Search Results for 'bloody'

Forums Search Search Results for 'bloody'

Viewing 20 results - 121 through 140 (of 269 total)
  • Author
    Search Results
  • #3488

    “How very strange” said Igor, when they eventually reached the waterfall.
    “What?” asked Mirabelle, who was paying more attention to the parrot perched on her shoulder. She tickled him under the chin. “Who’s a pretty boy then? muah muah muah pretty parrot, where have you been?”
    Igor rolled his eyes at the kissing noises. “Look!” he said, pointing at the waterfall.
    “It’s a fucking waterfall, yes, I see it!” snapped Mirabelle. Finding Huhu had distracted her from the discomfort of hunger, thirst and an aching body, but Igor’s questions brought her back to the reality of their situation.
    Then it dawned on her. The waterfall plummeted downwards, in a seemingly infinite series of cascades and pools. It was impossible to see the bottom with the spray and mist, especially in the fading daylight.
    “But we are still at sea level, Igor! The waterfall should be going up, not down. I mean to say, we should be looking up at the waterfall flowing down. This isn’t making any sense. But look” she said, pointing to the first pool on the right. “There is a little hut there and some people. Fat people.” she added. “I bet they will have some food, let’s go and ask.”
    Igor stepped cautiously to the edge and and peered over, looking for a way down. He looked down, then looked back at the little stream they had followed from the sea, and then back down again.
    “This water is breaking all the rules!” he cried. “It’s flowing in both directions!”
    “Don’t be silly Igor, are you delirious? Everyone knows that water flows downhill towards the sea.”
    “See for yourself then, look!” he put a stick in the stream and they watched it flow gently back the way they had come, towards the bay. “Now watch,” he said, as he tossed another stick over the edge of the waterfall. It quickly disappeared from view as it rushed downwards, in the opposite direction.
    “Where is the source? Where is the water coming from?”
    “Those fat people might know. Have you found a way down yet?”
    It appeared that the only way down to the pool of the fat people was via the waterfall itself. There were sheer cliffs of malachite and rose quartz on either side of the waterfall as far as the eye could see.
    “I think we will have to go down the waterfall itself, Mirabelle.”
    She gasped and took an involuntary step back.
    “We will have to steer ourselves towards where we want to go, that’s all.”
    “Oh no, not me, if you think I’m going to just throw myself over a waterfall…Oh! Huhu come back!”
    The parrot flew down to the pool of the fat people, and settled on a banana tree, watching Mirabelle above looking down at him.
    “Fucking parrot,” muttered Mirabelle. “I’ll clip your wings when I catch hold of you, I swear I will. For your own fucking good! Well?” she said, turning to Igor. “Are you coming or what?” and she launched herself over the edge and into the waterfall, with one thought in her mind ~ the bloody parrot.
    With a great splash, she landed in the rose coloured pool, bobbing to the surface like a cork. Disgruntled silvery fish leaped out of the water, one of them landing on the barbecue. Mirabelle waded out of the pool, oblivious to the fish, and the looks of amazement on the faces of the fat people, and walked over to the banana tree.
    Huhu ripped a banana off a ripe yellow bunch and dropped it, squalking in delight as Mirabelle caught it in her hands. When Huhu saw that she was focused on peeling it and eating it, he fluttered down and perched on her shoulder. She gave the parrot the last bit of banana, and then turned her attention to the fat people and the barbecued fish.

    #3480

    “It’s a fine thing Godfrey, really I am at a loss for words. One day, that’s all, just one day off, and what happens? Everything’s been rearranged or written off completely, it’s utter chaos. You just can’t get the staff these days.”
    “You could have robots, like everyone else, Elizabeth.”
    “Pah! Robots! Don’t talk to me about robots, too bloody predictable.”

