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  • #4098

    Someone had told him once : “Catastrophes are like meteor shower, they come in flocks.”

    Jeremy looked with dread at the smoke coming out of his computer. He had been writing an important e-mail to his new boss at the bank and was about to click the send button when it happened. The tech had said there was a current surge affecting the whole building. Everyone was in deep shit at the moment, they had to close the building to angry customers, and someone in high place was certainly worrying about the intangible money the bank was manipulating daily.
    Oh! and concerning all his data, considering the smoke coming out of the machine, it was certainly irremediably lost.

    Jeremy sighed. His last relocation a few hours ago had made him a 36 year old salesman in a not so well known bank. His ID said he was called Duncan Minestrone, but he couldn’t let go of his old identity and kept on thinking of himself as Jeremy. And he didn’t feel that old.

    His memory of his former life, before the relocation, was fading away. He didn’t remember well what he was doing and what were his passions. The only thing he was sure is that they had confiscated his cat, Max, when they gave him his first identity and he had been on the look for him ever since.

    It wasn’t easy, especially since every other day he was receiving a new identity in his mailbox. At first he had found it odd and not so easy : as soon as he got accustomed to a new persona, he would have to change again. He feared he would soon lose track of who he really was. And he wasn’t sure about what all this was about.

    The phone hanging on the wall rang. It was one of those old public phones. Jeremy had thought it was only for decoration. The tech was looking at him.

    “Are you going to pick up ?” he asked.
    “Me ?”
    “Of course! The phone is in your office, isn’t it ?”

    Jeremy hesitated but eventually got up from his desk. The phone was calling him, but he didn’t really want to take the call. What if it was more problems. They come in flocks.
    It was one of those old ringing tone caused by a mechanical bell inside. The speaker was shaking furiously. Jeremy couldn’t help but notice the dust on the machine.

    “You’d better take the call”, said the tech.

    Jeremy picked up the apparatus which a greasy feeling in his hand.

    “At last! Duncan, in my office! Now!”
    It was the voice of his new boss, Ed, and he didn’t seem very happy.

    #4096
    prUneprUne
    Participant

      I don’t know exactly when it struck me first. The passage of time.
      When you are young, it’s easy to miss it, some would say “you’re a child, you don’t know about such things”, and maybe they are right.

      In a few months, it will already be 2 years that we reopened the Inn. The results have been mixed, we haven’t gotten any richer, but it definitely helps pay the bills.

      It definitely helped to pay for Aunt Idle’s rehab, after her nervous breakdown last March. Well, rehab is a big word. We got professional help from some friend of Mater, Jiemba, who knows someone who knows someone.
      Of course, we had to package it nicely for Didle to take the bait. She would have none of that rehab thing of course. But she was sold at the first syllable of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and Psychotria viridis leaf, well aya for short.

      After that, seems she wanted to travel to Iceland. Got to figure how she gets all that fancy money. Mater says it’s her sugar daddy lovers. Not Mater’s, you silly. Dido’s.
      Mater says that without any judgment, which is rare. She still calls her a tart and all sorts of nice things, but it’s like she’s proud that she made it in the world —or just that she slowed down on the gin bottle.

      Speaking of Mater, she hasn’t been so well. After she tried to grab some can of chicken broth from the shelves, she broke her hip bone. Of course she couldn’t stand staying at the hospital and got herself discharged as soon as her doctor looked the other way, but I can see she’s not completely healed. Finnly is doing her best with the circumstances, adding nursing to her housekeeping skills. And Bert’s been around to support with the inn maintenance.

      Well my twin sisters are another story altogether. They’ll be moving out, they said, live in the big city. They had no intention of going to college anyway. Seems they are looking for a full-time blogger job. I’m betting they’ll be back soon enough. Nothing beats Finnly’s mince pice and charbroiled spicy huhu skewers.

      It’s been a while I’ve seen Dev’. Always working at the gas station. Mater always says his lack of ambition will save him from trouble.

