Corsica(na)
Looks like Pitch Darkly is all ready to move in to his newly relocated house in Bena. Just hasn’t done it yet.
I’m picking up on: Barry. Barry is missing?
Better start in the graveyard. If I can just get over this — chasm.
Easy peasy! Now… who will I turn into tonight originally? Barry?
Ah, let’s just go with Pitch. He begins poking around while the transformation continues from Baker…
—–
*This* is what I’m missing. A coffin! Vampires must have coffins to hide out for the night. And something about native soil. He should study all this more, him being a vampire and all. How does he exist and breath and live? What does he eat and drink? What kind of crowd does he mingle with? Other vampires? Not likely — at this stage. Too naive; would be called out (!).
So much more to learn about vampiring. Is that even a word (for instance)?
It’s not a bad fit. If I only had something to read late at night, to kill the time or just help me get to sleep. Wait — I don’t *need* sleep. Not at night. It’s during the day — yes, I remember. I’m suppose to hunt at night. For food, for blood. This is a daytime hangout. I’ll have to switch all my hours around to get by in this place(!). This Bena. Still — it’s night now. I can still go over to the public library and see what books they have. Okay, if this town is full of vampires, would businesses be open at night instead of the day? Would the public library be open? Maybe, even if not, I could just pass through the door, being a vampire and all.
—-
He smartly decides to ring up Bena lawyer wannabe Rebl to ask how to proceed with the assimilation into the community. Good idea. The first thing she recommended upon hearing Pitch’s explorations so far was: *don’t* use other vampires’ coffins. Get your own!
So he went online to the SL Marketplace and picked up a cheap used one from some dude named Barry.
mothers
“Do you see it out there Pitch? Come here please.” Kate McCoy, moved on from her late husband Jack and the Hilling sim as a whole, waved Baker/Pitch over to see if he could eyeball the unicorn as well. He stopped playing the piano and singing track 3 of the Platinum Prune suite of songs, popular in Bena and the surroundings these days.
“Nothing,” he said after moving to the window to also stare out at the yard. “Trick of the leaves,” he suggested correctly. But Kate knew it was more. Back to business.
—–
“I’ve decided I’m going to play my mother here in Bena. The Mother of Vampires, kind of like the Mother of Dragons but also different. Which wasn’t real either — cats instead,” Kate McCoy tried to explain about her new role.
“Um hum,” Pitch Darkly exclaimed from the couch. “And what of Garfield, um, *Hatfield*? Will he remain, say, in the attic of the house? He’s a big orange (cartoon) cat, after all. Nothing that a village full of vampires would have.”
“I suppose he’ll have to,” opined Kate McCoy, finger to lip in thinking mode. “And yourself? Did Rebl set you up with your own coffin? Have you interacted with anyone in the community proper yet?”
“Just Barry,” Pitch responded about the used coffin salesman he dealt with online, who just so happens to be from Bena and is giving up his own vampire gig here. So Pitch is, in essence, replacing Barry. Interesting.
“Lindens,” Kate then utters, and shakes her head. “Taking away the few good men — vampires — we have. Leaving us with only Lemons.”
Pitch became confused. “But — Lemons are good. Aren’t they?” Kate McCoy just glared at him.
(to be continued?)
mothers 02
Kate McCoy tries to find the unicorn where she saw it in the bushes.
A sudden call from the house in that scary, shrill voice, so familiar. “Katy! Katy Kidd! Come help your mother get out of bed and take her shower!”
Bens
He looked out the window at the red light just in the bay. “Everyone knows your bar here is basically the center of Bena, Ben. Ha! Even your name begins Bena — hadn’t thought of that.”
Ben Wolf’s thought of it. “Nice of you to say.”
“Nice in the day here — with no one around,” returns Barry X. Vampire, the “X” added only this morning after his first beer. He explained to Ben that he’s keeping the Vampire last name, even though he’s giving up vampiring [sic?]. The “X”, then, refers to his *ex* vampire status. But keeping the Vampire last name might be handy if he ran into one of those nasty nests, like he use to be a part of when Bena was plain ol’ ugly Bennington. He turned to Ben at the time. “Remember those days?”
Ben Wolf remembered those days. Still the town starting with his name. Of course he remembers. He ran the show even more back then.