    #3478

    “Are you sure this is the right direction ?” asked Sha.
    “The young guy at the Hotel d’El Refugio said it was down South the Sea of Bee Leaf, past the mangrove and the mystic wall”, said Glo.
    “Are you sure about that ? Look, the brochure indicate the pyramid is past the misty wall”, interrupted Mavis.
    “Mystic, misty, what’s the difference anyway ?” Glo tentatively rolled her eyes, but gave up the gym. “The young lad said mystic”, she added, not wanting to let go so easily.
    “What young lad ? You mean the one at the swimming pool that tried to flog the helicoleopter trip over the underwater tunnels of Lacuna to Sha ?”
    “Oh! I recall him well”, said Sharon, “He told me his name was Jube Lee ? He’s no older than eighteen. Don’t tell me you turned cougar Glo.”
    “Bloody hell, what ? Noooo !”
    “Here it is, the fog wall looks quite thin.”
    They heard the sound of big flapping wings.
    “Oh! Are you an angel ?” asked Sha. “What a beautiful face you have, young lady. As pure as vodka.”
    “My name is Fanella”, said the sphinx with a wide smile, “Answer my question and you’ll be free to cross the corridors of time.”
    Excited by the perspective of some fun the three ladies listened carefully.
    “What’s the difference between a cat and a complex sentence ?”
    “What the f*%$k ?”
    “Is that your answer ?”
    “No, no, no. I’m just thinking aloud”, said Glo.
    “That rings a bell”, whispered Mavis to her friends, “I think that’s from one of Steven Kong’s books. It has something to do with the claws and the paws. Yes ! That’s it. I have the answer”, she announced proudly.
    “Are you sure ?” asked Glo. “What happens if she give the wrong answer ?”
    “You won’t be able to enter the pyramid for ten years.”
    “Oh ! That’s all ?” said Sha disappointed, “I thought you were going to devour us or something similar.”
    “You must have mistaken me for someone else. As you are already in transition, there isn’t much that we can do to you. So, what is the answer ?”
    “A cat has claws at the end of its paws. The sentence has a pause at the end of its clause”, Mavis articulated clearly.
    The sphinx smiled, and let them pass.
    “Just one last thing”, she added as the three ladies were entering the Lion’s mouthed gate, “As you choose to go through, only go further, don’t stop or try to turn back. You may get lost in time and never come back. If you complete your taks, you may well find a new life.”
    She disappeared, leaving only her enigmatic smile in the memory of Sha, Glo and Mavis.

    #3465

    Lazuli Galore in the shape of the mandarin duck looked over his shoulder, grinning mischievously at his passengers.
    “Fasten your seat belts!” he shouted.
    “What bloody seat belts?” asked Lisa. “Hey! Steady on!”
    Lazuli the duck accelerated like a speedboat, ripping across the tops of the swelling waves and performing eye watering figure of eights, tilting the passengers first this way then that way as they held on to the feathers with all the strength they could muster, fearing for their lives, yet wildly exhilarated.
    Lazuli whooped with the exuberance of wild abandon, failing to notice that Fanella had slipped off his back into the brine, and unable to hear the cries of the others amid his own gleeful shouts and the roar of the wind rushing past.
    Fanella rolled and flailed in the backwash, eventually surfacing and gasping for breath. In vain she looked for the duck but it had disappeared from sight. The shore looked too far to swim to, but she knew she must try to reach it. Holding down the panic as best she could, she started to swim towards the mangrove trees lining the beach, barely visible in the descending fog. The striped shadows shimmered in the mist; was it an optical illusion of stripes and mists that it seemed as if a section of shadows was heading towards her? The zebra waded into the breaking waves, and calmly and purposefully swam towards the drowning girl.

