailer?” Mid-Hazel completed Sarah’s thoughts, the counterpart to Al, the love of his life by now, even though she may have to be put in “storage” again until he can figure out how to get to the wedding part. He’s committed to a future date, though — whenever it can occur. “Thought you were alone at the place? Yeah, I just pop in now and then. Coincidence, we’ll call it I’m here when you’re here. Serendipity. *Synchronicity*. Are you aware of that term my dear? Do you know the meaning?”

“Yes,” she spoke, brushing her hair away from her blue eyes and trying to make herself more presentable to the… whatever it was she was facing. Old Hag? Witch? Maybe a combo of several archetypes… yes, another term she learned in her college psychology classes, Jung touched upon here there and there.

“Then you’ll know this is *fate*, this meeting is.”

Al appeared from behind some bushes. He’d heard voices but he had to finish his tinkle, nature being the harsh bitch she is (he was thinking at the time). Both turned toward him.

“Ahh, and the *man*. Always a man lurking around for a pretty thing like yourself, honey.”

Al walked up, confident that they had a right to be here because of the orange trees and because of what they found beneath them. More orange. Pumpkin orange. “I assume this is your land, um…”

“Hazel,” spoke Mid-Hazel. “The central one. Two on the end,” and she extended both arms and looked at each “hand” that wasn’t there, “but I’m the most important. They say if you’re in the middle that sometimes you’re simply in the way. And so it is.” She collapsed both extremities onto her heart to indicate herself, the center, the void in middle of it all — no hands to mask. Mid-Hazel, Witch Hazel to some, especially if you’re from the West Coast. “We were just talking about eyes, young man; my kind of eyes,” and she indicated the larger pumpkin creature again.

Suddenly Sarah was teleported about 10 yards away and then quickly walked back, thinking she did it to herself somehow. But she didn’t. She was simply standing a bit too close to him and he didn’t like it, this mustachioed fiend of the night.

(to be continued)

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September 4, 2023 · 1:39 am

00390702

“Orange trees,” spouted Al, still under a spell. “Just like the lights before, don’t you think? Come join me, Sarah, in celebrating the sight of our arrival.”

“Um… okay.” And she sat down beside him but not without internal considerations of the consequences of all this. Is she the only one between them who can see this could be a trap? Halloween was still almost 2 months away but for some, the few, the powerful, it has already start at the 1st of September. If Christmas can have the day after Halloween until sometime in January, then All Hallows’ Eve can have at least its 2 months as well before this. So says Hazel.

After about 15 minutes on the rock, he gets up. “Shall we proceed?”

“I… guess so.”

(to be continued)

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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 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 gander. 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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April 27, 2023 · 4:45 pm

00380108

“Heyy. Howdy! Welcome to 108. You must be the Golden Girl I’ve heard about.”

“Well,” I said. “My hair is golden for sure. Some say dirty blonde but I like the metal.”

“Who doesn’t, who doesn’t? Come on in. I have *so* many things to show you, Golden Girl! Mineral. Plant. Animal. You name it!”

“I think you just did.”

“Hee hee, you’re a bright one. A big bright piece of shinyy gold, yeahh.” He waves without speaking again. He’s fading.

—–

“I found this after the dream. He must have been from the Moon.”

“Or the *Moon* of the Moon,” spoke the old hag more wisely than me, per usual. Not a golden girl any longer but, ooh, once upon a time…

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April 2, 2023 · 9:52 am

“Yelloo!”

—–

“Whatcha reading these days, Older Me?”

“Oh, pretty much blank pages, you know. Just me — you — reflected back. Everyman’s Problems.”

“Or Everywoman’s!”

—–

“Oh I’ve had my share of adventures down through the years. Hiking (pause). Biking.”

“Sounds like you plugged along nicely.”

Solemnly: “I did. I had to turn into a man sometimes to get by — female animations only go so far! Right in this very room in the center of the Cactus House it started, in fact. Long long ago. Lemont was with me of course. Your Arthur.”

“*Your* Arthur.”

“No. No dear. That’s not correct. That’s not correct at all.”

—–

“In terms of Nautilus, things have become a *bit* more complicated.”

“I *see* (!).”

—–

“I better get back to work, child. You should leave now.”

(to be continued)

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