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  • #4840
    F LoveF Love
    Participant

      “I see you are trying to sexy things up, Lucinda,” said Helper Effy. “Be mindful not to lose the plot in the process.”

      Lucinda reddened. “I’ll fix it,” she said.

      #4836
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        Lucinda handed in her assignment to Helper Effy with a satisfied smile. The first major confrontation, action, or dramatic event that came to her mind had surprised her. She had no idea where it came from, and only a vague idea about who the characters were, or indeed, where they were. But she felt the apple cart and bicycle scene was rather thrilling and had potential.

        #4834

        “I hardly think wearing such a peculiar hat is apt for undercover work, Agent X,” remarked Veranassessee.

        “It’s a local tradition,” gasped Agent X, trying to catch his breath as he attempted to right his mangled bicycle.

        “Never mind that! Leave it there, it’s no good now!”

        “The doll is hidden in the water bottle!” Agent X snapped, “And it’s stuck fast behind all this twisted metal! We have to take the whole thing!”

        #4826

        Aunt Idle:

        It was good of them to do it I suppose, but you know me and new contraptions, it’s hard to summon up the courage to deal with a new one, no matter how seemingly simple it might be to a mind more attuned to that sort of thing. There were a couple of glaring spelling mistakes the last time I used it, that I know I couldn’t possibly have made, so I suspect the damn thing has gremlins, like all these contraptions seem to have. Always doing inexplicable things.

        At first I was worried about those two women who hadn’t come back out of the old mine yet, and cursed old Sanso for blinking right out like that, but I had the feeling that Sanso was on the case and not to worry. What could I do about it anyway? I reckon one day we’ll hear the story, one way or another.

        I’ve had enough to think about here with Mater’s latest drama.

        #4824
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          The creative writing course teacher, or “Helper” as they liked to call themselves to avoid any suggestion of hierarchy, was an arresting looking woman of indeterminate age and the most extraordinary red beehive hair do. The colour and style of it, and the aplomb with which Helper Effy carried it off, distracted Lucinda sufficiently during the first part of the lesson that she heard none of it.

          At one point Helper Effy glared at her, and Lucinda quickly averted her gaze, realizing her mindless gaping stare had been noticed. She closed her eyes to better pay attention.

          “What’s the first major confrontation, or action, or dramatic event in your novel that comes to your mind?” the Helper was asking. “Why? Because if it is the first thing you think of, then it’s your chimney poking through the hardpan.”

          Not quite sure what a hardpan was, Lucinda never the less felt she’d got the gist of the thing, and hoped she wouldn’t be too distracted by the question of the hardpan.

          #4820

          “Hang on. I just saw a friend of mine,” said the driver, skidding to a stop. “You don’t mind, do ya?”

          Without waiting for an answer, he leaned over and opened the front passenger door.

          “Oy, Veranassessee! You wanna a lift somewhere?”

          “I’m out for the exercise. Thanks though. “ She waved them on.

          She’s a good sort,” said the driver, narrowly avoiding a large pot hole. “Bloody roads are a disgrace. She’s been on the island for years. Since the upset.”

          “What upset was that?” Asked Maeve, raising questioning eyebrows at Shawn-Paul.

          The driver turned round and looked at them in the back seat. “I’ve probably said more than I should but …. “

          “Watch out!” shouted Shawn-Paul.

          #4811

          A red leaf fell on the nose of the biggest gargoyle and Fox stopped his rehearsal. It had been exhausting and he didn’t remember why on earth he was doing that. He also didn’t remember how long he had been speaking in front of the Gargoyles, maybe he drank the wrong potion in the morning. Glynis had given him a potion especially made for him to calm his anxiety and help him solve a few energy blockages from childhood, or in his case, cubhood.

          One of the baby snoots giggled behind the back of the shrieking gargoyle.
          “You don’t mess with me, little…” He found himself lacking the creativity to find any insult the could understand. It was no use cursing the little rainbow creatures, they didn’t seem to care. Fox suspected it was not because of a lack of intelligence but simply because they didn’t view life, or anything, as a problem. He took note that he should get some inspiration from that.

          “What were you doing, uncle Fox?” asked Olliver.
          Fox opened his eyes wide. The boy seemed taller everyday and Fox had to look up to actually meet his eyes.
          “Will you never stop to grow?” he asked with a little resentment.
          “Well…” the boy started with his breaking voice.
          “Where were you,” asked Fox. “I thought you had left with Rukshan.” In a way Fox was relieved that it was not the case and it soothed a little the pain caused by the sudden departure of the Fae.

