Tag Archives: Ratcatcher^^+++++

00480507

Taking note of the too-similar design of this Rodentia sign with that in Sandy Shores, GTAV from the post before, we send Philip over to sit beside it, if only in a dream. He could be waiting for Wheeler (and perhaps Newt?) to emerge from the “rat hole” across the small pond in front of him we saw in section 01. Yes, there she is, waving at him from what was formerly the entrance and is now the exit, certainly glad to see daylight again however gloomy it may be. “I made it back, Newt!” she calls over to the shadowy figure whom she mistook for her oft times hubby, last seen sitting in this very chair 5 sections back.

But as Wheeler continues to wave and call, no answer is returned. She squints and notices the different clothes, the different hair, the different *man*, despite the same chair, the same location highlighted in the same photo-novel, #48 in a series. Something has changed with the passage of time in the passageways of the rat hole maze she’s been lost in. Unable-to-respond Philip wakes up, but is still in the chair, watching Wheeler in the pool now with several strange men. He stands.

Quack goes the duck. *Quack* goes the duck. My computer overheats and Philip wakes up properly. TBC

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0507, Dokken Hollow, Jeogeot

00480114

Ironically, the only bags she had to offer Mouse for totting his newly bought red dress home were trash too. She unceremoniously dumps the purchased dress inside, draws the likewise red strings, and hands the filled black plastic container over to him from across the counter. Although he struggles with carrying both the bag and the cane at once while walking out, she doesn’t offer to help, doesn’t even hold the front door open for him.

He trudgingly makes his way toward the now vacant Rat Hole establishment from the shop, wondering if his not wife but girlfriend — maybe — will enjoy the gift. Birthday, he ponders. 666 or thereabouts. Hard to forget. Demon inside her too to help him remember. Might as well be stamped onto her forehead.

Wheeler again of course.


Where is the old fool? she thinks after glancing again at her watch still on her arm.

Must rest now, he determined, catching his breath. Hope she f-ing likes it!

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0114, Dokken Hollow, Jeogeot

00480113

“I guess it was inevitable you show up.” He pauses as he looks over at his oft-times wife, now a ratcatcher complete with backpack cage with a couple of rats in it already. But not of the right kind.

“Yeah, I was attracted by the literal version but disappointed. No one home.”


Earlier: *Knock knock knock.* “Hello?! Anybody here?!”

“Soo now… an actual hole,” said Newt. Both stared over at it, Ratcatcher (aka Wheeler) with her useless rat catching devices for the job and Newt with his useless fishing rod apparently, just slung under his shoulder for looks by the look of it.

—–

She waved goodbye to him but he was already gone. Too laggy for him to stay logged on too while she entered. But not the fault of the sim. Probably my modem or something. Router. Anyway… inside.

—–

Eventually she found CENTER.

And directly above — still at center, mind you — a pawn shop named Escape with a browser named not Rat but Mouse. Doctor too.

That might be it, she thinks while panning up and peering into it.

“How much for this red dress here?” Mouse asks Wanda the shop attendant, pointing toward the object with his cane to indicate desire per usual.

In synchronicity, she then spots a blood stained hand poking out from a split bag of trash.

(to be continued)

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flashion show

“Welp, we finally found her. Our Sleeping Beauty. Clockwork eye’s a dead giveaway. Right Ted? Ted?”

“Oh yeah, we can’t find him,” John the Mind Reader remembers about his wastelands partner-in-law, as they call each other sometimes — always there; force of habit to think he’s by his side per usual. “We can’t find Ted,” he reiterates with a sigh. He stares at the teddy bear the Ratcatcher still clutches tightly but doesn’t make 2 1’s out of 2. Lime green has a way of blinding you like that. Witness the truck that pulled into the Last Drop the other day. Final meeting of The Gossipers.

“Well… anyway,” he continues only to himself, “I’m going inside, Ted’s rad peepers helping me out or not. Must work fast; report to Al due tomorrow whatever the circumstances. Here goes (!)”

He spots the red doors leading to the stairs going down…

—–

Not what he expected. Sisters’ act! Of sorts.

And there’s Ted across from me, he thought. Finally! “Hi Ted!”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0315, Heterocera, Lapara^, The Waste^^

couched terms

“Hello, Tom? I’ve arrived. And there’s a sprite already here, just like you said there would be.”

(reply)

“Hold on.” He removes the phone from his ear, looks over. “Honey, what’s your name?”

