They played footsies with each other in the parked UFO before Mythos leaned in for a kiss. Suddenly Horace was back. Laughing. “Damn Horace!” he said aloud and then continued in his mind, reverting to the old way of communication. “You almost let me go through with it!”
The Mind Games were over. Back to Meat City. But first…
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0040, 0312, Heterocera
He was staring at me holding his tiny gun armed with a bad attitude but I wasn’t scared. I was a much bigger green alien after all, half Roswell half Mythos.
“Along with being a triangle,” I could hear the little, wretched creature say in my head, “I am a circle that is also a square. A 3-n-1.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of those,” I said back with my own mind. “About 5 minutes ago when you mentioned it last.” We often played these mind games with each other, both of us being stuck out in the sticks on the far north side of Heterocera, as far up as you can get if you don’t count Fillip and Brindle (which we don’t — more on that story later?). He wasn’t such a bad guy I suppose, except he tends to repeat himself over and over. And the whole tiny gun issue. Those itty bitty bullets can sting a bit. Plus I suppose they could put out an eye if you fired directly into one of them for, say, 5 minutes. About the time it takes to say 3-n-1 twice.
Someone entered the cafe — phew! Out loud talk for a while hopefully.
But when I turned to greet the visitor and saw the square cartoon figure on the shirt I knew it was just Horace again in another guise, trying to make a point. He did that sometimes. Oh well. Better than Fillip and Brindle showing up and bragging about being on top of it all, king of the hills.
I watched in amusement as the two tried to determine how to become one again, the spider web I put up just yesterday getting in the way, ha. Now he’ll have a human doppelganger roaming around in the world for a while until they can figure it out — serves him right.
“Drink?” I said to her, trying to take advantage of the situation. Might as well make a buck off of it.
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0040, 0310, Heterocera
“Superman!” she remembered to correct about the vision from photo-novels past inspired by her writing. “Apeman and Superman on either side. And then Tinsman, like in ‘The Wizard of Oz’.”
“Interesting,” Serenity said to this, having been an L. Frank Baum and Judy Garland fan for years. She liked the ruby slippers.
“And then… can’t quite make out the last. Anyway, the *4th* we’ll call this man. *Imaginary*”, she recalled. “An imaginary man. Not real.”
“Virtual?” Serenity tried to guess.
“No, nothing like that. Something incomplete.” She put her finger to lip and started to think even deeper. I believe she may have even fallen asleep on the spot, perhaps from lack of nutrition. Yes, let’s go with that.
She had a dream where she was the sponge, the little square being from that television show. Bahahaha! she heard coming out of his mouth. He didn’t understand the square before him at all the Tinsman beside it was explaining, even if he was the same. Other shapes would have to be pulled in.
She woke up beside Serenity in the bed. Had she been drugged instead?
“I hope it was as good for you as it was for me. Shelley who?” she attempted to joke once more, and rolled a bit of Marsha’s pumpkin blonde hair around her little finger in a loving gesture that perhaps Brown within would appreciate most of all.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0040, 0307, Bellisaria, Heterocera, Rubi^, Sandfly
“The guy in the pineapple?” she said. “Yeah, I know him. Of him.”
We were back in the trailer of Serenity Lane, a neighbor not far off to the south. Marsha “Pink” Krakow ran out of cereal and was going door to door to see if anyone had a box of something — anything — to lend her this morning, being the addict she was. Serenity was first on the list, since she was the only green dot around. So maybe last on the list too. Marsha found it to be a very successful visit in more ways than one. Before she left with the box Serenity said she could even keep and that she was an addict herself in that department and that she already had one box of that particular brand so have at it, Marsha decided to stay put for a while and talk to the affable avatar of 16 years, old even for this area.
“How’s the 3-n-1 going?” Serenity started the post-cereal procurement conversation after laying down on the bed in what Marsha thought was a bit of a provocative pose. Is Serenity gay? she couldn’t help thinking. *No*, Marsha. Get your head out of the gutter for a change! She’s just a potential *friend*, which you need desperately (she kept thinking).
“Oh, it’s fine. I’ve found a boyfriend or decided on a boyfriend I guess is a better way to put it. Eddie D’Aigle, from even down south of you here. In Soggy Bottom, near the bottom of Big Sandy. I suppose at one time it was even soggy,” she tried to joke.
“Hmm,” she said. “Do you know Fred down there, then? Fred Mercury. Came to the sand and the sea to help his complexion.”
“I… don’t think so.”
“Anyway, you were telling me about the 3-n-1; how it’s going.”
“Great. Like I said, I have Edward–”
“So you’re dealing with the other two within. Who was it — Shelley of course, my cousin, or who *use* to be my cousin.”
“Still is,” Marsha “Pink” Krakow reinforced. “She’s still in there.” Marsha didn’t add that she just “escaped” last night and went on a bit of a wild spree, Brown in tow. “And Brown,” Marsha remembered to add.
