This past May while I was at the Kerrville Folk Festival, amongst the hundreds of wildly eccentric idividuals I met, I happened upon a brilliant fellow from the UK. His name is Harry Palmer and is the editor of a new paper called The Eccentric City.
I mentioned to him the obscure, yet sizeable writing groups I have been involved with here on Myspace. By the time we were done exchanging information, I realized I only had wonderful things to say about the group of talented writers I've encountered here. He asked me to submit some bits to him for possible publication in the next issue. For now they're published once a year. With its growing popularity in readers, writers and countries perhaps they will increase the number of publications in the years to come.
Harry sent me an email a while back reminding everyone that in August he will be making his final choices for the next issue. He asked me to spread the word along to all of you other writers that you are all happily invited to submit your work as well, if you like. He is quite a brilliant fellow and I highly recommend being a part of this if this is where your writing interests lie.
I added another bit-o-blog to my YOGABOGA blogger. It gives some info on where I've been and where I'm going for the next week or so.
If you're into music, yoga, or both, check it out and the corresponding links.
This year they're wired up, so hopefully I'll have no problems with internet access. If that ends up being the case I'll keep you guys posted with stories (galore) and pics. If you're coming out, drop me a line.
Week 12 Topic: This Is The New "Hip" bonus points (hard, 2 points): reference the Einstein-Rosen bridge bonus points (easy, 1 point): include purple legwarmers
March 1: Coast of Guernsey Arrived at the brig this morning to find I was late again for duty. Captain Horatio found a suitable 'job' for me to fill the rest of the day; slop bucket duty. Not even the ship's boy is given slop bucket duty. With all the fresh prisoners from our last victory with the French ship Bonifatius, the slop was deep, the buckets floweth over. In a moment of patriotism I freed the prisoners.
March 3: Azerbaijan Took a walk today. Stopped in to have a drink and escape the sun. One of the Parthian hordes was giving a speech on the honors of men. After ingesting his words for a spell I pushed my sari aside and revived a choking man with a kiss; reminding the speaker of the futilities of men's honor.
March 4: Sicily Reminded Archimedes to put on his robes before meeting the assembly.
March 7: Sicily Made plans to destroy Heracleides's work. A flawed system should never be expounded upon, as Archimedes had once said.
March 10: Rooftop I went out for a breath of air today. Designing a new recovery system isn't as fun as I thought it would be. Steve asked me what I was doing in C++, I told him no worries, html is the new hip; and hips need replacing all the time.
March 11: Florence Mary received the first copy of her book today. Due to the excitement, she chose not to indulge the fact that she was feeling another failed pregnancy coming on. So I sent a beautiful storm her way to drown her husband.
March 14: Temple of Venus Genetrix I washed her breasts today. An honor bestowed only to we few truly devoted slaves. With all my heart, as I wiped her marble façade, I prayed for an end to our great suffering. Along with hopes that the senators would be a little more discreet in their ramblings. I suppose Lucius and Gaius will never care for the presence of lesser slaves.
March 15: Theatre of Pompey My prayers were answered. We dined on bread and wine tonight.
March 17: G44-Illiarmen My baby is born. Mizar will be so happy with her new family. When I feel rested enough I will let the others know.
March 18: Linz I visited the funny man and his friend today. I wonder if they know just how horrible they smell? Perhaps I just need to adjust more. I told them about my new baby and they devised a most splendid plan for visiting her. As is fashion with these types, though, they named their vehicle after themselves. But that is OK, soon enough they will realize how horribly flawed their Einstein-Rosen bridge is. Oh well, destiny will have to wait a little longer.
March 21: Okinawa Nhaga wouldn't join in on today's picnic. Ever since the hornet attack he's been spending most of his time on the boat. I sent him a storm in the afternoon to remind him that the sea was far less forgiving than anything on land.
March 23: Aleutian Trench I'm tired. I think I'll call in today and rest some more.
March 30: Anlong Veng Pol Pot came out of the loo today dripping wet. As I watched the poison take over his body and shut down his nervous system I couldn't help, but laugh. The effect on his extremities made him look like he was wearing purple legwarmers.
March 31: Somewhere Over The Rainbow I think monkeys would be a great addition to the flock.
Blogophilia is a new writing group that I've been having fun with, at least for the Spring. Every Monday is a new topic, Every week is a chance at new fun. Last week we had 30 participants. No judgement, just good, clean (and not so clean), literary fun.
