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In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Now, now Lavvie dear, you know I detest hugging. Grandma Heliotrope extricated herself from Lavender’s embrace. It is so bohemian. If you wish to show me affection then a smile will suffice. A cup of hot vegemite would not go amiss either. Then I have an important message from the Fellowship for you. Sadly, you really have managed to get yourself in a pickle this time my dear Lavvie.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Believe it or not, it suddenly seems like the shifting symphony makes more sense than the ninth (and Beethoven doesn’t make you dumb), if you see my drift…”
“I could, if you’d stop talking in riddles” Lavender told Harvey with but the slightest hint of exasperation in her otherwise perfectly adorable soft and beautiful voice.“I don’t even know what I’m talking about actually, it’s like I’m channeling some deranged poet”
“Yeah, that or being taken over by aliens …”
“You know, I miss a sense of continuity… When I can’t follow the leaping frog in at least a pattern that makes sense, I gradually loose all interest. At least if I know the frog is going that way to look for tasty maggots, or that other way to lay a few eggs, or that other way to mate with psychotropic toads, I can hop or fly along… “
Lavender smiled a lovely smile.“There it’s like a frog without purpose; it’s running in all directions, keep changing colours like a chameleon, and no matter how I try, I can’t figure the simplest pattern.”
“Maybe you should ask your super computer floogle ?”
“Yeah… it would tell me that figures without a pattern are called irrational or even transcendent… Not that it would help me in the least. Usually, when you can’t find a pattern, it’s because you don’t use the proper decomposition.”
“You want to dissect the poor frog?”
“No… Not even sure why I bother with the frog at all… It can do what it wants in the pond after all…”In reply to: Strings of Nines
Yoland woke up feeling lighter somehow. The sun was shining, the young puppy, Phunn, scampered about without a care in the world as she perused the morning mail. The random daily Circle of Eight’s quote once again delighted her, synchronizing with her recent meditation.
“Fiona woke suddenly from a dream. In her dream she had been communicating with her online friends, through drawings and messages. She had been trying so hard to convey something, and the more she tried to say it, the more distant they felt to her.
She had woken feeling saddened. Her energy was greatly disturbed, and, unable to get back to sleep straight away, she meditated. She felt herself connect with the energy of a Snowy Owl, who invited her wordlessly to ask her questions. The Owl’s eyes seemed to have such a depth of wisdom and kindness, and no sooner had her thoughts begun to ask their questions, than she would feel the Owl’s answer merge with her own knowing.
She felt herself being able to say without words what she had tried so hard in her dream to convey, and understanding there was no need for any effort, she felt greatly comforted, and peaceful sleep swept over her again.”
Yoland had sent an email to her freind KX about her meditation, as her freind had unexpectedly popped up in it, in a wonderful pastel watercolour world:
The elevator stopped with a shudder and the doors slammed open. The landscape looked a bit too airy fairy for me (not real enough, haha!) and I nearly got back in the elevator. It was all aqua blue and pastel and floaty, like a watercolour world. Then I saw you, waving your arms around, painting the air with trails of pastel colours with your fingertips. You were smiling and wearing a pale blue shirt. You wrapped me round with spirals of colours from your fingertips and then I flew upwards into the dark blue. You tossed me a paper toilet roll to use as a silver cord, which I tossed back to you after a bit cos it felt a bit silly, and then you sent a burst of colours as an acknowledgement
KX had responded:
“Yoland!!That is very very cool! I’ve been “out there”! I’ll bet you I was changing the toilet paper roll at the moment you were in the Watercolor World ! Meanwhile so many things are coming together for me in how to create and how to hold my attention where I want it… Imagination is a key ~ Love you! I will beam over in a minute. KX”
Smiling, Yoland checked the latest blog updates. Sahila had posted some Possum photos, and the first thing that Yoland saw was the white owl in the fork of the tree behind the possum.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Yoland felt tired and deflated somehow. Weary, perhaps that was it, weary of the way she always felt when the animals were sick or dying. It was all very well to look at it logically, that with so many animals with such relatively short natural life spans that there would always be some coming, some going, but it was the way it made her feel that was so tiring. Responsible, as if she could have done more, or guilty that they were reflecting her energy somehow. It was all very well to say that the animals were creating their own reality, that would be easy enough to accept in some cases such as old age and diseases, but Yoland almost wished she’d never learned that they reflect her own energy, that always made her feel even more responsible than she already did.
