Friday, April 27, 2007
(tap tap) Is this thing on?
Because the Cap'n and I are both slightly neurotic, we both check the voting results at Write in the Thick of It quite often and today, during my many checks, I've noticed that the numbers aren't going up. Anybody having issues with the poll? Or are you just not voting?
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
"Let the voting begin!" shouted the Hillmombans as they stormed the hillside
Voting in The Writing Challenge - Nation of Hillmomba Edition is now open.
There were a record eleven entries this time! WAHOO! The word is getting out there and I could not be happier. Thank you! Let's keep things going - tell your friends and keep writing.
Voting is open until midnight May 2nd. (My last final is April 30th and I'm giving myself a cushion in case some evil instructor throws something unexpected at us.)
There were a record eleven entries this time! WAHOO! The word is getting out there and I could not be happier. Thank you! Let's keep things going - tell your friends and keep writing.
Voting is open until midnight May 2nd. (My last final is April 30th and I'm giving myself a cushion in case some evil instructor throws something unexpected at us.)
Curses!
It's 1:33am.
I just wrote a 7-page paper on Freud.
I just posted 11 stories to this blog.
I have an overwhelming urge to call my father.
And I can't get the poll to post.
I'm tired. I'll try again in the morning.
In the meantime, start reading this week's entries - we had a record number!
I just wrote a 7-page paper on Freud.
I just posted 11 stories to this blog.
I have an overwhelming urge to call my father.
And I can't get the poll to post.
I'm tired. I'll try again in the morning.
In the meantime, start reading this week's entries - we had a record number!
Jocelyn's Journey
Jocelyn's Journey by PigPen
The sun was in its final stages of clearing the horizon when the queen finally threw open her shutters. Her view was exceptionally beautiful on mornings like this. The sun was basking her realm in early morning beauty. The blue-green waters of Kings Bay, where the Mason’s River ran into the Smugglers Ocean, were alive with yellow fire as the sun glistened and shimmered across it. Her view was the most commanding view in all of the Valley Lands. Looking out to the northwest, away from Kings Bay, ran Garrison’s Way, an enormous road that stretched the entire length of the kingdom, north to south. She could still remember riding down Garrison’s Way and seeing Hammond Hall for the first time -- the largest and grandest castle in all of Duramond, befitting the royal seat and home to the “Largest Fleet.” There was no power at sea with half her might. They had launched a new dromond the day she arrived and it was her honor to name it. She had been dumbfounded when her good father had bestowed that as a wedding gift. When her wits returned, she had naught else but to name it after he betrothed. Henry’s Hammer was the biggest, fastest ship ever to set sail, as her prince had been the best knight in all the kingdom.
She turned around, intending to call her handmaidens and have them fetch up a bath. Her husband was propped up on his elbow and eyeing her lovingly, a small, innocent, yet playful, smile playing at his lips. “You seem very happy with yourself today, my Lord.” She couldn’t help but smile back, knowing how he disliked his wife calling him that. The first time she had made that faux pas had been their wedding night. Now, she only did it when she wanted to get a rise out of him.
“How not?” he replied coolly. “I bedded the most beautiful woman in all my kingdom last night and woke up with her in my arms this morning.” She could feel her cheeks heat up instantly.
She went to him, wrapping her arms around him and placing her head upon his chest. She could feel his heart beating slowly and surely.
As she lay there, her thoughts went back to when she was but fifteen, a maiden freshly flowered. Harold Hammond had arrived at their castle with the biggest retainer of knights, servants, squires, handmaidens, camp followers, and cronies that she had ever seen. Snow Fall was a large castle by any standard but could never hope to hold Harold’s entire host. Most had camped outside the castle walls, which made a city outside the castle. Her heart had begun to pound inside her chest the minute Harold’s outriders had been seen. He had come to see if she was fit for betrothal to his son. Stories had preceded his coming about how scathingly he had judged the first two maidens whose fathers saw them fit to wed the prince. She had met both girls at the last Kingdom Tournament, held every spring. Neither had been exceedingly comely, but neither had they been homely by any means. The girls had been pleasant and been her friends during the tournament. Some of the tales that had reached her claimed King Harold had gone as far as to call one girl a lack-wit and the other a freak. Her sisters had done little to lift her spirits. They had taunted her mercilessly from the day the raven arrived, heralding the coming of the king. She had been on edge from that day until the king claimed her worthy of his son almost a fortnight later.
Now, she couldn’t be happier. She had come to love her betrothed despite thinking she never would. He had been kind with her and generally wanted her to be happy, starting from the first day they met on the steps of Hammer Hall and ridden through the city and out the Kings Gate. They had ridden out to the cheers of all the small folk, a wave of noise that seemed to swell and followed them out through the fields. They had stopped after several hours and eaten a picnic that Prince Henry had packed in a handbasket. They sat and talked till the sun was low in the sky. They talked of childhood memories, friends, secrets that they hadn’t told anyone, and many other things that were of meaning to them. This was one of many quiet times Prince Henry had planned for them in the week prior to their wedding. It was the most magical time of her life. She felt as if she were in some fairy tale, told by wet nurses to young children at bedtime.
The wedding had been no less grand. After a resplendent ceremony in the Most Holy Sept, they had returned to Hammer Hall for the reception. It had been immaculately decorated from floor to ceiling. There had been seating for a thousand wedding guests, but more had packed in along the walls. Singers were all about, as well as jugglers and jesters in motley. They had even brought in dancing bears from the Isles of Veramell. She had not seen anything half so beautiful in all her life. The highlight of the evening for her came as the feast was drawing to a close. The hall was in a rare lull when the heralds began shouting the arrival of a late guest. As the doors parted, the Bard of Bention strode into the hall. The most renowned singer in all the kingdom bowed before the dais. “I am afraid that my tardiness will limit the amount of entertainment I can provide,” he said. “But if you will allow me, I have a new limerick I wish to share with you.”
He looked directly at the future queen, smiled and said, “It’s called ‘Jocelyn’s Journey’.”
The sun was in its final stages of clearing the horizon when the queen finally threw open her shutters. Her view was exceptionally beautiful on mornings like this. The sun was basking her realm in early morning beauty. The blue-green waters of Kings Bay, where the Mason’s River ran into the Smugglers Ocean, were alive with yellow fire as the sun glistened and shimmered across it. Her view was the most commanding view in all of the Valley Lands. Looking out to the northwest, away from Kings Bay, ran Garrison’s Way, an enormous road that stretched the entire length of the kingdom, north to south. She could still remember riding down Garrison’s Way and seeing Hammond Hall for the first time -- the largest and grandest castle in all of Duramond, befitting the royal seat and home to the “Largest Fleet.” There was no power at sea with half her might. They had launched a new dromond the day she arrived and it was her honor to name it. She had been dumbfounded when her good father had bestowed that as a wedding gift. When her wits returned, she had naught else but to name it after he betrothed. Henry’s Hammer was the biggest, fastest ship ever to set sail, as her prince had been the best knight in all the kingdom.
She turned around, intending to call her handmaidens and have them fetch up a bath. Her husband was propped up on his elbow and eyeing her lovingly, a small, innocent, yet playful, smile playing at his lips. “You seem very happy with yourself today, my Lord.” She couldn’t help but smile back, knowing how he disliked his wife calling him that. The first time she had made that faux pas had been their wedding night. Now, she only did it when she wanted to get a rise out of him.
“How not?” he replied coolly. “I bedded the most beautiful woman in all my kingdom last night and woke up with her in my arms this morning.” She could feel her cheeks heat up instantly.
She went to him, wrapping her arms around him and placing her head upon his chest. She could feel his heart beating slowly and surely.
As she lay there, her thoughts went back to when she was but fifteen, a maiden freshly flowered. Harold Hammond had arrived at their castle with the biggest retainer of knights, servants, squires, handmaidens, camp followers, and cronies that she had ever seen. Snow Fall was a large castle by any standard but could never hope to hold Harold’s entire host. Most had camped outside the castle walls, which made a city outside the castle. Her heart had begun to pound inside her chest the minute Harold’s outriders had been seen. He had come to see if she was fit for betrothal to his son. Stories had preceded his coming about how scathingly he had judged the first two maidens whose fathers saw them fit to wed the prince. She had met both girls at the last Kingdom Tournament, held every spring. Neither had been exceedingly comely, but neither had they been homely by any means. The girls had been pleasant and been her friends during the tournament. Some of the tales that had reached her claimed King Harold had gone as far as to call one girl a lack-wit and the other a freak. Her sisters had done little to lift her spirits. They had taunted her mercilessly from the day the raven arrived, heralding the coming of the king. She had been on edge from that day until the king claimed her worthy of his son almost a fortnight later.
Now, she couldn’t be happier. She had come to love her betrothed despite thinking she never would. He had been kind with her and generally wanted her to be happy, starting from the first day they met on the steps of Hammer Hall and ridden through the city and out the Kings Gate. They had ridden out to the cheers of all the small folk, a wave of noise that seemed to swell and followed them out through the fields. They had stopped after several hours and eaten a picnic that Prince Henry had packed in a handbasket. They sat and talked till the sun was low in the sky. They talked of childhood memories, friends, secrets that they hadn’t told anyone, and many other things that were of meaning to them. This was one of many quiet times Prince Henry had planned for them in the week prior to their wedding. It was the most magical time of her life. She felt as if she were in some fairy tale, told by wet nurses to young children at bedtime.
The wedding had been no less grand. After a resplendent ceremony in the Most Holy Sept, they had returned to Hammer Hall for the reception. It had been immaculately decorated from floor to ceiling. There had been seating for a thousand wedding guests, but more had packed in along the walls. Singers were all about, as well as jugglers and jesters in motley. They had even brought in dancing bears from the Isles of Veramell. She had not seen anything half so beautiful in all her life. The highlight of the evening for her came as the feast was drawing to a close. The hall was in a rare lull when the heralds began shouting the arrival of a late guest. As the doors parted, the Bard of Bention strode into the hall. The most renowned singer in all the kingdom bowed before the dais. “I am afraid that my tardiness will limit the amount of entertainment I can provide,” he said. “But if you will allow me, I have a new limerick I wish to share with you.”
He looked directly at the future queen, smiled and said, “It’s called ‘Jocelyn’s Journey’.”
The Potluck
THE POT LUCK by Hillbilly Mom
Mr. Prufrock smoothed the crease of his gray polyester slacks and sighed. This unrequited love business certainly was not so romantic as literature would have you believe. He put the finishing touches on his love letter. Love limerick, as it were. He closed his eyes and imagined how her eyes would light up when she got it. Carla. His inamorata. The mere thought of her set his heart aflutter. Mr. Prufrock slid his calligraphy pens back into their clear plastic case. “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” he said, tucking the pens back into the top right compartment of his antique oak roll-top desk.
Carla was everything he was not. Vivacious, popular, young. “Opposites attract, “ stated Mr. Prufrock in a sing-song manner. He often talked to himself these days. The house was lonely, now that Mother was gone. He smoothed the lace runner on the dining room table as he passed by. The smell of last night’s sauerkraut still lingered a bit in the dim, stuffy air of the living room. He settled back in his La-Z-Boy recliner, the one splurge he’d made with the insurance money. The TV was tuned to the weather channel, but Mr. Prufrock no more knew the forecast than a dog knew how to solve a quadratic equation. He sat, as had become his habit of late, dreaming of his soul mate, Carla.
Carla ripped open the bag of Ruffles and dialed her best friend. “Di. Watcha doin’?” She chugged half a can of Milwaukee’s Best, and emitted a long, rumbling burp.
“Just finishing my Mississippi Mud cake for the Pot Luck. Can you chew with your mouth closed?”
“Why? It’s just you and me. I ain’t tryin’ to impress anyone.”
“It’s kind of hard to understand you with all that crunching.”
“You’ll get over it. What should I take to the Pot Luck?”
“Isn’t it a little late to be thinking about that now?”
“Yeah, well. Call me Susie Homemaker. I was out in the back yard hitting golf balls all afternoon.”
“Don’t your neighbors complain?”
“Not real golf balls, you twit! Wiffle golf balls. So, I thought I might bring corn.”
“How are you making it?”
“Making it? I thought I’d bring a bag of that frozen stuff. If somebody wants some, they can heat it up.”
“I guess that’s no worse than the annual loaf of sandwich bread from the day-old bread outlet.”
“Exactly.”
“Hey, I saw your lovah looking at you during the meeting.”
“Ha ha. That bald little old freak? He told me he thinks you’re attractive.”
“Nice try. You’re making that up. You’ve never even talked to him, have you?”
“No. But he was watching YOU.”
“Only because I was in his way when he undressed you with his eyes.”
“Yeah, right. You crack me up, Di. He’s a 53-year-old virgin who looks like Montgomery Burns. Only not so attractive.”
“That’s a mean thing to say about your boyfriend.”
“He’s NOT my boyfriend. The day he becomes my boyfriend will be declared National Handbasket Day.“
“Don’t get you panties in a wad. It’s not like he’s even asked you out. He seems content to admire you from afar.”
“And he’d better stay a-far away from me. I heard him talking to Debbie after Open House night. You know how Danny had the flu? Creepy McGeezerson said, ‘I hope your betrothed is on the mend after his bout with the influenza. Perchance it has gone from whence it came.’ Then McPervy asked Stacy, ‘Are you and your cronies off to trip the light fantastic at a local speakeasy? Don’t overindulge, my dear, or you shall pay for it on the morrow.’ What’s THAT all about?”
“Aww…don’t be so hard on him. He’s just an odd duck.”
“Time to play Duck Hunt, I say.”
“It’s been fascinating, chewing the fat about your secret crush, but I still have papers to grade.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. On the morrow, heh heh.”
Mr. Prufrock lay back on his virginal bed, hands clasped behind his head. “I am quite the catch, if I do say so myself. I’ve held a steady job for nigh on 20 years. I have saved my chastity for the marriage bed. Those rowdy fellows who have taunted me all these years shall rue the day, when they spy the fair maiden, Carla, upon my arm. They shall be dumbfounded by the beauty of my bride. And when we retire to the marital chambers for our honeymoon, none of them shall know the measure of our passion. For I shall skillfully wield my battering ram to fill my fair lady with boundless pleasure.” Mr. Prufrock shuddered involuntarily. “Though I must take precautions to ensure that I do not commit a premature, seed-spilling faux pas. That would sorely disappoint m’lady, methinks.” Mr. Prufrock drifted into a pleasant slumber, dreams of his impending nuptials dancing in his head.
The next morning, Mr. Prufrock retrieved his Pot Luck corn casserole from the harvest gold refrigerator. He had prepared it two days ago, using Mother’s special recipe, which included creamed corn, Jiffy cornbread mix, and Eagle brand condensed milk. “I’m off!” he announced, to no one in particular.
Carla and Di filled their Chinet plates from the 20-odd covered dishes at the Pot Luck.
“Thanks for saving me a place in line, Carla. I’d hate to think that all the good stuff was gone before I got here,” Di commented, rolling her eyes like a world-class ocular orbitist.
“That’s what friends are for, Di. What’s that stuff? Mmm…it looks like a cheese casserole. Slop me a big pile of that on my Chinet.”
“No need to be greedy. Other lunch shifts need to eat, too, you know.”
“Yeah, well they can eat what’s left. You snooze, you lose.” Carla looked scathingly toward the end of the line. She did not see Mr. Prufrock, standing in the doorway, unrequited love oozing from every pore.
Di sat down, and Carla followed. “Let’s dig in!” She scooped a large plastic spoonful of the cheese casserole into her mouth. She immediately spat it back onto her Chinet.
“That is the nastiest stuff I ever put in my mouth! I think I’m going to vomit! What IS that shit?
Nobody noticed the single tear that slipped over Mr. Prufrock’s left lower eyelid, and slid silently down his cheek.
Mr. Prufrock smoothed the crease of his gray polyester slacks and sighed. This unrequited love business certainly was not so romantic as literature would have you believe. He put the finishing touches on his love letter. Love limerick, as it were. He closed his eyes and imagined how her eyes would light up when she got it. Carla. His inamorata. The mere thought of her set his heart aflutter. Mr. Prufrock slid his calligraphy pens back into their clear plastic case. “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” he said, tucking the pens back into the top right compartment of his antique oak roll-top desk.
Carla was everything he was not. Vivacious, popular, young. “Opposites attract, “ stated Mr. Prufrock in a sing-song manner. He often talked to himself these days. The house was lonely, now that Mother was gone. He smoothed the lace runner on the dining room table as he passed by. The smell of last night’s sauerkraut still lingered a bit in the dim, stuffy air of the living room. He settled back in his La-Z-Boy recliner, the one splurge he’d made with the insurance money. The TV was tuned to the weather channel, but Mr. Prufrock no more knew the forecast than a dog knew how to solve a quadratic equation. He sat, as had become his habit of late, dreaming of his soul mate, Carla.
Carla ripped open the bag of Ruffles and dialed her best friend. “Di. Watcha doin’?” She chugged half a can of Milwaukee’s Best, and emitted a long, rumbling burp.
“Just finishing my Mississippi Mud cake for the Pot Luck. Can you chew with your mouth closed?”
“Why? It’s just you and me. I ain’t tryin’ to impress anyone.”
“It’s kind of hard to understand you with all that crunching.”
“You’ll get over it. What should I take to the Pot Luck?”
“Isn’t it a little late to be thinking about that now?”
“Yeah, well. Call me Susie Homemaker. I was out in the back yard hitting golf balls all afternoon.”
“Don’t your neighbors complain?”
“Not real golf balls, you twit! Wiffle golf balls. So, I thought I might bring corn.”
“How are you making it?”
“Making it? I thought I’d bring a bag of that frozen stuff. If somebody wants some, they can heat it up.”
“I guess that’s no worse than the annual loaf of sandwich bread from the day-old bread outlet.”
“Exactly.”
“Hey, I saw your lovah looking at you during the meeting.”
“Ha ha. That bald little old freak? He told me he thinks you’re attractive.”
“Nice try. You’re making that up. You’ve never even talked to him, have you?”
“No. But he was watching YOU.”
“Only because I was in his way when he undressed you with his eyes.”
“Yeah, right. You crack me up, Di. He’s a 53-year-old virgin who looks like Montgomery Burns. Only not so attractive.”
“That’s a mean thing to say about your boyfriend.”
“He’s NOT my boyfriend. The day he becomes my boyfriend will be declared National Handbasket Day.“
“Don’t get you panties in a wad. It’s not like he’s even asked you out. He seems content to admire you from afar.”
