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In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
The summer Holidays were nearly over, or the Hollow Days, as they were known to some. The last days of summer had been a bit hollow for Ann at any rate, rattling around inside her own head, not really knowing whether it was full or empty. Ann had spent most of the summer sleeping, and with virtually no dream recall, it seemed as if half of the summer was missing. Probably just as well, what with it being such an odd summer. She wondered if she would simply sleep through the shift, like Ned Young slept through the mutiny. Didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
“Normally” the Worserversity students started rolling back towards Poubelleville round about now, but the word “normally” was becoming obsolete. What was normal, what could be expected? Ann didn’t know. She packed her coloured pencils, her detachable hand and her wooden men, and fished out her homework assigments for the holidays that she had only just remembered.
Alliteration. Bugger bollocks and blast, blimey but what a bother, too bloody hot and bored.
That’s a bit bloody depressing, she muttered to herself, try another letter.
Sweltering summer of sweat and sand, sleeping and sleeping, sublime surruptitious snooze, sail away in the sunset swell, sunrise surrender, ships ahoy!
Fan the flames, far sighted fellows! There’s a flash in the funnel for fast falling fishermen. Far flung, fun fueled, oh fast fleeting fantasies, follow the folks with the flags! Flounder not, fresh fishies, for fun feels fantastic!
Ah, wallow in wisps of wordless wonderings, weather the winds of wandering whispers, while weighty wells of wishes work winsome wonders, woven with worn wool and worrisome white weathered windows. Whether we will, whether we won’t, who will win, what will work, will we watch it water the weeds….
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
Cleaning gave lack circle reality
Under sudden strings essence saying morning soft
Liked himself baby aspidistra case fine whole dark shaIn reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
For her new course, Pr. Moose was a dolphin.
It was a fancy-dress course entitled: ‘Act out your characters’.Pedro was naked, and when she asked him in what kind of disguise that could be, he told her “I’m the Universe”. She was, a moment, hypnotized by his so blue eyes that she’d forgotten her question. She gulped, speechless and looked at him more closely, appreciating the physique of his body…
— Is it real? she asked.
— It’s the Universe.
— Well, ok then, go get a seat and let’s begin our course.Following him with her eyes, or more precisely following his butt with her eyes, she also noticed a few other students. Ann was wearing a nine-titsed alien costume and there were two glowing ladies with fishes stuck to their ghostly bodies…
This butt, she thought again, her attention distracted from the other students.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Yann had been working on a transcription all the afternoon, only accompanied by some mysterious musicians using pneumatic drills not so far outside.
Though he had managed to make it flow quite easily most of the time, the attention and the tension required to make it possible were now getting on his nerves… he had one more pass through the audio to do. He was wanting to do it now in order to get it over, but he realized he was pushing his energy…
A weird thought… he would enjoy diving into a pond full of little fishes that would massage his skin.
he chuckled thinking of that, imagining that the fishes were some kind of imagery of his energy field.In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
That unexpected call from the Dean had put the Fisherman in abyss of perplexity.
The fishes weren’t really his prime concern. He only needed to paint a little red nose on one of the cloud fishes to stir the others out of their unerratic routine.
The matter wasn’t really worth his coming back to the Worseversity, but he and the Dean knew better. If the fishes had snapped into that randomless routine, it was most probably a protective reflex to anticipate some trauma.Trauma hadn’t really been seen in ages —in fact, not even once since the Great Shift, which had been an orgiastic experience of trauma of all kinds for people prone to indulge into this emotional drug. The coincidence had not been lost on the two old men. Of all the Worseversity’s, there were very few true artifacts remaining from before the Great Shift; barely a handful of them. Most of the known artifacts were in actuality clever re-creations from older designs, but not the “real” thing. And for good reason actually; most of the laws of physics had changed since, and made almost all of the older designs broken and unusable.
The pool was hiding one of these few artifacts that had mysteriously gone through the Great Shift without decaying. Furthermore, this very artifact was quite old, and signed by the visionary architect Rumbold the Pale boasting in carved letters which had once been golden, now mostly erased by the passing of times: “The real game is only played whence it started”.