The black cat was dying. Yoland had made up her mind to take her to the vets that morning. That was another dilemma she’d faced often enough, too ~ would the animal prefer to die naturally at home? Or was it in too much pain, and would it prefer to end it quickly? How could she know? Yoland supposed she did always know, in the end, which was to be the choice, but there was always the agonizing period of time beforehand when she wondered which decision to make. But the black cat had disappeared and she couldn’t find her to take her to the vets after all.
When she’d made the decision to take the black cat to the vet that morning, Dean accidentally knocked a photograph of her first dog, Joe, off the wall. He was the first of her dogs to go, and a good age for a big dog, fourteen years old, and Yoland had known all along that he would die at home, and sure enough, he had. One day Yoland knew he was close to the end, and less than 24 hours later, he lay on his bed, and just gradually stopped breathing. Yoland hadn’t even been quite sure of the moment in which he went, as she held his head, she asked Dean, Do you think he’s dead? Dean replied, If he’s not breathing he is. It was a silly question, really, of course Yoland knew that if you weren’t breathing you were dead. As deaths go, it was peaceful and easy. They took him in the car to a place in the woods and buried him, somewhere where the ground was soft enough to dig; it was high summer and the ground was hard and dry. It wasn’t until Joe was covered with earth that Yoland cried.
Yoland cried again as she remembered Joe, and then she wondered if perhaps his photograph falling off the wall that morning was a message ~ perhaps a message that the black cat was choosing to die at home too, her own little niche somewhere, wherever that might be, wherever the roof cats slept. Maybe Joe was reassuring her that he’d be there when the black cat got there, in that field of flowers where the animals played while they waited for us to join them.
It was a comforting thought. Yoland reached for the tissues.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
These past few months away from home had been the occasion for a great deal of introspection.
For one, indulging fully into that somewhat frowned upon habit of his, regarding peanuts, had allowed him to gain a great deal of understanding and acceptance as well. Now his daily ration had dramatically decreased and he didn’t fancy as much as he used to the little round things.Another thing that Godfrey had noticed was the reorganisation that had taken place in all aspects of his life, and to be perfectly honest, his life was still a bit messy in places, but he was slowly getting there. How could a publisher publish anything of common interest without a bit of presentation, henceforth order?
Ann wasn’t too keen on the “O” word —especially when doubled— and surprisingly it always managed to give good results so far. So perhaps now he was settling down, and she was getting her own flamboyant creative juices all ablaze, they would manage to get somewhere. Or anywhere, for that matter.
A Tramway to Elsewhere was Ann’s debut novel, and had made her known to Godfrey. It was a brilliant short story about three tourists lost in a huge hotel in Europe, and trying to get an easy escape to Anywhere. And by some uncanny and hilarious succession of events, they were led nowhere but to Elsewhere.Now, something else was giving him a strange feeling. He didn’t know if that was because of the lack of peanut oil in his bloodstream (or the accompanying whiskeys for what was worth), but he was starting to get slightly paranoid.
He didn’t know where he’d got the idea, but he started to suspect the cleaning lady to not just be a cleaning lady. She was doing her best to keep a low profile, but somehow she wasn’t that good an actress. A thing that started his suspicion was that name… Franlise, eerily reminiscent of the obnoxious yet efficient Finnley in Noo York. Elizabeth had told him they’d suspected her for a long time to have inserted some paragraphs in Elizabeth’s novels, especially the most torrid parts that would have made a pimp blush like a nun. What had saved the cleaning lady was that in addition to being rather forgiving, Elizabeth suffered from frequent strokes of forgetfulness and bipolarity which made the investigation difficult if not moot altogether.But there, Godfrey was rather surprised at Ann’s sudden interest in continuity. He’d known of a covert organization known in the milieu as the Fellowship of Unification and Continuity in Knowledge.
Over the years, the hearsay had amounted to just a few deranged people, but recently there had been an increase in mentions of such nature in reports of the Guild of Authors. Strangely, there was less and less books that were published which had not an impeccable sense of continuity.
In a way, it had been perceived at first in literary circles as a blessing for the authors who had not to contend with fans and geeks of all kind who were hunting down each and every detail to prove or disprove unsaid theories. But Godfrey was starting to see some not so perfect points in that. It would be like wanting to string together all the eyelets of your shoes even if they do not belong to the same shoe (or the same pair of shoes). Soon, you’d be embarrassed to find a way to walk without looking like a penguin.Anyway, though all allegations made as to the existence of such secret organization had been mostly derailed as utter nonsense, he couldn’t help but find some inexplicable appeal to them as sound explanations for all the glitches he kept noticing.
