Search Results for 'help'

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  • #3975
    F LoveF Love
    Participant

      “Don’t push me,” snapped Finnley. “Yes Godfrey, I believe picking up rubbish is in my job description. Your job description … well buggered if I know what you do around here,” she said snarkily, perversely annoyed at being telepathically described as ‘the maid’. “Give me that rubbish immediately and I will deal with it,” she commanded, making a grab for Godfrey’s hand. “You go and help LIz with Roberto. And whatever you do, don’t let the blighter jump 3 times in the air and shout stickum lute putty.

      “Who are you?” whispered Godfrey, keeping a firm grasp on the scraps of paper, aided perhaps by the fact that the honey was adhering them to his hand. “You are not the Finnley we know and … well, the Finnley we know. Is that cucumber on your face really a disguise? What have you done with Finnley?”

      “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Finnley, rolling her eyes.

      “Help!” screamed Liz. “He’s trying to jump!”

      #3970
      Jib
      Participant

        That’s funny, Roberto thought, a bunch of nonsense.
        “What’s that ?” asked Liz, her curiosity picked by the alluredness of a strand of words.
        “It just fall off your hat”, said the gardener. He looked at the woman, thinking about what Godfrey had told him. The sunlight certainly made her look radiant. He noticed that the red of her lips was the same as the red rose bush he was just taking care of.
        Liz took the paper.
        “Be careful, It’s sticky”, said Roberto.
        “Say something I don’t know, dear.” She tried to get rid of the paper, tearing it in several pieces in the process.
        “I wonder…” she began, “Finnley”, she called waiting for her help. She would certainly know. She had a habit of sticking her nose everywhere.

        #3946

        In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

        At the same time, and in a different space, Floverley was trying to help some characters out of the limbo state of forgetfulness.

        To lure them out of the woodwork, and offer them a much needed sexying-up, she had set up a luminary booth at the fringe of the Limbo states next to Nowherehampton, which stated in unapologetic fluorescent neon lights “FREE MAKEOVER” and in little letters “(hugs NOT complimentary)”.

        As far as she’d found, the little In Sects were still in winter slumber, and her business was at a crawl that she wanted to consider switching strategies, not that she was big on strategies, only needing but one “go with the flove”.

        Anyhow, the ring of the sudden distraction with Master John and Dispersee would surely do as well as a round of aura cleaning duties.

        #3936
        ÉricÉric
        Keymaster

          “As always, reality can’t help but catching up with fiction.” mused Godfrey aloud. “Maybe another case of origami town in the making… If you see what I mean.”

          “I’ve got no idea what you’re rambling about big G.” muttered Finnley who had just reappeared out of the Blubbit in Nowherehampton. “There’s been a call for M’am Liz, by the way. From her cousin Badul.”

          #3931
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            Prune turned to look back at Quentin as she made her way home. He’d have been better off waiting for a new chapter in the refugee story, instead of blundering into that limbo with that daft smile on his face. What a silly monkey, she thought, scratching under her arms and making chimpanzee noises at the retreating figure. Look at him, scampering along gazing up into the treetops, instead of watching his step.

            A deep barking laugh behind her made her freeze, with her arms akimbo like teapot handles. Slowly she turned around, wondering why she hadn’t noticed anyone else on the track a moment before.

            “Who are you?” she asked bluntly. “I’m Prune, and he’s Quentin,” she pointed to the disappearing man, “And he’s on the run. There’s a reward for his capture, but I can’t catch him on my own.” Prune almost cackled and hid the smirk behind her forearm, pretending to wipe her nose on it. She wondered where the lies came from, sometimes. It wasn’t like she planned them ~ well, sometimes she did ~ but often they just came tumbling out. It wasn’t a complete lie, anyway: there was no reward, but he could be detained for deserting his new story, if anyone cared to report it.

            The man previously known as the Baron introduced himself as Mike O’Drooly. “I’m a story refugee,” he admitted.