“Where will you go?” asked Ben back in the present, wishing Barry would not cover the tip jar with his arm. Oh well — no one here right now to tip; Barry certainly never does. All the vampires are nighty night during the day. Except for Barry, because he’s an ex and all. As of yesterday. Sold his coffin to some goofy joe named Pitch Darkly. Gotta place just in back of the cemetery now. Ben makes a mental note to walk back there sometime soon and check it out. Close to the Mother Place. Maybe too close.
“Thought you might help me with that, Ben,” answers Barry to Ben’s present question. “I like Corsica. I want to stay with the peaks and all. Like, you know, Mother’s Place is perched upon. He pivots in what he thinks is the correct direction toward the pivotal house.
“I told you not to mention that place in here. It gets the vampires all excited.” Then Ben, again, realizes it’s day. “Okay, okay, I suppose this *one* time it’s okay to talk about the Great Mother.”
“And peaks in general.”
(to be continued?)
not what they seem
There are so many stories to tell about Corsica, as it’s turning out. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do an adequate job. How to match the potential of the continent??
Always the peaks not too far away, always surprising me with their appearance. Peakology to complement the already established Sinkology? It might be so.
I’ve hardly begun to scratch the surface. Better get back to Bena…
twinned
“I’m not sure I’m going back to this Bena, Mary. I was laughed at in the bar! And — I miss you.”
Pitch’s wife Mary, as usual around any body of water, was reeling reeling reeling them in. Perch always. It was the only fish around.
“If you don’t go back,” she explained patiently, “then you’ll never find out what happened. Keep close to Rebl. She’ll guide you through.”
“How about — *you*? Can you come as well? It’s the same house we have — had in Collagesity. Still have, except it lays empty there.” He picked at the laces of his boots. “Just like here.”
“We must choose Pitch Darling.”
Darkly, thought Pitch, then realized who he was talking to. And he knew what the choosing meant. Collagesity or Corsica? It could come down to that.
Mary suddenly switched over to the other side for more action.
the one
“You think he’ll go back?” asked Philip Strevor to his partner in crime Marion Harding, wearing his Gaeta V shirt for this particular shoot.
“Maybe.”
“He has to,” quickly came the reply. “He has to find that demon that killed our little girl.” His voice was becoming anxious, murderous even. Philip had not smoked any pot to take the edge off the racier drugs he was currently imbibing. Marion, in contrast, only did the marijuana. So much here! Mixed in with red wine per usual; balancing the red and the blue as he liked to say. Easier said than done. Like tragedy and comedy in life as a whole.
“Philip,” Marion tried to calm him, “have you ever thought about how we got from Gaston to here. I mean, *really* thought about it. The chain of events that leads from one to the other.” He looks around, at the other hippies milling about the place. Well, *he’s* a hippie. Philip definitely was the odd man out in this bunch. So much pot, so much booze. But the racier drugs were few and far apart. This wasn’t Philip’s place in the end. Corsica really wasn’t his continent. Gaeta V suited him better. But Capitol City and its Capitol Hill were no more. Returned to the swamp they arose from. Flattened back to the pancake prairie it started as. Pancakes… Laboratories. Marion suddenly had an idea.
“Philip, how would you like to return to Gaeta V? Just for a bit.”
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Eddison/242/165/27
—–
—–
I’m just going to have this red wine but you eat as many pancakes as you like, Philip.”
“Oh *goody*.”
another return
Rocky Racco sat in front of his typewriter waiting for a story to happen but it never did.
He went to the theatre to try to envision a play being acted out onstage, perhaps an interpretation of the novel he couldn’t start. Didn’t work.
What *was* it about this place, Old Ben — Bennington — but now New Ben: Bena? Creativity seemed to be sapped from the town. Before going back to his cave-home and sleeping the rest of the day for lack of anything else to do, Rocky decided to go visit Ben at the town bar, the center of it all down through the years, gluing old and new together to make something most likely not quite as good as either.
“Creative drought, eh?” he responded to Rocky’s confession of writer’s block. “You know what I do when something like that happens to me? Go fishing.” He looks to the large castle out in the water with this, tucked away in the northeast corner of the sim. Quite similar in this positioning to the Northeast Castle of the Hilling sim featured in the last section of this here photo-novel, perhaps too much so. There be the answers, Rocky realized, picking up on Ben’s accent in his mind. He’d have to rent a boat.