He would carefooly spy on Franlise.In reply to: Strings of Nines
Yruick (a temporary mergence of a pig’s little tone and Yurick) found himself mildly amused by the random quote about “Saint Tina” given that he’d spent a large part of the day hunting for misspelled “SAINT” in post addresses.
Then, he wondered what Yoland was raving about. The links work perfectly, don’t they? And what were these Bits of Little Tuna on her face?
Interesting she should mention Amsterdam however; at lunch today, Yurick’s new boss was thinking of planning a seminar, and was asking which little town they could go to. Why not Amsterdam he’d told them. Then Yurick smiled, thinking back of the Madrid adventures, and wondered how the pushing of little words like “fig” would work out in a different environment such as this more formal one. So he just thought of Madrid and that grand hotel where they’d been to for a few seconds.
And there it was… the next second after, the boss went like “You already all been to Madrid, haven’t you?”In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Did you call me?” Sumhellfi the Devilish Half-Elf Half-Goblin
of the lost Dhataland poopped into existence to answer the wishes of the lost soul.When she had tripped on the dog’s turds that her friends had reminded her more than once to take care of removing, she also inadvertently moved the old family dusty fish-clock that sings when you stoke it. Only that it had not sung for years —Flove forbids! That awful drunkard song didn’t play now there wasn’t any battery left in the horrible decoration.
Was it a magic clock? With a genie in there?
While Yoland was lost in deep thoughts and concern, Sumhellfi leaned forward with an enticing raise of the eyebrows
“May I offer you some sliced naggin? It tastes like coleslaw they say…”In reply to: Strings of Nines
Back in January, her friend Ronda had asked her if she wanted to come with her to a seminar in Madrid, one of these loonatics seminar. She wasn’t interested herself in that kind of gathering of freaky people and she wouldn’t have accepted if Ronda hadn’t offered to pay for her expenses.
That was the perfect occasion and the perfect time, with the crisis her little enterprise was sinking rapidly and money had never been so scarce. Those would be the perfect holidays, even if she would have to spend some time among some loonatics.
So in March here they went in Madrid. The hotel was simply gorgeous and as they told the biggest in Europe.
It was perfect again.
Not that the rooms were big, though they were quite expensive, but there were so many sculptures and paintings, so many trinkets
in the lobby and in the lounge… and there was a pool!!! She could see herself flirting 
with one of those rich loonatics, always ready to spend money on glass pyramids that had properly been tachyonised 
That’s where her life changed and that she realized she needed STRUCTURE in her life.
It happened during one of these meditations by a certain T’Eggy, a still active porn star, the favorite of Marvin Scrozzezi… and she was also doing seminars!!!
When she saw her, Patricia thought her face was familiar, and that’s when she saw the groupies in the first row, all of them wearing the leopard superstrings that had been made mass spread by her performance in the latest Marvin Scrozzezi. Patricia had one of them, but the superstring hadn’t resist her generous forms or she would have bring it to the party… well that’s another story.T’Eggy was stressing the need of structure that they all needed in their lives and she made her points listened and watched with a few scenes of her recent and not so recent movies. Everybody was charmed and she made them laugh with her story about when she played the millionaire waiting for Bill the milkman…
Ronda was not really interested by T’Eggy and a bit shameful of her adoration of T’Eggy, Patricia had to sneak out during the break and she bought a few books, amidst which “The Pelvic Respiration” or “Release your Stress in a Gang Bang”. She also bought a few vials of the special Dr. B. Cream which said “Rejuvenate your Vagina”… apparently made with some blue spiders silk and venom. She went quickly in her room and hid her purchases in her suitcase before returning for the Channeled Music of the Chinese Swamps Monastery and the Channeling of the Big ErectoMagnetic Stick called Fryzon.
Patricia didn’t listen to all of that, she was already imagining all the ways she could structure her new life with the pelvic meditation.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Yoland was inordinately pleased with her purchases, trifling though they were. She smiled at the little bottle of cherry red nail varnish, imagining how it would look on sun browned and callous free toes. Painted toe nails was one of life’s simple pleasure, she reckoned. Nothing fancy or expensive or uncomfortable, like her new brassiere, which had never the less given her spirits a bit of a lift, as well as her breasts, with its bright blue moulded foam shape. She wondered if she could suspend the brassiere and its contents from something other than her shoulders for once, but couldn’t see how it could be arranged and still allow a modicum of freedom of movement. Perhaps some of the new scientific discoveries that she was eagerly awaiting would include some kind of gravity and weight defying device, possibly helium filled foam support. Perhaps even in the future, anyone with a high squeaky voice would be described as a bra sucker. Or perhaps one day breasts worn on the waist would be fashionable. This thought made Yoland a bit uncomfortable, as she hadn’t really believed she was following fashion, but maybe she was after all.