            “Bloody hell, not another one,” replied Prune. Then she had an idea. “If you help me capture Quentin, you’ll get a much better character in the new story.”

            “I’ve nothing left to lose, child. And no idea what my story will be or what role I will play.” Perhaps it’s already started, he wondered.

            “Come on, then! If we don’t catch him quick we might all end up without a story.”

            #3915
            F LoveF Love
            Participant

              “You are confusing, but I know you can’t help it. Have you taken your pills?” asked Finnley kindly.

              #3898

              In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

              Floverley felt her presence was needed in the Cackling Dimension of lost stories refugees.

              In truth, she wasn’t so keen on leaving her aura cleaning duties, even less so to get involved with any of Dispersee’s warped assignments, but a call couldn’t be left unanswered (although her subtle help would probably be left unfelt).

              Anyhow, she braced herself and with some reluctance, followed her emanation of light which was already dispatched, en route to the Pickled Pea Inn.

              #3897

              Seeing Dido eating her curry cookies would turn Mater’s stomach, so she went up to her room.

              Good riddance she thought, one less guest to worry about.
              Not that she usually thought that way, but every time the guests leaved, there was a huge weight lifted from her back, and a strong desire of “never again”.
              The cleaning wasn’t that much worry, it helped clear her thoughts (while Haki was doing it), but the endless worrying, that was the killer.

              After a painful ascension of the broken steps, she put her walking stick on the wall, and started some breathing exercises. The vinegary smell of all the pickling that the twins had fun experimenting with was searing at her lungs. The breathing exercise helped, even if all the mumbo jumbo about transcendant presence was all rubbish.

              It was time for her morning oracle. Many years ago, when she was still a young and innocent flower, she would cut bits and pieces of sentences at random from old discarded magazines. Books would have been sacrilegious at the time, but now she wouldn’t care for such things and Prune would often scream when she’d find some of her books missing key plot points. Many times, Mater would tell her the plots were full of holes anyway, so why bother; Prune’d better exercise her own imagination instead of complaining. Little bossy brat. She reminded her so much of her younger self.

              So she opened her wooden box full of strips of paper. Since many years, Mater had acquired a taste for more expensive and tasty morsels of philosophy and not rubbish literature, so the box smelt a bit of old parchment. Nonetheless, she wasn’t adverse to a modicum of risqué bits from tattered magazines either. Like a blend of fine teas, she somehow had found a very nice mix, and oftentimes the oracle would reveal such fine things, that she’d taken to meditate on it at least once a day. Even if she wouldn’t call it meditate, that was for those good-for-nothing willy-nilly hippies.

              There it was. She turned each bit one by one, to reveal the haiku-like message of the day.

              “Bugger!” the words flew without thinking through her parched lips.

              looked forgotten rat due idea half
              getting floverley comment somehow
              prune hardly wondered eyes great
              inn run days dark quentin simulation

              That silly Prune, she’d completely forgotten to check on her. She was glad the handwritten names she’d added in the box would pop up so appropriately.

              She would pray to Saint Floverley of the Dunes, a local icon who was synchretized from old pagan rituals and still invoked for those incapable of dancing.
              With her forking arthritis, she would need her grace much.

              #3889
              ÉricÉric
              Keymaster

                “Did anybody see our last guest?” Mater couldn’t help but regularly count her herds (so to speak), and although she wasn’t as authoritative with her guests as she was with her family members, she couldn’t help but notice that her last count was one person short —enough to start worrying her.

                “Hmm lwwft thws hhmmmng” said Idle, her mouth full with cookies.

                Mater shrugged. It was still better than when she used to talk with sauerkraut.

                #3888
                ÉricÉric
                Keymaster

                  This morning was quiet, but his mind was not.
                  There were always the nagging thoughts that something ought to be done, the restless fear of forgetting something of importance.
                  But this morning was quiet.
                  A bit too quiet in fact.
                  No raucous cackling to stir the soft velvety dust from the wooden floorboard.