          “Oh! Teleporting here and there,” said the boy, considering adding some semi-truth about going to school.
          An idea sprouted in Fox’s mind. It was too tiny for him to know what it was but his unconscious mind was already working about a plan to catch up with Rukshan, connecting the bits and pieces left by the Fae in his tales to the children and his innocuous comments.
          “What do you think about… having some dinner,” he said not yet able to formulate in his imagination that he could even go on an adventure with Olliver.

          #4809

          The downward climb had taken what felt like days. The more he went, the darkest it was even the stars at his feet were now swallowed in obliviating darkness.

          Rukshan felt like abandoning at times, but pressed on and continued, down and down as he rose above clouds.

          The ancient energies that had shaped this topsy-turvy passage spiraling around the fence of the heartwoods wouldn’t have done something of that magnitude and let it unfinished. It was calling for an exploration, while at the same time protecting itself from mere wanderers, the kind with lack of imagination or endurance.
          His mind reminded him of old tales that spoke of sacrificing to the trees for knowledge and passage, but it was surely meant as a metaphor. Hanging upside down for hours was probably in itself a form of sacrifice.

          He reached to his pouch for a drink of sour milk, when he suddenly realized that the gravity had turned, and the pouch was no longer floating above his head. With the darkness and the lack of landmarks, he’d failed to notice when this happened.

          It surely meant he’d crossed an invisible barrier, and was now journeying inside another plan, deeper down. Ground couldn’t be far now. He took a pearl off one of his braids, and threw it. Then he looked at the darkness beneath his feet with intent to discern the faintest sounds. Quickly enough, the pearl gave back a ricocheting sound, clean and echoing slightly against what seemed to be moist stones. Indeed ground was there, where once the sky was.

          Maybe the final test was a leap of faith. Or maybe it was just to patiently complete the climb. A few more steps, and he would be there. A few more steps.

          #4806

          “Speaking of philosophical …” said Godfrey

          “Were we? Were we REALLY speaking of philosophical? Or were we talking about that … that … DERELINQUANT, Finnley. And SHE is anything BUT philosophical!”

          “I was speaking of philosophical … it reminded me of something I read recently … about the great philoosopher, Lemone, who as we know is the epitome of philosophicalness. The gold standard, if you will. It seems he has had a change of heart recently.”

          Liz wiped beads of nervous sweat off her forehead and sat down. “Do tell,” she said. “Perhaps he will soothe my troubled and long suffering soul.”

          “He has derogated his previous sayings as rubbish and issued a public apology. ‘Sorry about the nonsense comments,’ he is reputed to have said.”

          “Beautiful,” said Liz shaking her head in wonderment. “So succinct and humble. The man is a genius.”

          #4792

          The Doctor was at times confused about his own plan. Well, most of the time if felt clear and perfectly diabolical, and he could easily understand why at times lesser minds could get confused about the twists and turns —and to those lesser minds, it would usually suffice to say “don’t worry, it’s all part of the Plan.” It was difficult to properly phrase the sentence so that the Plan doesn’t get too easily confused with any plan. But he was expert in conveying that it wasn’t a mere plan.

          After having tried and used old or elaborate devices beyond known technology like alleged alien crystal skulls to outcomes of various satisfaction in the past, he’d realized that those so called AI technologies were a silent gangrene for the mind. By becoming more tech-savvy, people lost their savoir and their savour by relying too much on external support. People were becoming malleable, predictable, and replaceable.

          His bloody assistant was a sad testament to the downward evolution humanity was rushing towards. It was a strange and sad irony, that by enhancing their ineptitude, he was actually working to the perfection of the human race.

          “Ah yes! Evolution!” That was his legacy, and he was of course profoundly misunderstood.

          This whole sad business with the chase after the dolls and the keys and the remote control of magpies, and the psychic blasts, beauty treatments and Barbara enhancements, all that made sense once you showed it in the proper light. These were the catalyst to the real and interesting events. The ones which mattered.

          It all started after the Army got him out of his prison rot in exchange for his work on some special science experiments. Top-secret, evidently. His handler, a certain nobody by the name of Fergus, was assigning him the experiments.
          While he was dutifully working on his assigned projects, he quickly realized that he was given vast funding which would have taken him more time to gather on his own, so he did his part, all while experimenting and honing his skills. Clearly, the Army lacked any vision beyond the confines of “find a better way to torture, maim or kill mass amount of individuals.” Primates. Luckily, their experiments with remote control, brainwashing, and body modelage were less gory than the average science experiments, and far more into his own area of expertise.