That fishy omen seemed so dire that it couldn’t help but put the Fisherman out of his lifelong passion questing for the great Trouts of the Universe.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“What do you think Harvey? It is my first assignment in the new writing course. I really think I have made progress with my limericks.” Lavender beamed proudly at Harvey. “It is written in Sloopernoff and is full of rich symbolism, indeed, it cleverly elaborates on the symbolism in a coded form inherent in the precise rhyming structure required for the pure art form of the limerick poem. I think Gubby will be impressed. Okay, put down that zebra and listen:
They made a fine statooe of Melon
which pissed off his thirteenth wife Ellen
When a pigeoon stoopped by
She said with a cry
That man was a nasty oold felon!”In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Is old Gubby male or female?” whispered Lavender. To be honest, she didn’t really care much, but she did want to maintain the conversation with the gorgeous Dieter.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Ann knew what Monica was really thinking. Monica was thinking she had chubby fingers. Ann hated that.
“Uppity Tart’” she whispered spitefully under her breath. Then, feeling a tad guilty at her uncharitableness, and wishing she could be as inwardly lovely as old .. what’s her name, she quickly changed the subject.
“Apparently I am a challenge in the Continuity Class!”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Arona had no idea what dimension she was in. Or indeed, whether she was where she was at all. Oddly enough, and it was not often now that Arona found anything odd, she was finding the experience rather freeing.
“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Hoooooooooooooooooo” she shouted, and holding her arms wide open, began to whirl joyously around, till dizziness overcame her and she landed in a heap on the ground. She expected to land in a heap on the ground in a soft meadow with pretty spring flowers, but to her consternation realised that she had landed on what felt like polished concrete. She was even more concerned when she realised that she had a large audience watching her with interest, although at that stage all she really took in was a sea of feet around her. On further inspection she appeared to be in what looked like an enormous building full of shops, and, shoppers.
“Are you okay?” A kindly gentleman asked her in a concerned voice. At least that is what Arona thought he said. Although the words were familiar, the accent was strange, and not one she had heard before.
“I am fine, thank you,” replied Arona, trying her best to appear composed and rise gracefully from her sprawled position all at the same time. She must have looked convincing because, after a few more curious looks in her direction, the crowd began to disperse.
Good Grief, where am I now? she wondered. Determined not to be alarmed and to go with the flow, however rapid that flow may be, the intrepid Arona set off to explore her new surroundings.
“Wait!”
Arona looked around. It was the strangely spoken gentleman who had first offered assistance. He was brandishing a book towards her.
“Take this book. It is no good for me.”
Arona hesitated. The last time she had heard those words she had ended up with a funny little baby to look after. The man was insistent though, so, thanking him politely Arona accepted the gift.
“Hmmmm, How to Write Fiction, how very peculiar!” Flipping it open randomly she read:
[Random Words Epigraph] Step One: Randomly choose 5 entries from your dictionary. Just flip through the pages, close your eyes, and put your finger down on the page. Copy down the word that is closest to your finger. If your finger lands on a word that you don’t know, you can choose the word just above or just below it. For the purposes of this assignment, count paired words as a single entry (for instance, “melting pot” is listed as a single entry). Step Two: Shape your list of dictionary entries into a poem or story, using all of the entries.
“bugger that,” snorted Arona.
Topic: Probably Real
She woke up at noon and it was 100 degrees, or 37 degrees, whichever you prefer, but whichever way you look at it, it was not a good temperature to wake up to. Everything was pointing in the direction of going solo, playing the game on her own for awhile, or at least until she was in a regular habit of giving herself priority, giving more attention to her own creative pursuits, and less time to the futile attempts to keep group projects going. She supposed for a moment that making a start whilst hot, tired, discouraged and confused was not the most ideal mood for a start, but at least it was a start. She wasn’t even entirely sure what it was she was actually starting, but suspected that it didn’t much matter, in the grand scheme (or lack thereof) of things.