    #3445

    “It’s been years since we ‘ad a bloody ‘oliday Glor, fancy a nice vacation somewhere?”
    Sharon and Gloria were watching a documentary about changing landscapes ~ lakes appearing in the desert, islands emerging out of the sea, giant holes appearing in the tundra, rivers coursing along new and unexpected routes and other such things that were appearing with increasing regularity. So much so, in fact, that there was enough material to have a weekly programme on the topic. It was Gloria and Sharon’s favourite show, and they always made a point of sitting down together to watch it.
    “Oooh I dunno, Shar, me back’s always playing up these days, what if I ‘ad a bad turn in some foreign place miles from anywhere?”
    Sharon nodded in sympathy. “I know what you mean, it’s like me and my night turns. I have to get up in the night and eat ice cream and walk about a bit, bit awkward when you’re away.”
    “Like me and my stomach” piped up Mavis, poking her head round the door.
    “What oh, our Mavis! Didn’t ‘ear you come in. How about you, fancy an ‘oliday?”
    “Wouldn’t dare, not with my stomach, I have to have special foods, and what if I had a trapped wind while I was in a strange place with nowhere to go?”
    “Listen to us!” shouted Sharon, suddenly standing up and glaring at her friends. “Just listen to us, will yer? What’s become of us!”
    “Age?” asked Mavis drily.
    “Are we washed up then, over the hill, is that it, is it? Too old for a bloody holiday? Well, I tell you, I’m not done yet, oh no! I’m going on a holiday, even if I have to go on my own!”
    “Calm down, Sha, bit emotional, int yer?”
    Sharon sank down onto the sofa again, and replied quietly, “I been thinking about it a lot just lately. Wondering where my get up and go went. We used to do so much more!” She looked imploringly at her friends. “We was always off galivanting and ‘aving adventures.”
    “Yeah, and remember what you said after the last one? Never again?” Mavis reminded her.
    “I think she’s right,” Gloria piped up. “I think we should give it a go. What’s the worst thing that could ‘appen? And what difference does it make where it ‘appens?”

    #3438

    A man on a donkey making his way through the dust and rubble of the crumbling city elicited no attention, it was a common sight that attracted no attention. Sanso covered his hair and face with a blue shawl, more to keep the acrid cement dust out of his eyes that for purposes of concealment.
    The destruction was appalling, but wonderfully symbolic ~ there were buildings still standing like lone sentinels amid the piles of smashed grey blocks and mangled steel girders, but the huge gaps where the great wall had been allowed a view of the rolling plain beyond. The heat shimmered across the golden dry vegetation, silver grey olive trees gnarled haphazardly on the gentle slopes, and far off a milky haze rose above the distant sea.
    The donkey picked his way nimbly though the wreckage, scurrying figures clutching babies and assorted items rushed towards the holes in the perimeter wall, where the ragtaggle crowds fanned out as they ran through to the other side, as wild shouts of jubilation ~ as well as plaintive cries for loved ones lost in the chaos ~ ricocheted through the gutted buildings.
    The donkey stopped at a site of devastation indistinguishable from all the others, and indicated to Sanso by bucking him off his back that this was the ruined tile factory, and then Lazuli shapeshifted back into his usual human form ~ short but stocky, black haired and brown eyed, with eyebrows that met in the middle ~ for ease of communication.
    “Over there, look!” Lazuli pointed to wisps of dust rising from a depression in the rubble.
    Shading his eyes from the glare of the sun, Sanso could make out four bent figures searching the debris, pulling out stones and tossing them aside, evidently searching for something.
    Fanella! I have come back for you!” Sanso cried, stumbling and banging his shins as he rushed over to her.
    “And I have come for you too!” added Lazuli, following Sanso, and hoping to make a favourable impression on the girl, smitten with her long golden hair, elfin features and slender body.
    “About bloody time, Sanso” said Lisa tartly, easing her aching back into an upright position. “You may as make yourself useful, and help Pseu find the tile she’s looking for and then we can get out of this godforsaken hellhole. Jack will be wondering where we are.”

    #3364
    Jib
    Participant

      “Miss Pol ?” asked the man. His voice was full of testosterone. Linda Pol considered a moment using her doe eyes on him. Her lips parted slightly under an untimely warmth coming from her groin.
      “Yes.” She swallowed. She realized she was holding her breath. “Actually, it’s Linda Pol, this is my…”, she wanted to keep it simple this time, “stage name. You can call me Linda”, she offered him a wide smiled, which he ignored.
      “Who’s that ?” he asked glaring suspiciously inside the elevator.