                  Quentin was wondering whether the story makers had lost all interest in moving his story forward. Yet, he was more than willing to move it notwithstanding, his efforts seemed of little consequence however. Some piece was missing, some ever-present grace of illumination shrouded in scripting procrastination.

                  His discussion with Aunt Idle had been brief. She’d told him with great intensity that she had a weird dream. That she looked into a mirror and saw herself. Or something like that,… she was not a very coherent woman, the ging wasn’t helping.

                  Maybe his task was done. Time to leave the Pickled Pea Inn.
                  His friend Eicnarf seemed eager to see him. Or maybe that had been a typo and she really meant to sew him, or saw him,… she could be gory like that…

                  No matter, a trip out of the brine cloud of this sand coated place would do him good.

                  #3882

                  In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                  The fine-angel balanced sheet and innergy bud-jets forecasts were his least favorite part of the now. Master Medlik had learned a long now ago that when they reappeared in his presence, it only meant a resurgence of certain beliefs. Master Finn Min Hoot would say mawkishly that it had to do with his tendency to believe in and cling to control.
                  Notwithdangling, those blessed sheets had to be handed over to Tittartoness, the Lady of Tetratron who was in charge of the Heavenly Fine Angels.

                  It didn’t help that everyone seemed to be procrastinating to hand over their forecasts. Desiree seemed more interested recently in plastercasts for Old Deities, and unwittingly triggering Earth disasters, while stripping old satanic temples of their idols. At least, Master John had done a few tries, and could blame it on the extreme cosmic weather of late, and his busy jiggong schedule. As for the elusive Floverley, the peak season of energy hosting up above surely meant a lot of aura cleaning.

                  So, he was on his own, and had to just take a leap of faith. He jotted down a string of random numbers, and sent it without even looking. Ahah! he explaimed jubilantly, how’s that for going with the flow!

                  #3875

                  Cornella giggled, dusting off her keyboard before leaving the office. Ed Steam might have something to say about it when he saw the new lists of identities in the morning, but it had been worth it. A little alliteration helped to pass the day, after all. For the most part the story refugees either didn’t notice, or at any rate didn’t complain. They were relieved that the endless process was over, or too nervous about starting a new story to notice.

                  Zoe Zuckerberg to Zimbabwe was one of her favourites; and Quentin Quincy to Queensland. What did it matter that Zoe, previously known as Madam Li, had no desire to go to Zimbabwe, or that Ted Marshall had family in Spain? It was up to them to make up whatever they wanted once they started the new story. Her job was assigning names and locations, the rest was up to them.

                  She’d laughed out loud when one of them sat down at her desk, clearing his throat nervously. Current name and location? she asked.
                  Percy Piedmont from Paris, he said, I have a brother in Shanghai who has a new story, he said he’d insert me into his.

                  Cornella couldn’t help wondering who had assigned him his last character role, and if they were playing games in the office to pass the day, too.

                  Alright Percy, how about Shane Shylock?

                  #3861
                  ÉricÉric
                  Keymaster

                    By doing so, she dreadedly realised she might have broken one or two rules.

                    She let the thought float and flow away, embellishing it with a flurry of hells to make it sound more like it came from Lalaland.

                    With that, she should be safe from retributions and impeding baldness.
                    “Well, better that than the horrible fate of toothlessness of that last Filna’s incarnation” she couldn’t help but think before slumbering away.

                    #3858

                    “Glod help us all when Jacques Schitt and Frank Diddley Squat turn up”, Glodfrey remarked with a heartfelt sligh.

                    After perusing the latest plot proposal he felt a strong need to know just how many characters were potentially on the move. His head swam with the ramifications, and he had a sinking feeling that there were far more characters than he could begin to imagine.
                    So he started reading, inwardly screaming “don’t make me count!”. At first he’d only considered the earth bound more or less human characters.

                    “Glod help us all,” he repeated, his eyed glazed with apprehension. “Who will we ever get to ploof lead all this now?