          It took him 5 years to escape. This plan (a smaller plan, part of the Plan which had not yet fully hatched at the time) — this plan for an escape started to form when Fergus let slip important bits of information, which seemed insignificant taken in isolation, but meant a whole new area of discoveries when put together by a brilliant mind like his own.
          Fergus started to gloat about securing some secrets as a blackmail or fail-safe policy in case the Army’s “hired help” misbehaved. This part was known for a long time, it was what was called our ‘retirement plan’ in the contract we signed. What was more peculiar was when he started to let details slip about the method. All thanks to little doses of hypnotic potion in spiked shared drinks, courtesy of the Doctor. It seemed clear that this elaborate scheming of keys and dolls was child’s play and nothing particularly genius, however what was more interesting was when Fergus started to realize that the dolls his niece had made somehow matched certain persons of interest without her conscious knowing. There was a deeper mystery to be cracked, and even Fergus wondered if the Army had not tempered with his family genetics to induce certain characteristics or something of the like. Well, all ramblings of a simpleton you would say, but maybe it wasn’t.
          After all these searches to externalize certain abilities of the mind, the Doctor was starting to get fascinated by people exhibiting these qualities naturally.

          The appearance of this strange red crystal seems to confirm these doubts. There are untapped forces at play, and maybe doors that could be opened.

          Barbara suddenly irrupted into the room “Our guests are coming, just received a text!”

          The Doctor sighed thinking some doors should remain closed.

          #4788
          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            Tikfijikoo? I’ve never heard of an island called Tikfijikoo…” Shawn-Paul said once they were seated in the airplane.

            “Really?” Maeve was surprised. “My childhood was full of stories that happened in that island.”
            She was distracted though. She was sure she’d seen the man in black follow them through the customs and sneak into the plane. She had a doubt though, how could he have followed, the planed seemed so completely packed, she even wondered how Fergus had managed to get them tickets during what was surely peak season.

            It’s probably all in your mind… she said to herself.

            “What did you say?” Shawn-Paul inquired, fingers full of salt and a grin on his face after a violent struggle with the little bag of roasted pistachios the attendant had given him.

            “I said, you better rest. The trip is long, and you won’t sleep much in the next plane to the island. It’s not going to be a big and comfy plane, I can tell you.”

            #4783

            Gloria stared at Sharon accusingly. “You aint, ‘ave yer? Well that’s gorn and blown it. You’re too fat for us to carry. If you fall asleep we’ll ‘afta leave you ‘ere.”

            “We can’t leave ‘er ‘ere, you daft cow,” said Mavis. “Lucky for ‘er, I got a bit of summat wot’ll ‘elp.”

            “I’ll ‘ave you know I lost a pound last week,” retorted Sharon, taking umbrage at the reference to her weight.

            Gloria cast a critical eye at Sharon’s thighs spilling out of the sides of the rocking chair and replied, “Yes, but you found it again in the meantime. But never mind that, whatcha got there, our Mavis?”

            Ooh, is that something from the doctor?” asked Sharon, eyeing the little packet of blue powder that Mavis was carefully pouring into a little heap on the glass topped coffee table. Gloria tittered and glanced at Mavis, who merely rolled her eyes.

            “It aint all for ‘er, though is it?” Gloria faked a loud yawn. “I need waking up a bit myself.”

            “Don’t be daft,” Mavis reminded her. “But Sha’ can have double to counteract the effects of that sleeping stuff in the water supply.”

            #4774

            “I think we’d better go chase the giant,” said Fox. Rukshan looked at him, his right eyebrow looking like an elevated archway. “I mean, I heard Mr Minn’s nephew has been delayed and we have nothing better to do anyway. Glynis and the boys should be ok now that Mooriel is gone.”
            “You’re assuming a lot of things. Like for example the fact that Glynis won’t mind staying and taking care of the cottage and the boys. Not to mention Eleri, who’s been too silent recently, she must be up to something. Anyway. Let’s just ask everybody what they think want.”
            “Are you sure?” asked Fox. He was thinking that a short trip with his friend would be a nice change from the indoor life. It’s been too long a stay for him who had been living in the woods for so long before he met his friends. And Glynis was always too generous with appointing the house chores. A character trait that had only increased recently with Muriel’s long stay. “Maybe we can ask Margoritt to come back.”
            “I’m sure she has better things to do, and better company in the city.” Rukshan chortled as if he had said something funny.
            “Well, let’s ask Glynis,” said Fox who didn’t quite understand the hidden meaning.