“And he’d better stay a-far away from me. I heard him talking to Debbie after Open House night. You know how Danny had the flu? Creepy McGeezerson said, ‘I hope your betrothed is on the mend after his bout with the influenza. Perchance it has gone from whence it came.’ Then McPervy asked Stacy, ‘Are you and your cronies off to trip the light fantastic at a local speakeasy? Don’t overindulge, my dear, or you shall pay for it on the morrow.’ What’s THAT all about?”
“Aww…don’t be so hard on him. He’s just an odd duck.”
“Time to play Duck Hunt, I say.”
“It’s been fascinating, chewing the fat about your secret crush, but I still have papers to grade.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. On the morrow, heh heh.”
Mr. Prufrock lay back on his virginal bed, hands clasped behind his head. “I am quite the catch, if I do say so myself. I’ve held a steady job for nigh on 20 years. I have saved my chastity for the marriage bed. Those rowdy fellows who have taunted me all these years shall rue the day, when they spy the fair maiden, Carla, upon my arm. They shall be dumbfounded by the beauty of my bride. And when we retire to the marital chambers for our honeymoon, none of them shall know the measure of our passion. For I shall skillfully wield my battering ram to fill my fair lady with boundless pleasure.” Mr. Prufrock shuddered involuntarily. “Though I must take precautions to ensure that I do not commit a premature, seed-spilling faux pas. That would sorely disappoint m’lady, methinks.” Mr. Prufrock drifted into a pleasant slumber, dreams of his impending nuptials dancing in his head.
The next morning, Mr. Prufrock retrieved his Pot Luck corn casserole from the harvest gold refrigerator. He had prepared it two days ago, using Mother’s special recipe, which included creamed corn, Jiffy cornbread mix, and Eagle brand condensed milk. “I’m off!” he announced, to no one in particular.
Carla and Di filled their Chinet plates from the 20-odd covered dishes at the Pot Luck.
“Thanks for saving me a place in line, Carla. I’d hate to think that all the good stuff was gone before I got here,” Di commented, rolling her eyes like a world-class ocular orbitist.
“That’s what friends are for, Di. What’s that stuff? Mmm…it looks like a cheese casserole. Slop me a big pile of that on my Chinet.”
“No need to be greedy. Other lunch shifts need to eat, too, you know.”
“Yeah, well they can eat what’s left. You snooze, you lose.” Carla looked scathingly toward the end of the line. She did not see Mr. Prufrock, standing in the doorway, unrequited love oozing from every pore.
Di sat down, and Carla followed. “Let’s dig in!” She scooped a large plastic spoonful of the cheese casserole into her mouth. She immediately spat it back onto her Chinet.
“That is the nastiest stuff I ever put in my mouth! I think I’m going to vomit! What IS that shit?
Nobody noticed the single tear that slipped over Mr. Prufrock’s left lower eyelid, and slid silently down his cheek.
Deprecations on the Themed
Deprecations on the Themed by Cap'n Neurotic
Panic fell from the sky.
As he fell, Panic loudly cursed Miitrian’s over-zealous cronies for jumpstarting his powers in mid-air, sending him sidestepping into yet another dimension, sans airship. Or, at least, he would have been cursing loudly if his mouth had been able to act on the signals it was receiving from his higher brain functions. Unfortunately, as was generally true in Panic’s life, all higher brain functions were powerless before his more primal instincts, which, in this case, demonstrated themselves in the form of a continuous incoherent bellow of terror. Never before had his “fight or flight” response wished for a more literal translation of “flight” so powerfully.
He was distracted from his impending doom by a voice faintly calling his name from a distance.
Dumbfounded as to how he could hear the soft voice over the rushing wind roaring in his ears, he suddenly realized that this deadly plummet was taking an awfully long time, with no ground in sight . . .
“You really need to find yourself a new dream cycle to ride; that one’s getting old.”
The young man known as Panic awoke from his dream to find Taps, the source of the mysterious voice, standing above him. “You’re telling me,” he replied, pushing himself upright in the recliner which had lulled him into sleep. He wasn’t in the least surprised that Taps had known that his recurring dream had been playing out yet again; her Talent (although they don’t call it that here he reminded himself) allowed her to “tap” into a wide variety of information, from computers to telepathic hive-minds to the collective unconscious zeitgeist – sometimes whether she wanted to or not. “Was my dream so bad that you had to wake me to get some peace?”
Taps shook her head, her long unkempt hair obscuring her plump features. “I wouldn’t have bothered you for that; your subconscious needs to work that stuff out.” She brushed her hair back out of her face to give him a meaningful look; the infopath (as she had dubbed herself) had been after Panic to confront the root cause of his dreams ever since she had accidentally tapped into one a couple of weeks earlier. After pausing long enough to allow Panic a chance to agree -- a chance he, once again, ignored -- Taps carried on. “No, I just sensed a good old fashioned rant brewing on the horizon and didn’t want you to miss out.” And with that she grabbed the groggy teen by his skinny wrist, pulling him out of the recliner and dragging him down the hallway and into the meeting room populated by figures decked out in costumes straight out of the comic books his friend Burn used to smuggle into the orphanage .
“Superheroes,” he thought, still not quite believing it despite having lived among them for the better part of a month. As a “Traveler-with-a-capital-T” (as his one-time would-be mentor Cutter would say) Panic had visited a wide array of worlds and seen some unusual things – heck, his home world was filled with people displaying Talents ranging from telepathy to telekinesis to Panic’s purview, teleportation -- but even alternate Earths populated by dragons, cyborgs, or sentient slime molds paled in comparison to a world where people willingly slapped on capes and cowls in order to stop crimes - - or commit them, as the case may be. Taps’ fellow team-members were seated in a semi-circle, facing towards their gruff leader, who had apparently finished his diatribe just moments before.
“Oh, darn, did we miss the rant-storm?” Taps asked, crestfallen.
“Afraid so,” the stocky hero known as Heavyweight said, “although we might just be sitting in the eye; you know how easily these things can flare up.”
Taps nodded sagely. “True enough; but I hate that we missed the initial wave. Catching the aftershocks just isn’t the same, is it, Panic?”
Panic, true to his name, froze up at being drawn into the conversation; the others teased their leader about his tendency to rant up a storm constantly, but the grizzled hero had made Panic nervous from the first time they met. He wasn’t sure if joining in the ridicule and alienating the target or staying silent and alienating the rest would be the bigger faux pas in the long run, but then again, long run thinking had never been Panic’s strong suit; for most of his life, short-term survival was all his uncontrollable Talent had allowed for.
A feminine voice rang out, saving him from having to decide. ““Don’t worry, Taps,” the speaker said with an inhuman undertone which always reminded Panic of Theremin music, “I can fill you in.” With that, the slender figure with skin of polished glass pushed past the formerly ranting hero with a wink. Much to Panic’s surprise, the older hero just rolled his eyes and took a seat with no protest. A strange ripple flowed across the body of Mirrorgirl as she transformed herself into a virtual doppelganger of the now seated and mildly scowling leader of Vox Aequitas, Cloudburst.
“Do you know what I hate more than anything in the world?” Mirror-Burst called out stridently in a near perfect imitation of the real Cloudburst’s voice, the imitation marred only by how over-the-top the performance was. “Criminals. Law-breakers. Nasty little vermin. Need to be shipped off to Cloud Cuckoo Land and never heard from again.”
Panic -- who wondered briefly if Cloud Cuckoo Land was a real place in this world or not -- couldn’t help from glancing at the real ‘Burst, whose face was fixed in a purposefully neutral pose.
“But you know the one thing I hate more than criminals?” Mirror-Burst continued, beginning to pace around the room. “Super-villains. Take a two-bit hood, add a death ray or two, and you’ve suddenly gone from having a nuisance to having a deadly nuisance.”
Panic’s unease was gradually dissipating as he was drawn into Mirror-Burst’s performance, although he couldn’t resist sneaking a glance at the real ‘Burst occasionally. He could almost swear there was the tiniest hint of a smile on the care-worn face.
“And if there’s one thing I hate more than super-villains,” Mirror-Burst continued, now gesticulating wildly to emphasize his/her points, “it’s super-villain teams! Bad enough dealing with them one on one, but get two or more of those maniacal pests together, and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. And if there’s one thing I hate more than super-villain teams –“
“It’s using clichés like ‘hell in a handbasket?” Heavyweight called out, laughing.
Mirror-Burst met this comment with nothing less than Cloudburst’s patented we’ll-talk-later glare. “No, you sorry excuse for a sorry excuse, it’s super-villain teams . . . with a theme!”
Mirror-Burst’s whole body shuddered in such melodramatic disgust at this last statement that it generated a ripple of laughter among the audience.
Puzzled by the reference, Panic was compelled to ask, “What’s wrong with themed groups?”
“What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with them?” Mirror-Burst bellowed incredulously.
“Why they’re just so . . . so . . . silly!” he/she said scathingly.
“Oh, come on!” Panic flinched at the outburst from the real Cloudburst; if the journey to this world hadn’t temporarily burned out his Talent, that jolt would have been enough to trigger a fight-or-flight teleport jaunt across town. “’Silly’? Seriously, that’s supposed to sum up my argument? That they’re ‘silly’?” He sighed. “Okay, folks, the next time I recommend sending the Lillian Gish of the looking-glass set here out on an infiltration mission, would one of you please remind me of this scenery chewing fiasco?”
“I happen to think that it was a very accurate portrayal,” Mirror-Burst said, shifting back into the form of Mirrorgirl halfway through the sentence. Cloudburst merely snorted a laugh in reply. Although partially transfixed by the fact that ‘Burst was actually demonstrating a sense of humor, Panic’s curiosity got the better of him.
“Sorry, but new-to-your-dimension guy here still wondering what’s the deal?”
Cloudburst turned towards him, a crooked smile playing across his face. “It’s a bit hard for me to articulate,” he began, flashing a dirty look towards Heavyweight to forestall any smartass comment, “but basically there’s something about these groups which form around arbitrarily chosen schema that really chaps my hide. You want to form a gang based on how their powers and abilities are going to help you in your latest scam -- that I can understand. You want to form a gang based on how their powers and abilities relate to chess pieces or playing cards or computer terminology – that’s just a product of unbalanced minds, and it makes me want to punch them even harder than usual.”
“I don’t know,” Mirrorgirl countered, “I find some of them highly entertaining.” Another shimmer ran across her surface as she transformed into a rapid succession of monstrous shapes, some familiar (werewolf, nosferatu), some less so (a being seemingly made of cornstalks; another made of black ooze), and some surreal (a clown and a car?). “Beware, Panic!” the mirror-menagerie called out, its voice shifting with each new form, alternately growling, burbling, and (oddly enough) honking, “for you now face the incomparable power of The Kingsmen, each wielding a power based on the works of Stephen King!”
Panic wasn’t sure which was odder; the fact that there were apparently super-villains who were inspired by Stephen King – an idea that Brother Staple, the headmaster of Panic’s former school at the Order of the Infinite would have gleefully accepted as proof that King’s work was the source of all corruption – or that Stephen King was a common touching stone across dimensions.
“So, seriously – they based themselves on Stephen King novels? It, Christine, ‘Salems Lot, all that?”
“Well, actually,” Taps answered, “their founder wasn’t the most literate villain around, so he mainly recruited based on Stephen King movies and mini-series. So, ‘sleepwalkers,” yes, ‘gunslingers’, no. Luckily, as a team they’re even worse than most of those films were, so they weren’t much of a threat -- outside of giving ‘Burst an aneurism, that is.”
“Too true,” said ‘Burst, “although they were nothing compared to that stupid bunch of doofuses that The Immortal Bard threw at us a while back . . . what were their names . . .”
“Oh, you mean Bad Poetry,” Taps chimed in. “What a bunch of losers: Blank Verse, Poetic Conceit, The Rhyme Schemer, that mouthy punk Limerick.” She scrunched up her nose at the last name, her voice dripping with venom. Panic looked at her quizzically; Taps was strictly behind-the-scenes support, not a field agent, so rarely had enough direct contact with the criminal element to warrant such an obvious personal distaste. “The Immortal Bard kidnapped me as leverage,” she explained, “and that Irish brat taunted me mercilessly while he guarded me.”
The sound of a throat clearing caught their attention, and Taps groaned as she watched Mirrorgirl (who was clearly enjoying her chance to play the cut-up) morph into a short, scrawny, red-headed figured decked out in horribly ugly green pantaloons.
“There once was a techie named Taps
Who used lots of computer apps
But then at her peak
Zorg made her a freak
And now her whole life turns up craps.”
Taps mock-glared at the mock-Limerick. “Horrible little brat, he was; glad to see the end of him. Still don’t know how he knew about Zorg giving me my powers, though . . .” This last sentence she mumbled so that only Panic could hear her.
“Hey, ‘Burst, just thought of something,” said Heavyweight with a wicked grin. “What about super-hero groups with themes? Y’know like – The Weather Front?”
‘Burst glowered at him. “First of all, I think building a team around a common thematic element is just a ludicrous for heroes as it is for villains, although possibly less indicative of insanity . . . possibly. And second of all, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of The Weather Front.”
“That’s not what their by-laws say . . .”
‘Burst sighed. “Look, I got sucked into their first adventure, and when they did the obligatory ‘Gee, everything must happen for a reason, let’s stick together and fight crime with our eerily similar weather based powers’ shtick, I only got out of it by allowing them to browbeat me into being an ‘honorary founding member’.”
“Like Superman and Batman in the Justice Society,” Panic chimed in, earning himself a wall of blank stares that told him that, while Stephen King may be universal (or, more accurately, multiversal), DC comics, apparently, were not.
Panic fell from the sky.
As he fell, Panic loudly cursed Miitrian’s over-zealous cronies for jumpstarting his powers in mid-air, sending him sidestepping into yet another dimension, sans airship. Or, at least, he would have been cursing loudly if his mouth had been able to act on the signals it was receiving from his higher brain functions. Unfortunately, as was generally true in Panic’s life, all higher brain functions were powerless before his more primal instincts, which, in this case, demonstrated themselves in the form of a continuous incoherent bellow of terror. Never before had his “fight or flight” response wished for a more literal translation of “flight” so powerfully.
He was distracted from his impending doom by a voice faintly calling his name from a distance.
Dumbfounded as to how he could hear the soft voice over the rushing wind roaring in his ears, he suddenly realized that this deadly plummet was taking an awfully long time, with no ground in sight . . .
“You really need to find yourself a new dream cycle to ride; that one’s getting old.”
The young man known as Panic awoke from his dream to find Taps, the source of the mysterious voice, standing above him. “You’re telling me,” he replied, pushing himself upright in the recliner which had lulled him into sleep. He wasn’t in the least surprised that Taps had known that his recurring dream had been playing out yet again; her Talent (although they don’t call it that here he reminded himself) allowed her to “tap” into a wide variety of information, from computers to telepathic hive-minds to the collective unconscious zeitgeist – sometimes whether she wanted to or not. “Was my dream so bad that you had to wake me to get some peace?”
Taps shook her head, her long unkempt hair obscuring her plump features. “I wouldn’t have bothered you for that; your subconscious needs to work that stuff out.” She brushed her hair back out of her face to give him a meaningful look; the infopath (as she had dubbed herself) had been after Panic to confront the root cause of his dreams ever since she had accidentally tapped into one a couple of weeks earlier. After pausing long enough to allow Panic a chance to agree -- a chance he, once again, ignored -- Taps carried on. “No, I just sensed a good old fashioned rant brewing on the horizon and didn’t want you to miss out.” And with that she grabbed the groggy teen by his skinny wrist, pulling him out of the recliner and dragging him down the hallway and into the meeting room populated by figures decked out in costumes straight out of the comic books his friend Burn used to smuggle into the orphanage .
“Superheroes,” he thought, still not quite believing it despite having lived among them for the better part of a month. As a “Traveler-with-a-capital-T” (as his one-time would-be mentor Cutter would say) Panic had visited a wide array of worlds and seen some unusual things – heck, his home world was filled with people displaying Talents ranging from telepathy to telekinesis to Panic’s purview, teleportation -- but even alternate Earths populated by dragons, cyborgs, or sentient slime molds paled in comparison to a world where people willingly slapped on capes and cowls in order to stop crimes - - or commit them, as the case may be. Taps’ fellow team-members were seated in a semi-circle, facing towards their gruff leader, who had apparently finished his diatribe just moments before.
“Oh, darn, did we miss the rant-storm?” Taps asked, crestfallen.
“Afraid so,” the stocky hero known as Heavyweight said, “although we might just be sitting in the eye; you know how easily these things can flare up.”
Taps nodded sagely. “True enough; but I hate that we missed the initial wave. Catching the aftershocks just isn’t the same, is it, Panic?”
Panic, true to his name, froze up at being drawn into the conversation; the others teased their leader about his tendency to rant up a storm constantly, but the grizzled hero had made Panic nervous from the first time they met. He wasn’t sure if joining in the ridicule and alienating the target or staying silent and alienating the rest would be the bigger faux pas in the long run, but then again, long run thinking had never been Panic’s strong suit; for most of his life, short-term survival was all his uncontrollable Talent had allowed for.
A feminine voice rang out, saving him from having to decide. ““Don’t worry, Taps,” the speaker said with an inhuman undertone which always reminded Panic of Theremin music, “I can fill you in.” With that, the slender figure with skin of polished glass pushed past the formerly ranting hero with a wink. Much to Panic’s surprise, the older hero just rolled his eyes and took a seat with no protest. A strange ripple flowed across the body of Mirrorgirl as she transformed herself into a virtual doppelganger of the now seated and mildly scowling leader of Vox Aequitas, Cloudburst.
“Do you know what I hate more than anything in the world?” Mirror-Burst called out stridently in a near perfect imitation of the real Cloudburst’s voice, the imitation marred only by how over-the-top the performance was. “Criminals. Law-breakers. Nasty little vermin. Need to be shipped off to Cloud Cuckoo Land and never heard from again.”
Panic -- who wondered briefly if Cloud Cuckoo Land was a real place in this world or not -- couldn’t help from glancing at the real ‘Burst, whose face was fixed in a purposefully neutral pose.
“But you know the one thing I hate more than criminals?” Mirror-Burst continued, beginning to pace around the room. “Super-villains. Take a two-bit hood, add a death ray or two, and you’ve suddenly gone from having a nuisance to having a deadly nuisance.”