      “Who ?” Linda, unsettled by her conflicting feelings towards the man’s beauty and his brusqueness, looked back. She had completely forgotten about Kevinlol who seemed oblivious to the conversation, politely waiting for his customer to get out of his elevator.
      “Oh! Him ? He’s the bellboy who brought me Amber’s message”, she said with a tone she hoped casual. “Is that a gun in your pants ?” The words had escaped her mouth as if all her inhibitions had been put to sleep. Bloody sirens! More potent than I expected, she’d had to be careful.

      The man put his hand on his gun and grunted. “Follow me”, he said, and, without waiting, he turned around and strode into the corridor. Linda Pol gathered her wig and heels, and followed his butt.

      #3355

      “That bloke is sure talkin’ some bloody nonsense if you tell me, hope you know what you’re doin’” Jack knew that it was no point arguing with Lisa, and had always been anything but supportive of her fads, including her new and strange attraction to the young girl.
      “I s’pose I’ll be takin’ care of them dogs, then. When you comin’ back?”

      #3306

      Irina started to smell foul play when she arrived at the coordinates indicated in the last of the laconic messages sent to her by the Management.

      “Are you sure you got the coordinates right Mr R?”
      “Very much so Madam, but if you will allow me, I will double check to alleviate the hint of doubt I perceive in your most suave voice.”
      “Yes, do that please.”

      When becoming anxious, Irina tended to get prone to bossiness, and didn’t like what she heard in her voice.

      “I adore this door.”
      Yes, that was much better with suave undertones, with a hint of foreign raspy accent to spice it up.

      In truth, the door was plain, wooden, with a number painted on it, half erased, and a series of symbols which, although she could not place them, raised a distant alarm in her mind.
      “Rainbow magic?…” That was how they renamed the lore of black magic when it was privatized and re-marketed to the masses. She had not seen rainbow magic in ages, and there was no way that door would lead to an actual island without moving her out of this time and space.

      “Bloody buggers. Should have read those cryptic fine prints more carefully.”

      She realized there was a good chance her promised island was in a godforsaken place lost in time. She could count herself lucky if the deserted island was not in the palaeolithic and raided by dangerous dinosaurs…

      There was little choice. Either boldly embrace the great unknown behind the door, and trust her luck, or stay behind, short of the island of her dreams and probably condemned to run from the Management’s evil plans anyway.
      At least, with option one, the lottery could be favourable.
      That was what you got for dabbling in sketchy and questionable shots.

      “Mr R, are you ready?”
      “Always, Madam.”

      She felt lucky and pressed the door.

      #3295

      “Wait, wait!”
      When Jonbert in his crab suit arrived on the spot, most of the life had deserted the place to go for a half-brain peaceful sleep, except a few remaining inebriated whales making some more ambergris gyrating around the fading crystal. At times, the hologram could still be faintly perceived.

      “It’s so unfair, I’ve invested so much in this quest to see it fail now and have other reap the reward! I have a question, answer me!”

      The St Germain hologram seemed roused by the word question, if not by the emotional request.

      “A question… Mmm, sounds tempting, I didn’t really get a good question in ages, not to be rude with the previous ones, but well…” he shrugged.
      “Alright, alright, a few questions but be quick with it, I’m nearly done packing my data to transcend to Peasland.”

      Despite the draw to ask more about Peasland, Jonbert was steadfast in his resolve and asked the question that had been on mind rehearsed many a time, hopeful for a mind-blowing answer.

      “Life everlasting is at hand; all I need is to refine enough gold to go through time…”
      “Oh, or simply a bit of gugleshopping would do”
      “What?”
      “Nevermind, must be a data interference”
      “How do I manage that? Can you teach me transmutation?”
      “Well, sure I can, it probably would help, actually I just did it again right here about half an hour ago.”
      “Where is the gold? Where is it?”
      “It’s in the heart, that’s where true transmutation works. Maybe you should listen to some music, I hear a hit song is on its way.”

