“Who are you?”
Tessa suddenly understood. “Um. This is not good, Grandpa.”
“Don’t get up sir.”
Too late.
Tag Archives: Tessa^^+
slenderman
“How long has it been, Tessa?” an older Grandpa wheezed. He was the more valuable platinum through and through now.”
“4 years. You’re old, Grandpa. You need to rest here a while.”
“Is my tie on straight? Can you tell my teeth from my face still?”
“You look great,” his grand niece lied.
“Send her in, then. We must get the pricing over with.”
Liana the owner enters her heavily windowed coffee shop and immediately begins hanging tapestry. This was not who they were expecting. Where’s Sally?
Looks like Grandpa will live to see another day.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0604, New Island, The Waste+
N. Yd
“Tilers, Tessa. It marks this place as safe after all, despite the surface malignancy.
“But we can’t take a chance anyway this time — fog rolling in; darkness too. We better ascent that tall ladder over there to higher ground for the night.”
“I’m *more* than ready to get out of these lowlands,” Tessa offered, staring back at the pirate ship from whence they came. Shark references everywhere. And not in a good and beneficial way. *Those* signs are there too, and in much more profusion. Tessa thinks that her Grandpa Gold puts way too much stock in these Tilers he goes on about at times. Left their signets here, dropped their talismans there. Sanctified grounds, he states and walks forward. Nothing malicious has happened… *yet*. And this is just the kind of place to break the lucky streak.
“We’ll come back in the morning if possible,” he says. “If Tilers were here then there is surely more to look at and study.”
“Whatever.”
—–
The next morning, on the same spot:
“Oh the weather is *much* better now,” Tessa voiced sarcastically. “I can barely see 20 feet in front of me.”
“The tile here indicates safety, however,” her grandpa reinforced. “Safe to split up, then. You examine the buildings that way,” — Grandpa Gold points behind Tessa — “and I’ll work my way around from this end — counterclockwise — until we meet up somewhere in the middle. Is that okay?”
“If you say it’s safe, then I suppose it’s safe,” says Tessa, doubting the words coming out of her mouth but also putting her trust in who she assumes is a wiser and older being.
“Saves time that way,” he adds without verification from the child. “See you in the middle.” He turns away from her and walks toward the first structure in his direction. Tessa begins on her side.
—–
“Freak show eh?” Tessa speaks aloud at one of the westernmost structures of the compound, thinking back to something called the Elephant Man, she believes. Nothing to make fun of! But is this an octopus who has the features of a man or visa versa? Anyway — not alive. Taking a picture and moving on…
—–
“Nothing in there either.”
“Oh, there you are already, Grandpa. We meet in the middle, I suppose. Anything on your side?”
“A church,” he states.
“Tilers?”
“I think so. The right colors. They were indeed here. But first: let’s look in the last house of all. Together.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0518, New Island, The Waste+
futures
He looks down at the Orion’s Vale sinkhole and dreams of a Corsica continent that could have been.
But perhaps the dream contains pathways of possibilities yet.
Back to future Yd Bay:
Yes it got worse for Grandpa Gold and Tessa Fish. Especially Tessa. North Yd: a post-apocalyptic town not to be played around with.
“No. Uh-uh.”
Grandpa Gold knew that if they didn’t get out of there by sunset there may be no escape from the darkness.
“Grandpa. Get *down* from there. No playing around!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0517, Corsica, New Island, The Waste+
“Let’s go visit that small town over there.”
“What do you think Baker Bloch?”
“It’s really interesting. Really is. Soooo… Bart Smipson is invisible now? Is, er, that the alchemical experiment gone wrong?”
Baker Blinker put her hands behind her head. “I suppose. We don’t really have to explain it. Things are implied.”
“I suppose,” echoed the male Baker, irking the female Baker with the implied language. “We can write it over,” he then suggests. She was thinking: I’m *definitely* not writing that over. Took me 4 hours as is! “Nah, it’s fine Baker Blinker. It really is,” he says to reassure, looking at her pained reaction to this. “I get it. Bart Smipson is invisible on New Island and that’s why his sister Lisa couldn’t find him. He’s probably a fugitive of the law, and that’s why these Silver and Gold people decided they had the leeway to experiment on him — not registered, perhaps.”
“Baker Bloch, I’m not sure if you get the basic gist. Bart was suppose to be a companion for Tessa, to get her mind off the killer sharks, ahem, whales and such. Like earlier in these Collagesity novels, Toyna Two Egg created robot Arale from a kid her parents gave her when she was just a kit.”
“Kit… kid. I recall. But why invisible?”
“That’s the ‘wrong’ part about it.”
Baker Bloch rolled up the paper in the typewriter a little more. “And this part below the line…” He turned to Baker Blinker in her hanging chair. “Ready to read yet?” he queried.
She blew out air. “Go ahead,” she relented, steeling herself for more veiled criticism.
—–
Future times. July 11, 2022. Yd Bay again. Much much more has washed ashore.
Through the peculiar odor from what was cooking (stench, to her), East Bennington refuge Tessa Fish issued a declaration. “I don’t like this place, Grandpa Gold. I don’t like this place *one bite*.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0516, Heterocera, New Island, The Waste+
alchemy
“We should tell Tessa the truth, Monsieur Gold,” she spoke after finishing her meal.
“You mean that we are actually brother and sister as well as husband and wife, Madame Silver?”
“No — although that may be handy later on.”
“That the killer sharks she is so fond of are actually whales?” he guessed again.
“No, not quite yet on that one either. She’s having so much fun with them, and she detests whales as you know. Considers them noisy.”
“They should have never bought her that Engelbert Humpbackdinck record at such a tender age.”
“Right.” She picked up her sterling silver fork nervously and then set it down again. “No, I think it’s time to talk to her about the experiment, Monsieur.”
“The one that went right, or the one that went wrong, Madame?” he asked.
“The latter.”
“Ahhh,” he uttered, thinking back…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0515, New Island
no narrow escape
Dr. I.C. Yourinsides knew that this narrow boat would never make it off the wide New Island beach. The magnetic attraction of the place had snared another one.
For the moment, Tessa laid the blame somewhere else. “Oh no, Grandpa. What have you gone and done *now*?”
Sh-t, he thinks from the back. Can’t steer this thing worth a lick!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0115, New Island
Sunklands 