Panic’s unease was gradually dissipating as he was drawn into Mirror-Burst’s performance, although he couldn’t resist sneaking a glance at the real ‘Burst occasionally. He could almost swear there was the tiniest hint of a smile on the care-worn face.
“And if there’s one thing I hate more than super-villains,” Mirror-Burst continued, now gesticulating wildly to emphasize his/her points, “it’s super-villain teams! Bad enough dealing with them one on one, but get two or more of those maniacal pests together, and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. And if there’s one thing I hate more than super-villain teams –“
“It’s using clichés like ‘hell in a handbasket?” Heavyweight called out, laughing.
Mirror-Burst met this comment with nothing less than Cloudburst’s patented we’ll-talk-later glare. “No, you sorry excuse for a sorry excuse, it’s super-villain teams . . . with a theme!”
Mirror-Burst’s whole body shuddered in such melodramatic disgust at this last statement that it generated a ripple of laughter among the audience.
Puzzled by the reference, Panic was compelled to ask, “What’s wrong with themed groups?”
“What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with them?” Mirror-Burst bellowed incredulously.
“Why they’re just so . . . so . . . silly!” he/she said scathingly.
“Oh, come on!” Panic flinched at the outburst from the real Cloudburst; if the journey to this world hadn’t temporarily burned out his Talent, that jolt would have been enough to trigger a fight-or-flight teleport jaunt across town. “’Silly’? Seriously, that’s supposed to sum up my argument? That they’re ‘silly’?” He sighed. “Okay, folks, the next time I recommend sending the Lillian Gish of the looking-glass set here out on an infiltration mission, would one of you please remind me of this scenery chewing fiasco?”
“I happen to think that it was a very accurate portrayal,” Mirror-Burst said, shifting back into the form of Mirrorgirl halfway through the sentence. Cloudburst merely snorted a laugh in reply. Although partially transfixed by the fact that ‘Burst was actually demonstrating a sense of humor, Panic’s curiosity got the better of him.
“Sorry, but new-to-your-dimension guy here still wondering what’s the deal?”
Cloudburst turned towards him, a crooked smile playing across his face. “It’s a bit hard for me to articulate,” he began, flashing a dirty look towards Heavyweight to forestall any smartass comment, “but basically there’s something about these groups which form around arbitrarily chosen schema that really chaps my hide. You want to form a gang based on how their powers and abilities are going to help you in your latest scam -- that I can understand. You want to form a gang based on how their powers and abilities relate to chess pieces or playing cards or computer terminology – that’s just a product of unbalanced minds, and it makes me want to punch them even harder than usual.”
“I don’t know,” Mirrorgirl countered, “I find some of them highly entertaining.” Another shimmer ran across her surface as she transformed into a rapid succession of monstrous shapes, some familiar (werewolf, nosferatu), some less so (a being seemingly made of cornstalks; another made of black ooze), and some surreal (a clown and a car?). “Beware, Panic!” the mirror-menagerie called out, its voice shifting with each new form, alternately growling, burbling, and (oddly enough) honking, “for you now face the incomparable power of The Kingsmen, each wielding a power based on the works of Stephen King!”
Panic wasn’t sure which was odder; the fact that there were apparently super-villains who were inspired by Stephen King – an idea that Brother Staple, the headmaster of Panic’s former school at the Order of the Infinite would have gleefully accepted as proof that King’s work was the source of all corruption – or that Stephen King was a common touching stone across dimensions.
“So, seriously – they based themselves on Stephen King novels? It, Christine, ‘Salems Lot, all that?”
“Well, actually,” Taps answered, “their founder wasn’t the most literate villain around, so he mainly recruited based on Stephen King movies and mini-series. So, ‘sleepwalkers,” yes, ‘gunslingers’, no. Luckily, as a team they’re even worse than most of those films were, so they weren’t much of a threat -- outside of giving ‘Burst an aneurism, that is.”
“Too true,” said ‘Burst, “although they were nothing compared to that stupid bunch of doofuses that The Immortal Bard threw at us a while back . . . what were their names . . .”
“Oh, you mean Bad Poetry,” Taps chimed in. “What a bunch of losers: Blank Verse, Poetic Conceit, The Rhyme Schemer, that mouthy punk Limerick.” She scrunched up her nose at the last name, her voice dripping with venom. Panic looked at her quizzically; Taps was strictly behind-the-scenes support, not a field agent, so rarely had enough direct contact with the criminal element to warrant such an obvious personal distaste. “The Immortal Bard kidnapped me as leverage,” she explained, “and that Irish brat taunted me mercilessly while he guarded me.”
The sound of a throat clearing caught their attention, and Taps groaned as she watched Mirrorgirl (who was clearly enjoying her chance to play the cut-up) morph into a short, scrawny, red-headed figured decked out in horribly ugly green pantaloons.
“There once was a techie named Taps
Who used lots of computer apps
But then at her peak
Zorg made her a freak
And now her whole life turns up craps.”
Taps mock-glared at the mock-Limerick. “Horrible little brat, he was; glad to see the end of him. Still don’t know how he knew about Zorg giving me my powers, though . . .” This last sentence she mumbled so that only Panic could hear her.
“Hey, ‘Burst, just thought of something,” said Heavyweight with a wicked grin. “What about super-hero groups with themes? Y’know like – The Weather Front?”
‘Burst glowered at him. “First of all, I think building a team around a common thematic element is just a ludicrous for heroes as it is for villains, although possibly less indicative of insanity . . . possibly. And second of all, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of The Weather Front.”
“That’s not what their by-laws say . . .”
‘Burst sighed. “Look, I got sucked into their first adventure, and when they did the obligatory ‘Gee, everything must happen for a reason, let’s stick together and fight crime with our eerily similar weather based powers’ shtick, I only got out of it by allowing them to browbeat me into being an ‘honorary founding member’.”
“Like Superman and Batman in the Justice Society,” Panic chimed in, earning himself a wall of blank stares that told him that, while Stephen King may be universal (or, more accurately, multiversal), DC comics, apparently, were not.
Mercy Comes at the Edge of a Sword!
Tiger Jack Hwang, Shining Blade of the Wudan
In
Ask not for whom the Wedding Bell tolls!
Part Three: Mercy Comes at the Edge of a Sword! by Bubblegum Tate
“Tiger Jack” Hwang moved into the cavernous inner chamber of the monastery where he had spent so many years of his childhood and youth. The clean scent of scrubbed wood underneath the powerful aroma of incense, the recently risen sun peeking through the latticework surrounding the great iron doors, the eerie quiet of a monastery first thing in the morning, before the monks begin their day. Each of these things alone would have recalled better days, but together they were almost enough to overwhelm him with nostalgia; days long past when he felt protected and was constantly taught about the great destiny set before him by his teacher, or sifu, the learned Yu Zhi Shou. How Tiger Jack had loved Sifu Zhi. How he hated him now. The truth about Yu Zhi Shou hovering just under these pleasant memories was like the stench of rot barely masked by the scent of your mother’s bread.
High atop the Wudan Mountains in central China, far above the reach of the ChiCom government, sat the monastery. It was the center of a vast criminal web that stretched all over the world. The fat spider that sat at the center of that web was Yu Zhi Shou. Many years ago, he had been a mentor and more to Tiger Jack, but Tiger Jack realized the “great destiny” for which Sifu Zhi Shou had raised him was simply that of a thug, a killer, a weapon to protect the Wudan…a weapon to be wielded by Sifu Zhi Shou himself. The day that this became clear was the day that Tiger Jack became the Shining Blade of the Wudan, the pinnacle of martial mastery for the monastery. Though it dumbfounded him to imagine life outside the monastery, it was also the day that Tiger Jack left, a wake of lesser men broken and suffering behind him. That day, he vowed that when he returned, the Master would be brought low.
Knowing nothing of the world below the mountain, Tiger Jack had wandered the earth looking for a purpose and honing his skills, preparing for the day he would return to battle his master directly. As he traveled, he waged war against the Wudan’s many arms, destroying cartels, gunrunners, opium dealers and whatever other corruption he could find that bore the stamp of Wudan. It was inevitable that he would cross paths with Ajax Stewart. It was destiny that they would become such fast friends. It was legend that was created from their adventures. Today, Tiger Jack would fulfill a vow to an old master as well as a pledge to his best friend. Tiger Jack smiled at the thought, and made his way deeper into the monastery, the only sound the swish swish of his saffron robes.
The silence of the monastery’s morning was suddenly broken by a disembodied voice echoing through the main hall, commanding in tone but paper thin with age, saying “Welcome back to the Wudan, Hwang Ki Chak. Or should I debase myself to name you as the gweilo, Tiger Jack?”
The name was said scathingly and with an unmistakable sneer.
Allowing his body to fall into a comfortable, but ready, stance, Tiger Jack taunted his old master, speaking loudly into the seemingly empty hall, “You can call me whatever you like, old deceiver.
Even my true name is a lie dripped like poison from your viper’s lips.”
An old man’s cackle cut through the hall, twisted and evil, as a reply. “I never told you a lie, little Ki Chak. I always told you how powerful you would be, how special, how important a Shining Blade is to the Wudan. If you turned your back on this, how can one old man be to blame?”
Despite himself, Tiger Jack felt himself leaping to the argument. “The Wudan were once a powerful force for justice in this land, Sifu, and the Shining Blade was their vanguard! You took those who would fight for justice and made them wage war for greed! You took a beautiful poem and turned it into a dirty limerick. Well, the Wudan may no longer be what they once were, but this Shining Blade will continue to be an example of what they ought to be.”
Suddenly dour, the voice replied, “And how do you plan to do this, oh mighty Shining Blade of the Wudan?”
His mouth becoming a grim line and his brows knitting, Tiger Jack Hwang answered with steely resolve, “You taught me the journey of a thousand steps must begin with only one, old Master. My first step is to kill you.”
“So be it,” the voice hissed
Instantly, Tiger Jack was surrounded by similarly dressed young men, blades flashing around him, tassels from the handles of the swords whizzing through the air with blinding speed. Tiger Jack spun, whirled, stepped, leaped, pivoted and moved with the flowing grace of a dancer, managing to avoid all but the shallowest cuts. Summoning his chi, the internal energy that powered his amazing kung fu, Tiger Jack spun on one toe with arms outstretched and a mighty wind seemed to emanate from his open palms, pushing the throng of attackers away and leaving a slowly revolving Tiger Jack alone in the center of the massive room. Many of them stumbled and fell, but the more accomplished students rolled and somersaulted to their feet.
As he came to a stop in a much more aggressive fighting stance, Tiger Jack tore the robe, now tattered from thousands of barely dodged cuts, off his upper body. The early morning sun glinted on the gold-orange ink of the tattoo that surrounded much of his torso and was the source of his fighting name. The great tiger seemed to stalk across Tiger Jack’s back and over his left shoulder with a massive head and swiping paw across his chest and abdomen. Despite themselves, and in the face of the massive punishment Zhi Shou would visit upon them for the faux pas, the men surrounding Tiger Jack gasped at the tattoo that seemed so real you could see individual hairs of the tiger’s fur. Tiger Jack couldn’t help but smile.
“It sounds like your cronies weren’t properly prepared for the coming of the Shining Blade, Sifu. Also, you may have miscalculated the sheer volume of manpower you needed to throw at this particular problem.” Despite the fact that thirty or forty finely trained martial artists, each one a deadly weapon even before they took up a sword, surrounded Tiger Jack, he couldn’t help but feel smug. His old master must have forgotten his prowess if he expected these men to handle him. They couldn’t even stand up to Kwan Yin’s Hurricane, his most painless technique.
“I engendered that overconfidence in you, my student. Oh, make no mistake, you are formidable, but I led you to believe you were invincible so that you would never question any mission I gave you, suicidal or not. You are NOT invincible, my Shining Blade, not in the face of the entire Wudan Order!” The last words rose to a shriek and robed man after robed man stepped from the shadows or dropped from the ceiling rafters. Suddenly, the room was full of monks, grim and ready to do battle with Tiger Jack. Hell in a handbasket barely did the situation justice.
Tiger Jack made an intricate swooping motion with both arms that loosened his tendons and prepared him mentally for battle. Stepping into a powerful stance created by ancient Wudan masters to minimize the effect of great numbers, Tiger Jack motioned, palm up and with his fingers, for the monks to attack.
With a yell that shook the ancient foundations of the monastery, the small army of Wudan monks attacked in unison. Tiger Jack was instantly a blur of motion, dodging, kicking, punching and striking at sensitive vitals. Several times, he took control of a monk’s body and used him as a shield while forcing the man to use his weapon against his martial brothers. This was a typical tactic that Tiger Jack used against overwhelming odds, but he was both chagrined and impressed to see that these men, despite the singularity of most kung fu styles, had trained together as a unit. They adapted to Tiger Jack’s methods of attack and worked as a single organism with no member getting in the way of the whole. Even as he fought, another part of his brain realized that he had finally met his match. It was taking a small army with precise special training, but Tiger Jack was finally going to be beaten in hand-to-hand combat. There
was only one thing he could do.
Tiger Jack’s moves became faster, too fast for the eye to follow as more than a blur. He began to glow, first lightly and then more and more strongly until he was a man-shaped high wattage bulb smoldering with a baleful, red light. The men attacking him were constantly attacking and receding, like a never ending wave, but they began to realize that, when they were nearer to him, they were feeling nauseous and unwell. Every man that Tiger Jack hit instantly fell down, dead. A glancing blow to a minor area of the body or a direct hit to a vital, it didn’t matter; anyone touched by the glowing body of Tiger Jack dropped lifeless to the floor. The men, knowing what was expected of them, pressed in hoping to overwhelm Tiger Jack before their numbers were depleted. This was just what Tiger Jack wanted from them. As they pressed in, Tiger Jack pressed both palms together and a bright red light exploded silently off his meditative form, spreading out from himself at the epicenter. As the blinding flash moved across the men attacking him, they dropped like so much wheat. After the explosion, there was no one left because Tiger Jack knew Dim Mak, poison hand, the touch of death.
Tiger Jack was left breathing deeply, drenched in sweat. The Dim Mak is very draining, usually shared by a touch and meant to be used on individual foes so that one’s chi would not be so exclusively focused on Yang energy. But Tiger Jack new it was the only way he could have won. A dry, cracked voice broke his reverie as his old Master finally deigned to speak to him “in person.”
“Well done, my student. I didn’t think you would use the Dim Mak, even against the Wudan. I certainly didn’t expect you to survive such a flood of Yang energy,” Zhi Shou clapped lightly, as though at a golf match. “Catch your breath, Ki Chak. If this is to be our final climactic battle, I will have none of your friends claiming I took advantage of you. Would you care to see the garden?”
Nodding, Tiger Jack followed the old man through the room that was now a charnel house and outside to the meditation garden. “Beautiful, is it not,” Zhi Shou said over his shoulder as he gestured at the beautiful garden. “It is likely much as it was when you left, Ki Chak, much as it has been for centuries.”
“It is indeed both the same as when I left and more beautiful for not having seen it in so long,” Tiger Jack agreed, “but it is no longer a picture of the Wudan Order. Even such beauty as this cannot cloak your corruption.”
Zhi Shou turned on Tiger Jack slowly and with a beatific smile on his face. “The West has tainted you, Ki Chak. Where once you knew the meaning of the yin yang, now you only see the black and the white with no part of one touching the other. You will never understand what I had to do to preserve the Wudan, even if what I preserved is different than it once was.”
“Master,” Tiger Jack pleaded, “Listen to yourself! The Wudan of your youth was an Order dedicated to justice! You have preserved a freak mutation of the Wudan, a perversion!”
Zhi Shou waved his hand dismissively, “Despite our love of philosophy, we are men of action, Ki Chak, and this conversation does not become us. You came for battle, though you use the flimsiest of excuses for it. I will give you both of the things you seek, one after the other. I will give you battle, my former student, and, if you defeat me, you will have Kuan Yin’s Sapphire.”
Tiger Jack nodded curtly, “My best friend in the world needs that gem to save his one true love. I fight not only for vengeance, but for friendship and for love. That is why I came to you today, Master, with love in my heart as well as revenge. With vengeance alone as my ally, even in killing you, I would be no better than you.”
“Come then, Shining Blade. I’ll let you try my Wudan style!” Zhi Shou leapt at Tiger Jack in what seemed to be a cloud of silk robe. Not knowing what part of the billowing cloth to block, Tiger Jack leapt deftly out of its way, spinning in the air and landing lightly where Zhi Shou had began.
Only years of fighting the Wudan’s minions could have prepared Tiger Jack for the constant whirling attack that Zhi Shou brought his way from behind his billowing robes. Everywhere he dodged or blocked, the old Master was sending a knuckle, elbow, toe or knee at another vital area of Tiger Jack’s body. Tiger Jack knew that he was the superior fighter on offense, but if he could never get a shot in, the old man would simply outlast him. Despite his age, Tiger Jack was well aware of his old Master’s endurance. When Tiger Jack was young, entire days of his training would be devoted to making constant attacks on Zhi Shou while Zhi Shou blocked every punch and kick and kept up a constant verbal barrage of praise and correction. Tiger Jack had to up the ante of this fight the only way he could. Tiger Jack had to summon the power of the Shining Blade.
Focusing his chi into the edges of his outstretched hands, he felt the subtle change come over his arms from the tips of his fingers to his elbows. Suddenly, the swish thud swish swish thud of the battle between the two men was interrupted by the sound of silk being cut and a short intake of breath as Zhi Shou leapt away from Tiger Jack, blood oozing from one fist.
Sucking his bleeding knuckle, Zhi Shou said, “Behold the glory of the Shining Blade, able to combine the empty handed styles of kung fu with the Wudan’s 8 Divine Swords. Though I have not seen it personally in many years, I am still in awe of it.” The old man, took another step backwards from Tiger Jack and reached into a dense copse of growth in the garden’s landscaping. He pulled out a gold blade, slightly waved down its length, unlike the traditional straight blade of the Wudan style. It was sharp as a razor and seemed to hum in the air even as Zhi Shou held it still, leveled at Tiger Jack’s face.
“I forgot how to fear blades many years ago, Master,” Tiger Jack said with menace in his voice, “even one as beautiful and deadly as yours. Match your blade to the keen edges of my hands and we will finally see who is the best blade of the Wudan.”