                    “You deplessing old flart, Glodfrey, for leavens slake, it will be sluch flun!” Lilith said, giving him a playful plunch on the ell bough. “The arrival of The Time Travelling Absinthe Pirates might coincide with the government alien disclosure programme, what a hoot!”

                    #3846

                    “Are you alright, Tina dear?” asked Becky kindly. First she sounded serious and quiet, the next moment seemingly on the verge of hysteria, what was the matter with her?

                    “Rules won’t help much during the Imagination Wave, you know. This is all out chaos, I’m telling you! I didn’t want to think about it, but now that I am, I am wondering if all these displaced and irate characters are going to be following any rules? Hah!” she cackled wildly, more rattled herself than she was willing to admit.

                    #3826

                    In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                    prUneprUne
                    Participant

                      It feels like it has all been a dream. And not a particularly good one, too.

                      I look through the window, and the blue sky of Earth shines brightly though. Only a few more days before the quarantine is over, if I’m to believe the hazmat-suited staff, and I should be able to get out to wherever I want to. You can go back to your family the nurse had said with a smile. They surely must miss you.
                      Obviously, the well-intentioned nurse had no notion of her family…

                      The TV set they’ve put in the rooms is more helpful to piece together the fragments of memory of what happened. The news had kept mum about the aliens, or about our return for that matter. It seems they can’t explain how we came back so fast, without telling more. Maybe that’s the real purpose of the quarantine… brainwash us into forgetting, returning back to our lives quietly, and be happy that we could get back in one piece. Funny they should even bother at all, actually.

                      I don’t know if there’s any coming back to how life was before. Surely the Inn and Aunt Idle would still be there, if only both more derelict than before. But would I want to get back? Do what? Only Mater’s sharp wits were ever a match, and she is gone too.

                      This is the end of the Mars story.
                      With some chance, I’ll start a business with Hans — raise Guinea pigs, rats and maybe a couple of those cute African pygmy hedgehogs. That would be a lot more fun.
                      Squeals and cackles, and truckloads of cuteness.

                      #3825
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        Gustave jumped when the phone rang, his heart hammering unpleasantly. Get a grip! he told himself sternly. Hesitantly he answered the call, expecting to hear an ear grating cackle.

                        “Can I speak to Leonora, please? It’s Bea here,” the voice requested.

                        “Er, sorry, I think you have the wrong number,” replied Gustave, feeling like a fool as he tried to calm his shaking hands.

                        “Leonora Butterworth?” insisted the voice calling herself Bea.

                        Startled, he said “Ah, Butterworth’s the name, but I’m afraid I don’t know anyone called Leonora,” and then, astonished, he heard Bea start to sob and mumble incoherently.

                        “I’m so sorry, was it urgent?” he asked, already feeling a responsibility to help the unknown woman. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

                        “It’s the cackling,” Bea answered with a sniff, “It’s driving me mad. I thought a chat with Leo might help take my mind off it, but I haven’t seen her since the fiasco in Spain and I don’t know where she is, I was hoping this Butterworth number would be her and…..” her voice trailed off disconsolately.

                        “It’s driving me mad too,” Gustave was surprised to hear himself say. “I say, er, Bea,” he cleared his throat, “Would you fancy meeting for a drink in the Spotted Dick Inn? To, you know, take our minds off it?”

                        Gustave had regained his scientific composure somewhat, and was considering the benefits of an unexpected opportunity to research the effects of the cackling on the ordinary population.

                        Bea readily agreed, old tart that she was, and said she would be there in half an hour.

                        #3814
                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          A raucous explosion of laughter cackled in the neighbourhood, waking up Bea from her afternoon siesta.
                          SHUT UP!” she bawled covering her ears with a cushion, and looked desperately at something she could throw at the window. Alas, save for a manikin’s leg that looked like she owned a pegleg, and a piece of half-eaten banana, there was nothing she could find.