      So yes, time has passed. It’s funny how nobody else seems to notice.

      #4093

      It didn’t take too long to Ed Steam to find her. By his count, only a few hundred reality reboots.

      It could have been more, but keeping a steady count of all the trigger-cackles was tricky.
      He never was quite the same person each time. Hopefully, he’d noticed after the 57th reboot that something new had happened — since that particular reboot, it had seemed easier to keep track of his identity from reboot to reboot.

      As if Zero-point Bea had realized something, and honed her entangling capabilities.

      Ed had tracked her at the border. Funnily, nowadays she was more or less the only unchanging thing in the whole universe.
      She had rented a small apartment near the border, and was offering reallocation services on an ad-hoc basis.

      There were still many characters refugees who were looking for a story placement, and that’s what she provided them.

      Ed was there for one thing: termitate her. His reality now was quite different from the one he originated, but despite all the changes, he was still in charge of preventing the surges wherever they happened.
      It was a moral dilemma. Already so many persons had been displaced by the cackling surges and Bea’s uncontrolled shifting realities. Not even a map-dancer could now keep track of all the transfocal encounters and reallocation. The world was a much different place now, on shifting grounds and sandy whorls with no minute of fame.

      Ed was next in line, dreading that he couldn’t get to her before the next cackling reboot.
      The success of his mission was paramount to the security of the fabric of reality.

      #4088

      In reply to: Coma Cameleon

      TracyTracy
      Participant

        The waiter stood to the side of the of the tables and chairs on the pavement, smoking a cigarette and listening to the babble of conversation. Holiday makers exposed themselves in the sun, in shades of white, pink and red striped flesh, while the regulars were seated closer to the cafe in the shade of the awning.

        Across the road, a bone thin ebony skinned man carrying a small brown suitcase paused, and scanned the street. Laying the suitcase down, he opened it and removed a tattered cloth which he spread out upon the sidewalk and proceeded to display an assortment of sunglasses and cheap glittery watches. The man sat down behind his small display of wares, leaning against the wall. The waiter felt a physical pang in his gut as he registered the expression on the face of the watch seller: resigned hopelessness. A palpable lack of optimistic anticipation. The waiter wondered how he managed to sell any watches, indeed how he managed to get out of bed in the morning, if indeed he had such a thing as a bed.

        The waiter stubbed out the cigarette butt and lit another one. A group of five teenage girls picked at their pastries while passing around a bottle of sun protection lotion, giggling as they showed each other photos on their phones. An older couple bickered quietly between themselves at the next table, the wife admonishing her husband over the amount of butter he spread on his toasted baguette. A younger woman with two neatly attired and scrubbed faced children waved away a stray wisp of cigarette smoke with a righteous frown, and glared in the direction of nearby smokers.

        None of them had noticed the watch seller with the small battered brown suitcase across the road. The waiter caught his eye and nodded, giving him a good luck thumbs up sign. The watch seller acknowledged him with an unenthusiastic lift of his hand.

        The waiter sighed, ground his cigarette butt out with his heel, and went back inside the cafe.

        #4085

        In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

        ÉricÉric
        Keymaster

          bossy realized continued wait behind
          seemed character ask imagination opened
          started doctor leave business news often
          noticed hand cleaning tart certain

          #4066
          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            Godfrey kind of liked the silence of late.

            Finnley under the guise of regular taichi practice, had been actually quite busy ushering the randomly scurrying forgotten characters out of the house into the wild, with a broomstick and a mild dose of threat.

            The Splendor Manor had fell pleasantly silent. Too silent for Liz probably, who had started to notice and launch back into gears her creaking storytelling joints.

            #4064
            rmkreeg
            Participant

              John placed himself down on a crooked old chair at the table, with journal in hand, and stared out the window of his cottage. As he sat there, the imperfect glass of the window distorted his view slightly, but noticeably, almost unconsciously, and he swayed in minuscule displacements or perhaps shifted a bit to take a sip of his black coffee, giving the effect of a liquid world – to someone of imagination, of course. To those with no imagination, the window was rubbish and needed to be replaced.

