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  • #2806

    In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens

    ÉricÉric
    Keymaster

      The leaves were dry. They’d started to change to a brownish hue at the tip, then rapidly withered. They’d hoped it wouldn’t affect the whole crop, and when the first tea bush went down, they quickly uprooted it, for fear it would spread to the whole hill.
      But despite their best efforts, the tea bushes went down, one by one, as though engulfed by a deadly plague. He and she were worried for their next year income, as their tea field was their main source of revenue. The highlands had always been favourable to them, and it seemed such an unlikely and truly unfair event given that the beginning of the year had brought an unexpected bounty of huge tea leaves.
      What had happened? He was quite the pragmatic about it: disease, pests, too much sun, over-watering, over-pruning… nothing extending outside the visible, the measurable. She was the mystical: core beliefs, did she worry too much about that sudden wealth and made it disappear, the evil eye, greed and covetousness, celestial punishment.

      It never occurred to her she could reverse it as easily once she understood what it was all about.
      Well, she almost started to get an inkling of that thinking about warts. How efficiently she got those growths when she was so troubled about them, and how they all disappeared when she forgot about them. How not to think about something that’s already in your head? In that case, distraction never worked; it was a rubber band that would be stretched then snapped back at the initial core issue.
      Snap back at yourself.
      >STOP< – She stopped. Time to read that telegram delivered to oneself.
      Everything still, for a moment. Dashed.
      She started to look around.
      The air was still, hot and full of expectation.
      Almost twinkling in potentials.
      Like a providential blank page, in the middle of a heap of administrative papers full of uninteresting chatty figures.
      The pages are put aside, only the blank page is here.
      She can start to populate it with colours, sounds and life, anytime. Lavender maybe. Soon.
      But not yet now.
      She wants to breathe in the calmness, the comfort of the silence. Even the crickets seem to be far away.
      She was alone, and impoverished…
      She is alone, and empowered, … in power.

      [link:leaves]

      #2692

      In reply to: Strings of Nines

      TracyTracy
      Participant

        The sun was streaming through the window when she awakened, a soft diffuse brightness behind the lengths of gauzy white fabric that fluttered gently in the air currents. The bed was in the middle of the room, a large spacious high ceilinged space on an upper floor; completely uncluttered ~ there was nothing else in the room, or so it seemed, it was all white, but the white of lightness, not the white of colour lack. She sat up, slowly stretching, filled with a feeling of warm promise, an unhurried optimism for the bright new day. She was still in that first moment of awakening, before any plans or expectations intruded, leisurely luxuriating in the promise of warmth and light, still relaxed from sleep, but free of details, free of mundane specifics or intentions; quite simply the uncluttered serenity and joy of the promise of a bright new day.

        #2690

        In reply to: Strings of Nines

        Evangeline Spiggot sat outside the DDT bosses office, nervously twiddling her pony tail. She had no idea why she’d been summoned, but the tone of the memo was ominous. Eventually her boss, The Right Honourable B. F. Deale, was ready to see her.

        “What ho!” said Evangeline, in an effort to sound breezy and efficient.

        B.F. Deale glared. “Can you explain yourself?” he asked grimly.

        “Why, yes, sir! Sumari belonging, Ilda aligned, politic….”

        “I’m talking about DDT!” he shouted. “You’ve been diverting all our disaster damage calls to that ridiculous channeling show!”

        “Ah” she replied, “Yes, well, it seemed much more fun.”

        “Ah” replied B.F. Deale, momentarily non plussed. When he’d finsished unnecesarily shuffling some papers around on his desk, he continued. “Well, what about the disaster damage team? Hhhm? How are they supposed to, er, deal with disasters if they don’t even know about them?”

        Evangeline paused, giving the impression that she was deep in thought. In actual fact, she was deep in no thought, due to the influence of the Dead Dick Tracy channeled messages.

        “Well, sir, perhaps this indicates a changing trend towards having more fun and less disasters? Perhaps we could diversify, start our own Fun Department?”

        “By George, I think you’re on to something, Spiggot! I will hire someone to investigate this trend.”

        “Might I suggest Blithe Gambol, P.I.? Very hightly recommended, so I hear.”

        #2466

        After his failed attempts to gain control over the Land of Peas, and his being thrown out of the Majorburghouse body first and framed head second by an angry mob of infuriated Peaslanders (which was something to be noted, since Peaslanders were usually quite the happy bunch), the Majorburgmester now bereft of anything but his will, was thinking it was high time for a u-turn in his carreer.

        His dear blubbits had apparently mostly vanished out of sight, some said trapped in a blinking giant spider’s cobweb blinked out of Peasland, some others said suffocated under shiny duct tape, and even some said baked in ashes and almonds — those last obviously were the maddest of the lot.
        It seemed like all the Dimensions had conspired to his defeat.