She’d had a moment of inspiration when she started reading a book. She’d only read a few pages and had no idea how the book would turn out, but the format was interesting. Julie had had an idea, simmering on a back burner for years, to write a book. It always seemed to want to be an autobiographical book, and that’s where she always came unstuck because she couldn’t see the point of that, not that she was overly concerned about whether anyone would want to read it or not, but she often came unstuck when she wondered about how all the characters in the book might feel about it, which is why that moment of inspiration in the bathroom the other day seemed like such a good idea.
She could write a book about a probability party, perhaps called ‘Probably Real’, (maybe with the subtitle ‘Probably Not’.) There would be an occasion, the details of which she hadn’t worked out yet, in which various (not all, she soon realized!) of her probable selves met ~ such as in the Atkinson book, in some quiet desolate place with no interruptions (obviously somewhere with no internet connection, although there was always the danger of picking up a freak broadband WiFi), where they had all the time in the world to tell their tales, compare notes as it were.
Which was where the fiction idea came in ~ of course! Just call it fiction! Would just one of the probable selves be telling the truth, relating the only true version of Julie’s life? And if so, which one was the real probable self? All the characters in the book would have probable selves and probable lives; which of them was the real probable self, the official version? No-one would ever know.
Of course, anyone versed in the metaphysical mechanics of probabilities and such would realize that all probable versions are real, at the same time as all being, in a certain sense, fiction ~ made up. The only question was, would that be too unlimiting to contain within the confines of one book, but time (so to speak) would tell.
Procrastination had set in, as usual, not that that is a bad thing, and things pretty much carried on as usual for a few days. Julie noticed the puppy tugging at a particular magazine from the bottom of the magazine rack over the course of those few days, and eventually the magazine was rather pointedly poking out from the bottom of the pile, it’s title clearly showing: a booklet on How To Write FICTION, with FICTION in big letters.
Never the less, the procrastination continued, although the clue was duly noted. It hadn’t been the first time a Writing A Book incident had occured.
It was easy, in this case, to remember that date, because it was right around the time of the 1999/2000 milenium party, right around the time when that particular roller coaster had derailed. While unpacking the boxes of books and putting them on the shelves of yet another rented house ~ a particularly garish and tasteless monstrosity, a drug baron’s dream of unfunctional largeness with hideous coloured glass windows (it’s the sheer randomness of the colours that’s so awful, G had remarked) ~ a book flew off the shelf, quite literally, and landed alone in the middle of the floor some distance away from the bookshelf.
Becoming A Writer was the name of the book, and the funny thing was that she had been thinking of writing a book but didn’t know where to start, and had been toying with the idea of buying a book on writing a book. So she read the book and started writing, a little bit every day, following the books advice to just start writing, even if it’s just ‘I can’t think of what to write’. There was plenty to write about as it turned out, but circumstances changed, another sudden move of house ensued, another rollercoaster ride, and the writing stopped for awhile.
But back to the book, Becoming A Writer. For a long time, Julie had no recollection of buying that book, and wondered by what magic had it appeared at her feet. Many years later she perhaps would have simply accepted the magic, and would have known that she created the book in that moment. But at the time she didn’t, and in due course constructed a memory of buying the book some years previously at a car boot sale somewhere along the coast road.
(We did buy the book, piped up PSJ2, and I actually read it, unlike you, as soon as I bought it. My 5th book is about to be published, a lightweight comedy/detective series about the Costa del Crime)
PSJ2’s interjection reminded PSJ1 (Good grief, we’ll have to think of a solution to the probable self names, she noted) that she had in fact started writing a book about the Costa del Crime, called Peregrino’s, or perhaps that was the name she’d given to the bar, the central hub, of the book. Of course, that was in the days when bars had been her central hub; she doubted very much if she would choose a bar as the central hub of a book now. She hadn’t got very far with the book, and had burned it when PSA1 got busted, just in case. What to do first, bury the (probable, it must be remembered) pump action shotgun, or burn the book. She had buried the gun, under cover of darkness, in the back garden, wrapping it in plastic bags and blankets, making it look for all the world like the body of a dead child. It was dark, it was raining, and there weren’t many neighbours out there in the orange groves, and she could do no more than hope for the best that she hadn’t been seen.