“One more thing, laddie, before you be renting that boat,” Ben further advised. “You be also seeking a double to this town, but not Hilling. Don’t go back to Hilling.” Rocky was thinking: I’ve never been to Hilling and don’t even know where that is. Maybe that was his problem. He didn’t have enough backstory himself to go off and start creating microcosms of reality through books and plays.
He recalls… something about a hotel. Yes. I can start there.
“Hello, anyone… here?”
trees
From this angle she could barely see the top of the newcomer’s house over Jana Forest, this Pitch Darkly she’s heard so much about lately. Laughed at by other vampires in her husband’s bar so loudly that rumors have it he’s already moved away out of embarrassment — looking for land on the west side of the continent to settle down instead. But maybe the rumors are confusing recent Bena exile Barry X. Vampire with Pitch, Phyllis Phox considers, for Pitch was definitely still a vampire, or at least a wannabe one according to Ben. So goofy, though(!) Perpetually blood-splattered to name just one error: proper vampires do not roam about town with blood stains on their elegant, primly pressed clothes. She’d passed by his house several times now on her walks into the hills surrounding the town. No one there yet, and stuff that should be inside it according to her reckoning still outside cluttering up the yard. Good Bena has a privacy screen separating him from the rest of town(!). So that’s another strike against this Pitch Darkly fellow. Sloppiness in attire and decor all around. He won’t make it here — there.
Phyllis then looks just above Pitch’s disorganized spot at Mother’s Place perched on the now hidden green hill dominating Bena from the southeast. Polar opposite to the great castle out in the northeast corner of the sim, she knows (but, importantly, *not* the Northeast Castle this time ’round: that appellation still belongs solely to Hilling’s similarly positioned citadel). And the Whore Mother within, tended to by that poor, pitiful child of hers. Always forget the name, Phyllis Phox ruminates. Everyone just calls her kid. That’s what she answers to most of the time.
Katy, Phyllis Phox then remembers. Maybe she can shorten it to Kate when she grows up and, following Barry X. Vampire and others’ lead, forget about this place and move on. College is sometimes a turning point. But the Great Mother is now pushing for Bena to have its own, defeating the purpose in her mind. You go to college to get *away* from home. She certainly did.
She then looks more southward and tries to spot the tiny island in the middle of Danshire adorned until just several days back with a shack much like she grew up in — eerily so, she understands — with a mom tending to 3 other kids most of the time as well. And she had all the color drained out of her skin to blend in better at Bena after the marriage to her husband Ben, then the powerful werewolf leader in town before the Vampire Coup and the name change from Bennington.
Much to digest about town history, as it’s turning out(!).
No luck here. A little further up Queck Hill should do the trick.
Yes. There ’tis.
woulds and wouldn’ts
If and when she came into town, she liked to sip coffee at The Green Lady next to the park and stare out at the bay. At night, Ben’s place was too full of vampires, and during the day there was still the threat of one or two of his old werewolf friends stopping by and reminiscing about the old days. She didn’t want to hear such talk. *Both* eras are equally bad in her mind, she’d always want to pitch to them, both Bennington and, now, Bena. This town is *cursed*! she sometimes wanted to scream from the top of Bena Hill toward the buildings and roads spanning north to east before her, Mothers Place behind be damned. Here at the Green Lady, drinking her cinnamon spiced coffee, she could feel away from it all for a moment. It was like the place was made for her, Green Lady matching green (clad) lady. It was here she could think about her *own* past, and figured out what went right but also, yes, what went wrong according to her master plan formulated at age 17, her first year in college taking astromystics classes at Teepot Tech. She would acquire a husband in due time but not be chained to his lifestyle. Well, she missed the boat there(!). Although she loves Ben dearly, no one can deny his faults, primarily the threat of turning into a wolf during any full moon despite the continued treatments down through the years. “I can change,” he declares every now and then. “I *will* change”. “I have found The Lord now,” he also might tack on to any such proclamation. But wanderlust sometimes gets a hold of him and he’s gone for days, part of his wolf heritage surfacing. “Where were you now?” she’d ask, and he’d just go on talking about how The Lord told him to do this, and go there and do that. Always the same excuse. Sometimes she’d like to just yank this Lord dude out of the clouds and give him an earful back.