“Morgan,” she said in an ordinary enough voice for a part plant person. He raises the phone again.

“Morgan, she said.”

(reply)

“Wrong place??”

—–

“And that’s what brought me here, to the tree, to the *mutants*,” he said to John the Mind Reader still sitting opposite him in the present, drinking his coffee, still enjoying the beans. “Spill some more,” he requested, leaning back, carefully sipping at this tilted angle. Sometimes just the mention of the word triggers the event, he knew. The others finally arrived, the lot of ’em, crammed altogether in a lime green truck with Dude on the side and Chevy Dodge on the back. Joker and Jester, Jethro and Bauer, Doug and Clyde (formerly Tin Tin and Clubby). Paired troublemakers all. Liars to the hilt. They say caffeine makes you so if unchecked by alcohol. And there hasn’t been a (wal)drop of beer wine liquor in this levee type of place since January. And then: Jackson Bloch riding tailgate, the strangest of them all.

But where was Ted? all began to murmur as they took their usual seats in the establishment set up near the lip of the Great Fissure or Fracture, your pick. “Right here,” micronized Ted said unseen in the center of it all, tightly clutched by his new master.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0307, Hana Lei^^, The Waste^^

Junkyd again

“How I got here? It was dark. I couldn’t see the road. No street lights in this place. I ended up in this there tree, one of my tires dangling beneath like an eyeball loosed from a socket. Ghouls below — dancing. Carcass roasting in the middle but it wasn’t an ordinary animal. A *human* animal. They said it was a sparkly pink cowboy, formerly. They talked backwards a lot.”

“Like Doug over there?” John the Mind Reader pointed in the direction of Doug over there.

“No, not like a German (Doug was German: Douglas Hinterbocher the 3rd or 4th, I never can remember). Like a mutant.”

“Fine Young Cannibals?”

“Kind of,” I answered to this. “Anyway, I eventually came to the attention of Thomas, short, at least at one point, for Thomasina I gathered.”

“Yeah, the Big Boss. I know her.”

“Of course you do, John. We all do. Pyramid.”

“Right. Dunes.”

“We all come from there.”

“I recall.” But John the Mind Reader *didn’t* recall that part of their shared herstory, all of ’em. It was a big ol’ blind spot, as he put it, mostly in his mind and not to others and where they couldn’t get to it easily, he figured, being the only Mind Reader in the village, or at least he believed. Not until Brunhilde Sarah Jennifer Lane, another sparkly one in fact. Shared presents. The Answer? Maybe.

“Gorman was one of the ghouls.”

“Oh. *That* explains a lot.”

“Sure does.” He shut up for a while after that, figured he’d revealed enough for now. He could still see the fire, the carcass, the smiles and grins all around, only a few with a full set of teeth, thanks to the rotten dentists around here, mostly old and displaced Tilists. Including Gorman. Knew about the evils of Sprite all along, as it turned out. Grant Hill, PHEH. What was up on that hill anyway? Another mountain?

—–

“When did she first become visible to you. This… *woman*?”

—-

“She said she came from a library.”

“Ahh. More *origin* stories,” said John to this.

(to be continued)

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reemergence of Gully from Gap

“Is Al derived from Alvin? I’m just wondering because we seem to be telling another Straight Story.”

“Dunno,” he says. “Guess so,” he acknowledges. “Tell me more; fill me in.”

“You met the Ratcatcher. You *date* the Ratcatcher. You talk about Beans, maybe Magika and Flip but maybe not.”

“The… wrestlers,” he says to this, picturing an intergalactic tour of 2 brave and beautiful lovers, free from the shackles of men. “We can add that in.”

“Ratcatcher is a reformed wrestler. Ditched Magika along the way. Ratcatcher acquired not one but 2 boys in the flipping back. Magika was jealous.”

“Word.”

“What were their names?” I said. “Grant and Thomas?”

“Of course,” he said, and moved on quickly to: “What about Mike, what about Pat? What about Lemon Free State? Have you figured out how Lemongrab 1 and 2 and 3 figure into this? How about Warm Morning, the crash site, the straight line leading into the site–?”

“Just what I was talking about,” I tried to defend, I tried to keep up. He was losing me. Over the Hills and far away by now. Misty Mountain Hop.