                          She resigned herself to waking up, and pried open her little wrinkled eyes in the late afternoon purple light.

                          Every time she woke up, she had to reacquaint herself with her reality. Not that she was such a junkie on computer duster, as that rat had rudely implied, it wasn’t only that.
                          A few months before, she had an epiphany. Many years of meditation, guided, in groups, alone, with zen masters and copious reading had amounted to nothing but the occasional nice fluffy feeling. It was when she had decided to drop it all of sheer frustration, and burn all the stupid self-help books that something had chanced upon herself.
                          She’d lost her ego. Poof, disappeared, like that.

                          Before that, she was completely adverse to endings, and to any form of deleting.
                          But now, she understood the words she’d read many years ago that had infuriated her profoundly at the time : “Everything must be scrutinised and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed. Believe me, there cannot be too much destruction. For, in reality, nothing is of value.”

                          She was. And every waking up was a wake up to her eternal self.
                          So obviously, the external appearances left a bit to be desired, now that desire was not. Continuity was never there in the first place.

                          But to live, she had to find again what new reality she had just awoken to, as she did every morning, and after every siesta.
                          Truth is, she kind of liked it, the non-continuity of it. Before, she would have gloated to whoever that name of an old friend of hers, that she was right about it, the unnecessary of that continuity babble. Now there was no need of it.

                          A loud cackle outside stirred her back to reality.

                          #3805

                          In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                          Whenever Nabuco projected to human consciousness, they had the habit of seeing him as a plump looking bearded vagrant, like a Pavarotti turned homeless. It had annoyed him for a while, but now he didn’t mind as much.

                          Nowadays, he was mostly off the bliss addiction of the Rays, so in a sense, it was fitting. If he were still in physical human form, he would probably have taken on quite some weight. And that made him a sort of pariah too, splintering off the great order of ascension, or whatever They called it nowadays.

                          With them, there was no denying he’d lived quite the grand life, being ascended and all. They used to called him Master Nebuchadnezzar — well, often Master Nabuco.
                          He’d gotten on the rayroll almost by luck. He was credited for inventing the chibubble technique, as a way of extracting bubbles and peals of laughter when people get all hot and excited. At the peak of the technique, somewhere around the 1968s, he had recruited and incorporated many gnomes into the fold, as nature spirits known as gnomes had a uncanny knack for extracting laughter off people. With the call for sexual liberation and getting closer to nature, they had plenty of opportunities to get people high, and chibubbles were all the fancy.
                          It had started to go down as fast as it rose, people were no longer interested in nature, gnomes working condition when forced to move to urban environments were a disaster, and the chibubble production plummeted. Now, the industry was a thing of the past ; sometimes there were a few chibubble memorabilia kept by other Masters interested in speculating on its rare value more than for anything else. Now kitten videos on social media had replaced the chibubble gnomes business and driven a new unseen growth of the Gross Divine Product.

                          He didn’t know if the gnomes were responsible for it, but living so close to them and nature for a while, somehow opened his perception to the falsity and the insanity of their quest for power. So instead of finding new venues for innergy extraction as they all did, he’d resigned.
                          Nobody had heard about anybody resigning before, so they suspected him of trying to be original, and maybe disrupt the clever and immutable laws of the universe.
                          Long story short, he’d managed to escape their clutches, and live on his own, and off unhealthy junk thoughts habits. Those were the worse, the craving of decadent thoughts, maintained by the entertainment and news industries, the social media and all of it. In the long run, that or the fuzzy bliss were faces of the same coin, and debilitating in the end.

                          Even when he tried to block them, he could hear the thoughts, prayers and all the inner chatter. The spirit world, or however it is called, was a medium ideal to carry those thoughts and reverberate throughout the whole universe. Like sound waves travelling under water for large distances. Now, he could resist the urge to answer, seduce and insinuate. Many of the thoughts were so naive and would welcome anything. He was still a junkie, and those offerings were never helping getting him off the wagon.