Yoland wondered if she was verging on the ridiculous again, and decided that it didn’t matter if she was. There was something rather splendid, she was beginning to discover, about the mundane and the silly. Something serenely pleasurable about ~ well about everything she’d been taking for granted for so many years. The things she hadn’t really noticed much, while her mind was busy thinking and pondering, replaying old conversations, and imagining new ones, sometimes with others, but often with herself, inside the vast jumble of words that was her mind.
It was always a wonderful change of pace to go away on a trip, with its wealth of new conversations and words, events and symbols to ponder over later at her leisure, the many photographic snapshots providing reminders and clues and remembered laughs, but it was the renewed sense of appreciation for the mundane that was ultimately most refreshing about returning home.
The word home had baffled Yoland for many years. For most of her 51 years, if the truth be told. So many moves, so many houses, so many people ~ where, really, was home? She’d eventually compromised and called herself a citizen of the world, but she still found herself at times silently wailing “I want to go home”, but with the whole world as her home, it didn’t make a great deal of sense why she would still yearn for that elusive place called home.
Of all the words that swam in her head some of them seemed to keep bobbing up to the surface, attracting her attention from time to time. That was the funny thing about words, Yoland mused, not for the first time, You hear them and hear them and you understand what they mean, but only in theory. The suddenly something happens and you shout AHA, and then you can’t find any words to explain it! Repeating the words you’ve already heard a hundred times somehow doesn’t even come close to describing what it actually feels like to understand what those words mean. That kind of feeling always left her wondering if everyone else had known all along, except her.
Yoland was often finding words in unexpected places, and these were often the very words that were the catalysts. (Even the word catalyst had been one of those words that repeatedly bobbed to the surface of her sea of words). Her trip had been in search of words, supposedly, channeled words (although Yoland suspected the trip had been more about connections than words) and yet there had only really been one word that had stood out as significant, and oddly enough, that word had been watermelon.
That had been a lesson in itself, if indeed lesson is the right word. Yoland had been attempting to exercise her psychic powers for six months or more, trying to get Toobidoo, the world famous channeled entity, to say the word watermelon ~ just for fun. She couldn’t even remember how it all started, or why the word watermelon was significant ~ perhaps a connection to a symbol etched on a watermelon rind in Marseilles, which later became a Tile of the City. (Yoland wasn’t altogether sure that she understood the tiles, but she did think it was a very fun game, and that aspect alone was sufficient to hold her interest.) By the end of the last day of the channeling event Toobidoo still hadn’t said the word watermelon which was somewhat of a disappointment, so when Yoland saw Gerry Jumper, Toobidoo’s channel, in the vast hotel foyer, she ran up to him saying “Say watermelon.” The simple direct method worked instantly, where months of attempts the hard way had failed. Yoland felt that she learned alot from this rather silly incident about the nature of everyday magic, and this particular lesson, or we might prefer to call it a communication, was repeated for good measure the following day in the park.
Wailon, the other world famous channeled entity who was the star attraction of the Words Event, had proudly displayed photographic evidence of orbs at the lecture. Like Yoland had tried with the watermelon, he was choosing an esoteric and unfamiliar method of creating orbs, suggesting that the audience meditate and conjure them up to show on photographs, rather than simply creating physical orbs. Yoland and her friends Meldrew and Franklyn had chanced upon a beautiful glass house full of real physical glass orbs in the park, underlining the watermelon message for Yoland: not to discount the spontaneous magic of the physical world in the search for the esoteric.
It had, for example, been rather magical and wonderful to hear Gerry Jumper explain how he had mentioned watermelon to his wife on the previous day in the dining room ~ mundane, yes, but magical too. It would have been marvellous to create Toobidoo channeling the word watermelon for sure, but how much more magical to create an actual slice of physical watermelon in the dining room and have Gerry remark on it, and to have an actual physical conversation with him about it. Who knows, he may even remember the nutcase who spent six months trying to get him to say watermelon whenever he sees one, at least for awhile. It might be quite often too, as his wife is partial to watermelon. Yoland wondered if this was some kind of connecting link, perhaps the connection to Gerry and Cindy started in Marseilles and watermelon was the physical clue, the pointer towards the connection.
