Search Results for 'able'

In the flying car, Al was mentally reciting mantras and drawing symbols, and was distractedly participating in the conversation which he could follow thanks to telepathic transfers he grasped from his friends conversations.
His gums were now much better, and he had recovered a wonderful smile with shiny pearl-white teeth.

The car interior was now a bit small for them five, and Tina’d had to press herself on Al and Becky, who was almost disappearing in her boubou full of folds, her head wedged against the hat and the hat against the roof of the car.

— Can’t we get some air in there? asked Tina, who was feeling she needed to breathe more.
— Err… Let me check

Sam’s friend was looking clumsily at some buttons for one to release the hood.

— Watch out! Becky cried, propping up her hat which had fallen on her eyes.

They had narrowly missed a bunch of balloons floating in the middle of the buildings.

— Jeeze! It’s no better than the submarway this thing… Becky was being fidgety at everything and was wishing for the whole wedding preparations to soon be over.
— Is that a frog we hear? asked Armando who had finally released the hood, having Becky clutch her hat, as well as little Chump, with the strong wind now blowing on their heads.
— WHAT? FLOG A TIRE? Tina was shouting now, seeing now all the benefits of being able to telepathically communicate…

A click on a button. The hood was again put on top of the car.
— Bit too noisy, hey? said Armando
— Well, didn’t really mind said Albert dreamily

— Oh dammit! Is there a damn frog in that car’s engine or what? Armando was stressed.

Tina looked at Sam in the rear-view mirror and spluttered affectionately. Al had just mentally expressed he was experimenting with new yeast actions in his digesting system, and that there was some minor inconveniences on which he would have liked some discretion… His belly was swelling funnily and making gargoyling noises…

— Ahahah, a frog… perhaps even a blue-bullfrog with all that frogging noise! Tina was feeling surprisingly exuberant.

— Wait!

A small impish gnomesque figure wearing a black and white tunic adorned with a silver blazon was standing in front of Claude, formerly known as Number Four.
Claude was reading to fight, and extricate himself of that stinky situation, starting to feel the powerful strength the treatment had given him and feeling virtually unstoppable.
Considering that such a small individual, especially unarmed, wasn’t much of a threat, he stopped in his track, wondering if that was part of a subtle stratagem.

— What do you want?
— We do not want you harm, stranger. We are aware of the experiments which have been done on you, and we are sorry for what has been done…
— Oh, don’t be, I feel better than I’ve been in ages
— Yes, we saw that, though we are not that sure that the treatment effects are permanent either…
— Not permanent? What have you done to me?
— Nothing. There is nothing to fear from us, we are peaceful. We are a wing of a group of individuals whose primary skills lay in robbing. We are mostly hired to retrieve precious possessions in great discretion and you could consider yourself lucky to have seen us in our true form.
— Us? How many are you?
— A few… We gave you a mixture of plants and magnetite powder to help you stabilize your situation, apparently it has succeeded.
— Mmm, perhaps yes…
— Another thing you probably want to know before we help you get rid of these bandages if you want. During your sleep, you muttered lots of things, one of which was a name: “Sasha”.
— Sasha?
— Yes. I’m afraid we believe that the individual you were calling is dead. We monitored the doctor’s assistant when she disposed of the body. It was not pretty. I thought you should know.

Despite his mission, Claude couldn’t help but feel sorry; Sasha’s sweet voice had been such a comfort during the last days of his transformation…

Robbers they say… Hope we’re not after the same thing…

— So why are you here? Malvina was asking to the man with amber eyes and the black-haired woman with streaks of teal.
Tired of having danced, Leo, the marmoset was nestled on her lap, and she was lovingly stroking his little white mane. Comfortably put on langoat wool cushions, she was sipping yrok-butter tea, around a low round table with her alien guests.

— Well, that is a long story, said Georges
— And you probably are aware of a part of it, said Salome
— Yes, I am, answered Malvina, as far as dragons’ memory goes…
— Indeed, and there was a time before the dragons…

There is a time where reality and fiction bleed into each other so much exquisitely that they soon become indiscernible one from another. Such a time is not in a distant future. The time is now.