Without a word or even a hint of breath, Zhi Shou attacked Tiger Jack. His blade struck high and low, it slashed and attempted to prick, it glinted in the sun and then was hidden in the folds of Zhi Shou’s robe. Zhi Shou’s mastery of the 8 Diving Swords was a miracle, but each time it struck for some vital organ in Tiger Jack’s body, it was met by some portion of his hand or forearm. Fantastically, the sword rang off Tiger Jack’s arms as though it were steel on steel.
And even as Zhi Shou made cut after cut, Tiger Jack began to work in his own offensive. Tiger Jack turned aside Zhi Shou’s strike at his abdomen with his left hand, feeling the ringing shock all the way to his shoulder. Lashing out with a toe quickly, he caught the old man’s kneecap and Zhi Shou stumbled backwards. Tiger Jack brought his right hand around, knife edged and glowing with his chi, the one true Shining Blade of the Wudan, and struck at his master’s face with all his might. On his back, clearly in pain from his wounded knee, Zhi Shou threw his own blade in between his face and the striking hand. Tiger Jack’s hand hit the blade and the sound was like the clear ringing of a perfectly made bell. When the note finally dwindled in the air, Zhi Shou’s blade was split in two and the old Master had finished the earthly part of his journey.
Tiger Jack reached down into the robes at the throat of the now dead old man. Pulling a large, midnight blue sapphire from around Zhi Shou’s neck, he used the Shining Blade technique to cut the chain it dangled from. Staring into the deep, blue center of the gem and standing straight in the early morning sun, Tiger Jack felt the approval of centuries of Wudan monks. Turning his back on the garden and the man who had been his master, Tiger Jack walked back into the monastery. Despite the evidence of the violence done that morning, he felt a surge of pride.
With Zhi Shou gone, Tiger Jack would rebuild the Wudan and see that the 8 Divine Swords served justice instead of vice.
That was for tomorrow. Today, Tiger Jack was prepared to help his best friend rescue the love of his life. “Dr. B’hadgai,” Tiger Jack though with grim resolve, “should be very frightened indeed, though he does not know it. He thinks he knows how to manage the Engineer of the
Impossible, but he has no idea what to do with the Shining Blade of the Wudan.”
In
Ask not for whom the Wedding Bell tolls!
Part Three: Mercy Comes at the Edge of a Sword! by Bubblegum Tate
“Tiger Jack” Hwang moved into the cavernous inner chamber of the monastery where he had spent so many years of his childhood and youth. The clean scent of scrubbed wood underneath the powerful aroma of incense, the recently risen sun peeking through the latticework surrounding the great iron doors, the eerie quiet of a monastery first thing in the morning, before the monks begin their day. Each of these things alone would have recalled better days, but together they were almost enough to overwhelm him with nostalgia; days long past when he felt protected and was constantly taught about the great destiny set before him by his teacher, or sifu, the learned Yu Zhi Shou. How Tiger Jack had loved Sifu Zhi. How he hated him now. The truth about Yu Zhi Shou hovering just under these pleasant memories was like the stench of rot barely masked by the scent of your mother’s bread.
High atop the Wudan Mountains in central China, far above the reach of the ChiCom government, sat the monastery. It was the center of a vast criminal web that stretched all over the world. The fat spider that sat at the center of that web was Yu Zhi Shou. Many years ago, he had been a mentor and more to Tiger Jack, but Tiger Jack realized the “great destiny” for which Sifu Zhi Shou had raised him was simply that of a thug, a killer, a weapon to protect the Wudan…a weapon to be wielded by Sifu Zhi Shou himself. The day that this became clear was the day that Tiger Jack became the Shining Blade of the Wudan, the pinnacle of martial mastery for the monastery. Though it dumbfounded him to imagine life outside the monastery, it was also the day that Tiger Jack left, a wake of lesser men broken and suffering behind him. That day, he vowed that when he returned, the Master would be brought low.
Knowing nothing of the world below the mountain, Tiger Jack had wandered the earth looking for a purpose and honing his skills, preparing for the day he would return to battle his master directly. As he traveled, he waged war against the Wudan’s many arms, destroying cartels, gunrunners, opium dealers and whatever other corruption he could find that bore the stamp of Wudan. It was inevitable that he would cross paths with Ajax Stewart. It was destiny that they would become such fast friends. It was legend that was created from their adventures. Today, Tiger Jack would fulfill a vow to an old master as well as a pledge to his best friend. Tiger Jack smiled at the thought, and made his way deeper into the monastery, the only sound the swish swish of his saffron robes.
The silence of the monastery’s morning was suddenly broken by a disembodied voice echoing through the main hall, commanding in tone but paper thin with age, saying “Welcome back to the Wudan, Hwang Ki Chak. Or should I debase myself to name you as the gweilo, Tiger Jack?”
The name was said scathingly and with an unmistakable sneer.
Allowing his body to fall into a comfortable, but ready, stance, Tiger Jack taunted his old master, speaking loudly into the seemingly empty hall, “You can call me whatever you like, old deceiver.
Even my true name is a lie dripped like poison from your viper’s lips.”
An old man’s cackle cut through the hall, twisted and evil, as a reply. “I never told you a lie, little Ki Chak. I always told you how powerful you would be, how special, how important a Shining Blade is to the Wudan. If you turned your back on this, how can one old man be to blame?”
Despite himself, Tiger Jack felt himself leaping to the argument. “The Wudan were once a powerful force for justice in this land, Sifu, and the Shining Blade was their vanguard! You took those who would fight for justice and made them wage war for greed! You took a beautiful poem and turned it into a dirty limerick. Well, the Wudan may no longer be what they once were, but this Shining Blade will continue to be an example of what they ought to be.”
Suddenly dour, the voice replied, “And how do you plan to do this, oh mighty Shining Blade of the Wudan?”
His mouth becoming a grim line and his brows knitting, Tiger Jack Hwang answered with steely resolve, “You taught me the journey of a thousand steps must begin with only one, old Master. My first step is to kill you.”
“So be it,” the voice hissed
Instantly, Tiger Jack was surrounded by similarly dressed young men, blades flashing around him, tassels from the handles of the swords whizzing through the air with blinding speed. Tiger Jack spun, whirled, stepped, leaped, pivoted and moved with the flowing grace of a dancer, managing to avoid all but the shallowest cuts. Summoning his chi, the internal energy that powered his amazing kung fu, Tiger Jack spun on one toe with arms outstretched and a mighty wind seemed to emanate from his open palms, pushing the throng of attackers away and leaving a slowly revolving Tiger Jack alone in the center of the massive room. Many of them stumbled and fell, but the more accomplished students rolled and somersaulted to their feet.
As he came to a stop in a much more aggressive fighting stance, Tiger Jack tore the robe, now tattered from thousands of barely dodged cuts, off his upper body. The early morning sun glinted on the gold-orange ink of the tattoo that surrounded much of his torso and was the source of his fighting name. The great tiger seemed to stalk across Tiger Jack’s back and over his left shoulder with a massive head and swiping paw across his chest and abdomen. Despite themselves, and in the face of the massive punishment Zhi Shou would visit upon them for the faux pas, the men surrounding Tiger Jack gasped at the tattoo that seemed so real you could see individual hairs of the tiger’s fur. Tiger Jack couldn’t help but smile.
“It sounds like your cronies weren’t properly prepared for the coming of the Shining Blade, Sifu. Also, you may have miscalculated the sheer volume of manpower you needed to throw at this particular problem.” Despite the fact that thirty or forty finely trained martial artists, each one a deadly weapon even before they took up a sword, surrounded Tiger Jack, he couldn’t help but feel smug. His old master must have forgotten his prowess if he expected these men to handle him. They couldn’t even stand up to Kwan Yin’s Hurricane, his most painless technique.
“I engendered that overconfidence in you, my student. Oh, make no mistake, you are formidable, but I led you to believe you were invincible so that you would never question any mission I gave you, suicidal or not. You are NOT invincible, my Shining Blade, not in the face of the entire Wudan Order!” The last words rose to a shriek and robed man after robed man stepped from the shadows or dropped from the ceiling rafters. Suddenly, the room was full of monks, grim and ready to do battle with Tiger Jack. Hell in a handbasket barely did the situation justice.
Tiger Jack made an intricate swooping motion with both arms that loosened his tendons and prepared him mentally for battle. Stepping into a powerful stance created by ancient Wudan masters to minimize the effect of great numbers, Tiger Jack motioned, palm up and with his fingers, for the monks to attack.
With a yell that shook the ancient foundations of the monastery, the small army of Wudan monks attacked in unison. Tiger Jack was instantly a blur of motion, dodging, kicking, punching and striking at sensitive vitals. Several times, he took control of a monk’s body and used him as a shield while forcing the man to use his weapon against his martial brothers. This was a typical tactic that Tiger Jack used against overwhelming odds, but he was both chagrined and impressed to see that these men, despite the singularity of most kung fu styles, had trained together as a unit. They adapted to Tiger Jack’s methods of attack and worked as a single organism with no member getting in the way of the whole. Even as he fought, another part of his brain realized that he had finally met his match. It was taking a small army with precise special training, but Tiger Jack was finally going to be beaten in hand-to-hand combat. There
was only one thing he could do.
Tiger Jack’s moves became faster, too fast for the eye to follow as more than a blur. He began to glow, first lightly and then more and more strongly until he was a man-shaped high wattage bulb smoldering with a baleful, red light. The men attacking him were constantly attacking and receding, like a never ending wave, but they began to realize that, when they were nearer to him, they were feeling nauseous and unwell. Every man that Tiger Jack hit instantly fell down, dead. A glancing blow to a minor area of the body or a direct hit to a vital, it didn’t matter; anyone touched by the glowing body of Tiger Jack dropped lifeless to the floor. The men, knowing what was expected of them, pressed in hoping to overwhelm Tiger Jack before their numbers were depleted. This was just what Tiger Jack wanted from them. As they pressed in, Tiger Jack pressed both palms together and a bright red light exploded silently off his meditative form, spreading out from himself at the epicenter. As the blinding flash moved across the men attacking him, they dropped like so much wheat. After the explosion, there was no one left because Tiger Jack knew Dim Mak, poison hand, the touch of death.
Tiger Jack was left breathing deeply, drenched in sweat. The Dim Mak is very draining, usually shared by a touch and meant to be used on individual foes so that one’s chi would not be so exclusively focused on Yang energy. But Tiger Jack new it was the only way he could have won. A dry, cracked voice broke his reverie as his old Master finally deigned to speak to him “in person.”
“Well done, my student. I didn’t think you would use the Dim Mak, even against the Wudan. I certainly didn’t expect you to survive such a flood of Yang energy,” Zhi Shou clapped lightly, as though at a golf match. “Catch your breath, Ki Chak. If this is to be our final climactic battle, I will have none of your friends claiming I took advantage of you. Would you care to see the garden?”
Nodding, Tiger Jack followed the old man through the room that was now a charnel house and outside to the meditation garden. “Beautiful, is it not,” Zhi Shou said over his shoulder as he gestured at the beautiful garden. “It is likely much as it was when you left, Ki Chak, much as it has been for centuries.”
“It is indeed both the same as when I left and more beautiful for not having seen it in so long,” Tiger Jack agreed, “but it is no longer a picture of the Wudan Order. Even such beauty as this cannot cloak your corruption.”
Zhi Shou turned on Tiger Jack slowly and with a beatific smile on his face. “The West has tainted you, Ki Chak. Where once you knew the meaning of the yin yang, now you only see the black and the white with no part of one touching the other. You will never understand what I had to do to preserve the Wudan, even if what I preserved is different than it once was.”
“Master,” Tiger Jack pleaded, “Listen to yourself! The Wudan of your youth was an Order dedicated to justice! You have preserved a freak mutation of the Wudan, a perversion!”
Zhi Shou waved his hand dismissively, “Despite our love of philosophy, we are men of action, Ki Chak, and this conversation does not become us. You came for battle, though you use the flimsiest of excuses for it. I will give you both of the things you seek, one after the other. I will give you battle, my former student, and, if you defeat me, you will have Kuan Yin’s Sapphire.”
Tiger Jack nodded curtly, “My best friend in the world needs that gem to save his one true love. I fight not only for vengeance, but for friendship and for love. That is why I came to you today, Master, with love in my heart as well as revenge. With vengeance alone as my ally, even in killing you, I would be no better than you.”
“Come then, Shining Blade. I’ll let you try my Wudan style!” Zhi Shou leapt at Tiger Jack in what seemed to be a cloud of silk robe. Not knowing what part of the billowing cloth to block, Tiger Jack leapt deftly out of its way, spinning in the air and landing lightly where Zhi Shou had began.
Only years of fighting the Wudan’s minions could have prepared Tiger Jack for the constant whirling attack that Zhi Shou brought his way from behind his billowing robes. Everywhere he dodged or blocked, the old Master was sending a knuckle, elbow, toe or knee at another vital area of Tiger Jack’s body. Tiger Jack knew that he was the superior fighter on offense, but if he could never get a shot in, the old man would simply outlast him. Despite his age, Tiger Jack was well aware of his old Master’s endurance. When Tiger Jack was young, entire days of his training would be devoted to making constant attacks on Zhi Shou while Zhi Shou blocked every punch and kick and kept up a constant verbal barrage of praise and correction. Tiger Jack had to up the ante of this fight the only way he could. Tiger Jack had to summon the power of the Shining Blade.
Focusing his chi into the edges of his outstretched hands, he felt the subtle change come over his arms from the tips of his fingers to his elbows. Suddenly, the swish thud swish swish thud of the battle between the two men was interrupted by the sound of silk being cut and a short intake of breath as Zhi Shou leapt away from Tiger Jack, blood oozing from one fist.
Sucking his bleeding knuckle, Zhi Shou said, “Behold the glory of the Shining Blade, able to combine the empty handed styles of kung fu with the Wudan’s 8 Divine Swords. Though I have not seen it personally in many years, I am still in awe of it.” The old man, took another step backwards from Tiger Jack and reached into a dense copse of growth in the garden’s landscaping. He pulled out a gold blade, slightly waved down its length, unlike the traditional straight blade of the Wudan style. It was sharp as a razor and seemed to hum in the air even as Zhi Shou held it still, leveled at Tiger Jack’s face.
“I forgot how to fear blades many years ago, Master,” Tiger Jack said with menace in his voice, “even one as beautiful and deadly as yours. Match your blade to the keen edges of my hands and we will finally see who is the best blade of the Wudan.”
Without a word or even a hint of breath, Zhi Shou attacked Tiger Jack. His blade struck high and low, it slashed and attempted to prick, it glinted in the sun and then was hidden in the folds of Zhi Shou’s robe. Zhi Shou’s mastery of the 8 Diving Swords was a miracle, but each time it struck for some vital organ in Tiger Jack’s body, it was met by some portion of his hand or forearm. Fantastically, the sword rang off Tiger Jack’s arms as though it were steel on steel.
And even as Zhi Shou made cut after cut, Tiger Jack began to work in his own offensive. Tiger Jack turned aside Zhi Shou’s strike at his abdomen with his left hand, feeling the ringing shock all the way to his shoulder. Lashing out with a toe quickly, he caught the old man’s kneecap and Zhi Shou stumbled backwards. Tiger Jack brought his right hand around, knife edged and glowing with his chi, the one true Shining Blade of the Wudan, and struck at his master’s face with all his might. On his back, clearly in pain from his wounded knee, Zhi Shou threw his own blade in between his face and the striking hand. Tiger Jack’s hand hit the blade and the sound was like the clear ringing of a perfectly made bell. When the note finally dwindled in the air, Zhi Shou’s blade was split in two and the old Master had finished the earthly part of his journey.
Tiger Jack reached down into the robes at the throat of the now dead old man. Pulling a large, midnight blue sapphire from around Zhi Shou’s neck, he used the Shining Blade technique to cut the chain it dangled from. Staring into the deep, blue center of the gem and standing straight in the early morning sun, Tiger Jack felt the approval of centuries of Wudan monks. Turning his back on the garden and the man who had been his master, Tiger Jack walked back into the monastery. Despite the evidence of the violence done that morning, he felt a surge of pride.
With Zhi Shou gone, Tiger Jack would rebuild the Wudan and see that the 8 Divine Swords served justice instead of vice.
That was for tomorrow. Today, Tiger Jack was prepared to help his best friend rescue the love of his life. “Dr. B’hadgai,” Tiger Jack though with grim resolve, “should be very frightened indeed, though he does not know it. He thinks he knows how to manage the Engineer of the
Impossible, but he has no idea what to do with the Shining Blade of the Wudan.”
Mr. Charlie
Mr. Charlie by jusdealem
Back when I was a child, there was a rather strange man who lived at the end of our street in an old Victorian house with his spinster sister. His name was Charlie, but that's not what most folks called him. Years before, someone had given Charlie the nickname Norman Bates and it had stuck. Over time, Charlie had become our own hometown boogey man. To keep us kids in line, our parents would set rules that always ended with "...or Norman will get you!" When playing outside, we stayed strictly in the front yard, not daring to cross the street even for a wayward ball, for fear that Norman would suddenly appear out of nowhere and surely "get us".
His sister, Ms. Adell, was the local librarian and she managed to get Charlie a job there as the janitor. When I was about ten years old, my mother, too busy with my younger siblings, said I could walk the three blocks to the library all by myself. I could hardly contain my excitement as I ran out through the screen door. The Crawford County Library was my absolute favorite place on earth and I spent many hours there reading Nancy Drew novels and poetry. The best poetry, of course, is a limerick and I liked one that went something like:
There was a young man at our school
Who really thought himself cool.
The girls thought him great
And a really nice date
But I think that he was a fool.
One evening, I was late leaving the library. As I was getting my things and waving goodbye to Ms. Adell, I heard an awful commotion outside on the lawn. Stepping outside, I saw Johnny Reed, the eighth grade bully, and all his cronies gathered around an old man. "Freak!" they yelled in unison. From the steps, I could see that it was Charlie whom they had surrounded. Johnny had a large piece of wood in his right hand and he pointed it at Charlie, "You don't scare me, old man!" He looked so pitiful and confused as the boys scathingly taunted him. Without thinking, I rushed to his side and wrapped my arm in his. "Back off, you bullies!" I screamed at them. "Come on, Mr. Charlie, let's get inside."
He leaned against me as I helped him up the library steps. The boys cursed at me, then began to throw rocks at us. As it so happens, my father, on his way home from work, drove by that very minute and saw the group of boys throwing rocks at his little girl. He immediately stopped the car and ran towards us. Most of them took off running, but he managed to grab Johnny by the shirt collar and wouldn't let him loose. "Hooligins", I heard my father mutter, "going straight to hell in a handbasket if they don't change their ways!" Ms. Adell called Johnny's mother and they all got in alot of trouble that night.