              It’s been a relaxing weekend for John, who, on his working days, finds himself as a writer. This is, of course, if you were to think of any days as those in which you might suddenly stop writing or ignore inspiration. In that respect, every day is a working day. However, this weekend was a special one for himself.

              The writing that got him money was of the technical sort, dedicated to dry manuals and instructional fare. His passion, however, lent itself to the imagination. No doubt, he still adored the natural world and it’s workings, but he found himself nearly dead inside after completing a project for work. This, invariably, lead him to his personal expeditions.

              Every few weeks he’d save up enough money to take a train or bus to another location, picked nearly at random, just so he could get away and bring color back into his life. This cottage, with its imperfect windows, was one such expedition.

              So, he sat there for a moment, playing with his perception through the window, and then shifted his attention through it to world outside. A breath of beauty swept over him and he was inspired. In his journal, with no expectation of the entry living beyond those pages, he wrote:

              The Wystlewynds (Whistle Winds) or Wystlewynd Forest

              The Wystlewynds (Whistle Winds) or Wystlewynd Forest is a forested, mountainous area – if you’re apt to call these green, low laying perturbations in the Earth “mountains”. The cool-yet-comfortable south-easterly winds blow through the Wystlewood trees, whistling as it goes. Some would say the forest sings.

              Wystlewood trees “sing”, as it were, due to the way the wind passes through their decomposing trunks. While alive, the trunks of the trees have a hard, fibrous outer wood, while the inner portion is soft and sponge-like, saturated in chemical that simultaneously grabs on to water and repels insects. When the trees get old and begin to die off, they tend to remain upright for some time as the inner sponge decomposes. This leaves a hollow void where a particular caterpillar takes refuge, unaffected by the repellent chemical that a fungus slowly decomposes into an edible source of nutrition.

              These caterpillars leave behind a secretion that the decomposing fungus in the tree requires. The relationship between the caterpillar and fungus is symbiotic in that regard, both feeding each other. We call these caterpillars “Woodworms”.

              When the caterpillars are ready to cocoon, they climb out to one of the old branches and hang themselves from a cord of twisted threads at least a foot long. When they are ready to come out, they bite through the cord, dropping themselves to the forest floor while still in the cocoon. The cocoon and all drops below the foliage of the undergrowth, where the moth can come out into the world under cover of green leaves and the shimmering violet flowers of the Spirit Flower – a color scheme that the moth shares.

              The Spirit Flower is a rhizome with a sprawling root structure that tends to poke it’s way into everything. It has small violet shimmering flowers in umbels that in any other case might be white. The leaves are simple with a jagged margin, alternating. The stem is on the shorter end, perhaps a foot tall, fibrous and slightly prickly.

              There are a few flowers that tend to dominate the undergrowth, Spirit Flowers being one. Sun Drops and Red Rolls are additional examples, the former a yellow droopy flower and the latter a peculiar red flower with a single pedal that’s rolled up in a certain way that would suggest a flared funnel with wavy edges.

              The flowers and trees enjoy the soil here, a bit sandy and rocky, but mixed with a richness created by the mixture of undergrowth, fungi and bacteria. The roots dig into the soil, slowly stirring it and adding to it’s nutrients. The fungi eat the dead roots and fallen foliage and the bacteria eat the fungi and everything else, of course.

              The whole matter leaves a note of scent in the air that cannot be described as anything other than that of the Wystlewynds. It’s perhaps sweet, with Earthy undertones and an addictive bitterness. The whole place seems to elevate one’s energy, sharpening the senses. You want to sing with the trees, or perhaps play along with a haelio (a flute-like instrument created with wystlewood).

              #4058
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                Connie noticed the old woman was frowning a lot this morning, and thought to herself, Not so sweet after all, the old trout. In a funny sort of way, it endeared her to Connie in a way that the endless cheery sweetness had not.