        Now hardly a Majorburgmester, the title having now been offered by the cheerful crowd to the raucous and unexpected hero (after they hesitated for a good hour if it should be given to the herald of the liberation, that stupid Gandfleur whatever its name of a dog), he was now again known as B. Weazeltweezel (the B. standing for Bartabous, his mother having a fondness for names in “-ous” like Precious, his elder sister, and Pulpous his second sister; a chance his father was a man of more common sense, otherwise he surely would have been named Houmous himself).

        The newfound venture didn’t wait long to manifest. In the not so distant past, he had already suspected something fishy about Lady Fin Min Hoot and now he knew. She was a high member of the Bridge Tarts Order, and though it was a secretive and feminine order, he had always loved a challenge.
        He felt he could muster all the tartiness and bridginess needed to be granted access to their secrets.

        Galvanized as he was, were he to successfully infiltrate the order, he knew he didn’t really stand a chance without something else. By nothing short of a synchronistic chance, Fwick, the saucerer had given him the leftovers of a potion he didn’t know what to make of.

        In a gulp (and a few gargppls) Batabous was rapidly changed into a rather convincing dame matron, with slight mustache and ample bosom.

        Tarty Bridgies, here I come… he said in a falsetto voice that needed work. … soon everybody will know about Lady… Bartaba

        #2461

        Peackle dragged his father by the sleeve and showed him the delirious aunt speaking in tongues.

        See, dad, I think she got that special direct line with the Eight’s Dimension now…
        Oh, I see… a broken Pee said

        Their victory over Mother Blubbit seemed utterly and bitterly Pyrrhic at the moment, considering all the nonsense (damned be the Eighth Dimension) their trip has brought to otherwisely very non-nonsensical Peasland. Would they ever get back to normal again?

        He preferred to believe she’d just again overindulged on Peaskol, the famoul (famously foul) alcohol brewed from overripe peas known though all Peasland to clean old clogged pipes. That and smoking tea leaves of course…

        #2438

        AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
        Screamed the furry ball without notice in what seemed to the Mother Blubbit’s lonely ear the most piercing sound she’d ever heard.
        She was startled and threw that furry ball far away in another tunnel, the one leading to the lava chamber. Something in her inner alchemy had been altered with her moment of panic, one of the baby blubbit would be different for sure.
        That’s when she realized she had visitors.

        #2433

        Ann felt rather put out.

        “How jolly rude to disappear like that.” she muttered

        The truth was she had been feeling a tad out of sorts lately, plodding along, day in and day out, doing the same old things. She was finding Lavender rather dreary too, partly because she never seemed to be there when Ann called round. So the idea of helping the exotic, headless stranger with his mysterious request for “pea sauce” assistance had felt rather exciting. Ann loved nothing better than a good adventure.

        And now the bugger had disappeared!

        #2665

        In reply to: Strings of Nines

        TracyTracy
        Participant

          They were thick as theives, freinds for thousands of centuries, or even more; sometimes thick, sometimes theives, and anything else you might imagine. They got together again and again in this time and that, here, there and elsewhere, just for the fun of it. There was nothing they liked more than a puzzling occurance, or a riddle, or a basket full of clues to ponder over, unravel, and turn around and around, toying with meanings until they found one they liked. They had a home in The City, sort of a home base so to speak, where they met regularly each night in the dream state, regardless of which time or place they spent their waking hours. It was sometimes a releif to meet up at home in The City and always a pleasure: sometimes it was hard to stay under the radar back down on the ground, it was part of the job to stand out in the crowd, which often resulted in a lynching, or a ducking, or the stocks, at the very least. All too often it ended up on top of a bonfire, tied to a stake.

          One day in one of the Decembers, in amongst all the sweet dreams they often shared, they started having some unsettling group dreams, where they all felt like they were betwixt and between, falling through the cracks you might say. It was a feeling similar to dying of thirst, although it wasn’t really a physical thirst, it was more than that, a hungry yearning sort of thing. Some of them had strange nightmares, of a monstrous beast, and some of them actually saw beasts in the daytime too, especially on those falling through the cracks days. When they met up at home in The City, they compared notes about the beasts, and not always, but sometimes they found they were mirroring each others beasts. That often ended up in a heated debate, because the more mirroring that occurred, the more real the beast seemed. Some said that the beasts that appeared when you fell through the cracks were in a deep ravine, in a manner of speaking, and not of this plane at all. Others argued that if the beasts appeared through the cracks, then they were on this plane.

          And so it went on, and on. There were many more puzzling occurances to come, and lots of meanings to be considered, rejected, or taken on board for the friends, as thick as thieves, to turn around and around, and hold up to the mirror for closer inspection and dissection. They were making a tapestry, a huge rich colourful tapestry, and all the puzzling occurences, and even the beasts, were depicted in the colourful threads and patterns. They were the warp, you might say, of the weave. Love was the weft.