Perhaps, Yoland wondered, the orbs were the connecting link to Wailon, although she didn’t feel such a strong connection to him as she did to Toobidoo and Gerry Jumper. She had been collecting coloured gel orbs for several months ~ just for fun. There was often a connecting link to be found in the silly and the fun, the pointless and the bizarre, and even in the mundane and everyday things.
In the days following her return home ~ or the house that Yoland lived in, shall we say ~ she felt rather sleepy, as if she was in slow motion, but the feeling was welcome, it felt easy and more importantly, acceptable. There was nothing that she felt she should be doing instead, for a change, no fretting about starting projects, or accomplishing chores, rather a slow pleasant drifting along. Yes, there were chores to be done, such as watering plants and feeding animals and other things, but they no longer felt like chores. She found she wasn’t mentally listing all the other chores to be done but was simply enjoying the one she was doing. Even whilst picking up innumerable dog turds outside, she heard the birds singing and saw the blossom on the fruit trees against the blue sky, saw shapes in the white clouds, heard the bees buzzing in the wisteria. The abundance of dog shit was a sign of a houseful of happy healthy well fed dogs, and the warm spring sun dried it and made it easier to pick up.
It was, somewhat unexpectedly, while Yoland was picking up dog shit that she finally realized what some of those bobbing words meant about home, and presence, and connection to source. It seemed amusingly ironic after travelling so far (not just the recent trip, but all the years of searching) to finally find out where home was, where the mysterious and elusive source was. (Truth be told, some printed words she found the previous day had been another catalyst, by Vivian channeled by Wanda, but she couldn’t recall the exact words. Yoland had to admit that words, used as a catalyst, were really rather handy.)
Wherever you go, there you are ~ they were words too, and they were part of the story. Now that Yoland had come to the part where she wanted to express in words where home, and source, was, she found she couldn’t find the right words. In a funny kind of way the word vacant popped into her head, as if the place where the vast jumble of words was usually housed became vacant, allowing her to be present in her real physical world. It really was quite extraordinary how simple it was. Too simple for words.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Annabel Ingram was chatting the tourists through her guided tours, but most of the time, her mind was wandering elsewhere.
As a matter of fact, she often thought she should have been named “Wandering Elsewhere” instead. These were her two favourite words in the whole Manilvan language. Scholars had made fancy claims like basement portal or something of that ilk was the loveliest words combination, but she’s never been one to follow the trends and fleeting modes anyway.All in all, it was probably time she got herself a new job; touring the tourists in the middle of “ohs” and “ahs” to the Doorway of the Goddess Amarylis Moo Rue? Not for her any longer.
To be bluntly honest she was beginning to find herself a little of a fraud, as she tried to maintain a decent level of excitement at the ridiculous amazement of the tourists when they recounted their litanies of visions of Goddess Amarylis surrounded with cohorts of naked ladies and bare butt cupids holding wreaths of flowers. Amarylis was the Goddess of Flove. A glorious goddess representing the duality of the aspects of love and death. Quite a hype for people coming from the cities, eager to get a quick shot of esoteric experiences.But she’d seen Amarylis more than once, and it was not all that pretty behind the scenes. She was not as mean as herself, but she wasn’t the last to poke fun at people for whisking unwarranted followers to the altars. Anyway, that and her perfumes, honestly you had to wonder. Lavender and decaying morue (cod), what a blend…
In reply to: Synchronicity
LOL, and speaking of triplets baby essences, I was keeping seeing these photos crop up on my flickr account for some reason before you mentioned the piggletties
A guy from the Fellowship?
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Yurick woke up from another spell of dreams. The patterns of the bedsheets where as though his newly inserted tile was creating a strong combination with other tiles.
In his puzzlement, he forgot to take a physical dream snapshot…
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Bronkel was stern as ever, yet you could feel in his eyes that he was troubled.
— “What? That’s roobish, isn’t it?”
— “No! Elizabeth! Not at all! It’s your best book in years! Poople will want more!”
— “Well, we’ll see… For now, I think my moose needs some rest”Her detox had done her great. Her beautifool violet eyes weren’t as bloodshot as before, and she could even see some of her hair grow back in places. Elizabeth in some surge of energy had collected all the bits written here and there, loose paper flying at times with some missing (perhaps used during her poohnuts hazes to light fires in the office).