                “There’s no Elf School in the directory, but there is a Tw’Elf Centre, do you suppose this is the one?”

                “May as well check it out,” replied Sophie.

                “Representatives of the twelve continents of the earth?” Connie read, adding, “Sounds like some kind of mumbo jumbo fringe nutjob stuff if you ask me.”

                “What, less nutjob than an Elf School?” replied Sophie with a snigger. Connie laughed, beginning to warm towards the old dear. “I’d be interested to hear more about the anticipated merger with the Bermuda Triangle.”

                #4055
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  Connie excused herself from an after dinner drink with Supposedly Sweet Sophie, pleading indigestion from the sour berries in the reindeer stew. It was only half a lie: she did feel sour, but she didn’t know why. Locking the hotel bedroom door behind her, she leaned on it and let out a long sigh. Being annoyed all the time was starting to get so annoying.

                  In an attempt to lighten her mood and release some pent up energy, she found an exercise video and pressed play. When she saw the fitness instructor using weights on her ankles she had an idea. Scanning the room, she noticed a pair of matching concrete buddhas either side of the balcony doors. Perfect! Connie thought, and with gritted teeth strapped one to each ankle with a couple of brassieres. Now when I take them off, I’ll feel the impossible lightness of being.

                  #4052
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    “Did you have to make such a scene!” Yannosh hissed into the phone. “You were noticed!”

                    The Indian butler looked furtively over his shoulder, but there was no sign of Mr Asparagus leaving the hotel bar yet.

                    “Yes, yes, I know they’re calling it a dust devil but….”

                    Hearing someone approaching Yannosh quickly pocketed the phone, but it was only the chambermaid, Finnbjörg.

                    “Góðan dag herra, er allt í lagi?” she asked politely, and then added, ““क्या सब ठीक है? मैंने सुना है कि आप धूल शैतान का उल्लेख?”

                    Yannosh was taken aback. How many languages did this island bumpkin speak?

                    #4044

                    “What?” Ricardo was the first one to notice the slanderous pamphlet in the competing gazette.

                    “… the catchy headlines which deceivingly sells awe and amazement aplenty, while in the end amounting to the least possible information, and not even accurate or substantiated, makes you wonder if the dutifully reported oddities are not coming from the brains of their satirical redaction cousin The Courgette.”

                    Bossy wouldn’t like that. Nor would Connie. Oh no, not like it at all.

                    #4038

                    Connie looked at the Bossy Pants instructions, her face inscrutable.

                    Hilda was not up yet, probably passed out on her couch after a night of debauchery and snorting pepsain. As usual, she’d left a heap of links on her blog for Connie to choose from. Well, and of course, to sexy-bait them up. There were times she was glad she didn’t have to face all the people herself and interview them. Today was not one of them.

                    She gestured at the awkward new intern. He passed a head through the door. She didn’t give him the time to open his mouth. “Another chamomile tea,… thaaank you.” He disappeared hurriedly.

                    “At least this one gets me.”

                    For today, chamomile was the least of evils. Anything stronger would have her go full contact on any one daring to even look at her. If people knew the efforts she made daily.
                    Her self-defence instructor knew something about it. She almost sent him to the hospital last week.

                    Glancing upon the list of notes, she noticed that Hilda had made a highlight to double check on the gouda cat-like man. That was strange. Hilda wasn’t one to come back on stuff once shared and published. Definitively not the past-dwelling profile. There must have been something more.

                    “Well, know what, old tart: early bird gets the worm.”

                    She rose from the swivel chair, taking her purse swiftly and aiming for the exit door with the path of least eye-contact when the odd guy appeared again with the damn tea. She’d forgotten about that. Again, her brains firing at full speed, she didn’t leave him time to tell or ask anything.

                    “You don’t know where Joel is? Of course not…” The photographer was probably on another assignment. Had not been seen for weeks it seemed. Not that she cared, he would have been more like an alibi for her to go an a follow-up mission.