“The… gasper, you described her. The 3rd. Gesturer. But not Jester,” Serenity attempted her own weak joke. They were getting along swell, Marsha thought here. A potential friend indeed.
“Right. The 3rd.”
I’m trying to remember when and how Marsha brought up Spongebub and the crop circles. Probably when she revealed what she was writing about to Serenity as they got even closer, but *not* one on top of the other. Yes, let’s go with that.
“So I sat back and looked at what I just wrote — trying to do it in the style of Shelley, you understand.”
“I understand.” Serenity had had her own big bowl of Kellogg’s Woot Loops about a 1/2 hour back, just before Marsha showed up. So she was happy to keep talking. Marsha, however, found her stomach starting to rumble. She didn’t have much longer before she needed to leave. Better be quick about it. Thus the talk about the writing, the core of the mystery, she felt. If Serenity understood this, then she checked off the biggest box in the friend application process.
“Bone to spaceship, obvious reference to 2001. Which made me start thinking about men.”
“Sure it did,” Serenity attempted to quip about the bone part.
“No, 2 men.”
“Even better!”
“*No* (huff!). It was an Apeman and then a Spaceman. I knew this to be true. Past and future combined into something not quite as good as either separately. But that wasn’t all. There were 2 other men on either side. I suppose I would be in the center, watching it all, as on a television show. Do… do you know of Spongebub, the square little fellow who lives under the water with mates Starr and Squid?”
And this is where we came in.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0040, 0306, Bellisaria, Sandfly
This square-ish field in Morgan’s Hill, Wiltshire County, England was the site of a complex *square shaped* crop circle in July 2009.
A deceptively simple star circle formed 2 years prior to this in a neighboring field.
I couldn’t help but associate these 2 Morgan’s Hill circles with the cuddly characters pictured below we’ve already seen once in this here photo-novel, another square and star partnering.
Also, take a look at this article about a 2011 crop circle appearing at the foot of the same hill, 2 years after the square one and 4 years after the star formation.
http://www.cropcirclesandmore.com/thoughts/201103ecc.html
Patrick Star’s home anyone?
https://bakerbloch.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/fh/
—–
“Our next door neighbor Sandy’s gone, Eddie,” spoke Pink to her new beau floating in the pool with her, “although her car is mysteriously still there on the lot. Perhaps she’s planning to pick it up later after she settles elsewhere. I wish her well.”
“Oh well,” says Eddie to this, indifferent to the change.
“Aidema Hill guy is still on the other side, though. Brabin. Or Bravin.”
“Hmm.” And he falls asleep in the midday sun.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0040, 0304, Bellisaria, Crop Circles, Sandfly, United Kingdom, Wiltshire
Her functional neighbor to the west, just over the line in Sandfly, happens to be named Sandy but not for the sim or the attached region. She doesn’t think. We’ll explore that angle sooner than later.
Just to note: there is a village called Sandy FL in Manatee County originally named Stephen. Sandy FL is Sandfly rearranged. Sandy and Stephen sounds like a good name for a *couple* living next door, then. Bonded through history.
Sandy’s is a former fast food restaurant chain taken over by Hardee’s in 1979. Sandy FL is 6 miles below the southeast corner of Hardee County in that state, originally highlighted by towns called Lily being in both Hardee here and also Laurel County KY. Laurel and Hardy, then, another couple, building up the resonance. How far can we go?
Just beyond the western edge of Laurel County KY is a conjunction of Sandy Gap and Acorn, along with Squib that points to Squid. I think we know now what our immediate neighbor to the west looks like.
Now about Stephen…
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0040, 0103, Bellisaria, Sandfly
“I’ve been betrayed? By a *triangle*??”
“I can explain.”
—–
He often thought of that day he found Elvira with a shape. Three corners and the truth, he knew after that. So far did he run to square and the extra corner that he didn’t have time to stop. Until today. Decision. The portal would be open again to New Mexico: 7:15 this morning. He could take his bike and just ride ride ride, never looking back. Stupid second world, he thought and almost spat on the ground, at least imagined it. The powers that be had a plan. He would blend in with a pack of choppers heading south from Los Lunas, become part of the pack itself. “Do whatever you have to to accomplish this important important mission,” spoke his most immediate boss. And so he found Nikki at Silver City when the rowdies that had been hounding him since almost the beginning finally and completely dropped away (siren calls just here there and there), rode alongside her until the Shakespearean end. He didn’t plan to fall in love on the other side but love happens, as they say. Yeah, he also thought of the triangle as he made his plans for the future with her, used that negative energy to propel himself away away away from Burro Alley and the possibility of return.
