“Oh, I got woes floaty man. Yes I do.”
“You gonna order anything today, Karl?” asks Rhoda impatiently, his little stick arms protruding from below his oval, blue-green body per usual. He is a true flattie or cutout in both Real Life and Second Life — rather unusual. “‘Cause I got a business to run,” he continues in his slightly nasal voice. “A new business. Old Kent is looking over us all the time from… heaven, yeah. You gotta order something. You can’t just freeload in here. Load’s not free.”
“Rhoda, I’ve already drunk three frigg’n beers and positioned them on the counter over there,” responds Karl in his typical gruff manner and nodding in the appropriate direction.
“N-no you didn’t. They were there.”
“No, I distinctly remember the golden goodness of 3 Krings beers sliding down my throat and into Tummyville. And I paid you.”
“Oh, okay,” Rhoda says matter of factly. Then: “That’ll be 3 dollars.”
“Nah, I ain’t doing that.” Karl waves him off, and then looks over at the picture on the wall to his right. “So what’s with you and that Old Kentucky or Old Kent or whatever — *shark* anyway? It’s like you’re his bitch or something.”
“He looks down on me and tells me things to do and to order,” came the reply. “Listen, there’s something I have to tell you Karl.” He leans in closer. “We’re[ all] dead.”
At this point Karl got the sudden urge to pull out a gun and point it directly at Rhoda’s head. Or his body which is the same as his head. He’s psychically tapping into the violence that regularly occurred at Rhoda’s former bar. It wouldn’t be the last time.
“I don’t understand. I don’t get that,” he said instead.
“Aren’t you going to point that gun at me?” Rhoda was truly perplexed.
“How did you know I wanted to point a gun at you? Is this some kind of strange time loop?”
Karl blinked, and then Rhoda was laying dead on the counter, riddled in gunshot wounds.
“Holy shit what just happened!?”
But he’s okay.
Sunklands 