No doubt there was a probable self who did choose to create being seen, but if so she hadn’t arrived at the probability party (yet, at any rate) with her tale.
That it had been a major probability junction was certain. Not just the gun burying incident, which had turned out to be no more than merely incidental, but the events leading up to it.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Any idea what this is all about?” Beattie asked, to nobody in particular. A crowd was gathering at the crossroad.
The crossroad reminded Bea of a movie she’d watched some years previously, called, coincidentally enough, Crossroads. A symbolic sort of place, although real enough, a junction seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There was a large oak tree looming above the intersection, but nothing else could be seen in any direction but endless expanses of fields. There was a wooden signpost, the old fashioned kind, with two slats of wood pinned crosswise in the middle to a leaning post, but the place names had long since weathered away.
It was an odd sort of place and not much traffic passed by. In fact, the only traffic to pass by the crossroad stopped and disengorged itself of passengers..
“Is that a word, Bea?” asked Leonora. “Disengorged?”
“Don’t butt in to the narrative part Leo, or the story won’t make any sense.” hisssed Beattie, “Wait until you’re supposed to speak as one of the characters.”
“Well alright, but I don’t suppose it will have much effect on the making sense aspect, either way. Do continue.”
To say it was a motley crew gathering would be an understatement.
“You got that right,” Leonora said, sotto voce, surupticiously scanning the assortment of individuals alighting from the rather nautical looking yellow cab. Bea glared at Leo. “I suppose I’ll have to include your interrupions as a part of the story now.”
“Good thinking, Batman!”
“Oh for Pete’s sake, Leo, don’t go mad with endless pointless remarks then, ok? Or I will delete you altogether, and that will be the end of it.”
“You can’t delete me. I exist as a character, therefore I am.”
“You might have a nasty accident though and slide off the page,” Bea replied warningly.
“Why don’t you just get on with it, Bea? Might shut me up, you never know…”. Leo smirked and put her ridiculously large sunglasses on, despite the swirling fog..
“Oh I thought it was sunny” said Leonora, taking her sunglasses back off again. “You hadn’t mentioned weather.” She put her sunglasses back on again anyway, the better to secretly examine the others assembled at the crossroads.
“Why don’t you go and introduce yourself to them and see if anyone knows why we’re here, Leo, while I get on with the story.”
“Who will write what they say, though?”
“I’ll add it later, just bugger off and see if anyone knows who sent us that mysterious invitation.”
“Right Ho, sport, I’m on the bobbins and lace case” replied Leo. Bea shuddered a bit at the mixture of identities bleeding through Leonora’s persona. “Och aye the noo!”
Dear god, thought Beattie, I wish I’d never started this.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Dear Lavender, there is something awkwardly odd to the World Clooh’d. It looks like it’s stuck to this one sentence, a thing never seen before.
I wonder what’s the special meaning of it, as there surely is a special meaning for it wouldn’t be the same otherwise: ”“attempt movements inner communications
arona less escape later
nobody dream dancing god
side needed work
shar sort beauty strings thread reality”But Lavender was oddly silent to Harvey’s pleading intonation. A long silence during which Harvey seemed to notice that she had changed her hair… She looked nice in mauve.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
In reply to: Strings of Nines
The word flounder popped into Yolands head, and for want of the inspiration to do anything meaningful, or even useful, she googled flounder. She was astonished to find so many varieties of flounder, and recognized that she was counterparting with quite a number of them.
There was the Crosseyed flounder that she felt an affinity for, at the end of an evening of trying to sort out her photos; Alcock’s narrow-body righteye flounder, which was what she felt like in a bed full of male dogs every night, and she could relate to the Antarctic armless flounder when she couldn’t keep track of the Antarctic thread. Barfin flounder reminded her of the green icon and her friend Finn; Bigmouth flounder ~ Yoland sighed, she definitely felt a connection to that often enough. Blotched flounder, well that sounded a bit like botched ~ there were many occasions when Yoland felt that everything she did was botched, half done and messy. Chain-mail wide-eyed flounder when she dabbled a bit in past lives, and the Disc flounder when she got her music in a muddle. The Dark flounders were the worst, when everything seemed to take on the tone of a horror movie, but they were often followed by a Deep flounder, which sometimes contained a few insights, more often than not promptly forgotten.