            “Oh! I would have loved to see giants,” said Glynis. “Unfortunately I have started a class for the forest birds, and it’s a buzz. I’m teaching them to be a choir for the upcoming town festival.”
            “That’s too bad,” said Fox. “We would have loved to have you with us,” trying to ignore Rukshan’s throat clearing.
            “But ask Eleri, and the boys. I would be totally thrilled if you could take care of them for a while. I’ve been doing all the work around lately and I need a little time of my own, if you know what I mean. I’m sure they’ll all love to see giants.”

            #4771

            The Doctor smiled gleefully, rubbing his hands together.

            His new invention was showing promising results. Minds were being wiped clean, and foggy somnolence was enveloping characters without well-defined characteristics.

            Better still, he’d found something interesting trapped inside of his Remote Brainwashing machine, crystallized and trapped in a nugget inside one of the vials. It was glowing faintly and had tried to derail his experiment. A little sprite of some kind, or maybe a rebel soul .

            #4767
            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              Jerk was back at the mall from a week’s holiday break. He was surprised to notice the moderation queue to be almost empty. Usually, he would have found AT LEAST three comments a day to moderate.

              “Well, pity that.” he said, sipping his cold peppermint tea. “Summer is a slow season.”

              All his neighbours seemed still gone to some far away places, the residential building was almost empty, if not for the Pekinese dog regularly peeing in front of Lucinda’s door. He’d heard it was probably the stress of his owner being gone for so long. Lucinda didn’t seem to mind the piss stench —her mopping was overall quite modest.

              Good thing there was a misplaced comment. In two clicks, it was promptly rethreaded to the proper place. Of course the author of said comment would have argued with the whole logic, but she probably wouldn’t notice.

              #4766
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                There had been no communications from either Connie or Hilda for some time. Ricardo went down the usual route of worrying that something had happened to them, and then it occurred to him to try out the remote viewing he’d been practicing. It was too easy to rely solely on technological means, he reminded himself, AI (short for Abnormal Intrusions) or no AI.

                Ricardo found himself in a moonlit sweeping landscape, with some dark indeterminate built structure shapes. Oh, very helpful, he snorted, and then reminded himself to simply observe. Then he saw the woman, dressed in gauzy floating white, and found himself sneering at how corny the image was, like a new age art poster woman, beautiful and ethereal in a moonlit scene.

                Stranger still was the next thought to waft through his wandering mind. Maybe he inserted that corny woman to distract any remote viewing spies, and throw them off the scent? Suddenly there was a crash behind him. Another picture had fallen off the wall, he assumed. But nothing was out of place. He looked again, sure that something had fallen to the floor to make such a noise. But there was nothing to see. He shrugged.

                Later, he wondered: what had made that noise?

                #4760

                Aunt Idle:

                The old ruse was still working, so I continued to use it. Only way to get a bit of time to myself, especially lately. A bit of quiet time, to think. And there was so much to think about, what with all these people around. I wasn’t put on this earth to make beds and pander to tourists, and the clues were coming in thick and fast. Oh yes, some of these new guests were thick, and some were fast. Anyway, I pretended to be inebriated again and did a pretty good imitation of a lurching drunk to throw them off the scent. They always fall for it.

                After turning the key in the lock of my bedroom door, I leaned my back against it for a minute and closed my eyes. It was the bird flying in the window at the crack of dawn that got me worried. Now I’m not a superstitious person by any means, but there have been times when a bird in the house has been followed by a death, and things like that stick in your mind. The sight of Mater in that red pantsuit had etched itself on my mind as well, which was almost as worrying as the bird.

                I went over to the window and pulled down the blinds. The bright sun was making my head hurt. I was thirsty, and wished I’d brought a cup of tea with me, but lurching drunks can’t be seen to be making plans for a quiet afternoon of sober contemplation. I tried valiantly to ignore my parched mouth, but it was no good. I put my ear to the door, and the coast seemed clear so I inched it open, looking up and down the hallway. I sprinted to the bathroom, unfortunately tripping over the vacuum cleaner that Finley had no doubt left there deliberately to trip me up. She was a dark horse, that one. Good at dusting, and reliable, so I suppose that was something. Hard to get hired help out here so we had no choice, really.

                I smashed my nose on Mater’s doorknob and skinned my shin on the hoover. My nose hurt like hell, and quickly spurted an astonishing quantity of bright blood, similar in colour to that ghastly pantsuit. My fall made a hell of a din so I staggered quickly to the bathroom wash basin for the much needed drink of water before anyone came to investigate the crash, hoping to get back to my room before anyone appeared on the scene.