—–

He had to turn his world upside down to do it but he finally got in. She, of course, made it that way on purpose. He was in my control again…

Office of Thomas Boyy — Tom — one of the two as it turned out. Aka Hill, the Lesser. He had to visit her this time, she said, see how *she* lives and acts and presents herself. “See the difference?” she starts in her hovel of an office.

She apologized for not reading Al’s report before their meeting but said she’d been tied up this morning. “Maybe this afternoon,” she offered. Freedom again.

(to be continued)

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00380214

“Is it really you, Mother?” he called from across the court. “Alive and in the flesh again?” Ted, aka Stitches, couldn’t believe his ever-wide peepers.

“Come to Mama,” she said to this, and he flew into her open arms, micronized in a flash. Microcosm. She had a subject after all.

And a new character. Ratcatcher of the Fracture. *Not* the Fissure. She extended the story backwards and forwards to give it solidity. Two caught rats in a backpack cage — *not* pets, even though she’d given them names by now: Billy and Corgan. Story about that too. “Pumpkintwisters.” And, come to think of it, two more subjects I suppose, if she wishes.

Noise from the “cafe”. Two people she’d missed before, making a plan Stitches told her in her mind. She couldn’t make out the conversation herself but she knew the ever-aware, lime green teddy would give details later if she’d just hold her position without being disturbed. Physically, not mentally, because it was too late for the latter. Better add another scar or three and maybe the same with the rats, she thought, looking at what was coming her way. Al and John the Mind Reader (aka Jed aka Incognito we think) were only the first to arrive. Weekly meeting of the Last Drop Gossipers we have here. Including long forgotten Jackson Bloch, no kin to Baker. And apparently Ted numbered among them too. How could she explain the micronization? Was that even a word?

“Don’t worry,” she heard him say, still one through it all. “They can’t see you while I’m with you. Just sit over there in the center and *listen*. Takes two to know.”

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0038, 0214, The Waste^^

Bakers… and Wheeler

I think we have a new candidate for an alchemical experiment going wrong that you originally assigned to Bart Smipson here in photo-novel 09.” They were in the past. Which was also the present.

“Lemongrab, yes. I’ve heard,” the female Baker replies to the male Baker. She reads the blog even if she hadn’t appeared in it for a while. “Sink into Sunklands”. It’s taped to her bathroom mirror so she’ll remember at night. Just before bed. She understands they, the Baker family of avatars and friends, are struggling to establish Lemon Free State in the middle of Nautilus. Thus Lemongrab, who here goes by Mike. And Lemongrab 2 is his now female (?) mate Pat. Both found quickly on the Our Second Lyfe marketplace through a search for complete avatars using keyword “Duke.”

“Does that make you Princess Bubblegum?” He pivots his head, takes her overarching pinkness in. “You always wanted to be a mother, Baker Blinker. You always wanted… *boys*.”

“Not *those* kind of boys,” she shot back.

“Oh sure you do. You were jealous of Wheeler from the beginning.” He knew to let the matter drop after that. They’d been through the transference a 1000 times now, reviewed every aspect. In the early days of such analysis Baker Blinker was trying to assert herself as the queen ruler again, with Baker Bloch by her ever-side as Prime Minister. Like in the UK as opposed to the US, which had just gone to hell. Wheeler, early on again, was kind of like 2016 Trump happening at the same time, the new ruler, the wannabe *dictator* — obvious to them if not a big chunk of the country still surrounding their safe patch of virtual irreality up in the main world. Where Mike and Pat originally come from in Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee respectively. This was all fate.

And she’s still married to original “king” Karoz Blogger — that hadn’t changed, despite all the other stuff that has occurred since they tied the knot in photo-novel 02 and originally started dating in 01. It seems to be one constant of the blog and attached photo-novels. Perhaps the ultimate one. The ability of two to manifest at once and live and interact together as husband and wife. Then: Wheeler.

—–

She ditched the remainder of the crazy blue outfit, made the scars in her face deeper and more off-putting to fit into this world better.

“Last Drop, good,” she said, staring at the the sign of the place on the edge of the Fissure, which some call the Fracture just to be ornery about established protocol. “I have a place to eavesdrop on new gossip.” In particular, she was looking for Jed, who now seems to go by John (the Mind Reader) or perhaps Incognito, obvious enough nod to a disguise, a covering up of an origin rooted in one of those complicated North-South type disputes. And *Stitches.* “Ted,” she mouths his own new name aloud while thinking about all this.

“Yes?”

She twirls in her tracks.

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