                          Humans hoped for ascension, but ascended masters like him who were trapped in a false blissdom could only hope to resume their path by descending to human form. Such irony.

                          There was one voice that seemed to stand out. It had the flavour of “dangerous” pinned onto it, the kind of bright colours that venomous snakes and toads have on earth to warn predators to keep off, or else. It could only mean one thing, a genuine seeker of truth, someone who had the potential to tear the veils to shreds.

                          He’d seen quite a few of those, they were usually young, and for many of them terribly naive and easily corrupted by displays of power. Search for truth and search for power were sometimes so easily mistaken one for the other. The bright colours would fade over time, but they were still dangerous, too unpredictable to be trusted fully. Learned Ascended Masters knew well to leave those to their own device, while tending to the less critical minds.

                          But what did he have to waste, especially now? Nabuco zoomed towards the origin of the thoughts, observing at a distance, the young Domba.

                          #3803

                          In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                          Lord R’eye, the one-eyed ruler of the known universe, was known by many names, a great lot of them completely forgotten by the masses. He had to constantly reinvent Himself, borrow new disguises, create factions, sprinkle in a few miracles, create order ab chao and voilà.

                          He owned a few bodies, strategically placed here and there, one of his favourite in Geneva, quite involved in banking affairs. His bodies were a rare indulgence, and he couldn’t stay too long either, as his massive energy could easily get stuck with the lot of them, down to density.
                          Overall, he was much more comfortable managing his immense wealth “up there”, in the cosmic realms he had helped shape. So many underlings were ready to carry on his biding, and apart from a few small number of very close ergo very dangerous confidants, many of the minions didn’t even know each other, or that they were, for the most part, owned by Him, and part of the same team.

                          This was a cut-throat business, He had to admit, and everything was based on it. Manipulation and deceit, coercion, coaxing, anything necessary to control and manage the Empire.

                          One of those confidants, Lord Apex had been summoned and appeared almost instantly.
                          He had this charming archangelic halo and aura, but Lord R’eye would have none of it. A correction was in order, the latest results were extremely concerning.

                          “My Lord?” Apex asked in his mellifluous voice.
                          “My dear Apex, remind me what responsibility I gave you last century?”
                          “Of course my Lord, the Innovation project, the Great Disclosure and Holographic Contact projects, amongst other proj…”
                          “And how much progress have we had with those?”
                          “Well, my Lord surely knows that so much herding is delicate. The interference with Lord Bael’s projects too, you should know…”
                          “The Desert and Green Revolutions projects, indeed. A great success, so much pain and anguish! That’s what I’m talking, you should learn from Bael.”
                          “But my Lord, that has caused quite a conundrum with the Mars simulation, which, by way of fractal holographic recurrence, could well impact the whole delicate matrix we weave…”
                          “Stop your angel speech, Me’dammit. Plain Anguish, so I can understand every word. The Hell pits cannot wait to have you, so you better give some good explanation.”
                          “I mean, my Lord, that were the sheeple able to glimpse that the Mars experiment is but a reflection of a deception of grander scale in the cosmic realms, that the aliens saviours, or whatever saviours or… masters of any genre, are just ways to fleece them off their power… “
                          “Everything would unravel like a pile of dominos.” Lord R’eye’s voice made very clear that he had full grasp of the situation. “So,” he continued with the nicest menacingest voice “you better make sure that doesn’t happen.”

                          He dismissed Apex with a wave of a thought.

                          If the net of illusions unravelled before they have time to create the Earth 5th Dimension in time to double their profit, it would certainly be a disaster.

                          A few humans lost through the gaps were a hard to accept reality, but so long as they could cut the losses, it was not dramatic. But they were talking another order of magnitude. It could be a definitive blow. It always had been an issue when the net of illusion became too big in the past. They had bigger and bigger holes. So they had to start again, destroy, and recreate civilisations.
                          Stupid humans, if only they knew that Ascension was not the way out.

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