                    Sometimes her brains would also make her do the darnedest thing. She couldn’t stop herself from telling to the hapless intern.

                    “You look too happy Ric. Take your coat and come with me.”

                    #4015

                    Ed was still puzzled while he was eating his breakfast, and even more perplexed when he noticed all the blue bits in the confiture he had spread upon his toasted buns.

                    #3996
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on July 01, 2010. It is being delivered from the past through FutureMe.org

                      Dear FutureMe,
                      The Absinthe Cafe
                      Dawn and Mark had a bottle of Absinthe (the proper stuff with the WORMwood in
                      it, which is illegal in France) but forgot to bring it. Wandering around at
                      some point, we chanced upon a cafe called Absinthe. Sitting on the terrace, the
                      waitress came up and looked right at me and said “Oh you are booked to come here
                      tomorrow night!” and then said “Forget I said that”. Naturally that got our
                      attention. After we left Dawn spotted a kid with 2016 on the back of his T
                      shirt. We asked Arkandin about it and we have a concurrent group focus that does
                      meet in that cafe in 2016, including Britta. Dawn’s name is Isabelle Spencer,
                      Jib’s is Jennifer….
                      The Worm & The Suitcase
                      I borrowed Rachel’s big red suitcase for the trip and stuck a Time Bridgers
                      sticker on it, and joked before I left about the case disappearing to 2163. I
                      had an impulse to take a fig tree sapling for Eric and Jib, which did survive
                      the trip although it looked a little shocked at first. As Eric was repotting
                      it, we noticed a worm in the soil, and I said, Well, if the fig tree dies at
                      least you have the worm.
                      At Balzacs house on a bench in the garden there was a magazine lying there open
                      to an ad for Spain, which said “If you lose your suitcase it would be the best
                      thing because you would have to stay”.
                      Later we asked Arkandin and he said that there was something from the future
                      inserted into my suitcase. I went all through it wondering what it could be,
                      and then a couple of days ago Eric said that it was the WORM! because of the
                      WORMwood absinthe syncs, and worm hole etc. I just had a chat with Franci who
                      had a big worm sync a couple of days ago, she particularly noticed a very big
                      worm outside the second hand shop, and noted that she hadn’t seen a worm in ages
                      ~ which is also a sync, because there was a big second hand clothes shop next to
                      Dawn and Mark’s hotel that I went into looking for a bowler hat.
                      Arkandin said, by the way, that Jane did forget to mention the bowler hats in
                      OS7, those two guys on the balcony were indeed wearing bowler hats, and that
                      they were the same guys that were in my bedroom in the dream I had prior to
                      finding the Seth stuff ~ Elias and Patel.
                      Eric replied:

                      And another Time Bridger thing; a while ago, Jib and I had fun planting some TB stickers at random places in Paris (and some on a wooden gate at Jib’s hometown).
                      Those in Paris I remember were one at the waiting room of a big tech department store, and another on the huge “Bateaux Mouches” sign on the Pont de l’Alma (bridge, the one of Lady D. where there is a gilded replica of Lady Liberty’s flame).
                      I think there are pics of that on Jib’s or my flickr account somewhere.
                      When we were walking past this spot, Jib suddenly remembered the TB sticker — meanwhile, the sign which was quite clean before had been written all over, and had other stickers everywhere. We wondered whether it was still here, and there it was! It’s been something like 2 years… Kind of amazing to think it’s still there, and imagine all the people that may have seen it since!
                      ~~~~

                      The Flights

                      I wasn’t all that keen on flying and procrastinated for ages about the trip. I
                      flew with EASYjet, so it was nice to see the word EASY everywhere. I got on the
                      plane to find that they don’t allocate seats, and chose a seat right at the
                      front on the left. The head flight attendant was extremely playful for the
                      whole flight, constantly cracking up laughing and teasing the other flight
                      attendants, who would poke him and make him laugh during announcements so that
                      he kept having to put the phone down while he laughed. I spent the whole flight
                      laughing and catching his mischeivously twinking eye.
                      I asked Arkandin about him and he said his energy was superimposed. I got on
                      the flight to come home and was met on the plane by the same guy! I said
                      HELLO! It’s YOU again! Can I sit in the same seat and are you going to make me
                      laugh again” and he actually moved the person that was in my seat and said I
                      could sit there. Then he asked me about my book (about magic and Napolean). He
                      also said that all his flights all week had been delayed except the two that I
                      was on. He wanted to give me a card for frequent flyers but I told him I
                      usually flew without planes ~ that cracked him up ;))
                      ~~~