          “Congratulations, LizGodfrey remarked drily. “Are you supposed to use three months worth of creative writing challenges in one entry?”

          “Don’t be silly, Godfrey, of course not. Rules are meant to be broken, that’s what they’re for.”

          #2400

          Phurt knew there was something strange, her previous memory was that she was dead and now she seemed to be perfectly alive and alert.
          The environment was strange, though. It was all full of little balls and she could see many headless people. Compared to them, her size was quite ridiculous and she prefered not to make her presence known for the moment. She will have time later for her projects of conquest of the world. But is what world was she?

          All at her thinking, she didn’t see the creature coming and she almost died again out of fear when it began to breath in the air around. Maybe it was some kind of hoovering creature. She began to feel the vibrations as the dog (who has his head on for a change) began barking to notify his master that he has found the strangest little creature aroud. The master of the dog was a child of New Peasland and when he saw that strange little creature that he had never seen before, he called for his mother, who in turn didn’t know the little creature at all, and she asked her neighbor what it could be, but the neighbor didn’t know as well, so the went together to the mayor who in turn didn’t know what to think of it, but he was sure it had not been spotted before by a mayor of New Peasland, he would be the first, and he asked the kid to entrust him with his find and that he would tell him soon about it, thank you!

          All alone in her matchbox, Phurt started to relax, the last few event had been frightening and she couldn’t do anything to escape her assailants, but the eventually let her alone, even if it was in some kind of jail.

          MOUAAHAHAHAHAH, she laughed of her little spider laugh, which resembled more to a little squircking sound than to a laugh, especially in the New Peasland dimension. She had laughed because the walls of her prisons seemed quite tender and it would not demand her too much effort to get out. But for now, she was exhausted and needed some rest. It was not everyday that you found yourself alive again.

          #2352

          “Good grief, I don’t feel so bad about my face now”, said Phenol, who, as the stranger predicted, had reappeared.

          “What sort of help?” asked Lavender suspiciously.

          “We would be delighted to offer any assistance we can” gushed Ann, glaring at Lavender.

          Ann felt herself being sucked into the spiral of blue light and wondered if the vortex was messing with her head, or perhaps she should cut back on the weeds? “Well, not to worry, this feels like it could be a jolly fun adventure!” Privately Ann thought the stranger was rather good looking too, in a blue sort of a way.

          Lavender, who thought the stranger looked weirdo, rolled her eyes and wondered whether to call Harvey. She was becoming concerned about Ann, who seemed a little more blurred at the edges than usual, and whose skin had taken on a slight blue tinge. At least she had stopped all that irritating coughing though.

          “When in doubt, hug!” shouted Phenol, throwing ITs arms around Lavender. “Come on! Group Hug!”

          “Oh a group hug, how lovely!” giggled Ann, lunging at the stranger, who had become strangely quiet.

          #2351

          There was a blue light spiral whirlwinding in the center of what should have been a head. Ann seemed not at all surprised as if she had taken too much of those weeds of hers, though Lavender was terrified. Was that a wormhole? She coughed a few times.

          “Please, pardon me!” said the raucous voice coming from the center of the spiral. Ann was so fascinated that she stretched her arm to touch the vortex. In doing so, the voice took goaty characteristics that made her giggle.
          “We need your help…” said the goaty voice, which hurried to add “In peace, always…”

          For a moment, Lavender thought she heard someone coughing from the other end of the wormhole. But with Ann messing with the vortex who knows what it could have been.

          Note from the editor: in another version of the story, it has been a double of Ann playing with a device. Her voice was sounding much like the one of Darn Vadoor in Stare Worms before he informed Lurk that he was his janitor.

          #2639

          In reply to: Strings of Nines

          It was not before Leörmn suggested at Irtak the overlooked possibility that Irtak seriously considered the option.
          After all, the batty toothless woman who had come forth (almost in jest it had seemed at first) wasn’t really an obvious choice to make a dragon rider of the twin Heckle and Jeckle.

          Well, who was he to judge anyway? He was even starting to find the idea less and less incongruous. She would perhaps make for a good companion.
          As they said, dragon breeders may just be failed dragon riders, but Irtak wasn’t sure that it was close to the truth, or any truth for that matter.

          As his choice was finally made, he took a carrier fincheon from a cage smelling of bird’s droppings and started to write on a piece of torn and pissy parchment with a crow’s feather to Lady Peackle Handlebut.

          #2775
          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            #711

            Who the bloody hell is Becky Huh? Well, the same I’ve been waiting for AGES well after her long absence. Poor thing seemed to think it was he, Sanso.