Elizabeth started to munch on her black and white quillipooh. Her yawning had made one of the mini-goats faint and drop on the floor stiff as a board… Light as a feather, looking at the quillipooh, stiff as a board looking at the goat. Light as a feather, another look at the quillipooh, stiff as a board, look at the goat…

She wasn’t sure waking up in the middle of the night to write the tiny bits of sentences she’d heard were very useful.

Light as a father, staffed as a motherboard…, Late as a feature… stuffed as a bugger…
Eyelids becoming heavy and slowly dropping over her eyes, she was also feeling her body starting to vibrate violently… Her nerves, probably dying for a nicobeck fix.

She reached out for her bedecked beckelite cigarette holder, her eyes still half-closed, but it wasn’t here… For all matter and purposes, the table wasn’t here either…
She opened her eyes fully and almost got a shock. She was floating a feet above the floor, like cushioned in layers of air. Was she dreaming already? Wow, in any case, this… experimentation was hunky-dory!

111 emails in the inbox this morning, too
Rabbits, owls, neptunes and herons…..
oh and driftwood (driftwood icon)
OH! In today’s paper: normal people tell 88,000 lies (that’s either a year or a lifetime, I can’t remember), and that’s not including probable selves. We are not normal, therefore we are an exception

In the creaking wooden caravan slowly moving its way on the dusty roads, Twilight was lost in deep thoughts, caressing mechanically the beautiful blond wig.
She had done it almost on an impulse, but like all impulses she’d ever had, it had always felt deeply true to her core and she had gone. Now, it felt a bit strange, and too rational doubts were creeping along like viscous bugs, and she felt like judging her behaviour over and over.
Of course, her brothers, Jo the first, and then Elroy, had been supportive, but they had always been that way. Even when their first reactions were to object to what she was doing, like dancing in the saloon, her determination was always winning them easily. She had promised to write often, and she would probably be back in a year.

When the Freak Show had settled in town for a week, she had been at first almost grossed out by what was announced, and had not been her brothers to egg on her, she probably wouldn’t have been going to see them.
Pat Elson, the director of the Fabulously Great Freakus (or FGF), was a little dark-skinned man in an orange suit and top-hat, with a communicable enthusiasm and a sincere consideration for the people he called “his performers”. Very soon, rather than being repulsed by the differences, Twilight had been attracted by the way of life of these people, and was considering traveling with them as an opportunity to discover more about the world and about herself. Her inspiration to write was even tickling her fingers like an army of ants she had never felt before.
When she had said to Pat Elson that she was willing to travel and work with them, rather than laughing like he used to do, he’d taken a silent pondering moment to consider the options. Obviously Twilight wasn’t a freak herself, at least not physically freaky. But he couldn’t refuse help, as his business was growing every day. Venus, the armless woman, his best asset on the show, had been recently pregnant, giving birth to conjoined twins, and would surely appreciate two arms to give her a hand… so to speak.
So he had agreed.

The babies started crying in the caravan drawing Twilight out of her reveries. Venus was sleeping nearby, still exhausted, and Zarafina, the giraffe-woman, started to groan annoyed by the noise.
Twilight hurried to cuddle the babies, checking that they were alright. All was right, they were probably only bugged by the bumps in the road. No wonder… she sighed.

Mavis had not yet received any news from her friends Sharon and Gloria. She’d hoped she could have some postcard from them before she goes and join them…

Nearly two months… Two months since they had all received the exciting email from that Dr. Bronklehampton and had decided to take a leap of faith.
As a matter of fact, they had taken that leap of faith just before, and it was just a… “synchronistic confirmation that they were heading in the right direction”, that’s what old Harry had said… Or was it Joe? No, that was surely Harry.
Fred wasn’t very pleased.

