Search Results for 'away'
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Search Results
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In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
After leaving the parcel in the capable hands of the Post Office staff (and while she was there remembering to send a cute birthday card with kittens on it to her friend Trove and a note to Jove and Erove saying how nice it was to see them recently) Flove was ready for her next assignment.
She was stationed in Rotorua and although the exact nature of the assignment had not been explained to her she believed herself to be there in a journalistic capacity. She found herself standing in the ocean with a group of people, strangers, watching a game of rugby. The rugby game was also in the ocean. She had some brief interactions with her companions and had to move away from a rather unpleasant man who was annoying her. After the match, they all walked back to a small town — via the ocean. It was dark and Flove was initially hesitant because she was not a good swimmer, but she felt some security as her companions seemed composed about the journey. The ocean was not as deep as she had anticipated. Even though the water eventually came up to her shoulders, she found she was able to walk the whole distance. At one point she noticed the fins of a shark swim by in the inky darkness of the water, but she regarded it with childish delight, rather than fear.
In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
flower synch! but her mind was dulled with tiredness and she could not explain, although they questioned her relentlessly.
“Just align with whatever path you are on… it is by far the easiest way” she whispered as she dropped off to sleep.
She woke to find herself on a path. It was dark and only the ground directly beneath her feet was visible. It was hard to move forward under these conditions and she desperately wanted to see more. She fought with the darkness until, eventually, she realised the darkness was an illusion. With that realisation she took hold of the darkness and it fell away in her hands revealing a stage.
The stage was bare, other than an old boot and a plain wooden chair. She sat on the chair and looked around.
“This is a bit gloomy” she said. “I want flowers”. And deep crimson wild sweet peas appeared. “I want lots of flowers! And I want blue sky and sunshine and a few fluffy white clouds and a gentle sun shower for me to dance in and a rainbow to fill the sky with wonder.” And as she wished, the bare stage was transformed to a landscape filled with a vibrant profusion of colour and life.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Much to Pearls amazement the celebrity surge mania that had taken hold of the lower ranks of the surge teams assistants was starting to infest the higher ranks as well. In fact it had started to infect the celebrities themselves, as well as the royal families of several European and Middle Eastern countries. Celebrity mania had surged with an unholy vengeance just after lightning struck the Vatican, when the pope was led away in handcuffs the previous month. Royal princesses, not satisfied with the rank of just one position, recklessly started claiming the lives of feckless celebrities as their own. Celebrities started insisiting that they were directing Directors, and informing cameramen that they were a focus of theirs too. The cameramen wondered whether they even knew what P mode was, and who was in charge now anyway. The King of Spain decided to claim Madonna as his own, and refuted Lady Ga Ga’s claim that she was in fact directing him. A Pointless TV quiz contestant claimed to be directing Stephen Fry, which was clearly rubbish; many dismissed the claim as distorted.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
The phone rang while she was preparing her cabbage with soy sauce. It triggered a memory of a blue helmet. Quickly gone.
She hesitated a moment and stopped what she was doing to pick up the phone.
Her mother began speaking straight away.
“Where have you been all this time ? You’ll turn me mad. You’re so like your father, keeping to himself all those times when he was out playing mahjong with his friends. But I knew where that bastard was…”
Her voice was raspy after years of never being able to be speechless, and most astoundingly, she never repeated herself. The woman was even a sleeptalker. No wonder her husband would rather sneak out of the house to play with his friends.
Aqua Luna had developed an opposite habit, she would find her solace in silence and in doing house cleaning. But this time, the voice of her mother was fascinating. Something in it seemed different.A blue flash interrupted her fascination. She almost jumped out of her pajamas.
“Listen carefully”, was saying the blue helmet.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
In Ed Steam’s old office, Lord Lemon was like in a mausoleum full of ghosts.
Mostly computer illiterate, he favoured greatly goose feather and dark Chinese ink soft purr on the paper over the annoying clickety racket of the keyboards. So he wasn’t exactly feeling at home in Ed’s old shoes.The team’s greeting party had been cordial, but he didn’t feel an overwhelming welcome either, not that he expected it. It was Ed’s team after all, he was the Rooster of the chicks of roast, whatever they liked to call themselves. He was not found of monikers and preferred to be addressed simply as Sir.
The call he received on the morning was perplexing him. They’d found an auditor dead with a Surge Corp. business card in his jacket in the streets of a Spanish city, he couldn’t really remember which, the accent on the phone was as dreadful as that of a Chinese civet, but… What was that about already? He’d thought his memory was improving, getting back on the field, but there were relapses again, he had to concentrate. Afternoon Scrabble games were not that bad after all.