Some of these paper she wasn’t even sure were hers, or writing attempts by Finnley, but she didn’t care; they were all so funny and interesting.For instance, she wasn’t too soore that she’d have Veranassasss —whatever her bloody name was— go off with the pilot of the plane, but that sounded nice for her. So she’d used that part too.
Of course, the Spanish couple, Paqui and Jose had reemerged at the boulder moving party after a long trip in the underground space-traveling tunnels. Leo and Bea were not so glad they’d reappeared so early, but had found it was time to move on, and continue their quest for more bizarre and entertaining artifacts. And they wanted to go to Morocco anyway, in this gorgeous blue city…
Young Becky decided she wanted to go abroad to travel the world. “And study too” had said Dan who wasn’t as shifty as Dory, a thing for which she thanked heavens profusely every day.Sharon, Gloria and Mavis after some more bizarre adventures among the Masai tribes finally found their way back home, while Akita continued his explorations of this strange shifting world of the 21st century.
Even the bizarre animals stories in the ZOO she’d kept. They’d even found Arky the Aardvark. He had been accidentally buried under Oligan the Oliphant’s pile of poop. The poor Oliphant had suffered from an excess of mangoes in his diet, and Arky was so eager to collect poop for his garden of flowers that he hadn’t noticed the harbingers of it.
Pawanie the lady Panda and Barry the White Bear had since then decided to take care of the little Aardvark, and provide it with their own poop to fertilize the flower garden. Theirs was a garden to behold, with the most beautiful flowers to be seen in miles. Attracting creatures from all over the place.There were a few points Elizabeth had left deliberately unanswered; the mad doctor, who was probably still alive somewhere, and most important of all… if, after all this children bearing with Sean, Becky ended up with Sam or not.
One thing was sure though, they were all moving to the City. The sooner the better.In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Speaking of toomoorroow, Elizabeth,there is something I have been meaning to say to you for some time now. Godfrey cleared his throat nervously. Somehow with all our deep, and incredibly meaningful philosoophising about life, I clean forgot to mention it.
Clean is hardly the word I would have used whilst anywhere in the vicinity of this ooffice, muttered Finnley, mostly to herself, as she attempted to dislodge a large spooder web from the corner of the ceiling.
Godfrey hesitated. He looked down and with somewhat unusual preoccupation made spiral patterns in the thick layer of dust on the window ledge.
Godfrey, what is it? asked Elizabeth starting to feel some alarm. Oh in the name of Floove, you haven’t found another Felicity have you!
No, nothing like that. The thing is, you see … well …
Spoot it out! You are driving me Madder than Almad! snapped Elizabeth, losing patience, and craving nicobeck. She knew that meddlesome Finnley would take great delight in reporting her to Mr Arak if she smoked in the ooffice.
Godfrey sighed and looked up, directly into Elizabeth’s beautiful violet, albeit rather bloodshot, eyes.
I have been offered a position managing a poonut farm in Noo Zooland. I start immediately. It is a dream come true for me Elizabeth. I had to accept.
No! screamed Elizabeth.
Yes, I am afraid so. Goodbye dear Elizabeth. We both knew I was a rubbish pooblisher. Why don’t you see if that chap Bronkel will come back?
Good riddance I say! said Finnley as Godfrey walked out the door. You two have done nothing but speak noonsense in a hooty tooty accent since that man arrived.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
That was it. She had enough for the time being. Ever since the management had agreed to hire him for the new show, the Freakus was not as Fabulously Great as it once was.
Not that he was a bad guy, but he was all so closeted, he was imprinting it to the circus, and she wanted to breathe some different kind of air. Of course, never been a freak himself, Morgan the Mentalist wouldn’t ever come close as to understand what having been closeted your all life would mean. Being the Lobster girl of the show, she knew quite a bit about that.
It had took her awhile to know that there wasn’t anything wrong with her expression, so no one would told her how to express. Not the Mentalist of all others.Damo, the guy who was setting up the tents had seen her leave the Freakus without a word, her little piece of luggage on her “normal” hand, while her claw-like one was tucked in a glove under her bosom. Sweet-hearted as he was, he had tried to convince her to stay, that surely there was some misunderstanding.
“Lyla, don’t be stoopid, ain’t got nothin’ fur you out there” he’d said to her.She didn’t know how to tell him that all was good. She didn’t want to tell too much either, for Fama, his teen daughter wasn’t really loving the life at the circus either, and would easily have taken the bait to get out of there too. So she had moved saying that she would come back, “when it’s safe for kids” she’d added mysteriously.