Bored by all the variations of dominoes and dices games at their third-age club, the three inseparable ladies had decided, in a bout of delightful unreasonableness, to embrace all that modern technology had to offer. Sharon and Gloria, being the devil-may-care as they were, got their computer first. Mavis had to convince Fred that he could make his horse-racing bets with that computer without having to go to the city, now that the last pub in the village wasn’t taking bets any longer… and even play poker! she’d said, bluffing so vehemently that she’d almost blushed in shame for fear of being wrong. But that last argument had convinced old Fred. And now, she was connected too. A second-hand computer, with a dusty old keyboard, but she’d let it soak a night in a soapy basin, and it was now shiny as a brand-new one. Except that it now kept behaving strangely…

In their club, they could boast that now they were connected all over the word, and all the old parakeets of the club had almost choked over their tea when they had heard all of what they had discovered.
Sharon had won most of the glaring bedazzlement. Wearing newly bought sunglasses, she’d said whispering like a conspirator that she had searched her name on a website and she had seen more than 7 million pages talking of her! Imagine! More than seven million people talking of her! And she had not known she was so famous… Hence the sunglasses, she’d added with a wink… there were probably a slew of paparazzi hidden somewhere to discover all that was to know about her… But you can’t fool dear ol’ Sharon Stone.
Gloria Fowles had been gathering almost 4,000 pages… But well, she had not the charismatic aura of Shah.
And Mavis Staples had got a hefty 470,000 pages!… Of course, she had not told Fred, who was already so paranoid about all of this stuff. When they had received the machine, he was convinced there were miniature cameras and transponders from the MI6 inside the PC and had spent hours disassembling and reassembling it.

Very soon after they had registered for their free email address (the reseller had explained patiently that she couldn’t electrocute herself while licking the envelop), the next day to be precise, at 5:33 —that was the hour when Mavis had finished her routine dusting and breakfast preparing for Fred, and just before taking Gulp, the dog for a news reading (that was what Sha was saying “butt sniffing for dogs, is like news reading for us”), she had granted herself a little peek into the emailbox— she had seen something in the recipe folder.
She wasn’t sure why they had called that folder “meat” or “ham”… no that wasn’t “ham”… “SPAM” more like it… Anyway, in the recipes folder, she’d received her first email. She’d called eagerly Sha and Glo, and they had received it too, and had even answered it already, as they had spent the all night “surfing” as they said — which was a bit difficult for Sharon with her sunglasses in the dark.

All three of them had received a free coupon for a massage and therapeutic rejuvenating treatments (and possibly some bonus organ enlargements free of charge) in Tikfijikoo Island!

Well, now Mavis was ready to go too, now that Fred had been mollified and she’d gathered the money for the trip.
In a sense, that was good she’d not received anything yet from Sha and Glo, it would allow her to imagine the wildest things!

I had a whole scenario in my head last night and just couldn’t put a sentence together, I tried and tried, and deleted the whole thing. Mars, or Constable Marhsall, was surreptitiously meeting the robber lad in a brothel, waiting to meet the madame, the leader of the robber gang. darnit, I just couldn’t articulate it at all. Just thought I’d mention it

When Felicity had taken the job, she had thought at first that it was all a big interstellar joke…
Come on… Dead people speaking though living?
But a few recent experiences made her feel there was kind of warmth surrounding her when she started the radiophonic sessions, and that she was feeling… inspired, for lack of a better word.
Words indeed were coming and flowing, and even though she was rarely speechless, the words did have some different quality.
And people enjoyed the show greatly, and mails kept coming to the radio thanking DDT for all of the marvelous advices…

Till then, as she was conscious of the process, she had refrained issuing some definite statements on future events, as the inspiration was pressing her to do at times. As subtle as all of this was, she was feeling it was not really the same energy as the warm one; it was like incursions of a quicker and less stable bouncy energy.
It was pushing her to make cocky statements, on mass events about to come… Oh, not again self-fulfilling prophecies, please! she couldn’t help but think…

At times, Felicity was even wondering whether she was really going completely crazy.
Oh, it was so much simpler to be a genuine fraud…

— Arky, come here at once!
— But, I’ve done nothing…
— Stop being such a jackanapes, will you… You know very well there is no secret…
— Yes…

Despite his being immaterial, it was obvious that the One referred to as Arky was being scolded.

— And you know perfectly well there is nothing to gain in pushing things…
— But I intended well…
— I know that. As generations of focuses of leaders and presidents have been doing. One would have assumed you’d knew better by now… I can see you’re enjoying being with me on the soapbox, but either you find your own, or you better stay clear next time we get a communication.
— Understood.
— Fine, class dismissed.