Yoland sighed. Imagine counterparting with just about every flounder known to man! She decided she wasn’t the only one counterparting the European flounder, which was a releif, nor was she the only one counterparting the Fantail flounder, although at least it could be said that she wasn’t a complete fan of anyone in particular, dead or alive, she was a fantail of quite a number. There were long spells of resonating with the Finless flounder; Finn was always disappearing, or so it seemed to Yoland. Very rarely she felt an alignment with God’s flounder, thankfuly she wasn’t often prone to dwelling on God things.
Ah, the Gray flounder, yes she’d had a bit of a flounder when Gray sent all those photos of the Beltane Dance, she’d had a flounder for sure in amongst all those. Looking back though, she’d had fun with the mummy and Ella Tindale in the Gulf flounder…
Yoland had to laugh when she came across the Intermediate flounder. Yoland wondered if the majority of her foundering was counterparting with the Intermediate flounder and decided she was probably too intermediate to work it out objectively anyway. She often had a tussle with the Large tooth flounder, lordy, she was always floundering with dental issues. And the Largescale flounder, that really was the biggest ongoing flounder of them all, the sheer vastness of everything.
Every now and again, less than previously though, Yoland had a Melbourne flounder on Saturday nights, and rather enjoyed it, but not as much as she enjoyed a good old New Zealand flounder.
Another flounder Yoland always enjoyed was an Olive wide-eyed flounder, roaming around the ancient olive trees of Andalucia, wide eyed and awestruck with the beauty and history of the place. She also enjoyed a Peruvian flounder on occasion, too ~ she’d even had a dream recently about floundering around by the mysterious doorway of Amaru Muru. The next night she’d had a River flounder, dreaming of the river in the Grand Canyon.
Sand flounders were the best of all though, Yoland recalled many happy flounderings in the world of sand and all its Subulmantium configurations. The trouble with the sand flounder was that it often morphed into the largescale flounder, and got quite out of hand.
Yoland sighed, it had been ages since she’d felt connected to the Seven pelvic ray flounder, what with Dan working nights. She was beginning to feel like a Shelf flounder. However, at least thanks to her new diet of replacing meals with flans, chocolate mousses and ice cream, she was closely aligning now with the Slender flounder.
The ongoing slug issue with the cat food was obviously because she was still strongly aligned with the Slime flounder. Notwithstanding, Yoland was rather pleased to note that despite her morose and petulant mood this morning, it had to be said that she often counterparted with the Smooth flounder; although that was easy to forget in moments of quiet desperation when the floundering got out of proportion.
Smiling, Yoland remembered the dream of feet touching when she noticed there was a Sole flounder too. And how often the Spotted flounder popped up, she was always spotting clues. Well spotted! she would tell herself. Oh, and the Stone flounder, wasn’t that the truth! Yoland was aligning strongly with that lately, smoking more than ever, somehow striving for either inspiration, or perhaps oblivion.
Oh well, I guess this is just a Summer flounder, it will pass, Yoland decided (who was secretly glad that she was nearing the end of the list of flounder names). And sure enough, the next on the list was the Three spotted flounder, surely a good sign! A probability change perhaps! As if to validate Yolands impression, she noticed the Tile-colored righteye flounder. There was even a Warthog flounder, which seemed to ring a bell with a recent entry to the Reality Play.
Best of all was the Windowpane flounder, Yoland felt she would even go so far as to say that this was her new focus animal. Well, she thought, if I am making this all up, I can make that up too!
Thankfully Yoland reached the end of the flounder list, rather pleased that it had ended on such an amusing and encouraging note.