      Jonbert had the vague feeling he was being mocked, if not by Saint Germain, by fate or worse, his own attempts at a futile quest.

      “But seriously, endings are not so bad you know” the hologram went on “sometimes some experiences are like being trapped in a crystal. I was trapped in a crystal, in a previous life, a long time ago you know… But I digress… You see, new life sparks new creativity. I suggest you make peace with your life and go on with the rest of it, otherwise you’ll find out you have missed it completely. No amount of fountain of youth is going to make you feel better, not in this state. But the reverse is true, the more you will enjoy and inhabit your present, the longer you will live, without even ageing.”

      It surely wasn’t an answer he was expecting. Nobody would have dared give him such answer.

      “Take it as you are not dead yet, this capacity to be surprised is a great feeling… Now I must bid you farewell my friend. You had indeed some great questions…”

      “Wait!” the unexpected words had stirred him somehow and Jonbert had a sudden idea “Tell me a bit more about this Peasland place,… are they in need of a person in a place of authority? Can I come along?”

      “I don’t see why not. Let me recalibrate that crystal, and we’ll be there in a minute.”

      And with a flash of light, the hologram and the crab-man disappeared to the relief of Belen who was monitoring the scene with interest mixed with concern.

      “That was unexpected. And bloody hell, I’m dead. Those humans know nothing.
      Well, look at the Now, it’s high time I go back to Peter, he and the kids must be worried green sick…”

      #3291

      Jonbert’s arms nearly fell, when his pet robot blurted out the news.
      WHAT?!”
      It could only mean one thing, someone was purposely sabotaging his efforts to gain life everlasting. How else could the keys have been activated in the presence of the crystal. He had specifically designed it to be activated by his own DNA.
      Good thing at least it had sent a signal to the central computer of the submarine, otherwise he would have been in the dark before the questions were exhausted.

      “Bloody buggers will ruin all my chances with their silly questions” There was no time to think, only for action. He buttoned his kilt, buckled his heavy studded leather belt, and flushed the toilet where he was sitting and shouted “Bring my exosuit! No! Not the one with the tentacles! No, not the clam-like one, dammit! Are you deaf or what, the one with the pincers!”

      #3281

      “Isn’t that the greatest thing about those underwater goggles”
      After the shark threat had vanished, Sadie had contemplated for quite some time her new-found underwater abilities, and how to shift the weight of her body gracefully underwater. And then, she realized she could roll her eyes in the most peculiar way, with the membrane of the transparent skin massaging her eyeballs in the most relaxing manner. She’d never felt so good about rolling her eyes, and that was saying something.

      “BrllllSssadiieeee” came the urging sound in bubbles and gurgles, with a hint of despair dragging her out of the lovely eyeball massage session. The underwater acoustics needed some fine-tuning, so she had her wits to thank for understanding quickly the situation.
      Despite what might have looked like her sending messages on her ezapper, at the same time she was having in-her-body experiences, she was merely testing experimental echo-localization to pinpoint the spot where the pod of whales would be most likely found. The feedback buzzing had prompted her minutes ago that it had found 6 potential spots, and one only which was the most probable and located less than an hour’s diving distance. One thing she knew was that you had to be careful with automatic location instructions, so she’d run a second independent check and was waiting for the results when the alarmed look of Maurana turned and rolled in front of her face, almost giving her a fright.

      “Gbbbllood gracious, Maurana, what’s the matter?”
      “Gbblbl wooohoooglllbb bbbllrsfffftt plk plk plk skwooobbll!”

      “Oh, for fucks sake,” she telepathied “will you stop nattering in French, be more articulate.”
      “The others are drowned and I no longer see them, it’s awful, what should we do?!” the thought came back with force and a bit of campiness.

