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In reply to: The Chronicles of the Flying Fish Inn
Aunt Idle wandered around, wondering where everyone was. Had everyone gone out on a day trip or a holiday? Had she forgotten? She clumped across the yard looking for Bert. If she could find Bert, he would know ~ but where was he? Her feet felt dry and heavy. I really must do something about those dry callouses, she thought ~ perhaps a long hot soak in the bath. But first, I must find the others.
Idle continued her search, but her legs began to feel like lead. Funny how some days gravity seemed so much stronger. It was becoming harder to put one foot in front of the other. What was it that guy on the internet had said about a lightness of energy? The unbearable lightness of being ~ well this was more like the unbearable heaviness of feet.
A pair of butterfly’s scampered through the air, fluttering and darting around Idle’s sticky dreads. Be light like the skipping of a butterfly, that guy had said. Hah! she croaked. Easy to say! Unable to walk any further, Idle grabbed onto a straight little eucalyptus sapling to hold herself up. Her fingers felt stiff and inflexible as she grasped the slender trunk.
It’s just too hard, she thought with a heavy heart. It’s too hard to move.
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
Liz wandered out into the garden. There was a stiff breeze but the sun was shining and the sky was a dazzling blue. She spied Roberto bending over a rose bush, secateurs in hand, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of buttock crack. Liz laughed out loud. Tantalizing? She must be getting quite desperate if the sight of a gardeners bum crack appeared tantalizing. It had taken her mind off the others momentarily though, and her impatient thoughts of writing them all out of the story.
It really was a most splendid day.
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
Ignoring the peculiar behaviour of Finnley, who seemed to be having a strange turn (Flove only knew what had happened to her during her absence), Liz continued with her explanation.
“It’s the new exercise in the Mandala of Ascensions group. There are Leader Personalities, and there are Supporter Personalities ~ and let me be perfectly clear, there are no in betweens or other categories in this particular exercise. Members of the group must choose one category only.”
Liz paused to light a cigarette, and turn down the background chatter emanating from the puerile radio show, which was distracting her from her train of thought.
In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
His shift was almost over. Ed wondered why the funny guy had looked so insistently as his hands. That was not the part people usually stared at… He shrugged — people are always stressed when they get their new identity, probably a bit overwhelmed by the realization of how direly they liked their comfortable boundaries and restrictions.
Some people weren’t just ready for such a change. Actually, it had taken himself quite a few years as well, that it within relativilastic timing, all considering.He looked outside the window, it was night already, but at least the rain had stopped.
Usually, he would wait a little more until the brunt of the office people had disappeared from the overcrowded stairs, escalators or “moving staircases” as they liked to call it.But today he was feeling like leaving early. Liz’ would be waiting for him.
Putting on his raincoat, with his murse in one hand, he twirled his mustache with a grin and the other one.In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
Becky sat looking at the key in her hand long after the others had gone to bed, her mind going over seemingly disjointed images and random memories, trying to piece them all together. Why had Dory sent her, Becky, the key to the detention camp? She wasn’t expected to fly to the island and physically release the detainee’s surely? Should she send it to someone in the area? But who? Or was it more symbolic? But symbolic of what, exactly?
Was it connected to the Imagination Wave? It surely must be, she thought. It must be connected to the surge of story character refugees, looking for a new story.
Becky sighed. There had been such a dearth of imagination during the previous waves that literally countless story refugees had been rounded up and detained, with no new stories available anywhere on the planet. Of course this wasn’t actually true: there were always countless new stories to be told, but the lack of imagination, the sheer lack of will to tell them, had brought the global situation to a dreadful impasse.
We could write them all out of the stories with a rat tat tat of the keyboards, she mused, and immediately cringed at the idea. Any fool can destroy in seconds. Destruction isn’t power, creation is.
Was it a coincidence that the leader of the old story where most of the characters were fleeing from, had the same name as that alien that kept promising to land, but never actually did?