He sat here like a lifeguard on that fated day, actually imagining blonde Nikki from the future before (and below) him. Across the namesake cove, not quite in the corner but getting there: the 4th, the future — without Elvira, Our Second Lyfe, his triangle of bratty kids, pheh. “Elvira can take care of them,” he said aloud, still staring down at the form that had taken shape. “They all take after her anyway; best that like stays with like.” He refused to see his own brattiness, the bully that he’d become in his negative thinking about this that and that. So if Nikki likewise betrayed him… well, it won’t end pretty.
“How pretty,” he said, oblivious to this possibility.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0212, Nautilus, New Mexico, NORTH, Slaashsides
“Whoa there. Slow down Speedy Gonzales. We’ve passed it — there’s Fraggle Rock.”
“*Passed* it?” spoke driving Barry DeBoy, just getting really comfortable with the F-150 after 300 miles on the road. “But…”
“… there was nothing much there, I know. I didn’t even recognize the place. I was here during the glory days. It was the main stop on the highway between Arizona and Texas, or so it was billed. The lights, the activity. Like a teeny tiny Las Vegas it was then. But *this*…”
“I saw a shortcut back there,” said Barry, looking for a place on the I-10 to turn around. “We can get to Lordsburg the back way. Maybe you’ll remember stuff better coming at it from a different angle.” But Hucka Doobie doubted it. And the worst was yet to come.
—–
“Well *great*, Barry *DeBoy*.” You *dunce*, she thought, but of course didn’t say out loud because of his past problems with grades. “We’re totally…”
“… lost,” completed Barry this time. “And, let’s see, we have about 2 hours to get the truck back to the rental agency, since you said this town was so walkable.”
But Hucka Doobie was checking her smart phone just earlier. No rental agencies listed in Lordsburg — she hadn’t really thought about this possibility. Nowhere to turn the truck *in* to. Not round these here parts.
“Hold on, Hucka D. I see some kind of rusty machinery sticking up over there from the brush and desert. Let’s go check it out.”
“30 minutes in the sun *tops*,” warned Hucka Doobie, knowing their water supply was limited. Also: sunscreen. They could shrivel up like a sponge and a starfish in no time, with no spacesuit wearing squirrel around to rescue them unlike in the cartoon she was thinking of.
—–
“I know this place, this wagon. We’re going to be all right, Barry.” She points to the formerly hidden buildings. “Shakespeare.”
“Awesome!” Barry already wanted to paint soo badly. Or do collages — something.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0037, 0202, New Mexico
“*Say*, Hucka D. It’s your car again. You know, the one you got from the Mountain in the Air.”
He needs to stop trying. Hucka D. is not coming back. Instead:
“Heater Presents”
“All the hard, impermeable rocks are tucked safely inside, Jackie. I think we’re ready to roll.”
“I’ll get the butter.”
“Funny. I’ll drive while you sober up.” Burt edged around her; entered the cab.
“I’m not drunk.”
“Power I’m referring to,” he said, rolling down the power window in preparation. “Get in.” He opened the door on the other side; rolled down its window too. Burt figured they needed the fresh air after what they’d been through.
—–
The road turned from pavement to dirt, then back to pavement and then finally to rock. “It was rough, Burt,” she said, bouncing along, voicing her confession, knowing the end was looming. “All the dust and the visions.”
“I know. I have a wife, daughter and dog. I’m more rooted than you. I only saw dust,” *bounce*. A hard one there. Took out a tire.
“Sawdust, good.”
“Yeah. 2 comedians on their way to the gas ovens to dispose of the evidence.”
“They’ll never miss us.”
The heavily illuminated crematorium revealed itself around a last, dark, rocky, really bumpy turn in the road. Heaven for some. Heavenly illuminated. They had to stop for a bit and admire it; the flaming entrance like a door to Hell. It *was* Hell. The place was both — 2 places at once. Burt used the pause to check the tires. 3 flats. Perfect. Just enough air left to make it to the end.
They knew the rocks wouldn’t survive the intense heat. They donned their inflammable suits, but it was only for show: the bodies would be consumed along with the stones.
Burt climbed back in; gave the gas a go, opened the passenger door (your choice).
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0036, 0408, collages 2d, Iowa, Maebaleia/Satori
“Vast swaths of abandoned land in the middle of continents, Hucka D. I’m not sure the study of Peakology is even valid any longer.”
“Better stick with Nautilus,” said the Hucka D. who was not Hucka D. if still yellow. Square. “Bahahahahaha.”
—–
One of the people at the bar lit up. One of the people at the bar spoke. “I know I’m not your type.” (long pause). “I realize the kids may be involved.” (long pause) “You’d give that up for me?” (long pause) “Sally doesn’t have to know.” (long pause) “Eliminate the middle man, right.”
She gets up, this Mrs. Ordinary, and moves 10 feet down the bar, which is further than anyone else here could.
“I have a house and home, you see.” (long pause) “I’m a better person than you.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0036, 0405, Corsica, Maebaleia/Satori, Nautilus, Southwest^
Sunklands 