As soon as she’d come back from her trip, Dory had planned to travel again very soon.
Of course, she had enjoyed tremendously being home, being with Dan and young Becky… yes, she had… the first day for sure…
Well… She was a born wanderer, she couldn’t do against her own nature, no need to beat herself for that, and feel guilty for leaving Dan and Becky periodically. Hopefully, Becky was very understanding, and perhaps that the fact that Dory was her stepmother made things easier for them both, without burdening their relationship with useless obligations towards one another.

On the other side, many exciting destinations were on her list, and she barely knew where to start. One that had attracted her curiosity was the site of Jiroft in Iran, where the famed lost Kingdom of Aratta had been supposedly found very recently. Artifacts had been discovered on this site, predating our commonly supposed invention date of written language, which had fascinated Dory for a while, before she got lost amidst the wide spectrum of her other interests.

Well, all of this was of frenzying interest, but there were dogs and back issues…
Somehow, Dory had been struggling with lots of tensions in her back, and the more she forced herself moving, the worse the pain was. Finally beaten by herself, when no one else, friend, family or doctor could accomplish such a feat, she was stuck to a cushioned armchair for most of the day holding to her pain as to a stuck parasitic hated friend.
And then, there was the dogs.
As she was barely able to move, Dan had renounced to have her come with him and Becky to see Sabine, Becky’s mother, in Mallorca, where she had invited them for the Epiphany.
Secretly, Dory was happy to have to stay at home, and not to have to make pleasing faces to the horrid obsessive woman she could only stand a few minutes without having to go out and empty a whole pack of cigarettes to calm her down.
The only little drawback was that she had to take care of the dogs… And she was running short of dog’s food…

Before leaving, Dan had left her a phone number of their new neighbours, a batty couple of Brits who had just rented the farm nearby, and with whom Dan was occasionally playing golf and lending a hand in small DIY work.
Reluctantly, Dory took the post-it and smiled at the familiar handwriting of Dan…

BEATTIE & LEONORA FLETCHER : 933-157-821

She composed the number in a deliberate slow motion, which strangely felt very empowering.

— Hello! a quavering male voice answered
— Err… Mr Fletcher?
— Ms Fletcher,… herself, what can I do for you?
— I’m Dorothy Mc Leane, one of your neighbour, you probably know my…
— Oh, yes! Dorothy, may I call you Dorothy, Dan spoke of you so much that we were very eager to meet you, weren’t we Leo?

A ruffling sound behind Beattie Fletcher seemed to approve.

— And is there anything we could do for you?
— Well, I’m awfully embarrassed to have to ask you, but I’m stuck at home, and my dogs don’t have much food left…
— Oh my dear! You did so very well to call us, didn’t she Leo? We’ll be at your home in a few minutes!
— But…
— Oh, no need to thank us for that, it’s all natural, after all that your delightful husband did for us! We see you in a moment…

And with that the line was cut. Dory was a bit disconcerted by the strange couple, but decided to dance with what was coming to her doorstep (wishing it would not be flamenco), seeing that having placed these quaint people in her reality could not entirely be a stroke of wild madness… If only…

Back in the depths of the water, Aglaë was thinking of a way for her to move easily on the other world.

There was a legend of her people, a legend which was told to the children. It promised pain and an accursed half-life to those trying to disown their heritage, and live outside of the life-sustaining element of water.
For most of the children, such an idea was incongruous at best, and none would have thought of breaching the taboo simply to try something different and potentially lethal.
But to Aglaë, all that it meant now was that such a thing was possible.
In that legend she had been told when she was young, there was a prince, who betrayed his people, and was condemned to an exile outside of the oceans. So that he would not die an immediate and atrocious death on the dry surface, but rather suffer even more, by not being able to come back to the depths, he was given a mixture of plants to ingest. A deadly algae which grew in the cemeteries of the Holders of Dreams, on the carcasses of the Wise Ones, mixed with an herb from the lands.

Aglaë did not know how and where to gather the plants… She was hesitant to do such a thing, for it would surely infuriate her father… But she was willing to do it. She would have to find a naïve ally to help her in her task, because she was seeing her half-brother Pelorus becoming suspicious and she did not want to have him discover her plans before she could realise them.
Pelorus was very close to their father, who had made him Captain of the Tritonic Guard. Though he was not having a slithery serpentine tail like her own, he was very agile and swift in the waters with his tentacles, and was very respected, as he had a reassuring presence, radiating might and power.