Shaking her head, Becky wondered, not for the first time, if the world population can’t handle a few displaced story characters, what in Glods name would be the reaction to a load of aliens? Still clutching the blue key, Becky went to bed. She would discuss it with the others in the morning.
In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
Vincentius took one last look at the children, wondering if he should give them all a hug and bid them farewell. But they were happily engrossed in smearing Fanella’s collection of Venetian glass with marmite and peanutbutter paint effects, so he slipped out without a word and left them to it.
Shivering in the damp chill air, he looked nervously at Arona. “Where are you taking me? I’m not supposed to leave without permission, I might get sent back to the detention camp on the island.” He shuddered at the thought.
“Don’t be silly,” snapped Arona, “Do pull yourself together, you are but a shadow of your former self. Yes, yes, I know it must have been awful,” she said impatiently at Vincentius’ self pitying look, “You can tell me all about Tikfijikoo Spider Camp later. But now we must hurry. Come on!”
In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
“‘allo? ‘allo, is Fanella there? Zis is ‘er friend, Mirabelle, wiz an urgent message.”
“A massage, you say? For Fanella?” Vincentius covered the phone with his hand and shouted “Oy! get down off there, you rascals, and go and call your mother, she’s wanted on the phone. Somebody about a massage.”
“No, no, a message! I must speak to Fanella about ‘er fiance,” the woman said.
“Well bloody speak properly then,” Vincentius muttered. “Bloody foreigners!”
“Vincentius, for goodness sake, can’t you keep these children under control!” Fanella said crossly, irritated at being interrupted from her massage. “Couldn’t you have just taken a message? And get this place tidied up before Gustave comes over!”
Vincentius scowled, his once handsome features faded with drudgery. He’d been a fool to leave the old country, notwithstanding the destruction. He should have chanced it, dodged the bombs, he’d have been a free man still. This life of servitude as a fostered refugee wasn’t what he’d hoped for when he set off in the overcrowded dinghy all those months ago. Cold, wet and tired, he’d stepped ashore full of anticipation. But nobody had told him just how awful the weather was, and how dreadful the children. Spoilt wilful little rotters! No discipline, no matter how hard he tried to control them. No wonder everyone had refugee childminders these days, who but the destitute and homeless would want to look after the unspeakable brats?
“In the Spotted Dick with a tart, you say?” Fanella snorted into the phone. “I’ll be there in ten minutes”
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
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.In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
Evangeline Spiggot admired her long crimson polished nails before pressing the button for the Noise Control Officer, Ed Steam. He answered the call with a muffled “hwellflow?”
“Ed, are you eating peanuts again? Vangie here, just had a call from Muffin Mews, another complaint about the cackler, over in Cakltown this time.”
“Cakltown! I say, she’s frightfully efficient, she must have finished Bunbury already, I must see the boss about giving her a bonus.”
“Oh, I don’t think Bunbury’s finished yet, Ed, you know these freelancer chancers, they don’t usually stick to the plan. Hedging her bets, I expect, covering her trail. Most of Tartlett Terrace has been insantizied, but I haven’t had a single call from Croisssant Crescent in Bunbury yet, nor Pieman Park.”
“This mission is taking a good deal longer that I imagined,” replied Ed. “Might have to see if we can insantitize en masse at the bake sale next week at Lemoine Meringue Hall.”
In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
“We have registered your complaint and our Noise Control Officer will be around shortly.”
The smooth voice of the woman on the other end of the line did little to placate Bea. In fact, she could feel herself working up to a frenzy.
“The damn officer will come around and that cackler will stop cackling and your officer will say: we can’t do anything about the cackling if we don’t hear the cackling for ourselves. Because we have to measure the decibels of the cackle and we have to ascertain the cackle is indeed loud enough for us to warrant confiscating the cackle.
Bea knew she was getting agitated and took a deep breath. Just breathe. Calm down.
“It really is most annoying to be woken up continually by cackling. What would you do in my situation? she asked, miserably imagining the red manicured fingernails and perfectly coiffured hair which surely must be attached to a voice this calm and imperturbable.