Strange at it seemed, it was like taking a breathe of air, and yet, she couldn’t help but think over and over at how she could have changed anything in what had happened. Perhaps it was just a pretext for her to do her next step.
When Morgan first came to the show, he wasn’t in a good shape, and had begged Pat Elson to hire him. As he was kind of smart guy, he didn’t stay long in Damo’s team of workers. Pat saw his potential as a sort of empathic guy, and devised the Mentalist act with him.He was good at cold-reading, mostly guessing at people problems; in the beginning, some of the freakus’ people would play a part with him, to amaze the audience, but it became less and less necessary, and he would do a nice job buy himself, with lots of “it wouldn’t happen to be that your mother gave the watch to you? No… not your mother… but someone close… I can feel blah blah” and then picking on the subtle hints the guy was giving off unwittingly.
Lately, he had started to kind of feel stuff for real. And he started to freak out. After all this time, not many people remembered Morgan as he first came to the circus, and for most he was the Outstandingly Great Mentalist. Yeah, he had been pimping up a bit his name too… Those things happen in the milieu.
But Lyla remembered. She was a girl at this time, but your work at the circus starts very early when you’re a freak.
She had seen how he gained a little confidence in himself, as long as it stayed within closed tents and half-lit veils. He was truly a master of illusion games, and he didn’t want people to see him differently than the way he was presenting himself. He’d first tried his little games of séances with some close trusty friends, and Lyla had been quite encouraging; he deserved to blossom his potential; no one deserved to be maintained at a place where you can’t reach your highest.A few days before, Lyla had had the pleasure of seeing Jenny, who’d been snake charmer many years ago, and had quit to become a singer in a bar: “tired me to travel so much, ya see” she’d said to Lyla “Now my life ain’t so complicated”.
Then Jenny had then asked about the guys she’d known in the freakus, first of all was Morgan the Mentalist. “How’s that old fart of Morgy?” she’d asked with a giggle “still scamming around?”Lyla had said innocently that he’d been practicing doing it more genuinely, even to some success with local peasants in a few séances. Jenny had greeted the news with a cheer. “Wonderful, hey!”
The next day, Lyla had had the Mentalist erupt in the caravan she shared with Zarafina and Venus, since Twi had gone to sing too. He was looking furious and once they were out of earshot (how could there be any need of making secrets with the others, Lyla had wondered, they shared everything, even the tiny bar of soap) told her with his sweetest voice how he appreciated Jenny. Of course she wasn’t a Mentalist, but she knew when someone was beating around the bush; and she needn’t be Moses to know the bush was smelling of burning.
“I greatly appreciate Jenny, but I’d love to choose when I disclose my information to her” that’s what he said. At first, she’d thought, well, why the theatrics? Cool for you guy, peace off now. Then she slowly understood that he wanted to tell her to shut her mouth. How could she know what part to shut and which to tell? She hadn’t done anything wrong did she? Why was he having the same tone than the frigging priests with their sermons telling that you’re sinful, and when you’ve got a crooked arm, it’s because you’re born evil and such guilt shit.”
Well, she didn’t want to stay in a position where she had to figure out which of his sharing was a real sharing or was not. So she better bugger off, take some fresh air.
She thought how she loved to hear the radio, and her lifelong dream was to work there, in a place where people would hear her before judging from her appearance… Maybe she would thank Morgy in the future for giving her the last excuse to do what she wanted.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Not willing to play another tug of war with Elizabeth, whose mind was obviously not as soond as one might expect of an authoor of her statoore, Godfrey didn’t even mention to her that she misquoted him repeatedly by making him barf mindlessly unbearable amoonts of poonuts while in trooth, it was cashoo nuts he was craving for.
That being said, he couldn’t let her last remark go without notice, and pointed her to a newspooper article she’d been cutting recently off an interview with one of her former editors, Darool Barash.
“See, Elizabeth dear,” he said after taking a sip of a hot fragrant lootus tea “ Why would you want to impose your desired change everywhere ‘roond you. Thawing the ice caps? And what else? Did you think of the pengooins? All the beautiful harmoony you fail to consider… Why forcibly change the ootside when you can choose from an infinite of already created pootentials. Well, at least, that’s what Barash says…”
He paused, her looks betraying that she was completely lost.