            Search for Ted got the head of Becky.

            Twilight in your mind. wig is just great Bekkie ; a variation of a variation of you look ; terrible!

            Nurse insisted in more intimate moments of course.

            #2758
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              #87 Quintin had a woman near London ~ a strange small replicate, put here for gracious officials. Strangely linked to the story, was Dory. The other participants didn’t really expect this quaint dream…

              Dory made Quintin in Madagascar for the first time. Funny, but now they seemed to connect to Arona. Malvina disappeared, and once again Arona found this quite irritating. She could barely remember the music.

              Really, things are shifting. In the name of heaven use magic I Scream or something!

              A Man emerged from Arona’s lap. This is great, more comfortable than the ground.

              Oh cute, said Arona, a talking Man, love your cape by the way.

              Arona stroked Man. It was all feeling heat and humidity… and especially her hunger. Man sighed in an eggs sort of a way. She exclaimed delightedly, hugging the Man.

              [¹] Note from the editor: Man being a noble reader

              ~~~~

              Dory was dry, with strange hard shoulders and face. Her shawl finally surfaced flapping in time to a cloud of dust.

              PPFFT! I’m all on my own. Dory was momentarily speechless.

              #2338

              Though the more Ann thought about Monica, the funnier it seemed. Guilt was such a tiresome emotion.

              “Fancy old Bronkel deciding to go for a sex change! I must have sensed something when I wrote him in as the crazy, brilliant, cross dressing Dr Bronkelhampton in the Island novel!”

              She thought for a moment, “did I ever finish that novel?”

              Ann sighed. What was she like eh! Always starting novels, never finishing them. No wonder old Bronkel, ahem, Monica, got so fed up with her.

              Anyway, perhaps she would give Monica another chance as her pooblisher? He … she… was certainly much kinder and easier to deal with now. That Godfrey, or whatever the heck his name is, wasn’t doing much for her career.

              The writer wondered again how to strike out text and correct the inadvertent slip into the Ooh dimension.

              An idea for another novel was forming in the murky convoluted depths of Ann’s brain, something about a gorgeously cuddly big teddy bear man, with his unruly tumble of brown curls and his colourful FairIsle sweaters, who had flown the nest from a potato farm in deepest darkest Idaho to pursue his dream of being an Elsespace Guide at the Worserversity.

              “Brilliant, Moonica will loove it!”

              #2315

              The writer wanted to write, full stop. The problem was that the writer’s desire to write was continually interrupted with things in brackets assuming monstrous and all comsuming proportions. Endless chains of things in brackets that always seemed to have priority.

              “You could always write about the things in brackets, Ann,” remarked her new friend Lavender. “Might be fun. A thrilling blast, even.”

              #2314

              Privately, Lavender was thrilled to find she knew Ann! She couldn’t remember when she had met her of course, however that was nothing unusual these days. Everybody seemed to know each other! It was really quite a thrill. Maybe she would go and have coffee with her new friends Becky and Tina, after she had been to the hairdressers of course.

              hmmm, it can’t be a thrill, thought Lavender, The “writer” has already used “thrilled”.

              The writer wondered, huffily, how to strike out text. The writer wanted to write “It was really quite a blast”

              #2304

              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….

              #2301

              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. :fish: :yahoo_clown:
              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.

              #2295

              “To be perfectly honest dear, I wouldn’t be very outwardly lovely if I were to be honest.”
              “Another of your convoluted ways to say it’s rubbish” Lavender said with a smile “But that’s fine, you know. It’s also meant as a test of honesty… And as I’m not sure you heard it properly anyway, a little honesty wouldn’t have hurt you know.”

              But it seemed Harvey’s attention had already gone somewhere else. “Are you even listening to me?” Lavender said with a lovely voice practicing the delicate guttural accents of Sloopernoff, snapping back Harvey’s attention to the conversation.
              “Oh, you were speaking… I’m sorry, I’m starting to worry that Ann’s narcolepsy is contagious.”
              “Always the worrywort…”

              As they were talking surrounded by the soft dusty specks of the library (which every time annoyed Lavender quite extensively, as she wasn’t so fond of the taste of dust bunnies and didn’t see with the same eye as Ann the archaeological value of burying useful things in dust), Gremwick the mad Dean of the Worseversity passed by with a yellow sticker stuck to the back of his trench coat.

              “Looks like mad old Gremwick isn’t doing so good recently hey… Seems like he was droning about taking the students’ courses to check on their quality last time we heard of him…” Lavender looked empathetic.
              Harvey was smiling “If you ask me, he might just be wanting to know if the rumor of Prof Gubby’s nine nipples were true or only sheer fantasy”
              “I wonder which perverted mind’s fantasy it could be” sighed Lavender unimpressed.

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