                      The Dream Bean

                      Eric cracked open a special big African bean that is supposed to enhance
                      dreams/lucidity so we all had a bit of it. The second night I remembered a
                      dream and it was a wonderful one.
                      (Coincidentally, on the flight home I read a few pages of my book and it just
                      happened to be about the council of five dragons and misuse of magical beans)
                      In the dream I had a companion with magical powers, who I presumed was Jib but
                      it was myself actually. It was a long adventure dream of being chased and
                      various adventures across the countryside, but there was no stress, it was all
                      great fun. Everytime things got a bit too close in the dream, I’d hold onto my
                      friend with magical powers, and we would elevate above the “adventure” and drop
                      down in another location out of immediate danger ~ although we were never
                      outside of the adventure, so to speak. At one point I wondered why my magical
                      freind didn’t just elevate us right up high and out of it completely, and
                      realized that we were in the adventure game on purpose for the fun of it, so why
                      would we remove ourselves completely from the adventure game.
                      In the dream I remember we were heading for Holland at one point, and then the
                      last part we were safely heading for Turkey…..
                      The other dream snapshot was “we are all working together on roof tiles” and
                      Arkandin had some interesting stuff to say about that one.
                      ~~~

                      There were alot of vampire imagery incidents starting with me asking Eric if he
                      slept in his garden tool box at night, and then the guy who shot out of a door
                      right next to Jib and Eric’s, in a bright orange T shirt, carrying a cardboard
                      coffin. He stopped for me to take a photo (and Arkandin said it was a Patel pop
                      in); then while walking through the outdoor food market someone was chopping a
                      crate up and a perfect wooden stake flew across the floor and landed at my feet.
                      The next vampire sync was a shop opposite Dawn and Mark’s hotel with 3 coffins
                      in the window (I went back to take a pic of the cello actually, didn’t even
                      notice the coffins). Inside the shop was an EAU DE NIL MOTOR SCOOTER Share, can
                      you beleive it, and a mummy, a stuffed raven, and a row of (Tardis) Red phone
                      boxes.
                      I had a nightmare last night that I couldn’t find any of my (nine) dogs; the
                      only ones I could find were the dead ones.
                      ~~~~

                      Balzac’s House

                      The trip to Balzac’s house was interesting, although in somewhat unexpected
                      ways. (Arkandin was Balzac and I was the cook/housekeeper) The house didn’t
                      seem “right” somehow to Mark and I and we decided that was probably because
                      other than the desk there was no furniture in it. Mark saw a black cat that
                      nobody else saw that was an Arkandin pop in (panther essence animal), and Dawn
                      felt that he was sitting on a chair, and Mark sat on him. (Arkandin said yes he
                      did sit on him ;) The kitchen was being used as an office. Jib felt the house
                      was too small, and picked up on a focus of his that rented the other part of the
                      house. (The house was one storey high on the side we entered, and two storeys
                      high from the road below). There were two pop ins there apparently, one with
                      long hair which is a connection to my friend Joy who was part of that group
                      focus, and I can’t recall anything about the other one. Dawn was picking up
                      that Balzac wasn’t too happy, and I was remembering the part in Cousin Bette
                      that infuriated me when I read it, where he goes on and on about how disgusting
                      it is for servants to expect their wages when their “betters” are in dire
                      straits. Arkandin confirmed that I didn’t get my wages.
                      The garden was enchanting and had a couple of sphinx statues and a dead pigeon ~
                      as well as the magazine with the suitcase and Spain imagery. Mark signed the
                      guest book “brought the cook back” and I replied “no cooking smells this time”.