He’d perfected a neat technique to remember things, placing vivid images in memory palaces constructed in his mind were he could retrieve them later, but the thing was that his memory palaces sorely lacked a cleaning lady, and images sometimes blurred together or went missing, fading away. He sighed.
His gaze on the phone brought him back to his stream of thought. This would have been stored on the Suspicious Clues Palace, in Ed’s corner. His mind raced back in the atrium of his palace where he could see the various corners, and he went back into the Alley of Dark Secrets, then turned to the Corner of Lonely Puzzle Pieces. There were actually a lot of them, but the topmost one was vivid enough. It was a red blood hearing-aid spewing out a mean Larsen and bathing in paella. For “auditor murdered in Spain” obviously. He turned down mentally the volume of the hearing-piece. This was not a very elegant image, but he was in a hurry, and crude preposterous images always were remembered better he’d found out. The lewdest even more so. Which was why his Palace of Past Precious Moments was starting to look like a brothel he was loath to admit.
He was starting to wonder if Ed’s demise was not some sort of inside job. Circumstances were not really orthodox, but nothing was in their line of duty, so he had to look for something else. He’d already started to make an inventory of the storage room, just before the break-in, but computer handicapped as he was, between paper and memory palaces, he couldn’t figure it anymore and had to start it over with some help from Cornella.
At least, he’d sent Hyphen and Dash to discreetly investigate on the break-in and now, he will probably send them to investigate on… he faced a blank. All he could remember now was he was having the meanest craving for mussels and prawns.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Aqua Luna had difficulties understanding what the voice was telling her. The words made perfect sense, separately. They were like bubbles floating around her, she could almost see them. Each had a different hue and some where even shining a bit.
“What am I experiencing ?” she asked.
At least it was her thoughts, but she wasn’t sure the voice would understand as each bubble seemed to follow its separate route once out of her mouth.
When more bubbles appeared in the room, it seemed they were coming from all around her, and not from a specific location. She wondered if she was in some kind of whale ship, in its stomach.
When more bubbles came, she began to feel a bit irritated. She smashed one with her left hand and got startled by the booming “SHAKE”. She retreated on the spongy stomach which was emitting bubbles now. She tried to shoo them away and their explosion was more like a squishy sound.
A bigger bubble was coming toward her. It was with shades of pink and blue, very vibrant. She put her hands on her ears before it blew out, but the sound seemed to come from her skin now.“HAHAHAHA”
When more bubbles came to her, the words she heard were the following
quickly full days told moscow
dragon sounds face earth itself
pin often middle herself under light
katarina warm asked further turnedIt made no sense at all, but she was beginning to find it fun.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t be sure…
Josephinella, the train station cleaning lady, was on night duty. And she was tired of waiting for that damned train with that irritating French accent in her ears, her lungs filled with the engines’ fine coal dust and her nostrils irritated by the pigeons’ smell.
But tonight was going to be her night, she would get drunk on fresh air, her hair whipping her face, bugs biting her eyes, while she would sing elated woohoos launched at full speed on the last commuter train left unattended by drunk Freddie. That was such a beautiful plan.
“ Another Dreamliner scare… and a train crash coming your way!”
“Sounds like a transportation surge to me!” Björk replied on the internal chatting system to her African Twa colleague Kiki Razwa. Björk was not her real name though —it was just a moniker given to her because she liked eccentric costumes. Her real name was Mæja Valbjörnsdóttir,… so ‘Björk’ was better for everyone in that international team, she’d tried to convince herself.
“Doesn’t internal policy says two makes a clue, three makes a surge ?”
“Oh, who cares… For me it smells dreamception transportation surge.”
“Better that than this Mercury retrograde crap, at least that’s more fun to hunt.” Kiki’s reply came up on the screen.
Björk had come to realize that she would probably have to cover for Mari Fe who was elsewhere but at her post. The last surge being in Europe, so she was in for a trip at the taxpayers’ expense… Not so bad actually, since nothing ever happened on her faraway island.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Have you ever dreamt that you forgot to put your pants on to go to school or to go to work? How did you feel in the dream ? Ashamed ? At ease ? Were you wondering how you got there in your undies ?
Dream memories were flying in Madam Li’s head. It had been a recurring dream in her childhood and her most dreaded fear. She had always checked on twice before living her house that she had a dress or trousers long enough to hide her ankles.Her cell phone didn’t have any battery left and she was late. She would have to find one in the street. She ran out of her apartment after having checked her outfits twice and reassured took the elevator. She had her bags with warmer clothes inside for when she’d arrive in Harbin for the ice festival. She looked nervously at her cell phone again, still no battery of course. She put it back in her handbag. Someone entered the elevator, 30 more floors to go. She gasped when she realized the man, a westerner, had no pants on. She looked away quickly. Was he not aware of the missing element in his outfit ? She decided to make as if everything was normal.