“Have you tried talking to the Cackler? It’s always best if people can work it out between themselves. Point out to them how their cackling is impacting on your quality of life. I am sure they will be reasonable.”
In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
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.
Beware, this story is for the light of heart and laughter inclined, not to be confused with Dafletown and the Tone Dancers of Dustard or Mapletown and the Mown Mancers of Mustard which are stories made of an altogether different cloth…
In reply to: The Chronicles of the Flying Fish Inn
The house was strangely peaceful.
The hot days were over for now, and the air wasn’t as suffocating.
Dido was gone for a visit to New South Wales, talking the girls with her.
As Mater said, breathing a bit of ocean in her pipes instead of her infernal smoking would do her quite a bit of good. Actually, to her surprise, she’d refrained herself from saying what she originally meant. Her brains needed washing too, but that would have been mean.
“Mater, old cow, you’re getting soft with age” — Prune could hear her mutter. The young girl was clever at reading her silences and mutterings. For all the good it would do her.
So, yeah, a bit of coastal loitering, instead of vagabonding with all the in and out guests that summer had brought. Dido would endlessly run head-first in so many troubles by following people’s every whim. But hopefully she would be a bit more responsible having to care for her nieces.It must have been those books she read, or the Internet gobbledygook. Mater had found a second-hand worn-out book Dido had forgotten to flush on her way out of the loo. Or the reverse.
Anyway, she’d given it a peek. Out of concern of course.
No wonder Dido was so taken with silly concerns. It was a book by a French Tibetan Buddhist monk, advocating compassion for this, compassion for that. Good for nothing, all the same those preachers. Now, she could understand why Dido was all ranting about how meditation change your brain. Well, no surprise! Makes it all mushy and unable to think critically, more like it.Just before she left for her little vacation, she’d almost had a nervous breakdown about what she called the extermination. Happened the noise on the roof were stray cats. Well, I knew she fed them from time to time. Probably Finly too. Now, neither Finly nor myself would have called the exterminator to kill some poor cats, good gracious. The guinea pigs are out of their reach anyway. But I guess one of the neighbours wasn’t the compassionate type. Now, what about having compassion for those bastard cat killers? Silly monks who know nothing.
Anyway,… darn phone! Somebody to answer that phone?
When she arrived at the ringing phone, she realised it was again one of those stupid marketers to sell whatever useless crap. She put the handset delicately on the ledge, letting the guy talk to the air, and resumed her calm walk around the quiet house.
So, where was I, she thought. The thought has nearly slipped away.
It was something about fish oil maybe. Oh there… walking meditation, mushy brains, cat killers… There, she lost it again…
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
His mother had told him not to trust what he would see. Somehow she’d spoken as if she knew more than she wanted to tell.
After the mayhem with the quakes, and the meteor impact, he thought that was it. There was something more to the reality of these events.
But then, nothing could have prepared them for what happened next. “Bloody aliens?”
Suspiciously, everyone seemed completely hypnotized and blissfully eager to follow them wherever they led. He had tried to wake Yz up, she was usually the no-nonsense one, but she’d looked at him with vacant eyes barely recognizing him with a faint “Johnny?”.
He started to get really suspicious when one of the robots started looking at his behaviour, not packing like the others. It even tried to force him to drink water —dehydration was common in these airtight environments, it said. It was then it dawned on him, that there must have put something in the water. But for what? A Mars take-over?
How he was somehow immune? Well, for a while he’d collected the water dripping from the stones, and had analysed it, found it very pure. A few days ago, before the whole string of disasters, he’d tried to drink it, see how it tasted, and it seemed safe. Must have been why. By now, most of the stones he’d collected had dried up, and his water supply was limited.
While pretending to slowly pack his things, he was looking at everyone queueing in short lines, all very ecstatic to go to the implausible blue boot-ship surrounded by watchful Finnleys. The exodus had a very eerie feeling about it.