As we were leaving, my father shook Mr Charlie's hand and invited him and Ms. Adell over to our house for Sunday dinner. "Well, take care, Norman." my father said. I gasped at his embarrasing faux pas and he stammered, "Er, uh, Charlie! I'm sorry, I meant Charlie!" Smiling and waving, he quickly ushered me to the car.
After hearing the story, my mother was absolutely dumbfounded about what had happened and said my bravery had earned me a trip to the ice cream parlor. Yum!
Back when I was a child, there was a rather strange man who lived at the end of our street in an old Victorian house with his spinster sister. His name was Charlie, but that's not what most folks called him. Years before, someone had given Charlie the nickname Norman Bates and it had stuck. Over time, Charlie had become our own hometown boogey man. To keep us kids in line, our parents would set rules that always ended with "...or Norman will get you!" When playing outside, we stayed strictly in the front yard, not daring to cross the street even for a wayward ball, for fear that Norman would suddenly appear out of nowhere and surely "get us".
His sister, Ms. Adell, was the local librarian and she managed to get Charlie a job there as the janitor. When I was about ten years old, my mother, too busy with my younger siblings, said I could walk the three blocks to the library all by myself. I could hardly contain my excitement as I ran out through the screen door. The Crawford County Library was my absolute favorite place on earth and I spent many hours there reading Nancy Drew novels and poetry. The best poetry, of course, is a limerick and I liked one that went something like:
There was a young man at our school
Who really thought himself cool.
The girls thought him great
And a really nice date
But I think that he was a fool.
One evening, I was late leaving the library. As I was getting my things and waving goodbye to Ms. Adell, I heard an awful commotion outside on the lawn. Stepping outside, I saw Johnny Reed, the eighth grade bully, and all his cronies gathered around an old man. "Freak!" they yelled in unison. From the steps, I could see that it was Charlie whom they had surrounded. Johnny had a large piece of wood in his right hand and he pointed it at Charlie, "You don't scare me, old man!" He looked so pitiful and confused as the boys scathingly taunted him. Without thinking, I rushed to his side and wrapped my arm in his. "Back off, you bullies!" I screamed at them. "Come on, Mr. Charlie, let's get inside."
He leaned against me as I helped him up the library steps. The boys cursed at me, then began to throw rocks at us. As it so happens, my father, on his way home from work, drove by that very minute and saw the group of boys throwing rocks at his little girl. He immediately stopped the car and ran towards us. Most of them took off running, but he managed to grab Johnny by the shirt collar and wouldn't let him loose. "Hooligins", I heard my father mutter, "going straight to hell in a handbasket if they don't change their ways!" Ms. Adell called Johnny's mother and they all got in alot of trouble that night.
As we were leaving, my father shook Mr Charlie's hand and invited him and Ms. Adell over to our house for Sunday dinner. "Well, take care, Norman." my father said. I gasped at his embarrasing faux pas and he stammered, "Er, uh, Charlie! I'm sorry, I meant Charlie!" Smiling and waving, he quickly ushered me to the car.
After hearing the story, my mother was absolutely dumbfounded about what had happened and said my bravery had earned me a trip to the ice cream parlor. Yum!
Sometimes in My Dreams
Sometimes in My Dreams by Redneck Diva
We were in the church fellowship hall when I saw you across the room, skinny as ever in your blue jeans and button-down shirt. I don’t think I ever, in my entire life, saw you in a t-shirt. That thought just occurred to me, I don’t know why. Now, as I grew older I noticed you switched from cowboy hats to baseball caps, but you never made the transition to a t-shirt. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen any of the old farmers from the neighborhood in t-shirts. Perhaps it's a farmer faux pas.
But there you were, visiting with a church member, one of the older ladies of your generation. I guess you could call her one of your Sunday School cronies. You were listening intently with your head kind of tilted forward like you were really trying to absorb what she was trying to say. I have that picture of you in my head still – when you were in conversation, you tipped your head toward the other person. Maybe you were a little hard of hearing or maybe you really were just paying attention, I’m not sure. Regardless, it was an endearing trait on you. All of the sudden, as I watched you from across the room, you laughed out loud and there is no way I could ever effectively describe in words what you looked like when you were really amused by something. For one thing, your mouth opened really wide, in a “HA!” kind of manner, like whatever was said, either by you or the other person, was the most hilarious and comical thing ever uttered. I seriously doubt it was a limerick - that didn't seem like your style. It might’ve been a funny story from your farming days, maybe a calf on a freak-out tear in the milk barn. It might’ve been a joke or maybe she was just teasing you, but whatever it was, you were amused from head to toe. If you were going to make the effort to get tickled about something, you went all the way with it. I loved that about you.
You patted the lady on the arm and moved on to visit with some other church member, this time a man. A firm handshake is something lost on newer generations, but it was a serious thing back in your day. You shook the man’s hand firmly and I watched as the two of you talked. Even though I couldn’t hear a word of the conversation, I’m pretty sure it was about politics and how the country’s going to go to hell in a handbasket if the Republicans have anything to do with it. I'd heard enough scathingly vehement comments about it and I would just about bet that was the topic of conversation. I leaned on the counter top, my chin in my hand, and watched you with a grin on my face. Politics aren’t of much interest to me, but I couldn’t have cared less if you were talking about Republicans, the price of wheat or what the almanac was predicting for the summer – just watching you was enough.
About that time, Sam caught sight of you and took off in a run. I started to yell at him not to run in church, but decided not to. I’d run to you, too, if I could, but it seemed I was stuck behind the counter. I knew what he was going to do – he wanted to show you his Easter basket which was chock full of colored eggs and candy. You greeted him just like you always greeted the great-grandkids, “Heyyyy! How’s my baby?” and then leaned down to have a look at his basket. He looked up at you and nodded at something you asked and my heart actually ached. You put your hand on his shoulder and the two of you started to walk toward me. Sam grinned and you looked down at him, then back up at me. I had been leaning on the counter top, but stood up as the two of you approached, ready for my own conversation with you. I wanted my turn. You stopped short of where I was and I was dumbfounded as to why. You stooped down to talk to Sam again, then stood and started to speak to me. I felt so excited to have the opportunity to talk to you one more time.
But I opened my eyes and the tears on my pillow taunted me, reminding me that you’re still gone.
We were in the church fellowship hall when I saw you across the room, skinny as ever in your blue jeans and button-down shirt. I don’t think I ever, in my entire life, saw you in a t-shirt. That thought just occurred to me, I don’t know why. Now, as I grew older I noticed you switched from cowboy hats to baseball caps, but you never made the transition to a t-shirt. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen any of the old farmers from the neighborhood in t-shirts. Perhaps it's a farmer faux pas.
But there you were, visiting with a church member, one of the older ladies of your generation. I guess you could call her one of your Sunday School cronies. You were listening intently with your head kind of tilted forward like you were really trying to absorb what she was trying to say. I have that picture of you in my head still – when you were in conversation, you tipped your head toward the other person. Maybe you were a little hard of hearing or maybe you really were just paying attention, I’m not sure. Regardless, it was an endearing trait on you. All of the sudden, as I watched you from across the room, you laughed out loud and there is no way I could ever effectively describe in words what you looked like when you were really amused by something. For one thing, your mouth opened really wide, in a “HA!” kind of manner, like whatever was said, either by you or the other person, was the most hilarious and comical thing ever uttered. I seriously doubt it was a limerick - that didn't seem like your style. It might’ve been a funny story from your farming days, maybe a calf on a freak-out tear in the milk barn. It might’ve been a joke or maybe she was just teasing you, but whatever it was, you were amused from head to toe. If you were going to make the effort to get tickled about something, you went all the way with it. I loved that about you.
You patted the lady on the arm and moved on to visit with some other church member, this time a man. A firm handshake is something lost on newer generations, but it was a serious thing back in your day. You shook the man’s hand firmly and I watched as the two of you talked. Even though I couldn’t hear a word of the conversation, I’m pretty sure it was about politics and how the country’s going to go to hell in a handbasket if the Republicans have anything to do with it. I'd heard enough scathingly vehement comments about it and I would just about bet that was the topic of conversation. I leaned on the counter top, my chin in my hand, and watched you with a grin on my face. Politics aren’t of much interest to me, but I couldn’t have cared less if you were talking about Republicans, the price of wheat or what the almanac was predicting for the summer – just watching you was enough.
About that time, Sam caught sight of you and took off in a run. I started to yell at him not to run in church, but decided not to. I’d run to you, too, if I could, but it seemed I was stuck behind the counter. I knew what he was going to do – he wanted to show you his Easter basket which was chock full of colored eggs and candy. You greeted him just like you always greeted the great-grandkids, “Heyyyy! How’s my baby?” and then leaned down to have a look at his basket. He looked up at you and nodded at something you asked and my heart actually ached. You put your hand on his shoulder and the two of you started to walk toward me. Sam grinned and you looked down at him, then back up at me. I had been leaning on the counter top, but stood up as the two of you approached, ready for my own conversation with you. I wanted my turn. You stopped short of where I was and I was dumbfounded as to why. You stooped down to talk to Sam again, then stood and started to speak to me. I felt so excited to have the opportunity to talk to you one more time.
But I opened my eyes and the tears on my pillow taunted me, reminding me that you’re still gone.
Bitter
Bitter by Bell
“It’s got to be done.”
“Yes, but how? We’ve gone over this, Marjorie.”
Marjorie paced the Oriental carpet as she thought. How could it have come this far? The relationship was never encouraged. The willful independence! How dare she? How could she?
“We simply must make it clear, Mason. No help will be given. No engagement parties, no wedding, no honeymoon. They certainly can’t pay for it. She must come around to reasonable thought. When she does, it may take some time, but people will come to forget this little faux pas. Maybe even, given enough time, Jonathan will again look her way.”
“A faux pas, Mother? Is that what you would call a marriage between two people who love each other?”
Marjorie turned to see Kate at the threshold of the room.
“Darling, of course that’s all it is. It’s something you’ve taken from books, from too many years at girls’ schools. It’s fine to dream about, but that isn’t what marriage is really for. Be reasonable, Darling. We can’t have you walking down the aisle in a peasant dress next to this, this…”
“Freak, Mother. That’s the word I believe you’re looking for. All you see when you look at him are piercings and tattoos. You will never look to see the kind, caring person behind them. You only see what you know your friends will see. Just yesterday he wrote me the most beautiful poem. Let me get it, Mother. It’s right here in my pocket. You must read it. He’s really a gentle and beautiful person. You’d see that if you took the –“
“Put it away, put it away. I don’t want to hear any love poems written by him.”
“Come now, Marjorie. I enjoy a good limerick.”
Mason’s chuckling abruptly ended as he heard the familiar reprimand from his wife.
“Mason!”
It was all it took. Trying to bolster his wife’s argument, he turned to his daughter in all seriousness. “Be reasonable, Katie. You’ll go to hell in a handbasket with this boy and all his cronies.”
“Mason, don’t be vulgar!”
Mason had done all he could. His wife was in charge, and he knew it. He turned his attention to his newspaper and ignored the battle between his wife and daughter.
“Mother, please,” Kate whispered a plea as she began to cry.
“Mother, please,” Marjorie scathingly taunted.
The tears flowed freely now, but Kate’s voice was clear. “It’s the last time I’ll ask, Mother. If you won’t support us, that’s your choice. You can’t bully me any more. I really couldn’t care less about engagement parties or receptions. I just would love it if we could have a relationship beyond this theatrical performance dictated by the social club biddies of the community. I’m finished, Mother. You won’t change my mind. Even without him, I would be done.”
Dumbfounded, Marjorie watched her leave the room. It was over. All her sacrifices were for nothing. Her work was undone. Just like that. There would be no recovering from this. They would cease to be invited to events. No one would come to their own. They would be a laughingstock. And Marjorie would be stuck with him. She looked over at Mason reading his newspaper. She remembered the conversation she had had with her own mother nearly 30 years before. She had been a good girl. She had listened. Now, look what she had. The right husband and the wrong life anyway.
“It’s got to be done.”
“Yes, but how? We’ve gone over this, Marjorie.”
Marjorie paced the Oriental carpet as she thought. How could it have come this far? The relationship was never encouraged. The willful independence! How dare she? How could she?
“We simply must make it clear, Mason. No help will be given. No engagement parties, no wedding, no honeymoon. They certainly can’t pay for it. She must come around to reasonable thought. When she does, it may take some time, but people will come to forget this little faux pas. Maybe even, given enough time, Jonathan will again look her way.”
“A faux pas, Mother? Is that what you would call a marriage between two people who love each other?”
Marjorie turned to see Kate at the threshold of the room.
“Darling, of course that’s all it is. It’s something you’ve taken from books, from too many years at girls’ schools. It’s fine to dream about, but that isn’t what marriage is really for. Be reasonable, Darling. We can’t have you walking down the aisle in a peasant dress next to this, this…”
“Freak, Mother. That’s the word I believe you’re looking for. All you see when you look at him are piercings and tattoos. You will never look to see the kind, caring person behind them. You only see what you know your friends will see. Just yesterday he wrote me the most beautiful poem. Let me get it, Mother. It’s right here in my pocket. You must read it. He’s really a gentle and beautiful person. You’d see that if you took the –“
“Put it away, put it away. I don’t want to hear any love poems written by him.”
“Come now, Marjorie. I enjoy a good limerick.”
Mason’s chuckling abruptly ended as he heard the familiar reprimand from his wife.
“Mason!”
It was all it took. Trying to bolster his wife’s argument, he turned to his daughter in all seriousness. “Be reasonable, Katie. You’ll go to hell in a handbasket with this boy and all his cronies.”
“Mason, don’t be vulgar!”
Mason had done all he could. His wife was in charge, and he knew it. He turned his attention to his newspaper and ignored the battle between his wife and daughter.
“Mother, please,” Kate whispered a plea as she began to cry.
“Mother, please,” Marjorie scathingly taunted.
The tears flowed freely now, but Kate’s voice was clear. “It’s the last time I’ll ask, Mother. If you won’t support us, that’s your choice. You can’t bully me any more. I really couldn’t care less about engagement parties or receptions. I just would love it if we could have a relationship beyond this theatrical performance dictated by the social club biddies of the community. I’m finished, Mother. You won’t change my mind. Even without him, I would be done.”
Dumbfounded, Marjorie watched her leave the room. It was over. All her sacrifices were for nothing. Her work was undone. Just like that. There would be no recovering from this. They would cease to be invited to events. No one would come to their own. They would be a laughingstock. And Marjorie would be stuck with him. She looked over at Mason reading his newspaper. She remembered the conversation she had had with her own mother nearly 30 years before. She had been a good girl. She had listened. Now, look what she had. The right husband and the wrong life anyway.
The Professional
The Professional by MR
It was a dark and stormy night. Actually it was a clear and colder night. Night baseball in September was never meant for Montana, an unforgiving scheduler’s faux pas. He had played through August snow flurries in Butte with a grimace and a chuckle. The night air was more than crisp, it was cold. “This is definitely not Dodger Stadium” he thought to himself as he stood in the on deck circle. Would this be his last at bat? Would this be his last night in uniform playing the game that had consumed his identity since early childhood?
If so, he never dreamed it would end like this. His dreams were of the old tabernacles of the game in the Northeast, the bright lights of metropolitan America, the big show he never made. His aching throwing elbow and surgically repaired knees taunted him, reminding him of the freak collision that transformed from a bonus baby on a fast track to the big leagues into ancient minor leaguer who never made it past Pawtucket or Nantucket, one of those places you hear about in a naughty limerick that just happen to actually exist. His cronies advanced, some excelled, most lived on the fringe of the league, child all stars now utility players and bullpen catchers. But they were in the Show! He made the slow descent back to the Montana rookie league where he would help the Helena club by showing the young studs the ropes of being a professional. Be on time, do your work in the cage, stretch, take care of the body, offer proper respect to your teammates, your coaches and to the game, all these had been his life, his truth.
He was despite his broken down body, the consummate professional. His dream was to retire in a Dodger uniform not as a Helena Handbasket, playing out the string in a rookie league hoping to get another invite to spring training. He was dumbfounded as to what he would do without the game, without the uniform, the clubhouse, ritual that evolved from Little League through his known adulthood. Baseball had been his ticket through school, where with the exception of one veteran English teacher who insisted that he WOULD read Beowulf and write a research paper, his eligibility had been more important than his academics. The game had defined him, and it still did….
Lost in his own rare self awareness was the screaming old man behind him. He began to snap back into the surreal reality of the night. “You don’t need this at bat, I need to see what the kid will do in this situation.” He looked scathingly at the belligerent face stained with tobacco juice who dared to rob him of this moment. “Sorry Skip, I’m going to the plate, it’s who I am, this is my moment.”
That thought quickly passed and he nodded in agreement and headed back into the dugout, offering an unsolicited and unaccepted “be patient up there kid, you dictate the moment, don’t let it control you, get a hit” because that’s what a professional does.
It was a dark and stormy night. Actually it was a clear and colder night. Night baseball in September was never meant for Montana, an unforgiving scheduler’s faux pas. He had played through August snow flurries in Butte with a grimace and a chuckle. The night air was more than crisp, it was cold. “This is definitely not Dodger Stadium” he thought to himself as he stood in the on deck circle. Would this be his last at bat? Would this be his last night in uniform playing the game that had consumed his identity since early childhood?
If so, he never dreamed it would end like this. His dreams were of the old tabernacles of the game in the Northeast, the bright lights of metropolitan America, the big show he never made. His aching throwing elbow and surgically repaired knees taunted him, reminding him of the freak collision that transformed from a bonus baby on a fast track to the big leagues into ancient minor leaguer who never made it past Pawtucket or Nantucket, one of those places you hear about in a naughty limerick that just happen to actually exist. His cronies advanced, some excelled, most lived on the fringe of the league, child all stars now utility players and bullpen catchers. But they were in the Show! He made the slow descent back to the Montana rookie league where he would help the Helena club by showing the young studs the ropes of being a professional. Be on time, do your work in the cage, stretch, take care of the body, offer proper respect to your teammates, your coaches and to the game, all these had been his life, his truth.
