Elizabeth Tattler, Bronkel, Finnley, Godfrey and others…
So the Story goes...
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“As I was saying,” continued Liz, “Oh, unless you want to explain something first, Finnley?”
“I’m trying to tell you I am a Leader Personality, and it doesn’t fit my character assignation, which is why I am flitting about the place snickering,” the confused hitherto supportive cleaner replied.
“I love it when we play Mandala of Ascensions!” shouted Finnley. “I will be a leader personality! You can bugger off now, HS cleaner. You were never really needed; she only hired you out of spite”
Liz patted Finnley on the shoulder. “Now, now, dear, I know it’s confusing, one moment confused, the next moment elated and bossy.”
“Speaking of those pills,” the two dealers asked almost apologetically, “when are we going to get paid?”
“Well, I can pay you in concrete statues?” ventured Liz, while finishing her cigarette.
“That’s not concrete payment, if ya know whatcha mean…” the fat one said.Liz chose to ignore Finnley’s last remark and continue with her explanation.
“The exercise was proving to be illuminating in many unexpected ways. Despite the well known fact (or let us say, well known assumption) that each individual leads themselves, and the widespread reluctance of the group to follow established leaders, when presented with an option to label oneself a leader, suddenly everyone wanted to lead.”
Liz cast her eyes over the fat ones body, weighing up the amount of latex it would take to make a mold. It would cost an arm and a leg to purchase that much latex, and Liz wondered if there was much of a market for Fat Hitherto Supportive Dealer statues.
Roberto, the new Hispanic gardener hired that very morning, was cleaning the windows. One of them was open, of course and he had heard what his employer had said about leader and supporters. He had always been a solitary person, and he dared think he was supporting himself. Would that make him his own leader ? He splashed water on the window and used a yellow rubber duck to clear the glass. It squealed. He saw Liz looking at him in a strange way.
“Will someone answer that!” Liz parroted the other fat dealer. “Whose the leader of door answering these days anyway? All leaders and no fecking staff, now!”
Glancing towards the open window, where a shrill noise seemed to emanate from that had immediately set Liz’s teeth on edge, she noticed him. Could it really be him? After all these years! Was it really Roberto?
The door bell pealed again, distracting Liz, and when she looked back, the man had disappeared. Did I imagine that? she wondered.
Roberto, rubber duck in hand, walked around the outside wall to see who was making such a racket on the door bell.
“Madre mia! Los Guardianos !” he whispered, aghast. What were they doing here, of all places? Roberto crept back around the house, hoping he hadn’t been seen.
“Godfrey, shouldn’t you DO something about that? The characters are wandering all over the place, on the wrong threads, wandering right out of stories, whether they’ve been written out or not. They’re all just doing whatever they damn well want, it’s getting ridiculous!”
Obligingly Godfrey cackled loudly, in what Liz presumed was a game attempt to restore some order in the threads (mistakenly assuming momentarily that they were in Caketown) .
“Are they all turning into anarchists?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t be daft, Godfrey, you can have characters that are anarchists, but you can’t have anarchists that are characters, where will it end? Who will be in control, and lead the story?”
“The writer will have to follow the lead of the characters, then, and support their moves with filler and back story.”
Elizabeth felt faint. “What are you suggesting?” she whispered, filled with dread and uncertainty.
“The writer is as slow as my aunt Germaine” was all that came to Godfrey’s mind.
His aunt Germaine was a notorious for her gaps of lucidity during the family reunion cards tournaments, which made playing with her much less ludic that it should have been.“Truly, what I meant” said Godfrey, carefully weighing the next words to assemble in a coherent sentence (he’d been chastised playfully by the new maid already, who would pretend to not understand a word of what he asked her to do) “is that I thought you where talking about winter, not writer. Alas, the writer is not coming.”
Finnley would probably have had a fit of bright clarity with that one, he smiled at himself proudly.
“Godfrey, what on earth are you mumbling about now, while that man is running around the grounds with a rubber duck in his hands! Please do focus on the matter at hand! He’s stumbled into the wrong thread, surely?”
Elizabeth wrung her hands. “The characters are all running amok!”
The Roberto story had been finished long ago ~ or had it?
Finnley would know. But where was she?
“Why do you suffer pain? You have compressed yourself into a form and an identity, hence the suffering. You pursue spirituality from the same limited and conditioned standpoint and hence you cannot secure any foothold in these pursuits. In whatever subject you are absorbed, you deal with it from the standpoint of a personalized entity, and not as dynamic manifest consciousness…”
“Hear that Liz’ ?” Godfrey beamed in delight “It was not Roberto or any bloody character, it was only your dynamic manifest consciousness!”