      “Well, that would depend what it is you want” straight answers were not Sadie’s forte.
      “I want to have our party with costumes and dances, I want to be the black pearl of the Ocean, I want to have more glitter and less molluscs, more chic and less kelp…” she started to sob profusely, half-choking and breathing from her tears. “I want my friends, and to be back hooooome”
      “Bloody hell, Reggie, now is not the time to lose your shit, pull yourself together dammit.”

      The reaction was immediate, the telepathic swearing was so out-of-the-ordinary that Maurana looked twice at Sadie, with her bob cut surrounding her face like a heavenly halo. Suddenly self-conscious, Maurana started to reapply some waterproof mascara to cover the stains.

      “I found them,” said Sadie with infectious calm “the ezapper’s first scan took them for a pod of whales or octopi for some reason. Let’s go get them, then we go visit the whales. But first, you have to try this, it will soothe you…”, as she started to show some more rolling motion of her beautiful blue eyes.

      #3259

      The early morning sea mist was evaporating as Fanella strolled around the village picking up dog shit. She reminded herself to fully appreciate the damp coolness, before the scorching summer sun enveloped them in a bone warming blanket, and then reminded herself to appreciate the bone warming effects of the full sun later. As she retraced her steps she noted how differently everything looked on a return journey, how piles of dog shit had escaped her notice while going one way, but were obvious on the way back. It reminded her of something she’d read recently in one of the books that Lisa insisted she read to improve her English ~ A Field Guide To Getting Lost . Hah! Had there been a cruel irony in that choice of book? Fanella had felt lost ever since she arrived in 2020. But according to the book, getting lost wasn’t a bad thing, not at all.

      To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.

      Fanella sighed. All sounds very philosophical, but I’m still stuck in the wrong time zone.
      Another passage from the book popped into her head:

      We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.

      Fanella gazed up at the sky ~ the blue of longing was taking over, as the white wisps of clouds dispersed.

      The people thrown into other cultures go through something of the anguish of the butterfly, whose body must disintegrate and reform more than once in its life cycle…. how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly….No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

      Charming, Fanella thought, just bloody charming. Rotting soup of change, that just about sums it up. No wonder I wake up every morning with my bones feeling like mush.

      #3247

      Lisa was delighted when she woke up the next morning recalling a dream. She had just joined the new dream group despite hardly ever remembering dreams in the hopes that the pooling would improve her recall. In the dream she had been going on a trip with a few friends, and was waiting for the ferry to leave. The boat was on the beach instead of in the water, and there was thick fog but a number of people on the beach, so she went for a wander around and saw a man stretched out on his back, fully clothed, reading a book, the surfboard gently rolling in with the tide, and out with the tide, and back again. When she returned to the ferry it had turned into a building, the interior quite different from the ferry, and her friends were gone. Lisa checked her bag for tickets and camera, but they were missing, and the bag was full of plastic forks and spoons instead. Bloody Adeline! she thought. Plastic spoons and forks but no camera and no tickets!

      #3223

      A long deck was stretching and unfolding from the shore into the ocean, passing above the shallow plateau of sand bathed in aquamarine waters, and the coral reef.
      After stretching for about five miles and six feet, it was seemingly above open waters where schools of colourful fishes and placid turtles where swimming blissfully.

      The submarine broke the surface of the waters on the evening of January 18th, at precisely 17:56 HST, Hawaii local time, a handful of seconds too early (or a minute too late) for fetching a prized synchronicity.

      Jonbert soon realized that, as usual, it could only mean one thing: others were late, synchronistic timing notwithstanding.
      Of course, other being late meant timing couldn’t be synchrone, and all figures couldn’t align properly.
      The first mate robot reported back to him on the top deck where he was sipping his scotch and enjoying the late sun after months spent underwater.

      — “Dear sir…”
      — “Oh forget about the blasted dear, I’m nothing dear to you, you ingrate piece of rubbish”
      — “Of course sir. If I may”
      — “Blurt it out, goddammit! Where are they?”
      — “Their signal doesn’t register at the resort we have booked for them.”
      — “What?! And where is it now?”
      — “The ezapper have been geolocalized at 5.56 miles inland, sir”

      That darned missed synch again

      — “Then, bloody go fetch them!”