He was despite his broken down body, the consummate professional. His dream was to retire in a Dodger uniform not as a Helena Handbasket, playing out the string in a rookie league hoping to get another invite to spring training. He was dumbfounded as to what he would do without the game, without the uniform, the clubhouse, ritual that evolved from Little League through his known adulthood. Baseball had been his ticket through school, where with the exception of one veteran English teacher who insisted that he WOULD read Beowulf and write a research paper, his eligibility had been more important than his academics. The game had defined him, and it still did….
Lost in his own rare self awareness was the screaming old man behind him. He began to snap back into the surreal reality of the night. “You don’t need this at bat, I need to see what the kid will do in this situation.” He looked scathingly at the belligerent face stained with tobacco juice who dared to rob him of this moment. “Sorry Skip, I’m going to the plate, it’s who I am, this is my moment.”
That thought quickly passed and he nodded in agreement and headed back into the dugout, offering an unsolicited and unaccepted “be patient up there kid, you dictate the moment, don’t let it control you, get a hit” because that’s what a professional does.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Untitled
by Peg
Eliza Weathersby moved to Rogansfield from a small town called Farfa a week before starting the 8th grade. She was used to walking through a wooded field to get to the school house, not riding a bus through a bustling suburb to a brick monstrosity called the middle school. She had always done her shopping in the only store in town, Farfa Dime and Dollar. She carried her goods in a handbasket that had been woven long before she was born by her grandmother. She had never seen the likes of the Rogansfield Shopping Plaza or the glossy paper bags that men and women seemed to enjoy cramming with items purchased with credit cards. Eliza was the epitome of a country girl, right down to her sweet southern drawl.
Eliza never imagined herself living in a large city. She never bothered to let her imagination wander to shopping malls, fashion, or boys. Those were things that simply left her dumbfounded. She wasn't the least bit prepared for the changes she would soon find upon moving to the new town. Her grandmother had assured her that she would make new friends and soon forget all about her simple life in Farfa.
The first day of school at Rogansfield was always electrifying. The excitement of reliving summer memories with old friends, starting new classes, and each student securing their place on the social ladder buzzed through the halls as the doors swung open.
Eliza stepped off the yellow school bus and felt the electric currents racing around the school yard. She made her way up the stairs and into the main building as the first bell rang. She hurried to the first classroom listed on her crammed schedule. When she reached room 701 she was sure there had been a mistake. This class was filled with girls and boys that appeared ready for a magazine photo shoot, not school work. She looked at the main door anxiously awaiting a casting director to storm in and remove her from the set.
Not wanting to be embarrassed by a forceful removal, Eliza decided to wait in the girl's restroom for the tardy bell to ring. She figured that after the bell rang, a teacher would appear in the room or a director would start yelling action. That would answer her question.
While standing in the restroom Eliza watched the other girls applying make up and talking about their outfits. She looked at her own clothes and for the first time in her life felt ashamed of her self. She turned her attention to the walls and began reading a toilet humor limerick penned by a student with apparently no sense of etiquette.
A blond girl and her cronies walked in the room and a hush fell over the once talkative crowd.
"Are you new?" The girl shot out at Eliza.
"Umm, yes, I am Eliza new. I mean I am new here, and my name is Eliza." She managed to stammer out.
"Well, it that sweet, now could you move your shit out of my mirror space." The girl replied scathingly while hoisting her enormous make up bag onto the sink.
The other girls began giggling and pointing at Eliza as if she was a caged animal in a zoo. She had never in her life been taunted and she instantly felt like a freak.
"Oh, umm, yes, sure, umm no problem."
Eliza quickly walked into the first bathroom stall and locked the door. She sat on the lid of the toilet and felt her entire body redden with embarrassment. Today was the first day of school and she had apparently made a major status faux-pas.
The tardy bell rang and the gaggle of girls rushed to their classes. Once Eliza thought she was sure the room was empty she slowly unlocked the stall door and walked to the sink. She looked into the mirror and saw the blonde girl staring at her.
"You don't have to be embarrassed, but if I were you I'd not let it happen again." The girl said through her perfectly glossed lips.
Eliza took a deep breath and smiled at the girl, "It's alright sweetie, if my face looked like the ass end of a donkey, I'd want to cover it up quickly too."
Eliza Weathersby moved to Rogansfield from a small town called Farfa a week before starting the 8th grade. She was used to walking through a wooded field to get to the school house, not riding a bus through a bustling suburb to a brick monstrosity called the middle school. She had always done her shopping in the only store in town, Farfa Dime and Dollar. She carried her goods in a handbasket that had been woven long before she was born by her grandmother. She had never seen the likes of the Rogansfield Shopping Plaza or the glossy paper bags that men and women seemed to enjoy cramming with items purchased with credit cards. Eliza was the epitome of a country girl, right down to her sweet southern drawl.
Eliza never imagined herself living in a large city. She never bothered to let her imagination wander to shopping malls, fashion, or boys. Those were things that simply left her dumbfounded. She wasn't the least bit prepared for the changes she would soon find upon moving to the new town. Her grandmother had assured her that she would make new friends and soon forget all about her simple life in Farfa.
The first day of school at Rogansfield was always electrifying. The excitement of reliving summer memories with old friends, starting new classes, and each student securing their place on the social ladder buzzed through the halls as the doors swung open.
Eliza stepped off the yellow school bus and felt the electric currents racing around the school yard. She made her way up the stairs and into the main building as the first bell rang. She hurried to the first classroom listed on her crammed schedule. When she reached room 701 she was sure there had been a mistake. This class was filled with girls and boys that appeared ready for a magazine photo shoot, not school work. She looked at the main door anxiously awaiting a casting director to storm in and remove her from the set.
Not wanting to be embarrassed by a forceful removal, Eliza decided to wait in the girl's restroom for the tardy bell to ring. She figured that after the bell rang, a teacher would appear in the room or a director would start yelling action. That would answer her question.
While standing in the restroom Eliza watched the other girls applying make up and talking about their outfits. She looked at her own clothes and for the first time in her life felt ashamed of her self. She turned her attention to the walls and began reading a toilet humor limerick penned by a student with apparently no sense of etiquette.
A blond girl and her cronies walked in the room and a hush fell over the once talkative crowd.
"Are you new?" The girl shot out at Eliza.
"Umm, yes, I am Eliza new. I mean I am new here, and my name is Eliza." She managed to stammer out.
"Well, it that sweet, now could you move your shit out of my mirror space." The girl replied scathingly while hoisting her enormous make up bag onto the sink.
The other girls began giggling and pointing at Eliza as if she was a caged animal in a zoo. She had never in her life been taunted and she instantly felt like a freak.
"Oh, umm, yes, sure, umm no problem."
Eliza quickly walked into the first bathroom stall and locked the door. She sat on the lid of the toilet and felt her entire body redden with embarrassment. Today was the first day of school and she had apparently made a major status faux-pas.
The tardy bell rang and the gaggle of girls rushed to their classes. Once Eliza thought she was sure the room was empty she slowly unlocked the stall door and walked to the sink. She looked into the mirror and saw the blonde girl staring at her.
"You don't have to be embarrassed, but if I were you I'd not let it happen again." The girl said through her perfectly glossed lips.
Eliza took a deep breath and smiled at the girl, "It's alright sweetie, if my face looked like the ass end of a donkey, I'd want to cover it up quickly too."
Sally, Sally, Sally
Sally, Sally, Sally by Mrs. E
"Had she pulled another faux pas?" Sally wondered as she left her mother-in-law's hospital room. Why was she always saying such innocent things that came out so wrong. Surely everyone knew that she didn't mean anything by her ridiculous ramblings. Clive's family had known her long enought to understand. Right? Sure! Like that was ever going to happen. She knew in her heart that Clive understood. He was always so patient. Why couldn't she just sit around smiling, nodding and looking sweet? Never going to happen.
Sally arrived at the elevator just as the doors were shutting. The man saw her coming, and she waved for him to hold the door, but did he oblige her? No. She was dumbfounded that even strangers seemed to be against her. Now even the elevator taunted her as it left her behind standing there gaping and shaking her head.
What kind of a freak was she? Well, if you must know, all of her cronies thought she was an exceptionally nice freak. No one would ever call her ordinary. She wanted to let the world know that if they didn't like the way she was--- well, they could all just go to hell in a handbasket, whatever that meant. She had heard that phrase used countless times in her life and yes, she used it herself, but she didn't quite know how you could go to hell in a handbasket or for that matter exactly what a handbasket was. She needed to research that sometime when she got a chance.
Any way she wanted to tell them off but she never quite had the nerve. Once she wrote a cute limerick expressing how she felt but then, she never shared it with anyone because she didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. It really was a good limerick. It followed all the rules she had learned in school about the 1st, 2nd, and 5th lines rhyming and having 8 syllables while the 3rd and 4th lines rhymed and had only 6, or something like that. Yes, maybe she was a headcase but she knew her way around a poem and was quite proud of herself. So his family wasn't impressed with her degree from a small not quite up to snuff local college, Clive accepted her and all of her ideosyncracies. She was his headcase and he loved her.
When the elevator finally stopped to pick her up, she had regained her composure and was ready to face the world. She climbed on the bus and started the long dreary trip home. Why was February so grey? It's the month of love, red hearts, candy and flowers so why was it so depressing?
Sally knew she had to shake off the blues so she tried closing her eyes and humming to herself. It was no use. Even with her eyes closed, she could see the looks everyone had given her as she fled the room. Scathingly, they turned their noses up. Their looks and body language said it all. What did their darling Clive see in this misfit? She had no sense of propriety. She just let fly any silly thing that came into her head. Did she have no sense of decency?
Well, of course she did. She had just been raised in one of those relaxed families where laughter was the norm. They laughed and made jokes of everything. That was the way they dealt with grief or tragedy or illness or any of life's many set backs. Clive's family didn't get that. Everything was so solemn, so reserved, so downright blah. How had Clive survived this cold no nonsense raising and become such a wonderfully, perceptive man? She didn't have the answer to that and didn't know if she ever would. What she did know was that when she got home, he would come in, place his arms around her, and make everything all right. He was good that way.
Maybe by the time she went back to the hospital tomorrow evening the family would have forgotten her lapse of dignity. Oh well, maybe they would let it slide, and maybe they wouldn't. She had more important things to concern her now. For instance, she really felt the need to get to the computer and find out what it meant to go to hell in a handbasket.
"Had she pulled another faux pas?" Sally wondered as she left her mother-in-law's hospital room. Why was she always saying such innocent things that came out so wrong. Surely everyone knew that she didn't mean anything by her ridiculous ramblings. Clive's family had known her long enought to understand. Right? Sure! Like that was ever going to happen. She knew in her heart that Clive understood. He was always so patient. Why couldn't she just sit around smiling, nodding and looking sweet? Never going to happen.
Sally arrived at the elevator just as the doors were shutting. The man saw her coming, and she waved for him to hold the door, but did he oblige her? No. She was dumbfounded that even strangers seemed to be against her. Now even the elevator taunted her as it left her behind standing there gaping and shaking her head.
What kind of a freak was she? Well, if you must know, all of her cronies thought she was an exceptionally nice freak. No one would ever call her ordinary. She wanted to let the world know that if they didn't like the way she was--- well, they could all just go to hell in a handbasket, whatever that meant. She had heard that phrase used countless times in her life and yes, she used it herself, but she didn't quite know how you could go to hell in a handbasket or for that matter exactly what a handbasket was. She needed to research that sometime when she got a chance.
Any way she wanted to tell them off but she never quite had the nerve. Once she wrote a cute limerick expressing how she felt but then, she never shared it with anyone because she didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. It really was a good limerick. It followed all the rules she had learned in school about the 1st, 2nd, and 5th lines rhyming and having 8 syllables while the 3rd and 4th lines rhymed and had only 6, or something like that. Yes, maybe she was a headcase but she knew her way around a poem and was quite proud of herself. So his family wasn't impressed with her degree from a small not quite up to snuff local college, Clive accepted her and all of her ideosyncracies. She was his headcase and he loved her.
When the elevator finally stopped to pick her up, she had regained her composure and was ready to face the world. She climbed on the bus and started the long dreary trip home. Why was February so grey? It's the month of love, red hearts, candy and flowers so why was it so depressing?
Sally knew she had to shake off the blues so she tried closing her eyes and humming to herself. It was no use. Even with her eyes closed, she could see the looks everyone had given her as she fled the room. Scathingly, they turned their noses up. Their looks and body language said it all. What did their darling Clive see in this misfit? She had no sense of propriety. She just let fly any silly thing that came into her head. Did she have no sense of decency?
Well, of course she did. She had just been raised in one of those relaxed families where laughter was the norm. They laughed and made jokes of everything. That was the way they dealt with grief or tragedy or illness or any of life's many set backs. Clive's family didn't get that. Everything was so solemn, so reserved, so downright blah. How had Clive survived this cold no nonsense raising and become such a wonderfully, perceptive man? She didn't have the answer to that and didn't know if she ever would. What she did know was that when she got home, he would come in, place his arms around her, and make everything all right. He was good that way.
Maybe by the time she went back to the hospital tomorrow evening the family would have forgotten her lapse of dignity. Oh well, maybe they would let it slide, and maybe they wouldn't. She had more important things to concern her now. For instance, she really felt the need to get to the computer and find out what it meant to go to hell in a handbasket.
A DaY tO ReMeMbEr
A DaY tO ReMeMbEr by Cazzie
It was a day that the small town of Limerick would never forget, a day that would be etched in the minds and indeed, the very skins of every single taunted resident.
In the house that the hand basket maker lived, also lived two old cronies, age did not weary them...not like the people who lived next door to them, that's for sure. The people next door were always calling the fuzz, every day of their lives. Complaining about the smell resonating from the house..I mean, what would you do if you had the scent of a sewer next door? You would surely call the authorities.
Not this morning, this morning, there was no phone call, no police visit, no blaring sirens to awaken the whole neighbourhood. What WAS wrong with these people?
I sat in our front yard tree, eating my red shiny apple, watching, waiting for action. Nothing...so I skipped on across the road to have a perve in the window of the old cronies and hand basket maker's abode, a faux pas in these parts I know, nevertheless, I wanted to know what WAS going on.
The sight before me was alarming...I was in shock, they were all sitting there playing cards..WITH the neighbours. All the fights they had had over the years.
Then, the worst freak scathingly looked up at me. The hand basket maker leaped out through the window, "Gotcha kiddo". I scampered free, ran down the road, only to look behind me and see them all chasing me, they were stark raving lunatics, NUDE lunatics at that!!!
My Dad came running out of our house to see what the commotion was all about, he had a stroke and died on the spot. I think the sight of the naked old gits was just too much for him. His death dumbfounded many people.
Yep, the story of the old cronies, the hand basket maker and their neighbours was one for the history books of this town. The memories taunted by this. Never before had anyone been so brazen as to run naked down the main street..... on what was Christmas Day.
It was a day that the small town of Limerick would never forget, a day that would be etched in the minds and indeed, the very skins of every single taunted resident.
In the house that the hand basket maker lived, also lived two old cronies, age did not weary them...not like the people who lived next door to them, that's for sure. The people next door were always calling the fuzz, every day of their lives. Complaining about the smell resonating from the house..I mean, what would you do if you had the scent of a sewer next door? You would surely call the authorities.
Not this morning, this morning, there was no phone call, no police visit, no blaring sirens to awaken the whole neighbourhood. What WAS wrong with these people?
I sat in our front yard tree, eating my red shiny apple, watching, waiting for action. Nothing...so I skipped on across the road to have a perve in the window of the old cronies and hand basket maker's abode, a faux pas in these parts I know, nevertheless, I wanted to know what WAS going on.
The sight before me was alarming...I was in shock, they were all sitting there playing cards..WITH the neighbours. All the fights they had had over the years.
Then, the worst freak scathingly looked up at me. The hand basket maker leaped out through the window, "Gotcha kiddo". I scampered free, ran down the road, only to look behind me and see them all chasing me, they were stark raving lunatics, NUDE lunatics at that!!!
My Dad came running out of our house to see what the commotion was all about, he had a stroke and died on the spot. I think the sight of the naked old gits was just too much for him. His death dumbfounded many people.
Yep, the story of the old cronies, the hand basket maker and their neighbours was one for the history books of this town. The memories taunted by this. Never before had anyone been so brazen as to run naked down the main street..... on what was Christmas Day.
Friday, April 20, 2007
If you'll excuse me please
While I have no intention of making this a common occurence, I am extending The Nation of Hillmomba challenge deadline to Monday, April 23rd.
Why?
I have a hot date with Sigmund Freud this weekend. No, that wasn't a Freudian slip, I'm just writing a paper about him and it is consuming my very being - which means (from what I've learned so far, anyway) that according to Freud I have a secret desire to date my father and lick a Congressman's toes while wearing sunglasses. Or something like that.
Regardless of any repression going on, that's the only writing going on around here and because I missed last week's challenge and I'm kind of the boss.......well, anyway, have your stories in by Monday, dammit.
Why?
I have a hot date with Sigmund Freud this weekend. No, that wasn't a Freudian slip, I'm just writing a paper about him and it is consuming my very being - which means (from what I've learned so far, anyway) that according to Freud I have a secret desire to date my father and lick a Congressman's toes while wearing sunglasses. Or something like that.
Regardless of any repression going on, that's the only writing going on around here and because I missed last week's challenge and I'm kind of the boss.......well, anyway, have your stories in by Monday, dammit.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
The Writing Challenge - "Nation of Hillmomba" Edition
Oklahoma's weather has been insane this past week and my computer has been shut down and unplugged since Thursday night because of the highly electrified atmosphere around here. Usually my personality is pretty electric, in and of itself, but the weather even outdid me the last few days.
But now, I'm back in action and (drum roll please) hooked up to broadband internet (wild applause here), so all should be groovy from here on out. Or until the next storm rolls in.
Hillbilly Mom sent me her list of The Words nearly a week ago, but they've been locked away in a 55-gallon drum for safe-keeping until now. So now, with crowbar in hand, I present to you...
The Words for this week's Writing Challenge - "Nation of Hillmomba" Edition:
faux pas
taunted
handbasket
limerick
dumbfounded
freak
scathingly
cronies
Writing is open NOW and all stories must be submitted by Saturday, April 21st.
Get writing, by cracky!
But now, I'm back in action and (drum roll please) hooked up to broadband internet (wild applause here), so all should be groovy from here on out. Or until the next storm rolls in.
Hillbilly Mom sent me her list of The Words nearly a week ago, but they've been locked away in a 55-gallon drum for safe-keeping until now. So now, with crowbar in hand, I present to you...