                      #3978
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        A strange peacefulness enveloped Idle as she stood immobilized beside the sapling. A feeling of imperturbability washed over her, the grace of stillness. She glanced down at her legs and rather liked the smooth cold marble effect; so much more attractive that purple veins and loose skin. While her neck still had a degree of flexibility, she looked around, appreciating the hard still silent trees, their infinite serenity and refreshing lack of hustle bustle.

                        But her quiet reverie was not to last long. The sudden appearance of a partly clad woman sent flocks of birds squalking away from the treetops in alarm.

                        The woman immediately set to removing her shirt and rearranging it across her torso in an attempt to gain some kind of conventional modesty, dislodging the sticky paper scraps.

                        Devan, who had chanced upon this usual scene in his search for his aunt, failed to notice the paper at first, so entranced was he with watching the attractive woman attempt to cover her voluptuous body with a gardening shirt. Mater, breathing heavily from the exertion of the search, came up behind him and slapped him soundly on the back of the head and gave him a push.

                        “The paper!” she hissed. “Get the paper!”

                        #3976

                        In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          unexpected john apparently interesting
                          secret world gone easily cackler
                          notice program chair refugee outside
                          run dido fact ones lizette start short

                          #3972
                          F LoveF Love
                          Participant

                            Suddenly there was a piercing scream.

                            Finnley’s face had turned white—although later she would claim it was not fear but rather the cucumber mask giving her face a death-like appearance—and she was pointing a shaking finger in the direction of Roberto’s derrière. Or more accurately, towards where Roberto’s derrière had been prior to the scream; like the others, he had jumped up in alarm at the ear splitting noise.

                            “What the devil is the matter?” gasped LIz. She grasped Finnley’s shoulders firmly and shook her. “Pull yourself together; it’s just a bum crack. I know it is a long time since you will have seen a man’s bum, but really as I keep saying to you, if you will just smarten yourself up and make a bit more effort. I mean, look at you; you’ve got vegetables falling off your face ….” Liz shook her head in confoundment.

                            “It’s not the bum crack,” snarled Finnley, recovering her usual unflappable composure. “It is the tattoo on his bum. The tattoo of the girl with the glass feet. Do you not know what that means?”

                            Roberto’s eyes narrowed as he began to back away towards the gate.

                            In all the excitement, nobody noticed Godfrey picking up the sticky and ripped shreds of paper which Liz had let drop to the ground.

                            Or did they?

                            #3970
                            Jib
                            Participant

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

                              #3957
                              F LoveF Love
                              Participant

                                The paper fell from the ceiling on to Dido’s head. She was too busy stuffing herself full of honey to notice. In fact it was days before anyone noticed.

                                #3955
                                F LoveF Love
                                Participant

                                  But wait! What is this?

                                  Her greedy fingers had located something unexpected; something dense and uncompromising was lurking in her precious nectar. Carefully, she explored the edges of the object with her finger tips and then tugged. The object obligingly emerged, a gooey gelatinous blob.

                                  Dido sponged off the honey allowing it to plunk on to the table top. It did not occur to her to clean it up. Indeed, she felt a wave of defiant pleasure.

                                  The ants will love that, although I guess Mater won’t be so thrilled. Fussy old bat.

                                  She licked her fingers then transferred her attention back to the job at hand. After a moment of indecision whilst her slightly disordered mind flicked through various possibilities, she managed to identify the object as a small plastic package secured with tape. Excited, and her ravenous hunger cravings temporarily stilled in the thrill of the moment, she began to pick at the edges of the tape.

                                  Cocooned Inside the plastic was a piece of paper folded multiple times. Released from its plicature, the wrinkled and dog-eared paper revealed the following type written words:

                                  food self herself next face write water truth religious behind mince salt words soon yourself hope nature keep wrong wonder noticed.

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