“Frankly, Liz, you’re starting to worry me. All this loony talk… It’s so oother-dimensional. You say it’s too complex, but the way you moove all those extroovagant letters is baffling. And this non-existent “Al” you’re talking aboot… Let me finish please… I know you feel remoorse for leaving old Arak just because he wouldn’t let you have the tiny giraffes —not even mentioning that ghost-writer of yours, Finnley? That’s the name, isn’t it?… I sure want to believe your shift in vowellness excoose, but that’s not enoogh…”
“Will you just stop talking roobbish Godfrey…”
“Now, serioosly, your delirioos inspiration break-oot has got to be channeled, if we want to make your proper come-back ”
“But everything’s fine, I’m just very kewl.”
“You see! Like I said!”
“What?”
“You did it again!”
“ Yeeps? I did it again? ”
“Just now! You said ‘very kewl’, instead of ‘too cool’! That’s unnoorvingly vexatioos!”“KEWL! KEWL! KEWL!”
screeched Robert X the pet magpie from the other room.In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
“Girls! Let’s ‘ave a rest! Akita’s waking up!” Sharon’s powerful voice commanded the caravan of snooter-powered hairy ladies to a halt.
“Wow, I really start to love this place,” Gloria was reeling. “And who knew all this extra hair would come in so handy. Look! Another aurora borealis !”
“Yeah, an’ another crowd of trillion of these darn Adélie penguins shoutin’ like Freddy during those bloody crickets cups…” said Mavis with a sniffle, pointing at the icy coastline blackened by the seemingly boundless flock of little noisy creatures.
“And how the heck you so sure they’re Adultery penguins?” snapped Gloria a bit vexed her sharing of the beauties of the white paradise was left soiled by Mavis “like you’re goin’ to impress us with your botanic knowledge-it-all? Just because you love looking at those stupid nightly animal documentaries?”“Be still girls! Bring those watermelbombs to make a fire, food and water, we’re camping here until Akita’s ready to go.”
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
That’s some stroke of genius, said Al to himself, as he was waiting in the cold for a gondoskate to pay a visit to Becky Tooh who was sick with the flu at home with the three kids, and Sean nowhere to be found. Usually Sam was keen on helping Becky Tooh with the motherly duties, but as he was gone to the City he had relied on Tina and Al for that…
If we manage to move the characters of the Reality Play out of that freezing land sooner, we’ll probably soon get hotter as well… Well, at least it’s worth a try!
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
“Jeeze, I can’t help to be continuously amazed by Becky” Al said more to himself than to Tina who was reading silently in the room next to his.
“She struggles so hard at times, when all she needs is a little attention…” he continued in his breath.“What are you moaning about again?” Tina said, who unlike Becky was paying much attention even when she didn’t look like it.
“Moonbeams! Did you see that last entry? There was as close as moon and beams as you could get in the previous entries in the Reality Play… I really wonder why we make things so hard for ourselves at times…”— Well, because it’s fun, I suppose she’ll tell you… Come on, you know how she is, you don’t need to play your sumafreak labouring it to the bitter end…
— I suspect you’re right… And who cares about randomness anyway; it doesn’t look much fun these past few days, does it?
— Sure…
— Like I say. Look, you don’t even barely write yourself; if I didn’t know you’re here, I would probably do with the Play like the tomatoes plant; uproot it and cut it in pieces in a plastic bag for recycling.
— Oh, but you have to admit the bedroom looks so much better without all these creepers around the place… All for what, twenty one tiniest tomatoes?
— Plus the last two still ripening on the cupboard, Al retorted in a sullen manner.After a moment of silence, Tina laid her book down, and came closer
— Yeah, you’re right, I don’t find it very funny for the moment, especially with that shift of vowellness in the Ooh dimension,…
— Hehe, you mean, that nasty habit of telling ‘peanut’ instead of ‘poonut’?
— Oh yes, but not only that,… Well, it looks like all my characters are eluding me, becoming alien… if you see what I mean…
— Yes, I see; and I must say you’re doing great with that; Becky would faint at the mere mention of something becoming alien, Al couldn’t help but laugh.
— No, but seriously…
— I know. I think what we need is some more of your inimitable talent at creating syncs. You’ve always been the connector my dear with those “magifestations” of yours.
She smiled.
— Now, speaking of random syncs, what have you got to say about that; we could create a music band
— What?
— Hang on, here’s the band’s name: 57th Ward of New Orleans and we could call our first album… Mmm… That’s it: The Cup To Overflowing … What do you think?
Mmmm… that may sound weirdo, but it seems very feisty all of a sudden !
