“And so you see you couldn’t help your father because there’s nothing wrong with me and everything wrong with him. So you were right to run him over in your car while the old fool stood helplessly exposed in the middle of Route 9 over there. Like you hit him with a bullet in the past in, what was it, 1785?”
“More like the late 1800s I think,” said Alice Tart to her mother Wheeler Wilson, finally together for that talk about the recently deceased Mouse. Overdue, as are a lot of things in life. Better attend to the important stuff before death.
“I– met the town leader I think,” she then revealed, “this Rodentia of the continent of Jeogeot of the metaverse of Our Second Lyfe,” she expanded needlessly. Like assigning a particular color to white.
“Oh. The male?”
“Yeah, the embodiment thereof.”
“What was he like?” said the curiously non-surprised Wheeler at this turn. She knew that behind the female there’s always a male, often in the same body whether virtual or real, or figuratively if not literally as was the case here.
“What you would suspect, I suppose. A big rat, but with brown markings on top of the white. Add in a bit of color.”
“Chocolate to vanilla,” said Wheeler, translating hues into flavors. “What did you say to… this rat?”
“I confessed *everything*. He seemed very pleased. I supposed I owed him that, using his town, his *female* half, for a good number of posts already. He kind of trapped me in retrospect, drew me to the assembly hall that was his sanctuary. So I just explained everything.”
“Pleased, you say?” Wheeler takes another puff of her cigarette. She’d already offered one to daughter Alice who refused. I wonder if she– no, can’t be. Can it?
“Yeah, pleased. He’s probably still over there if you want to pay him a visit. Checking… checking… yeah, green dot still there. He’s waiting for us… when the time comes.”
“When the time comes,” echoes Wheeler then inhales more smoke. TBC
Sunklands 