The Words for this week's Writing Challenge - "Nation of Hillmomba" Edition:
faux pas
taunted
handbasket
limerick
dumbfounded
freak
scathingly
cronies
Writing is open NOW and all stories must be submitted by Saturday, April 21st.
Get writing, by cracky!
Monday, April 9, 2007
Well done, Hillbilly Grasshopper
The poll is closed and it's official - Hillbilly Mom is this week's winner!!!
Stop by her blog and congratulate her or just say it here - she checks in here often while she bounces her chilly Ice Baby on her hillbilly knee.
Okay, so now Hillbilly Mom, it's up to you to provide us with a new list of The Words by Thursday. Get crackin', by cracky!
To everyone else, tell your friends, tell your neighbors - we need more story submissions! (We also need more voters, but we'll tackle that after we get more writers.) So write! And make your friends write! They'll thank you for it. Trust me.
Questions? Email me. The little white box in the upper part of the sidebar tells you how to do it.
Stop by her blog and congratulate her or just say it here - she checks in here often while she bounces her chilly Ice Baby on her hillbilly knee.
Okay, so now Hillbilly Mom, it's up to you to provide us with a new list of The Words by Thursday. Get crackin', by cracky!
To everyone else, tell your friends, tell your neighbors - we need more story submissions! (We also need more voters, but we'll tackle that after we get more writers.) So write! And make your friends write! They'll thank you for it. Trust me.
Questions? Email me. The little white box in the upper part of the sidebar tells you how to do it.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Super Tiger Dragon wants you to vote
Voting is open in the second Writing Challenge, the one known as Super Tiger Dragon. Your humble host did not participate this round because her life sucks this week. You can forge on without her this once. Super Tiger Dragon has faith in your abilities, Grasshopper.
Vote once for your favorite story and feel free to leave comments.
Voting closes Monday night around 10ish.
Vote once for your favorite story and feel free to leave comments.
Voting closes Monday night around 10ish.
When you think you are all alone in the Outback…
When You Think You Are All Alone in the Outback
by
The day was set to be a lovely clear one. Nothing in particular seemed out of place, it all appeared normal. That was until I turned around, what I thought was my shadow, was not my shadow. It was, indeed, the sky above, becoming darker and the air felt cooler by the second.
I looked to my left, over there, behind the hill, there was a place to find cover. In the Outback, the weather can change so suddenly. A cloudburst could dump thousands of litres of water in a matter of minutes. The wind could whoop up and push away the clouds and the Sun would shine through vividly. The ground, so arid, would sop up the rain in minutes, leaving the place looking just as it was before the rain even came.
Plodding footsteps came from behind me. Could it be a kangaroo? No, it was too heavily set to be a kangaroo, and I was not about to stop and look around, I wanted to get undercover.
Flummoxed by the sound even so, I kept my pace. I finally reached the hill, I found a rock ledge protruding from the hill and took shelter there. A cacophony of screetches ensued. It was the sound a flock of Gala’s flying hurriedly for cover, alerting each other to the ensuing rain.
Then, it hit, the deluge of water making the rock face all shiny and smooth looking. Those footsteps from before, they were those of a little Aboriginal fellow. He began speaking in his native tongue, I could not understand him. His expression on his face one of excitement, mixed with alarm. I was not sure what it was he wanted. He scooped up some of the Outback dirt in his hand, held it out under the running water that was dripping off of the rock above us and made the dirt into a paste.
With finesse, he proceeded to mark the underbelly of the rock with indigenous art icons. I remembered in high school, the study of general arts. Australian aboriginal art is a representation of visual history of the stories, song, dance and spiritual beliefs of the indigenous people of Australia. It plays an important cultural role in the "passing on" of traditions, myths and history. Originally, the art was painted on surfaces such as walls of caves, rocks and Aboriginal bodies for ceremonies. The form and style of Australian Aboriginal art is very different by region in Australia and by artist. Indigenous Australian art is tribal in nature, often with imperfections, with color and iconography or symbols used as part of the story telling process.
The boy was drawing me, evidently, a white woman with a scarf on her head, then he drew himself, the boy with long curly hair, strikingly white teeth and a bright yellow T-Shirt. Then, I thought he was finger painting an image of a monkey, but it turned out to be that of, what seemed to be, a little girl. Yes, it was a little girl, she was stuck inside a corrugated iron shed. This thought triggered a plethora of emotions for me, I was remembering a time when I was trapped as a little girl, down in a water well…
I had to get a grip. I knew that we needed to make a break for it, run for it, but to where? He seemed to know the way. I followed, using his footsteps as guidance, as the rain was pelting down again. We came to an abrupt stop. The boy ushered me underneath the verandah of the shed, the one he drew. I could hear a call for help. Inside my backpack I remembered I had a key. I felt around for it, through the change that was floating around the bottom of the bag, as well as the pens and crayons and markers I had in there. Ahhh, the key, I unlocked the door to the shed, it was, afterall, my place. The girl had gotten in through the small loo window, and could not get out. Her sigh of relief was music to her brother’s ears.
Today I had met two lovely friends, who would soon teach me the customs of the Indigenous people of this land. What I had to offer them in return, I was yet to figure out.
Rainy Days and Mondays
Rainy Days and Mondays
by
The sun was shining for the first time in many days. Bobbi couldn't bring herself to actually go outside to enjoy the break in the weather. She was totally flummoxed. How could she act normal? What was normal? She had just received the notice that the divorce was final.
She was relieved or at least she thought she was. She had been waiting on the papers for some time now. So she and Joe were now officially divorced. After all that was what she wanted. So why did she feel so empty. Their relationship had never been amicable. It was just that animal magnetism thing. The only thing they had in common was they were good together in bed. Ah yes, those were the best times they had had over the past few years. They had nothing else in common. What had she been thinking? Well, you know sometimes passion has been known to monkey around with clear thinking. Oh well, she was thinking clearly now and that was what counted.
Bobbi thought that she had handled the break up with great finesse. She had packed up all of Joe's things, set them on the front porch so that he would find them when he got home from his business trip, and changed the locks. Sure the cacophony when he returned home and couldn't get in was quite annoying. The neighbors sure had been insensitive to what Bobbi was going through. If they had just been patient and waited for a few hours before calling the police, she was sure that Paul would have stopped all the ranting and plethora of cursing. Oh well, the police did take care of everything, showing up with their shiny badges and weapons. At least that whole bad scene was over.
Bobbi's problem now was that she couldn't shake off this feeling of depression. She had thought that by this time she would have been ready to get back out there on the dating scene. She knew that even though she was older now, she still had what it takes to get noticed by the opposite sex. Some good looking hunk out there would want to monkey around with her if she could just once force herself out into the world again.
Bobbi looked out at the sun and decided that today was day to start over. She showered, fixed her hair and makeup, and headed out the door. But where was the sunshine? Where had all of those clouds come from? How was she supposed to start her life over? As the cloudburst poured down buckets of rain, Bobbi thought I could sure use Joe right now.
The Ice Baby Cometh
The Ice Baby Cometh
by
She was born into a cold, heartless world. The Ice Baby. Never having known her own family, she was chunked unceremoniously into a bag, a bag which was immediately cinched shut. The Ice Baby, and countless other ice babies born that day, were abducted from their birthplace within minutes, and trucked across creation.
It was cold in the truck. OH SO COLD. The Ice Baby held her breath. If she ever had a breath of life to call her own. The back of the truck was pitch dark. The Ice Baby could not see, but sensed a plethora of ice babies allaround her. Crushing her, even, in their flummoxed, disoriented state. The Ice Baby did not think to panic.She endured. It was her nature.
The truck rumbled through the land, bumping, thumping, jouncing its precious cargo without remorse. Where it stopped, the Ice Baby did not know. The door was flung open. Intermittent flashes of light flooded the compartment.The calloused hands of hard-muscled men grabbed at her. She did not want to leave the cold, dark truck. Certainly she would perish, once removed from her safe haven. The men tossed her this way and that, in the rough manner of men, with little finesse. The Ice Baby would not have fought them if she could. It was not in her nature.
The Ice Baby was thrown onto a type of wheeled conveyance, and rolled through a sudden deluge into her new foster home. This cloudburst was surely an omen of the life that lay before her. Upon exiting the truck, a cacophony of epic proportions had greeted her. The Ice Baby knew not what the sounds were, but only that she longed to return to her peaceful existence in the cold,dark truck. But the Ice Baby did nothing. It was her nature.
The chapped, chilled hands of the men grabbed the Ice Baby again. She was tossed into her new room, a room shared with a great number of her ice baby companions from the truck. The Ice Baby didn't mind sharing. It was normal for her. In fact, she would have thought it odd if they were separated. If the Ice Baby was capable of thought. She had been at her new home for a mere week when the Boy came into her life. He was a medium-sized boy, with a bit of a monkey face. He chose the Ice Baby from the multitude lying about the room with her. His hands were smaller than those of the men, more gentle. The Boy slid the Ice Baby from her resting place. The Ice Baby did not resist. It was not in her nature.
The Boy had been sent on this mission by his Mother. She provided him the funds to purchase the Ice Baby. But with Mother's money came strict instructions: do not cradle this ice baby like the last one. Yes. The Boy understood. He knew he had held the last ice baby too tightly, and had overheated her little body. They had barely made it home with her. This time, he was careful. He did not cradle this Ice Baby. He grasped her by the tousled topknot, careful not to touch her precious body.
The Ice Baby dangled, and swung to and fro as the Boy carried her to the car. She felt no pain. No fear. She had never been cradled, anyway, this Ice Baby. The shiny silver barrette in her pale hank of hair did not even slip. This Boy was calm, careful. The Boy placed the Ice Baby on the back seat, beside his Brother. He laid her on his old coat, and covered her with his new coat. He didn't need the coats. The temperature had reached 81 degrees today. The boy wanted to protect the Ice Baby from the sun, which had emerged from the unexpected cloudburst, unscathed. It did not enter his mind to strap the Ice Baby into a car seat. His Mother grunted,"Get in the car. We've got to get her home." The Boy climbed in.
The Ice Baby could not see where she was going. She layon the softest thing that had ever touched her small body.This ride was smoother than the truck ride, though noisier.The family talked, but not to the Ice Baby. The Ice Babydidn't mind. It was her nature.
When the family arrived home, Mother parked the car inthe garage, and gathered her purse. The Boy and hisBrother jumped out of the car and ran up the steps to theporch. Three dogs and two cats greeted them, amidst muchgalloping and gamboling and whining and licking. Motherwent into the house to start supper. The Boy and his Brotherstraggled in to do what boys do after a long day of school.
The Ice Baby lay patiently on the seat of the car. She began to get quite warm. A bit of liquid seeped out of her. The IceBaby was not embarrassed. Nobody had ever fussed over her. She waited. She expected nothing. It was her nature.
By and by, the Mother had a feeling that something was amiss. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it lingered near the fringes of her consciousness. What was it? She screamed: "THE ICE BABY! We've forgotten theIce Baby in the car! Boy! Go get her! NOW!"
The Boy ran to the car. He saw the Ice Baby, prone in apuddle of her own secretions, and was ashamed. The IceBaby could not care for herself. He had left her alone inthe hot car for nearly 30 minutes. Mother would be angry.He picked up the Ice Baby by her tresses, and carried her gingerly to the kitchen door, drops of her essence leaving a trail across the sun-faded boards of the porch. Holding the Ice Baby at arm's length, the Boy poked his head into the kitchen. "Look at her, Mother. She's full up to her waist, and she's still leaking." He held her up for Mother to view, much the way a fisherman holds a prize catch for a photographer.
Mother grabbed a sharp, black-handled kitchen knife."Don't bring her in here! Hold her over the rail!" The Boy moved quickly across the deck, and dangled the Ice Baby over the 15-foot drop to the backyard. Mother rushed to his side, and quietly, deftly, stabbed the IceBaby's bottom with a flash of her kitchen knife. Two sharp jabs. "There. Hold her until she's done."
The Boy held the Ice Baby dutifully. When Mother was gone, he hugged the Ice Baby close to his chest. Her fluids drained quickly, splashing onto the barren ground below. The pets watched, heads tilted. A yellow cat ran down to lick the Ice Baby's juices from the soil.
"I think you're done now," the Boy said softly. Adjusting his grip on the Ice Baby's topknot, he carefully carried her through the kitchen. "Put her in the freezer," commanded Mother. "She's worse than the last one." The Boy placed the Ice Baby on the third shelf, next to a box of State Fair corn dogs.
"Don't worry about the Ice Baby anymore, Mother. She's in a better place now."
Vox Oraculum
VOX ORACULUM
by
The costumed hero floated gently down to the rooftop astride his unlikely cotton-colored conveyance, alighting easily and quickly sinking through the cloudlike mass as it dissipated back into the ether from which it was called until he stood firmly on the building itself. He took a few strides to the edge of the roof, glancing over the side to catch the work of a potential recruit in action; he would have had a much better vantage point from the sky, but had been afraid that one of the earth-bound players would have noticed a 6’3”, 240 lb. figure in a brightly colored costume floating over-head on what could easily be mistaken for a cumulonimbus. If he had been forced to engage in the battle below, it would have been a chaotic mélange of brute force, sonic booms, and broken bones, as opposed to the exercise in finesse being practiced by the rookie hero unknowingly under his scrutiny, the latest in a long line to adopt the costumed identity of Balance.
He grunted as he noted how long the fight was taking; the new Balance obviously outstripped her opponents in every way, and could have easily trounced the thugs in the amount of time it would take for their pilfered possessions to fall to the ground from out of their limp arms. But instead, the lithe brunette was drawing the confrontation out, content to furnish three or four lesser blows to each combatant in lieu of the finishing blows that were wide open to a super with her enhanced physicality.
It was a trait he had observed in some of the pervious Balances – the only one to actually be a member of Vox Aequitas had explained the philosophy behind it as an attempt to demoralize opponents
“If I take them out with one blow,” the middle-aged Balance had explained in a thick brogue, “then there’s every chance they’ll use their immense powers of self-delusion to talk themselves into thinking I just got in a lucky punch. But, if I prolong the battle, and outshine them at every turn, then they may finally get it through their thick skulls that they’re outmatched, and possibly be willing to forego engaging in such activity again.”
"Either that, or they’ll spend all of their time in the pen obsessing over how you humiliated them, and set out to become your new arch-nemeses.”
The British Balance had merely laughed at his teammate’s gruff prognosis. “A ray of sunshine as always, my friend, a ray of sunshine.”
The hero closed his eyes in regret; it hurt to think of the former Balance, just as it hurt to think of any of the long gone members of the Vox. But he had spent too much time in regret, too much time wallowing in seclusion, a fact he had recently had his nose rubbed in thanks to some tough love from the vigilante known as Bloodstain. Now, he was determined to reform Vox Aequitas and wipe away the shame and disappointment which had accumulated
"Shame, shame, Cloudburst. I’m disappointed; very disappointed.”
Startled by the words which seemed to echo his thoughts so closely, the hero whirled around, instinctively sheathing his fists in miniature storm clouds crackling with energy instants away from blasting the figure hidden in the shadows.
“I mean, I can’t believe you’re getting the band back together and haven’t asked me!”
As a tall, lanky figure in a motley costume ambled from the shadows into the light, Cloudburst allowed the energy encircling his fists to discharge harmlessly around him; he was all too familiar with this character.
“Ooo, shiny!” the wiry man exclaimed at the light show produced by Cloudburst’s energy release.
“What do you want, Gremlin?”
“Um, I believe I’ve already established that I’m here to lodge a complaint about not being asked to be a part of the Vox reunion tour.” Gremlin cooked his head quizzically. “Now, is it deafness or senility to blame for you missing that? I know how spotty you old folks can be.”
Cloudburst silently gritted his teeth and counted to twenty – getting irked by Gremlin’s antics served no purpose, but it was nearly impossible for him to control his temper around the wisecracker. Choosing to ignore the senior citizen crack (especially since, from what he had gleaned, Gremlin had probably been around for the signing of the Magna Carta), Cloudburst addressed the complaint directly.
“First of all, it would be hard to ask you to be part of a reunion since you were never on the original team –“
“True, but then again, neither are ¾ of the group you’ve recruited so far.” Gremlin flashed his bizarrely wide grin, which Cloudburst strove to ignore; he wasn’t about to fall into the trap of pondering how Gremlin knew about the reformation of Vox Aequitas, let alone who had been selected. The pest popped up in the most unlikely of places, equipped with information as infallible as it was esoteric, making him both an indispensable aid and an infuriating nuisance.
“Second of all,” Cloudburst continued, “when you actually were invited to join Vox you refused membership, claiming that you didn’t, and I quote, ‘play well with others’.”
Gremlin gasped in exaggerated shock. “Will wonders never cease . . . you actually do listen to what I say.”
“Well, for once, I agreed.”
Gremlin smirked. “I’m sure you did. And, I hope that you’ll agree with what I’m about to tell you now, because you definitely need to listen this time, ‘Burst; a lot of lives depend on it.”
Cloudburst’s jaw tightened as he heard Gremlin’s voice take on the sonorous tone which signaled the quirky crime had been overtaken by the power of prophecy.
“Heed your instincts, ‘Burst,” Gremlin intoned, “for the Voice of Justice has rarely been needed as sorely as it soon shall be. But remember that lesson once hard taught, that few are what they seem, and mysteries reside within us all, whether we acknowledge them or not; the new chords added to your symphony might sound pure and true at first, but if not carefully tuned, your harmony will breed cacophony, which then will spell calamity.”
Cloudburst shook his head, flummoxed by the windings of Gremlin’s pronouncement. He had once been told by the occult adventurer Mister Myster that those with the mystical gift of prophecy (as opposed to the more mundane gift of precognition) were slaves to whatever forces spoke through them, so he couldn’t very well blame Gremlin for the words which had just escaped his lips. But at the same time, Cloudburst had always had a strong, almost primal, distaste for all things connected with magic and mysticism, and any encounter with such supernatural forces instantly set his teeth on edge.
“And what, pray tell, does that mean?”
Gremlin’s eyes lost their thousand-yard star, and regained their normal twinkle. “It means this, my literal minded friend: Some serve as a boon / some serve as a curse / some secrets for better / still others for worse.”
Cloudburst allowed a small growl to escape his lips; the initial prophecy may have been the product of some larger guiding force, but that last bit of doggerel was all Gremlin. “You realize that you’ve just given me reason to doubt every single member of the team; I’m going to be second-guessing each of them every step of the way.”