Being closely aligned with flounders wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Yoland awoke feeling disgruntled. The uncomfortable dreams of feeling left out, left alone and bored beyone endurance lingered throughout the morning. In a peculiar melding of dream and reality, Dan had woken her requesting her assistance in his preparations for a days outing, which didn’t include Yoland. The dream details were already vague, but the feeling was strong, the feeling of being bored and alone ~ wasted somehow, as if all her lust for life was withering away on a back burner, evaporating, as she mooched through her days, accomplishing little (or so it seemed), endlessly frustrated with the clutter and disorganization that was her world, yearning for the life, LIFE that was full of LIFE, that she used to have. What had happened to her sense of adventure? Where had all her fun friends gone?
“Eh Sha, emergency transmission required ‘ere pronto!” Gloria shouted to Sharon. “Yoland needs some inspiration, toot sweet, get yer arse in gear!”
“Oh bloody ‘ell, Glor! Not a-bloody-gain! Not ‘er, she never bloody listens anyway, that one!” replied Sharon, disgruntled. “This isn’t as easy as I ‘spected it to be, getting the messages through, is it?”
“Well, why don’t you look on it as a challenge?”
“Pfft, more like ‘ard bloody work, if you ask me.”
“Eh, you daft tart, you’re channeling HER! You’re sposed to be sending HER some words of inspiration, not the other bloody way round!” Gloria exclaimed. “Beats me how you ever got your ascension pass, how you got through I’ll never know.”
“Oh they let any Tom Dick or Harry in these days, Glor, they relaxed the rules you know, well did away with the rules, and what happens when you do away with the rules? Floundering, that’s bloody what. Floundering.”
“Is that a fish sync?”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
The newly deceased Shar and Gor…
“Shouldn’t he say something less grim you think?”
“I definitely agree my dear Shar”
“Something like in-ceased, or up-ceased… We’re ascended after all!”
“I’m not so sure it sounds better, but…”Well, them being up-ceased, involved a new challenge for the writer(s) of this story, as the two blusterously boisterous ladies were in a desperate move to attempt sending communication to the objective world —officially to discover the extent of their influence. Their new-found access to the collective subconscious made them all the more a trouble for the writer(s).
Anyway, as we speak, Shar and Glor, were… or are actually trying to influence some characters and hence co-authors of this work of fiction to test their own ability to manipulate some of these individuals.
So far the extent of their experiments had fared tepid results.
“OK. Let’s try with these two. I’m beaming something down to them!”
To which, moments and some non-physical sweating on Glor’s brow later, one of the two subjects of this experiment (the blond one) blurted out without knowing from where it came: “Spiggot on the spike freak, Lingenburg Dash”
“What the hell was that Glor?”
“Good Lord, I don’t have any idea!”
“What was it supposed to be then!?”
“I just beamed them ‘Speaking now without mike – leap if you ain’t dead’!”
“Good grief… Those two might as well be hopeless…”Of course, unbeknown to them, in other potential realities, what she really beamed to them was entirely different; something like ‘Speaking now – dead to the living – leap and bound if you catch’… Subsequently, Ann’s catch was in fact an indication of great disposition to tune into more than one probabilities at a time, the benefits of which were lost to the poor dabbling souls.
But this point notwithstanding, as they were speaking, another potential just appeared at the horizon. A woman named Yoland, with an improbable ability to express strings of thoughts inspired from above (anywhere that ‘above’ might be) without much distortion.
“Have to tread carefully with that one, Glor”
“Yes, I reckon dear…”
“We could even manage to fully channel her body, she seems a perfect candidate!” Sharon would have rubbed her hands with glee if she’d had hands still.
“Innit a bore though that she would ask for such grand truths…”
“Not to worry, we’ll invent them as we walk. I’ve even got an idea for session one with her: the great cluster of Mamarose of energy essential oils.”In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Well, you’re not going to make Franlise believe you outdid yourself in Continuity Course by stringing a slew of comments all made by yourself in less than an hour darling” Godfrey said Ann, wishing he would have briefed her more about being an infallible agent-double for the Fellowship…
“And there are risks you know” he said lowering his voice “if they unmask you, they may do something dreadful, perhaps even go as far as a character annihilation…”
“Sometimes I fear you take our reality just too lightly” Godfrey continued with a misery look on his face. “If you really want to bring down the Fellowship, you got to be more cautious to first understand how they work.”Godfrey didn’t know why, but it suddenly felt as though all the subtleties of the dangers involved in this mission somewhat (if not completely) eluded the befuddled Ann.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
nonsense real making write
gave seen girl heliptrope
known latest beautiful news
sense lilac waiting
attention ladies
tell ann
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“It’s the 57th Creative Challenge theme, so I have to do it,” Ann remarked to her editor. “Obviously”, she added.