Things went worse when she got out of the elevator. There were two men and a woman waiting at the check out desk, and they had pink underwears. Apparently the first man didn’t know them and the service apartment employee behind his desk didn’t seem at all surprised by the situation. When it was her turn, he looked at her, and at her long dress. She gave him the keys and as he turned away to put them back on the wall, she noticed that he was bare legs too. Something was wrong. Was it a surge in the population ? Would she have to stay here longer ?
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
The taser was a long range and when Mari Fe threw it away, it inadvertantly triggered the mechanism. The waiter was at that moment bringing a big plate of very hot soup to the table near Elza’s and was shocked. His body was shaken and Elza watched the soup making an odd design before splashing upon the table just behind her. She took advantage of the confusion to sneak out of the restaurant without paying the bill.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Evangeline Spiggot put the phone down, and turned to old Flanigan, the cleaning man. “Another request to investigate the death of Ed Steam! Three already, and it’s not even lunch time. I think this is a case for Blithe Gambol.”
“Lift your feet up, will you, I’m trying to make a clean sweep here” Flannely replied.
Evangeline obliged and put her feet up on her desk, and put through a call to Blithe. After a few pleasantries, Evangeline explained the case. “So the question is, is Ed Steam really dead, or not?”
“I can tell you the answer to that right away,” replied Blithe. “Yes, and no.”
“Er….thanks, I think…”
“You see, the difficulty with facts these days is that none are true, and all are real ~ well I know you know that dear, but it becomes something of a problem when clients want to know the Truth. Probable realities are pretty loosely woven these days; now, I can stitch together the case, and give you a more definitive answer. Or I can stitch together the case differently, and give you a different answer. The question is, really, what is the answer you want to hear?”
“I’ll confer with the clients and call you back.”
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Pearl sighed. “I can’t find the location. Even the dog leg method didn’t give me any clues. I’m going to forget this for awhile and have an hour on Flackbook.”
Mari Fe breathed a sigh of relief, and tried to erase Moscow from her mind. But before she had time to refocus, Pearl shouted “Aha! Katarina inserted the address on my newsfeed. Here is it, Mari Fe, look!”
It said:
“19 January at 15:00 in UTC+03
Каждую субботу начиная с 08.12.2012 на Лубянской площади / Every Saturday Moscow, Russia, Bolshaya Lubyanka 2, 107031”
Mari Fe groaned.
“There’s more!” Pearl said, “Baku / Azerbaijan “ 12.01.2013 Армия во время митинга в Баку”. She looked at her watch, and frowned.
“Mari Fe, prepare for teleport right away. We have less than 6 minutes to get to Azerbaijan. Toot! Toot!”
“But I only have one pair of thermal socks and one Norwegian wool sweater!”
“Oh cheer up, Baku is among the world’s top ten destinations for urban nightlife, so I’ve heard. And Baku hosted the 57th EuroVision Debt Contest in 2012, too. We’re going to Fountain Square you’ll love it.”
Mari Fe set a strong intention to arrive in summer.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
The aftershock of the surge at the Three Kings’ Parade started to hit full blast at the portals initial location, thus effectively linking old mummies energy to the bodies there that were hit by Mari Fe, and for he most part still lying unconscious.
The combination of energies started to make them arise and walk like mindless zombies, intoning old guttural sounds in cadence in a language that sounded like Italian poetry.
There you had the Balthazar, Rogelio, Dru and alter-Ed who all woke up at once, and even Sanso who had been hit (while impersonating a Portal Worker) started to feel oddly strange.Noticing the atypical occurrence, Arona, whom Janet seemed to have had taken a sudden liking to (blame it on her Yankee side), started to look at her brood and rally them for a safe and prompt exit.
“What is it Arona dearie?” Janet didn’t seem worried. She was a Surge Team member after all, and a zombilic epidemic (zombies energy coming from wormholes) wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle.
“I fear that although your presence is most delightful, we shall be on our way.” Arona’s old sabulmantium had shown persistent and remarkable hints of dragon energy in this dimension that, although a bit different and looking in her mind’s eye like red flying snakes bearing impossibly long mustache, resonated quite well —not to mention she was eager to part with such bizarre company.
“Alrighty, let’s keep in touch dearie,” Janet added, covering their escape, not without winking at Sanso as he was the last one to leave through the map portal, leaving her to look for her missing flushed friends, Mari Fe and Pearl.