The enigmatic hero nodded sadly. “True enough, I’m afraid, but ask yourself this: would not the old Vox have benefited from such questioning?” The question left Cloudburst momentarily speechless; it was difficult to refute Gremlin’s point. In many ways, it reflected thoughts that had dwelled in Cloudburst’s head ever since the unfortunate events which marked the final adventure of the previous incarnation of Vox Aequitas – reflected the thoughts so well in fact that, not for the first time, Cloudburst wondered if, despite frequent claims to the contrary, telepathy was included in the large back of tricks wielded by Gremlin.
Although he thought he knew what the answer would be, Cloudburst still felt compelled to ask the question. “How do I know that you’re telling the truth?”
The wiry hero drew himself ramrod straight, puffing out his chest and fixing his face into a rictus of outrage. “How dare you question The Great Gremlini!” he exclaimed, twirling around and sweeping his arms around his head with a theatrical flourish. “Am I not the Jester of Justice?” he cried, suddenly bounding through the air over Cloudburst’s head, then springing off sideways to the northern edge of the roof. “Am I not the one chosen to wield the Wrench of the Monkey?” he asked, his long arm sweeping out to graze the rooftop AC unit, which instantly began to stutter and hiss, a victim of Gremlin’s innate anti-technological nature. “Am I not –“
Cloudburst drew in a deep breath, tuning out the indignant rant. He knew that once his mercurial companion had slipped into such histrionics, there was only one way to put a stop to it: sink to his level.
“Am you not done yet?” he barked as his overly dramatic companion launched himself into the air yet again. At Cloudburst’s outburst, Gremlin clutched at his chest, let out an agonized groan, and slammed into the ground.
“Bad . . . grammar . . . my only . . . weakness . . . how . . . did you . . . know . . .”
Cloudburst squeezed his eyes shut, reaching up to fiercely massage the bridge of his nose before letting out an exasperated “Grem . . .”
Gremlin – who had drawn himself into a fetal position, twitching frantically – rose to his feet in a fluid motion, affixing Cloudburst with a mischievous grin.
“Well done with the grammar-bomb, ‘Burst; there might be hope for you yet. You really need to laugh more; it’ll add years to your life.”
“Is that prophecy or platitude?”
“Can’t it be both?” Gremlin asked earnestly before shaking his head. “No, ‘tis not one of my plethora of prophecies, I’m afraid, just some advice from a long-time ally.” Gremlin paused, as if carefully weighing his words. “’Burst, I know we have our differences, but you know I’ve never steered you or any of the others wrong in the past. Take my words with a grain of salt if you must, but do think on them; I promise it’s important.”
“But you have no idea why it’s important?”
Gremlin just shrugged; most of his power worked more on instinct than anything else.
“Besides,” Gremlin continued as he began to move back towards the shadows, “pondering that might take your mind off of other things.”
“What other things?” Cloudburst asked, regretting the question as soon as it escaped his lips.
“Oh, you know, things like the fact that you still don’t know why, 25 years ago, you suddenly manifested super-powers, almost like . . . well, magic.”
Cloudburst’s jaw dropped, but before he could utter a word his impish companion let out a maniacal giggle, burst into a double back handspring, and launched himself into the dark corners of the roof. Cloudburst didn’t even attempt to follow; long experience taught him that once Gremlin wanted to disappear, he was gone, and no tracker alive could find him.
The hero’s attention was diverted from the shadows which had swallowed the soothsayer by the sound of police sirens below; he walked back to his original post overlooking the alleyway where he could now see Balance’s easily bested prey, trussed up in immaculate knots awaiting their impending arrest. Cloudburst allowed himself a moment to admire her handiwork before the question set in: “What’s her secret? Is it a boon or a curse?” He tried to shake it off, but Gremlin’s words held fast in his mind.
“He said everyone had a secret,” he thought glumly. “Does that include me?”
As the uniformed officers swooped in to corral the helpless offenders, Cloudburst turned away from the roof’s edge, conjuring forth his once pristine conveyance, now dark and stormy to match his mood, and rode it into the sky, oblivious to all but the echoes of the voice of prophecy ringing in his ears, his head lost in the clouds.
Doom Strikes Anew!
Ajax Stewart, Engineer of the Impossible
In
Ask not for whom the Wedding Bell tolls!
In
Ask not for whom the Wedding Bell tolls!
Part Two: Doom Strikes Anew!
The Pyramid has hung above Rio de Janeiro for a little over a year and roughly five miles up. Easily several miles across at the base, it is a giant pyramid made of thousands, perhaps millions, of smaller interlocking pyramids and triangles. Its construction resembles clear PVC pipe threaded with purple neon tubes, although many have seen it withstand blows that would splinter such sundry materials. It looks like an advertisement from Blade Runner. Or a floating casino. Or an overindulged rich kid’s art project. It looks nothing like a time machine so, naturally, that’s what it is. Many would call it an affront to science and many more an affront to good taste. The city of Rio, where good taste is something that happens to other cities, has grown accustomed to the Pyramid. Even the weird attacks that come with hosting the Quantum Pharaoh seem normal to the average citizen of Rio. Even so, the boom of a massive explosion draws every eye upwards and familiarity is shot to hell. Giant, neon pyramids hanging five miles above your city aren’t supposed to flicker like that…are they?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some hours earlier…
Piloting his one-man mini gyro, Ajax rose slowly towards the Pyramid. Avel’s Something New was “something so new, it comes from the future.” Before he even read exactly what it was, Ajax knew he was going to have to deal with the Quantum Pharaoh. He had not been looking forward to it.
When the Pyramid first appeared over Stewart Heights five years ago, Ajax instantly went into panic mode. Although it didn’t look like anything Avel would have dreamed up, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going through a retro phase and 50s-style robots with death dealing laser blasts emitted from eye diodes weren’t going to suddenly erupt from the bottom of the neon construct. As five days passed with no change in position or response to any message sent to it, Ajax shifted from panic to worry and finally to annoyance. When every news agency in the world started showing up on the same day and telling Ajax’s employees they’d been invited to a press conference, Ajax’s annoyance reached epic proportions. At 9 am precisely, a man dressed like a Hollywood fever dream of an ancient Egyptian god-king, except with a lot more silver lame and purple neon, seemed to float down from the bottom of the Pyramid. The theatrical bastard had even brought his own podium, made from the same PVC and neon construction as the rest of the Pyramid. Resplendent and shiny, the man calling himself the Quantum Pharaoh began to speak to the citizens of the world. As he did so, the annoyance Ajax had felt up until that moment was a candle in the face of a million blazing suns.
The Quantum Pharaoh said he was from the future. He said he had fought untold menaces at the dawn of time and under the rays of a dying sun. He proved this by checking his watch and announcing an earthquake was about to occur in Croatia, blipping himself and the Pyramid out of existence, reappearing in Croatia and stopping the earthquake by pumping seismic waves into the ground that cancelled the tremors. After performing this miracle and rematerializing at Stewart Heights to massive applause, he said the only thing that could have gained him more notoriety. “I’ve been sent from the future by my father to aid his younger self in a time of terrible crisis,” the Pharaoh said as he smiled at the millions of viewers, “and that’s why I’ve parked my Pyramid over his building.” Ajax gripped the edge of his chair so hard the steel frame bent a little as the Pharaoh turned to him and said, “Dad, I’m here to help.”
Dealings between Ajax and the Pharaoh had been strained. After a couple of adventures, Ajax couldn’t deny the Pyramid was a time machine. Still, he refused to believe that this overly theatrical dilettante was his son from the future. And if he was Ajax’s son, had the future Ajax sent him back in time just to get rid of him?
Nearing the Pyramid, one of the triangular sections seemed to iris into itself and a bright white light emanated from within. Ajax angled towards the bright, triangular shape and the unmistakable silhouette cast by the master of the Pyramid. As he choppered in, Ajax was again amazed by the tesseract technology that allowed the interior of the Pyramid to be vastly larger than the exterior would suggest. Some theoretical physicist speculated that the interior was infinite, but those types of physicists will speculate anything just to get attention.
“Dad,” the Pharaoh beamed, “I knew you were coming” (Ajax couldn’t help rolling his eyes at this) “how can I help you?” “Shiarra has been kidnapped,” Ajax began, “by Dr. B’hadgai and he’s given me a list of things to collect to save her life. I’ve already got Something Old, and now he wants me to collect Something New.”
The Pharaoh nodded knowingly, “He wants something so new it’s from the future, doesn’t he? He wants the Celestial Stele.” Despite himself, Ajax was a little surprised by the Pharaoh’s insight. “He’s lusted after it ever since he helped us fight off the attack of the Tachyon Trapper. As the power source of the Pyramid and the basis of my time travel abilities, nothing else would ever be good enough.” Both men lapsed into a grim silence thinking of their arch enemy. An outside observer would be struck by how similar the men looked at that moment, despite their obvious difference in fashion sense.
Shaking himself from his reverie, Ajax said “I know we’ve had our differences, Pharaoh, but if you really believe what you say, you have to help me. It’s the only way to save your…mother.” Ajax nearly choked on the last word. The Pharaoh wordlessly turned and headed deeper into the Pyramid.
Ajax followed him through a plethora of twisting and turning routes that led further into the crystalline depths of the Pyramid. After what seemed hours, they finally reached a large, circular door. It was jarring; everything else in the Pyramid was built on triangular theme. The door irised open from the center and the two men walked across a long platform into the center of a spherical room so large that the Pyramid, at least as it appeared from the exterior, would fit with room to spare. Hanging at the end of the platform and in the center of the room, haloed by a purple nimbus of light, was the Celestial Stele. It was shaped and sized like a prop from the Ten Commandments and appeared to be made of a substance so black that it made areas between stars look bright in comparison. Worked into the black substance with such finesse as to make a grown man weep were hieroglyphics that seemed to be etched in violet neon. Ajax had once tried to decipher them, but he had slowly realized that, though the changes had been subtle, the message of the Stele changed over time.
Both men were mesmerized, but worry for his bride-to-be finally overcame Ajax and he cleared his throat before speaking. “Pharaoh, if this is the Pyramid’s power source, shouldn’t we land it somewhere before removing it?”
“Remove it?” the Pharaoh replied, spinning on Ajax wide-eyed and flummoxed. “We can’t give it to that madman! Dad, even if mom’s life is at stake, even if it creates a paradox where I don’t exist, we can’t just hand it over that villainous mastermind!”
Instantly, Ajax slumped. No matter how much he disliked the Pharaoh on a personal level and hated the fact that he just might be speaking with his own son as an adult without ever getting to know him as a child, he knew the Pharaoh to be a courageous man willing to do the right thing at great personal cost. What he feared was that the Pharaoh might be a more courageous man than Ajax himself, because Ajax was willing to trade all the items of power on Avel’s list to save the life of his one love. The look of sorrow appearing on his face was like a cloudburst out of a clear blue summer sky.
The Pharaoh put his hand on Ajax’s shoulder. “We’ll find her, dad. Look at me, I’m living proof that she doesn’t die, not for a long time!”
“I’m sorry,” Ajax whispered.
“You don’t have to be sorry, dad, I understand. Now isn’t the time to tell you all about her, but let’s just say that there’s a young lady in the future, the far, far future, that would certainly make me commit dangerous acts to save her. But this…this is just too dangerous, even for us, dad.”
It was at that moment that Ajax, for the first time, believed that this young man was his son. Did he hear himself in the Pharaoh’s voice or see Shiarra in his eyes? He couldn’t tell, but something about this moment swept all doubt from his mind. With eyes squeezed shut and fists clenched tightly he said,
“No, son, I’m sorry for this.”
Ajax brought an uppercut all the way from his toes and landed it squarely across the unsuspecting chin of his son. The Pharaoh was literally lifted from his feet as his shock-filled eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets. He fell backwards and landed on the platform with a dull thud, his headdress fell off and showed bright blond locks just like his mother’s. His head lolled to the side, eyes shut and mouth hanging slightly open. Ajax took a deep breath, stepped over his fallen form and grabbed the Stele from where it floated.
As soon as it left the nimbus of light that transfixed it, the entire Pyramid seemed to flicker like lights during a lightning storm. A cacophony of alarms and klaxons began to sing, chirp and wail. With a sickening, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Ajax felt the Pyramid list. He couldn’t tell which way he would fall in the topsy-turvy world that made up the Pyramid’s guts, but Ajax was certain that outside, in the world where physics worked, the Pyramid was dropping.
Ajax stooped, lifted the Pharaoh and threw him over his shoulder and ran for the circular door. With the Celestial Stele in his hand, the entire architecture of the Pyramid suddenly made sense to him. It was as though the Stele was singing in his head and, though the notes seemed strange and alien, they caused the world around him to come into a sharper focus. He thought of the mini-gyro and the triangular panels in the floor seemed to glow and he knew without knowing how he knew that, if followed, he would be led safely to the hangar. Without giving time to marvel at the miracle of technology or magic he held in his hand, he started to run.
As he followed the twisting and curving directions of the humming Stele in his hand, he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched or followed. Did the Pharaoh have companions in the Pyramid? He mentioned a girl, but could he also have servants living here? Had Ajax just doomed an untold number of people living within the tesseract to death? It was too late to figure it out now, he would just have to hope for the best.
He rounded the last corner and found himself in the cavernous hangar with several of the Pharaoh’s wondrous vehicles and his own mini-gyro. Suddenly, the feeling of being followed seemed to collapse in on him, as though he were a tiny man living in a house of cards he’d never noticed before. The Stele screamed in his mind and a blinding flash of light took his vision even as a concussive force blasted him off his feet. The Stele went one way, the Pharaoh the opposite and Ajax straight back.
Ajax, being a man of action who had found himself in plenty of tight scrapes, hit the ground rolling and came quickly to his feet. He fell into an easy fighting stance and begin to listen for sounds that would give away the location of his attackers to the blinded fighter. If he strained his ears he could hear tiny servos, but nothing else. As his vision returned, he began to wonder if his eyes had suffered permanent damage.
Surrounding him were a more than ten man-sized shapes. They seemed to either be men dressed in armor or automatons fashioned somewhat after a medieval knight. The armor appeared to be highly decorated, almost more suited to a parade or display than actual fighting. What’s more, the armor appeared to be almost clear or crystalline and filled with different shades of neon light, not unlike the Pyramid’s interior, though it was always the monochromatic purple of the exterior. Though the armor was beautiful, each of the shapes carried a wicked sword in both hands. The blades pulsed with the same neon energy as the armor. One of the shapes stepped forward and leveled its bright blade at Ajax.
“You have attacked a Paladin of the Knights Temporal,” it said in a voice that was deep and strong, but resonated with the same sing-song quality as the Stele, only from far away as though some distant voice sang accompaniment with his words. “You are also charged with the theft of a holy artifact of the Temporals. These crimes cannot be allowed! Give over the Stele and pray that the Quantum Pharaoh is not permanently harmed, Ajax Stewart!”
Ajax’s mind raced! Paladin? Knights Temporal? Even in all their adventures, the Pharaoh had never mentioned these things! And he was obviously highly regarded by these men, whoever they were. Regardless, he had to get the Stele and escape them. His eyes flickered to his left, glancing at the Stele.
“Do not move, Ajax Stewart! You are a great hero of your time and one day will be both the progenitor of the Pharaoh and the technology that birthed our holy order. Today, however, you are a criminal to us and if you force our hand, we will cut the evolution from you with our blades of pure Time. One good cut, and you will find yourself a monkey!”
Again Ajax’s mind was sent whirling. Progenitor of time travel, is that what they meant? Could it be possible, that HE would harness the Stele at some point in his own future and create the miraculous chrono-engine that was/is/would become the Pyramid? He was startled by a croaking, but familiar voice, from behind the Knights.
“Dad,” it said with great strain, “catch!”
From over the Knights, the Stele flew, singing its siren song of cosmic wisdom. Every helmeted head looked skyward and, although no face could be discerned, the horror was plain. Ajax caught the heavy tablet and it caused him to stumble backwards and fall, ass over teakettle, into the cockpit of his mini gyro.
The Knights spun on the Quantum Pharaoh, their horror turning to utter shock. Before they could say anything, Ajax was righting himself and could see the Pharaoh crackling with the same purple energy that coursed through the Pyramid!
“I’ve spent tens of thousands of years harnessing the Stele and I’ve learned to sing some of its celestial arias,” the Pharaoh intoned, the faraway accompaniment growing louder and stronger as he spoke. “Knights Temporal, I respect your holy Order and we have aided each other many times in the past. My bodily progenitor is your spiritual Progenitor, but I tell you now, no matter how close the ties that bind us, that man is flying out of here and I am taking you someplace where you will be unable to impede his plans!”
The Quantum Pharaoh’s voice was raised and he sang as the Stele had sung, great forks of purple lightning arcing from his body towards the walls. The voice was beautiful, enchanting, and it enraptured Ajax in the midst of firing up the mini-gyro.
The song broke for a split second, and with it went Ajax’s reverie. “Get gone, dad, these men won’t trouble you again!” The entire Pyramid seemed to flicker again and even the Pharaoh and the Knights seemed to go insubstantial for a moment.
Ajax threw the gyro in gear and cranked the stick, gaining altitude and spinning in place at the same time. He broke for the shimmering pyramidal door that had to be the way back into normal space. Straining the small craft to its limit, he sped towards it while the Pyramid’s flickering began to make it look like an old film about to break.
Ajax hit the hole into normal space at full speed and suddenly felt himself whipped around by the warm air of the southern hemisphere of earth, circa 2007. He was spun hard, just in time to see the Pyramid flicker out of existence, leaving a violet triangle-shaped burn in his retinas. He blinked back tears and hoped that he hadn’t sentenced his son to a death in some far reach of space and time. Tapping his ear bud, he spoke to his assistant, Julie.
“Jules,” he said with a throat suddenly sore and parched, “I’ve got the Cosmic Stele, start telling me about the Something Borrowed while I chopper back to the Rio office.”
“Boss, we just read a chronal energy shift that buried the needle! What happened?” Julie asked frantically.
Swallowing a lump in his throat, Ajax replied, “My son gave me the Stele, saved my life and probably the entire timeline so that I could save his mother.” Ajax’s jaw tightened with new purpose, “He won’t be allowed to make that sacrifice in vain. It’s time to borrow the Borrowed and give that boy a future!”
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