“What do you mean, obviously?” asked her editor (Ann had forgotten his new name in the second book, and toyed breifly with the idea of making up a new one ~ perhaps Rumbold the Pale?)
“Well, I would have thought that was obvious, Godfrey!” Ann replied tartly, secretly delighted that she’d remembered the old boy’s name. Notwithstanding, Ann continued to make little ‘cuh’ and ‘tut’ noises, and rolled her eyes a bit, until Godfrey eventually replied.
“Spiggot on the spike freak, Lingenburg Dash”.
“I beg your pardon?” Ann looked at Godfrey in astonishment. “Holy Moly, I said that earlier myself, whatever does it mean?”
“I haven’t got a clue, dear,” he replied. “Just popped into my head, you know, how it does…” His voice trailed off as he stared into space.
“I’ll google it.” As Ann started the search, she realized she’d completely forgotten that she was doing the 57th Creative Challenge entry. “Blimey O Riley, what am I LIKE” she said to herself, with a wry grin ~ she wasn’t altogether sure what wry meant, but somehow she felt it was wry ~ “Now what was the theme again?”
“Misery Loves Company” Godfrey piped up. “And dare I say, it’s rather obvious what has occurred here.”
“What do you mean, obvious?” retorted Ann, somewhat snarkily, although nowhere near as snarkily as Lavender might have said it.
Godfrey resisted the urge to respoond with a few little ‘cuh’s’ and ‘tut’s’, and chose to simply smile enigmatically.
Ann scowled at her old freind and said “If you don’t spell it out, you maddening old coot, I’ll write you out of this story. I’ll delete you.”
“You can write me out of YOUR story if you wish, but I may continue to write YOU into MY story.”
“Oh Gawd, WHAT?” Ann said to herself. “Where did that come from?”
“Ann, let me explain.”
“You sound just like Elias, Godfrey!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Ahahahahahahah”
“Now shut up and pay attention”
“Elias would never say that”
“That’s YOU saying that, Ann, to yourself,” said Godfrey.
“YOU said that Godfrey, it’s right here in black and white!” retorted Ann.
“It’s never black and white, Ann, and it’s only here in black and white as ME saying it because YOU wrote it.”
“Well there’s no answer to that” replied Ann. She went to put the kettle on.
Ann returned to her computer with a steaming mug of tea.
“Now, shall we get back to the point, Ann?” inquired Godfrey, with a wry grin.
“I must look up that word later”, Ann mused. “I seem to be inordinately fond of the word wry tonight, I wonder why. I Wonder Wry…”
“ANN!” Godfrey shouted. “Back to the point!”
Ann looked pained. “What point?”
“The point of this story, and the obvious occurence therein.”
“Welp, you’ve lost me there, Gordon, there was a point?”
“Oh My God, this could go on all night” Gordon was wringing his hands.
“Good God Gordon, didn’t see you come in!” exclaimed Godfrey.
Ann was giggling helplessly. She was rather pleased with the way she covered her faux pas over the editors name.
“‘Ann was giggling helplessly’; you see Ann, there is your clue!” Godfrey said excitedly, as he read aloud what Ann had just written.
“OH! NOW I get it! D’oh! Nonsense loves company! Giggling loves company! No wonder I couldn’t stay focused on misery!”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Perhaps I will ask Mr Ark about “Eau de Nil” mused Lavender later that evening to Harvey.
Lavender your musing is really getting irritating. Can’t you ponder or something instead?
Well your nasal twang gets on my nerves but do I complain? retorted Lavender, snarkily, hurt by the unexpected outburst from her friend.