They managed, but it wasn’t what you’d call a perfect relationship. On the sly, sometimes Phyllis Phox would inquire to her lawyer friend in town — Rebl of course — about how divorcing a werewolf might fare. “Poorly,” she would emphasize. The pack always takes care of itself. Ben, of course, wouldn’t lift a finger — *probably* — but the others…
If only ditzy classmate Marsha wouldn’t have introduced me to him at that Benjamin Harrison Ball held at Grover Cleveland Hall down Former Presidents Lane. If only one or the other would have chosen a different college.
(to be continued?)
Moor(k) 02
“Well, well, well, Marion. Well well well well *well*.”
“Yes,” replied his partner in crime. Always. “What do we have *here*?” And then he waved Philip on before him. “After you,” he offered.
Goose Egg
When I entered the room, I was alone. Except for the complete bastard of a man known as Casey One Hole. Philip was no more. I figured he was shuffled back to Gaeta V, since my corresponding shirt had also disappeared.
“I didn’t need something. But I *wanted* it. Now I have it.”
I walked in front of him to confront the demon. “Tell me where she is,” I demanded.
university towns?
Audrey was, as usual, dancing an Irish Jig. Jeffrie Phillips was enjoying the scene, but they must get down to business soon. One more dance, though.
“Try 13 now,” he requested.
—–
“Whatever happened to Marsha, by the by?” Jeffrie asked after Audrey had given him the latest update. He didn’t need the information but he wanted it. Sounds familiar.
“Oh, the usual. Marriage to some slob and now they’re pinned down with the standard 2.5 kids. Thank you for not wanting any. Teepot has enough. The *world* has enough.”
“The world is not long for us anyway. No use in bringing someone new in to experience all that misery.”
“Agreed,” Audrey quickly followed.
“Well… we’ve tracked Casey One Hole down to Danshire before his disappearance, along with the Small Kowloon House. This is right outside Phyllis and Ben’s home — no accident there. And now Ben might be recalled to the old country, thanks to Host Charming. No accident there either. One chance out between two worlds.”
“Don’t say that,” red pendant wearing Audrey requested. “It reminds me of the girl we had to kill.”
“Kill off,” red tie sporting Jeffrie elaborated. But the Kidd remains within. They didn’t know of Tronesisia’s big picture plan.
—–
“Who are you??”
“Don’t be afraid,” Billy Jean spoke to Katy from the other side of the walkway. “It’s only another Kidd.”
directions
Whenever Ben gets lost or confused in his wanderings, he just types BENA into his map search box and returns here through it, to the center of Bena, formerly Bennington — with his bar straight ahead. Through this practice he’d learned, quite a long time ago at this point — about the time of the Vampire Coup I suppose — that his home sim now called Bena has a double, also named Bena. Or beginning with Bena. Anyway, it’s an ocean sim or water sim, more in the western reaches of the continent. And, just to its northwest, a kind of parallel town to here. One day he’d use this trick to escape the bar, the vampires, even his old werewolf friends that still come by his establishment every now and then, despite what the vampires told them to do. “Stay away,” they exclaimed after the coup. “The bar is ours, the *town* is ours. And then they brought in that foreign lawyer Rebl to seal the deal. How many forms did he have to sign back in the day? Too many to remember. Bennington to Bena, pheh.
He turned around in place and stared at Northeast Bloodbath Castle, so named because of a bath of blood (the king’s favorite in olden days) instead of a murder spree of some kind. “Wonder if that Rocky Racco writer guy ever made it over there to fish?” he wonders aloud. “Guess I should have told him about the sea monster that guards the place, hehe.” Ben Wolf ponders about the last time he saw Gregg Oden, aka the “monster”. Probably 20 years ago at this point. Just walked in the bar, ordered a Baileys and poured it in his shoe and drank it down, and then walked back toward the bay, shouting, “I’m Gregg Oden!” before the waters took his slimy green, pink tutu wearing figure again. He’s always looking for a man-wife after he shows them his shiny man-gina, and perhaps this Rocky Racco will turn out to be a suitable one this time. But the odds are stacked way against him.
Ben exits the bay and walks into town, but passes his bar — empty anyways (day hours) — on the way to Rocky’s now vacated cave, his old home when Bena was Bennington. The “Wolf Den.”