Unbeknownst to everyone, the picture-taking lady had camouflaged herself to look like a red sofa nearby the hot pink leather chaise lounge in the corner of the room, and was documenting silently the promising epic battle of Janet and Riff Raff against the zombies.
And for sure, Janet was still ready to make good use of the pocket-sized forklift to move away all cumbersome bodies,… as there was bound to be casualties.In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Captain Yang Lang, or Goat as they called him, had reluctantly anchored the Aqua Luna at the Long Poon port to resupply for the next month. The Aqua Luna was his pride, an old pirate ship improved with modern tech, with sails bright vermilion, and polished deck of teck wood, smelling of the forests and brine. Years earlier, he’d vowed to stay off land as much as possible, and use her to remain away from the current lunacy that sprayed over the lands. But strange tides and surges on the ocean had warned him that it seemed to spray further than he’d expected.
To get to the bottom of it, he was having an appointment at the basement of an old derelict building, on the first floor of which artists had setup an organization named the Long Poon House of Stories; funnily, the basement was full of other kinds of stories. It had served as a training facility back when the Brits had dominion over the seas. It was now recycled into an archive facility for the Surge Team. You usually wouldn’t notice that, but if you paid attention, the bag of sponges sold at the Sinese medicine store full of dried animals, dogs legs and whatnots was unmistakable.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Cornella had been enjoying the bamboo shoots until she found out about the dog leg broth they were cooked in. “Really, I can eat no more” she said unhappily, pushing away the bowl and glancing around the room. “What the devil is that?” she exclaimed as her eye fell on the tall dark mysterious cabinet. “Where did that come from?”
Lord and Lady Appleton glanced at each other. “I told you to be more careful, Jedward” whispered Mirabelle. “What’s that doing in here?”
“Oh, ha ha, why that’s just a little trinket I picked up in Long Poon, Cornella. It’s nothing, nothing at all.” Lord Appleton cleared his throat noisily. “Just an old cabinet, nothing really.”
“What’s inside?” asked Cornella, moving towards the dark wooden doors. “What an interesting insignia, it reminds me of something.”
“Don’t open it!” shreiked the Appletons. “It’s, er, full of dog legs.”
Cornella frowned, wondering why dog legs kept popping up.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
At the same moment in a remote town in a far away galaxy, master yoda took his light saber out, preparing to fight Dookoo. He was trying to sort out all these probabilities where buns were blending with dogs in boobs. It almost got him killed.
“Have you considered suing your brains for lack of support?” said Dookoo with an evil grin.In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
Luigi’s arthritis was amassing to an all time extreme, and he was unsure if he could take anymore of the pain, when just then, and with amazing timing, a lady walked up to him asking if he wanted any arthritis ointment.
“Well yes… I could use some at this very instant.” Luigi said, as he pondered what sort of miracle occurred that would land him just what he needed, and in the very instant he needed it.
“Your welcome.” said Marsha. She smiled and began walking towards the nearest health foods store.
– – –
The sun was shining and the leaves were green, and Marsha was worried about her health. She had just been reading about all the horrid chemicals that big pharma puts into their ointments, and thought it would be better off if she simply gave away the ointment contained in her purse.
Just then she noticed an ugly looking man clutching his right hand. He was all bent over and wailing, and screaming absurdities.
“Aha!” she thought.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“Who else?, as a matter of fact, Dr Whoohelz,” he winked unapologetically.
“Oh, that?” he added knowingly to the glaring lady. “Did you know pink tutus made from pink panthers’ hides are a symbol of power in most old African countries.”
Meanwhile, Luigi, the hapless driver and his scooter, and the land beneath them had moved and groaned a good few meters further away from the doctor.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Lilac stealthily inched closer, curious to see how the Forehead shaved, and what it was that he felt the need to shave, notwithstanding the apparent difficulties. Unfortunately the Forehead was hidden behind the Pate, which was gleaming in the moonlight, but otherwise quite expressionless, giving away nothing.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Of course, it wasn’t Mandrake, but a stray snakipooh, lured by the magical properties of Aronipooh’s feet that had started to lick her toes while Mandrake was away chewing on his pride. Arona had a split moment of pleasurable intensity before she came quickly to her senses to realize Mandrake wouldn’t do such an odd thing.
Arona wondered if the snakipooh would make a nice boa round her lovely shoulders, but then thought it would be a tad too daring and quite unecessary given her natural allure. She quickly shooed it away, searching in her magical bag, among the sabulmantium and her other belongings, for a bottle of Nhum.