                Had the water in the cold tap been cold, it might have been different, but the new water pipes were still above ground, and the cold water was scalding hot from the heat of the sun on the black pipes. I didn’t have a moment to waste, so drank some quickly, horrid though it was. The unfortunate side effect of the cold water being hot was that it encouraged and diluted the blood, making the overall effect look considerably more alarming. I was tempted to blame Mater for the whole sorry affair, for starting the red theme with that damn pantsuit. I actually said “bloody pantsuit”, which struck me as inordinately funny, and made it hard to get back to the bedroom quickly. I was still laughing hysterically, leaving red hand prints and strange red markings along the corridor wall, when Sanso appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

                “I saw cave paintings like that in Zimbabwe,” he said conversationally, taking a closer look at the bloody hand prints. “I’ve often wondered what the purpose was, the meaning.” He raised an eyebrow and smiled at me. “Have you interpreted these?”

                I was momentarily speechless, as you might imagine. Then I had an impulse, and grabbed his elbow and propelled him into my room, slamming and locking the door behind him. He was almost unnaturally calm and unperturbed, albeit looking as if he was trying not to smile too broadly, which was just the kind of energy I needed. My kind of man! I gave him one of my famous coquettish looks, which made him laugh out loud, and then I caught sight of myself in the wardrobe mirror and hastily grabbed an old nightgown off the floor and spit on it to rub the blood off my face.

                “My kind of girl!” he laughed. Oh, how he laughed.

                #4758

                It took a while for Franola to get back to the sudden surge of activity. She had to use Finley as an anchor for awhile, since Tiku seemed to have moved out of the picture.
                Franola shook the typo mergence out of her dusty cloud, and resumed being Garnola — — well, Granola.

                She’d picked up interesting stuff on her way to the now overcrowded inn.
                Bits and pieces of a ragtag team of mag’spies on their way to fetch the engraved key, but they seemed to have been distracted by promises of gold on their way from their last known location. She hadn’t stayed too long to check on them, as she’d felt a sudden telepathic attack from the Doctor, and had simply popped out to avoid attracting him into her safe mental spaces.

                Well, without Tiku around the Inn to lend her body for spirit possession, it would be more difficult to verbally warn her friends Maeve and Shawn-Paul, especially caught up as they were in all that dramatic tension.
                She quite liked her new vantage point though. Fisheye view, literally. She could see the whole company, hidden in the eye of the strange fish hanged on the wall.

                A mean looking cat was starting to hiss and snarl at her though. Or maybe that was her mind playing tricks. After all that backstage exploration, she might have been confounded as to whom was doing the snarling.

                #4757

                The loud throbbing of a Harley Davidson interrupted the unexpected revelation moment.
                A few seconds later, the door banged open and a man with a long moustache, thick eyebrows and a rather bushy hair entered the Inn.

                Fergus?” said Mater, frowning.
                Uncle Fergus?” said Maeve.
                “You old bastard!” said Bert.

                Devan didn’t know the name of the man, but he did manage to infuse his wide open mouth with an interrogation.

                “Who’s Fergus?” asked Dodo, who didn’t want to be left behind.

                The fact that Mater was the first person to pronounce the name of the man didn’t escape Prune’s shrewd mind.
                “How do you know him?” she asked Mater who blushed and used another puff of dust to cough and avoid the question.

                But one surprised all the others, even Fergus.
                “My long lost brother!” said Sanso. He moved forward and hugged the newly arrived man. Truth be told, there was some ressemblance between the two of them.

                Mandrake was looking at Ugo who seemed rather focused on the scene. Something was off, he could feel it. He should warn Arona, but the darn lizard never left her side, or her hair. It was pretty annoying since she would not brush his fur very often now, and he certainly needed some refreshing with all the knots caused by the dryness of the climate.

                #4756

                “Maybe we shouldn’t have skipped that welcome lunch” Continuity said to her friend.

                “Nonsense, Connie. We go and report where the heat of the action is, and something tells me, it’s nowhere near this crumbling dusty Inn anyway.”

                “Oh, right, it’s just as I thought Hilda, but our guest might have found it rude and all.”

                “Bollocks, Dido wouldn’t mind, after all she was the one to drop clues like water from a puzzle jug, talking about underground dinosaurs’ pyramids near the old mines and all that.”

                “Technically, and you know how particular I am about details, it wasn’t Dido though, it was that old fossile of Bert that dropped all the clues, clearly out of earshot from Did’. Kind of suspiciously too… Maybe he wanted us to have the real stuff, throw everyone else off the scent. But yeah, you just might be right…”

                “Of course I’m bloody right. When have I ever been anything else than right, Connie. Now, follow me, the old mines entrance shouldn’t be far now.”

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