He could live here again, he ruminates while sitting on the soft, cushy pillows within. But that would mean…
The pack wouldn’t understand, despite the weakening down through the years. They’d still tear her to shreds, pull out her head and all her limbs and wave them about while howling their crazy “traitor songs” maniacally. Once married to a wolf, always a Wolf yourself, he understood. The surname Phox she cooked up one drunken evening was a sardonic play on words. She knew it was Wolf still and told it to everyone who asked, saying the other name was a joke and then usually laughed a bit to emphasize this. Funny Phyllis Phox, people thought about her. Guess that led to the stand up comedy. Which led to the novels.
No, he’d have to think of another way. Perhaps involving this other Bena, yes…
bargain 01
She didn’t even want to look over at her, this Mother of Vampires. Time hadn’t been as kind to her. Cat-Witch, on the other hand: PHEH! She could still claw her eyes out right on this spot and get the last laugh. But she was admittedly curious about the story. Martha Lamb and the Cat-Witch as sisters (!). How could she not have known about this all those years back? There must be deception involved here. She’ll wrangle it out and then expose it to the child. The kid will be under *my* powers. For all eternity, even beyond death. Because she had worked out that *little* detail as well, ha (!).
Cat-Witch winked at Katy Kidd while the Mother of Vampires kept looking away and fuming. Because this was Billy Jean Kidd again, dressed up temporarily in a new body. She was dead, yes. Casey One Hole swiped at her with his metallic club and knocked her head clean off into the next sim of Danshire, where it washed up on the shore of that tiny central island we’ve seen several times already. Then One Hole built a shrine around it, which lasted until several days ago when neighborhood watch fanatic Red Pepper spotted the shack and had the thing deleted. The head is dead.
Trouble is, it was also Katy Kidd’s head and that’s what dead Billy Jean told her first off about it. She saw it from a distance, while hovering above. Like an angel, she explained. “We are the same,” and then they merged into one from opposite sides of that walkway where they met, just for a moment. Just long enough to *know*.
Billy Jean changed. They walked inside. Cat-Witch sat downstairs to wait. Katy helped Mother hobble from her bedroom, down the stairs, to the parlor. She couldn’t look. How does she stay so *young*??
(to be continued)
bargain 02
“They’re ready for you Ms. Rebl.” Hidi then noticed that the cat-person lawyer was using her hands for a brush and her attache case as a pallet. “What, pray tell, are you painting, ms.?”
“Like any good lawyer, I’m painting a scene,” came the logical answer.
Case still in hand, she follows Hidi down the Hall of Fear to the Chamber of Utter Unspeakable Horrors.
Despite the name, there was actually a happy, feel-good vibe to it tonight. Things in this section of the photo-novel were being wrapped up in a relatively honest and decent way.
“Great Mother,” spoke Rebl solemnly while bowing at The Threshold (they called it). “I am honored.”
bargain 03
For the child, Great Mother of Vampires asked a high price. “Let me have the lives of the remaining werewolves in town. Let my vampire brood feast on their flesh and blood.” Rebl looked over at Ben Wolf, who nodded, a look of surprising calm in his eyes. “We agree,” the cat-being lawyer answered back. Ben turned to the Great Mother and studied her ancient figure. He knew this was the only way to save his Irish Lass. What was her name again, darnit? Oh yes: Phyllis — the only way to save Phyllis. The pack would kill her otherwise. Unless it was the pack being killed. No other way.
“Then I turn over the child to the Cat-Witch here.” Great Mother eyed Cat-Witch loathingly again. So young! she thinks while imagining her own skin crumbling to dust. “We will not speak of the matter further.” She got up wobblingly, grabbed her cane, and hobbled out of the room down the hall to the secret elevator that would whisk her back to her parlor. Ben returned to his bar to prepare for the slaughter he knew was coming. He’d made his peace with The Lord. In fact, The Lord (me) told him to do all these things, to allow the vampires to take complete control now. “Fate”, I called down to him. “Bena must shift into a new era, with no Wolves or wolves allowed. That means *you*.” He had seen the light on this particular Corsica summit — Moork I think it was again. He descended back into town to tell Rebl to go through with the prearranged deal.
What of this child, though, this Katy Kidd? All we know now is that she will live to see another day in another section.
Sunklands 