      #3206

      How many ways to stab a pea with a syringe? Jonbert woke up from his nap with the most peculiar question on his mind.
      At 153, he’d started to get those annoying narcoleptic fits. He would go down in a blink of an eye into a deep dreamless sleep, and wake up to the most embarrassing of situations.
      He felt like kicking someone, and mumbled under his breath “Just bloody once, before it gets puréed”.

      He could have sworn he heard one of the butler robots titter silly. Those darn robots were getting smarter every day, he would have to get them a good canning.
      But more pressing matter were on his mind, and he blisslessly ignored the wondrous display of flying manta rays around the eight-flippered submarine.

      Time-landing around Big Island was always tricky, he was glad the darned bots got this one right, tittering notwithstanding.
      Why so tricky, he could hear minds wonder. Why can’t those minds just read the bloody Time Traveling Manual! he exploded. The Island is expanding, creating new land every day. One miscalculation, and your expensive submarine would be enclosed in molten lava! How many times he had to repeat it.
      True enough, his temper had not improved with age, but that kept him alive well, thank you very much.

      That’s were they were supposed to collect the travelers, to entertain and train them a bit before leading them to the whale’s hotspot.
      He would have to remain discreet for now on, and the prospect of having to refrain swearing loudly at ghosts seen by anyone but himself got him nervous all of a sudden.

      :fleuron:

      They’d felt the Time Sewer get cleaned up, although it took a time to reach them. The frogs were paddling like crazy, and then the bubble reached them, propelling the jelly-bean shaped carriage like a rocket to their destination.

      “Brace yourseeeeeeelves!” Sanso sung in the key of F, ending the frogs’ symphony with a perfect 5th.

      “The mind has a tendency to forget unpleasant things…” Sadie was saying to the queens in a way to soothe their increasingly worried faces “It will be over in a minute”.
      The last part didn’t get them any less worried.

      #3137

      Finding a time smuggler on such short notice was near impossible, Linda Paul soon found out when she hit the web. There were sure long lists of pages offering the services at seemingly attractive prices, but then never covering all the highly recommended options, such as the time collision waiver, and collateral time damage waiver.
      She had a pretty good idea of what she needed to smuggle back and when, but all the time pathways simulations seemed to run into a dead-end.
      After a stroke of genius, realizing that the one-timeway drop-off prohibitive surcharge may be the reason why she couldn’t get decent tariffs, she changed her simulation for a return.

      “Time and item of origin/return…” she muttered as she typed “Queen Anne’s crocheted ferrets, 1625, Louvres Palace”.

      Of course, going forward in time was easy, so she would simply need to give specific instructions to the time smuggler to pass on those bloody ferrets along the timeline.

      A click here, accepting the long conditions with hardly a glance, “blabla, not covering extra temporal charge… blabla… ensured discretion, yes, yes, service cannot be used to leave historical artifacts protected by the amendment on the … or any incongruent item blabla… smuggling service comes with no obligation of results…”
      The rest was piece of cake.

      She already had the perfect time mule in mind for the delicate mission of reintroducing the crocheted ferrets where her dragqueen competition was now held.

      :fleuron2:

      When Nicole du Hausset, widow of a poor noble man, one of the two femmes de chambre of Madame de Pompadour, first hear Madame talk about her first encounter with the Count in 1749, she remembered immediately about her mother, and grand-mother’s secret instructions.
      A few nights later, she wrote down in her diary “‘A man who was as amazing as a witch came often to see Madame de Pompadour. This was the Comte de Saint-Germain, who wished to make people believe that he had lived for several centuries.”

      For some reason, she was to find a way to give him two scrawny century-old (and quite frankly smelly) crocheted ferrets, as a token for the Queen.
      She still had seven years or so to make it happen, that was time ample enough to do the deed, if the Good Lord would grant her enough life, or else she would need to pass the burden to the next of kin.
      She’d never known exactly why this was significant, but she’d been told that her family’s past riches were due to the success of this task, passed on to the next generation until 1757.