He could see most of the persons he knew, even the new ones, Prune cuddling a box with her hamster family, Hans, even that daft Lizette and the mines guy. The religious nuts were so stoned they were all following an obviously overdressed robot with a headpiece they probably took for their religious leader.
But wait… His mother? He hadn’t see her. Where had she gone?
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
“You can call us the Blue Enders” said gently one of the blue aliens, which by the shade of it, must have been a top ranking official.
Kale was a bit confused, and space had a jelly consistency that harped and warped around his ears. It may have been the injections they gave him after the meeting with the sculpturesque Fin Min.She had explained to him, they had made contact with a unknown sentient civilisation, and that they had in their infinite and blue compassion decided to warn us of impending doom on the Mars colony. They had requested a translator to go with them on a rescue mission on their faster-than-light bluship named Sprakle Star.
Hazy and fuzzy, he was quickly put and wrapped in a ball of cotton, ear-deep into a globe coaster of roller proportions.
At least, that’s how it felt… That waccine must have been full of blue bees.“Arrival on Mars orbital level 1, in 5,… 4… 3…”
At least, the Blunders had the good idea to put an instant translator in his ear-muffins.
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
When Eb woke up, there was a dozen messages left on his phone.
He didn’t have to check to know.
His mother wasn’t too subtle when he missed their weekly call.She now lived in a modest retiring home in Mississippi, spending most of her time on social networks exchanging links about anything from politics and revolution and anarchy, kittens and drugs. Oh, that, and politics too. And revolution.
She was suffering from early stages of Alzheimer, but called it “transition” as the old-age hype advertised some decades earlier, and due to her refusal to take her prescriptions, it wasn’t improving much as time went by. But Eb’s prognosis was more like “selective Alzheimer”, as she would perfectly recall when (and how many times) he had missed their weekly calls.He could already hear her complain about how she was left out of the loop, that the world story would be over by the time she catches up with all the gossips they’d hidden from her. Often, she would become so agitated that Fancy, her nurse would come help her relax and stop waking up the others. Everything was much less confusing thanks to Fancy.
After all that is said, he loved his mother deeply. She was always full of extravagant ideas and when she stopped doubting herself, she had her moments of sheer brilliance.
Being his only son, that she’d taken care of as a single mother most of her life, he felt tremendous pressure to be worthy of her sacrifices. So talking about his job wasn’t really something he liked to explore with her. If she’d known what he did for a living,… he couldn’t bear to imagine the look of crushed hopes and expectations on her devastated face. Well, suffice to say her face needn’t any of it.
Instead, he’d told her he was working in a tree nursery, working on pest control, with humane and eco-conscious methods. Which actually wasn’t too far off the truth. The pests were the glitches of the program, and the vegetables… well, that didn’t need much explaining.“Tricia speaking, who’s this?” Eb knew she knew perfectly well it was him, but the game was ever the same
“Mother, it’s Eb”
“Ebenezer, my dear boy, how kind of you to remember your old mother. What have you been up to? So many things happened here, with that new batch of decrepit old farts who arrived last month, so much drama. But you should tell me about you. Oh, makes me recall that stupid incident, a synch! I should tell Fancy about it! Fancy, Fancy!
Oh dear… She’s gone cleaning up again. The last one who came in is a Chinese, and all his family is there, I bet she’s cooking some rice now, it smells funny. Fancy! Mind the rice! So well, it’s like the twins I talk with on the Internet, with funny names, Cilantro and Nutmeg, something like that, well, they have so many funny stories, like that meteor that dropped on Mars and blacked-out the TV show, they think it’s all bollocks. I told them I’d ask you about this, after all you did some studies in physics before becoming a gardener, you’ve always been the clever one in the lot, always helping with the dust stuck in my keyboard, and other IT problems. Oh dear… that was fun, but I think I must go, Fancy is waving at me, she says hello by the way! Oh, she rolls your eyes at you, how cute! Time for my siesta, … what? Oh, and change my nappies too, thanks Fancy, you’re precious, I keep forgetting everything. Talk to you soon my boy!”Well… If he hadn’t been so hungover, he probably would have tried to place some funny comments, or at least a well-meaning “hmmm hmmm”, to let her know he wasn’t just letting her monologue. Today was a good day notwithstanding, she hardly had a complaint. He should remember to send Fancy a card and a nice honey pot like he did every year, she was doing wonders at pacifying his mother.