“In other words, are you saying it was all my fault again, cheeky blithering fool?” Liz’ couldn’t contain her petulance.“I think you’re missing the point, dear,… but yes.” He added after a dramatic pause “or you can blame it on Cynchtia Dipity, or her twin sister, Serene.”
Cynchtia and Serene Dipity had a tea room and cake shoppe on the banks of the river Nedge. You won’t find the river Nedge on any maps, nor will you find Slack Alice’s Cake Hole, despite it’s world famous Chakra Buns. The story hadn’t been written yet about the Dipity’s; they were fragments of a ludic imagination, loosely lucid and at times ludicrously lewd. Llewellyn The Leotard was beginning to take shape, although what that had to do with Slack Alice’s Cake Hole, Elizabeth wasn’t quite sure.
“As always, reality can’t help but catching up with fiction.” mused Godfrey aloud. “Maybe another case of origami town in the making… If you see what I mean.”
“I’ve got no idea what you’re rambling about big G.” muttered Finnley who had just reappeared out of the Blubbit in Nowherehampton. “There’s been a call for M’am Liz, by the way. From her cousin Badul.”
Finnley, who you will surely recall had been on a brief excursion to Nowherehampton, wondered whether to ask what she had missed while away. She decided forlornly there was no point.
It never makes any friggin’ sense.
Sense was important to Finnley. Even if superficially a subject made no sense, she liked to believe there was an underlying meaning.
That’s not true. What are you on about? Your brain is clearly addled. And possibly baduled as well.
“Finnley! you are monopolising the thread again,” admonished Liz. “You are thinking too much and it is sabotaging the beautiful spontaneity of my story. Now, be a good dear and wipe that surly look off your face. You look so much prettier when you smile; you might even attract yourself a nice young man if you would make a bit more effort. Anyway, do cheer up—I want to hear about dear cousin Badul.”
Roberto had just heard the end of their conversation. I want to hear about dear cousin Badul, the old tart had said to the maid. Something in his brain was triggered by that name, something he had been led to forgot by his handlyer in Vegas before… his mission. Yes he remembered now that he had a mission. But still all the little tickling wheels in his brain were catching up with the forgotten memories.
He looked inside the house. The old tart was handling what looked like a sheep skull. Was she doing some dark magic ? Was she a bruja ? He was not particularly superstitious or religious, but he had learned to fear the brujas of his village in the desert.
“Put that on the library between Byron and Baudelaire, will you?”
The maid looked at the skull, then at her mistress with the same rollling eyes. Oh it was subtle, so very sutble that the old lady had certainly not seen it, but he had been trained to read people’s faces… well he had read an old book of Chinese face reading that his grand mother had when he was living there… That’s why they recruited him.The maid left with the skull, removed a few books from the shelf and put the skull unceremoniously in between. She shoved the remaining books randomly on other shelves and shrugged.
“I’m going to make a banana yogurt cake… without yogurt”, she said to nobody in particular.Big G came to the rescue, as poor Finnley was visibly at a loss for words. Having her talking culinary delights was in itself a revelation as to her levels of stress.
“Liz, dear. I think your cousin Badul is going to invite us for her nth wedding. There always has been a sort of untold competition between the two of you, hasn’t it?”
“Godfey, don’t be silly. There hardly was ever a competition at all, to begin with. Now, be a dear and go fetch me a new husband.”Godfrey had anticipated the unexpected again. His eyes were set on the window, where the shady and hunky enough window-cleaner was peering through, visibly interested by the whole play. With a little make-over, he would make Liz a fine tenth husband, he reckoned.
“Badul is gender neutral”, said Big G, “It comes from ancient Rubbish where gender was pliable and mostly nonsensical”.
“I wonder what that can possibly mean about the cousin”, muttered Finnley. She squinted and wondered what could be Liz’ ancient Rubbish name. They were cousin after all. Did they come from and ancient Rubbish family too? She was too polite to ask in that moment.Liz looked at the fat dealer with a snicker “Oh, you’re still here talking nonsense Big G? Haven’t you got your cabbages already? The staff these days… FINNLEY!” she shouted to the gaping muttering maid. “Snap out of this silly trance, will you! Get the man his cabbages, and show those drug-dealing gentlemen out. Can’t be here all day with the cement to set, I have a wedding to plan now.”
She turned at the window, looking for Godfrey who had temporarily left her, “what on Earth is he doing talking to that devilishly handsome fellow. Those rubberducks give me an idea for the wedding dress though. Golden yellow for the colour. With gorgeous yellow shoes. I’m feeling ages younger today… Oh, sweet love.”