      It didn’t take very long. An elaborate and convincing lie did come easier to her than she would have known, and the Count swallowed it hook and sinker. Next thing she knew, she’d glimpsed the plush beasts in the midst of the menagerie of the Queen, and felt relieved of a life and generation-long burden.
      She could now return to a simple and uncomplicated life, although she would sometimes wake up at night in cold sweat, having had dreadful nightmares that the ferrets had disappeared before the date.

      #3000

      “How do you feel now?”
      “Not so bad, considering I just survived a slug indigestion…”
      Ernie and Jett were giving sad glances at their nearly empty glasses of Bourgogne red wine. Ernie’s plate of snails au beurre persillé was barely touched, and Jett who was eyeing at it for a while now as he was sucking on his empty shells decided now was a good time to grab it and switch it with his own empty one while continuing to rant loudly in the French restaurant with his mouth full.
      “You see, that’s why I don’t like those bloody Chinese greasy spoons, especially after a surge. You never know what you’re goin’ to get. Me in’ haffin’ none of it sea bloody bottom-feeders cucumber…”

      Ernie was still looking a bit pale, except for the occasional patches of purple hematomata, that the doctor mentioned would disappear once the body manages to expel the impossible to digest slug.
      “Should have had that blessed surgery, would have been faster” he moaned.
      “Are you kiddin’? Look, don’t want to be gross or anythin’ but last time I had things expelled too fast, it wasn’t a pretty sight!”
      “Oh stop it again with your oily shit fish, that’s a blessin’ disgusting memory I would merrily forget!”.
      “L’addition!” Ernie had had enough of Jett’s snail munching. It was time to get to their next assignment. Even if the occupational medicine doctor had tried to deter him resuming work too quickly, it was better that than dragging around an empty house in flip-flops and pajamas.
      The good thing was that the Disaster Damage Team was never short of assignments. Most of the time they were working in locksteps with the Surge Team, clearing the aftershocks, so they didn’t have to fear about boredom.

      #2993
      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        Liverworts had done wonder at the Vatican, actually.
        That, and maybe the out-of-the-body sit-ins of the Occupy The Vatican Library Out of Body team too. So much so that the old cranky current tenant decided to leave his chasuble and tiara and go for more exciting adventures such as sky-diving and bungee jumping.

        The Surge Team’s game was about to change to a whole new level they soon started to discover when their screens started to light up at the same moment the first news report came out with the scoop. Well, the second one actually, because the first reporter spoke only in Latin.

        “So much red can only mean one thing,” a dejected Pearl mused out aloud at her screen.
        “Chinese Bloody New Year?” a distracted Skye answered tentatively.
        “Yes… but no, I mean, it’s not surges any longer… another Wave is on the making… And I fear they’ll overdo the religious stuff with that one.” she added gloomily.

        “Oh, and by the way, anyone seen Aqua Luna recently? I’ve never seen my keyboard so bloody dusty in ages!”

        #2991
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          “Early retirement!” Skye said, “Bloody cheek! Undercover operation, very hush hush, it was. The noteworthy case of the Welsh Leaves of Absinthe, a very interesting case indeed. Fifty Seven bottles in that case, and each one different. I had to case the joint first of course, then proceed with the utmost abandon. Absolutely crucial to work this one to the book ~ intuition and impulse, and absolutely no planning.”

          “I can’t wait to hear all about it” said Pearl. “ I heard about the Rose surge while you were there, and something about a radioactive grafitti surge originating in an abandoned nuclear plant in the mountains?”

          “Absolutely true, Pearl. I heard about that one on the way back to the airport, spontaneous radiactive grafitti appearing and it’s heading east. That’s the bizarre thing, it’s working its way across the country, and each new sighting is east of the last one.”

          “Sounds nasty, what’s the plan to divert it?” asked Pearl.

          “Liverworts.”

        Viewing 20 results - 121 through 140 (of 269 total)