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
The chair in the center of the bare white room was shaped like an egg. Kale wasn’t a big fan of the current trend in zen minimilism; he stood up and wandered around restlessly.
He hadn’t been going to take the job, no matter how much data about unemployment and job probabilities Flynn ranted on about.
But then he had seen her again. The dark haired woman. Just call me Agent T, she had said mysteriously when he asked her name.
He had been putting out the garbage—Flynn’s job but he was still sulking about the job situation—when she, Agent T, popped out from behind the purple Amelia bush.
“Please take the job,” she had said pleadingly. “It’s my first job and if I stuff it up they won’t give me another one. And it really is important. And all you have to do is play along and do what they say and wait for instructions from us.”
She had refused to give any further details about who “us” were, but Kale’s curiosity was well and truly piqued.
He was thinking about this when the wall slid open and a gorgeous creature appeared before him.
“You must be Kale.” she said in a silky voice. “I am Fin Min Hoot. How good of you to come.”
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
Pádraig was alone as usual with his dog when he felt the first tremors. Dust started to fall from the large columns of sandstone inside the cave. He wasn’t too worried at first, as the area still had some faint thermal and seismic activity, but the second aftershock took him by surprise.
He almost fell violently backwards if he hadn’t had good enough reflexes to grab on the half carved ledge of the column he was working on.
His dog started to howl violently.“Hush, Poppy!” the dust made him cough. “Must be those stupid government guys from the nearby base. I thought they’d stopped their nuclear testing decades ago…”
The dog didn’t stop barking though, but darted out in one of the carved galleries. It stopped just before going out of sight, as if waiting for his master.
“Oh, what now silly? I’m getting old for these games.”
But the dog was stubborn, a trait they had in common, his dead wife would have told him. So he relented, and went in the direction the dog was leading to.
It took him a few hundred meters in the tunnel to realize something odd had happened. The air was full of moisture, quite unusual at this time of year. He pressed on.
The dog’s paws were making tick-tick noises on the stones, and echoed in the chambers. His gait was less light, and he had to stop a few times to catch his breath. His life’s work was now quite monumental, and it could take quite a while to go from one end to another.
Before they reached the last chamber, he had to stop. His feet were getting wet.
It had been his dream for a long time, to bring water deep down to create a sort of natural healing pool, and bathe in the beautiful minerals, but he’d done some research, and although he’d always believed some underground river was nearby, he’d never managed to find it, or find any trace in the cadastral maps.Seemed it wasn’t as far as he’d thought after all.
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
“Ah, here you are at last.” said the dark haired woman, a trace of impatience in her voice.
Kale looked at her quizzically, trying to place her. Up close, she seemed older than he had first thought.
“I’m sorry but do I know you?”
“No, Kale, you don’t know me. But I know you”.
She looked at him intently for a moment and gave an enigmatic smile before continuing:
“You have a job interview tomorrow. You must accept the position.”
“Okay, this is getting really weird now. How do you know me and what business is it of yours whether or not I take the job?”
“You have been chosen.”
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
“I must say all this bending is jolly awkward.” grumbled Tinia-Tiffany Bloo. “The sooner we get these aliens escorted back to earth and we are able to return to Thereon the better.
“Stop whining will you!” snapped Betty Bloo, her antagonism in large part due to intense jealousy at Tinia’s gorgeous pale robin egg blue colouring. “It is totally unprofessional.”
Tinia smiled sweetly as she ducked her head under her arm. That poor Betty, she really drew the short straw with that awful pigmentation.