I don't know about the rest of you, but in my world Truth really is stranger than Fiction. I received this message from my attorney on Wednesday. Sometimes I really wonder what goes on behind those 'conference room' doors.
"Have you ever been so stoned that you crashed your car into a tree? Then did you get out of your car and see there wasn't actually any damage from the accident—not so much as a scratch on your bumper? Then did you notice that there also wasn't any tree? When you were finally able to calm down and get back in your car to drive away, were you embarrassed to realize that all along it was the air freshener hanging from your rearview mirror?
Me neither. "
RRVW, LLP.
Currently
reading
:
Good Omens
By
Neil and Pratchet, Terry Gaiman
Purposely misspelling words drives me absolutely batty. I understand typos and simply not knowing how to spell a new word in one's vocabulary, but purposely missspelling a word drives me slightly nuts (more of a filbert than a coco-). I know slang is a major player in defining and redesigning languages. That's cool. I mean, seriously, how cool must it feel to know you created a whole new word that has been fully embraced by a culture. Seriously, that's next to godliness.
But if you know how to pronounce a word, how to spell a word, even how to use that word......... then freaking do it. (mostly my beef is with the spelling part, not so much the others)
"So I says to Mabel, I says, 'Hey, if ya not gonna botha checkin' the tire pressure any more than once-in-a-blue-moon, ya might as well just hitch the ca' to ya back an' start hoofin' it.'" Billy started laughing at himself, slapping his rotundas belly with a self-satisfying *smack*. Noncommittal chuckles followed around the plastic table. Two of the occupants exchanged silent glances with one another; "who is this guy?"
But that was Billy; a massive, hairy, Bronx sore thumb amongst his fellow south Texas fingered acquaintances. He was a nice enough guy and all, took pride in his work and family, he just had a tendency to disturb and confuse his neighbor's friends every once in a while. Apparently the effects of unyielding sub-tropical heat spurred the same lifestyle choice as NE middle aged mechanics, the desire to dress in as little clothing as possible. And in that act alone, Marley found his company very acceptable, although still occasionally distracting.
"I've been really tryin , baby Tryin to hold back these feelings for so long, And if you feel, like I feel baby, Come on, Come on, Let's get it on…"
The melodious voice of the radio came wafting out the windows of the living room. Taking their cues from good ol' Marvin Gaye, everyone at the table took a moment to sink a little deeper into their lawn chairs, sliding their bare feet across the cool evening grass, letting the sounds of summer tunes wash over their day-worn bodies and souls. Marley bobbed her head lazily back and forth, slowly incorporating her tanned shoulders into the movement. Through her slit lids she spied the ring of condensation pooling around her glass.
"I'm going in for another Margarita, anyone want anything while I'm up?" With no response from the group, Marley took her Willow tree physique up the broken steps of the front stoop and into the house, slamming the partially hinged screen door on the way.
"I love that sound," said Avi from a dream.
"What's that?" Pam replied.
"That metallic squeak that comes from screen door springs. It's such a summer sound. Reminds me of our house on the coast. Everything was always rusty… you know, from the air being so salty. We could never keep screens on our windows because they'd rust off from one summer to the next. Our fishing poles wouldn't last much, but Dad never bought anything more than bargain basement anyway. Didn't matter much since we hardly ever caught fish, but I suppose it wasn't the thought of catching fish that kept us going back to the shore, day after day, to fish.
"But I digress. My brother and I would run in and out of that stilted house, after one thing or another, usually after each other. Mom would yell out to us from wherever she was, 'Stop slamming the screen door, boys!', but we just couldn't seem to get the hang of it. In all those years I don't think we ever remembered to NOT slam the door. Drove her nuts, I tell you." A couple people at the table were smiling and nodding in that wistful understanding of one who'd been there themselves.
"Of all the things I remember about those summers, oddly enough, it's the sound of that rusty screen door opening and slamming shut I find myself most nostalgic for." Avi grabbed a cig from his pack and lit it with one of the tea light candles at the table.
"I look at you all, See the love there that's sleeping, While my guitar gently weeps, I look at the floor, And I see it need sweeping, Still my guitar gently weeps…"
"Oh, well, speaking of childhood reminisces, this song.." but Pam was cut off abruptly by Marley rushing out the door waving a large envelope in her hand.
"Hey, check this shit out guys," said Marley as she dropped the envelope onto the table and plopped into her seat with a fresh sweaty glass of salted tequila and lime over quickly melting ice.
Everyone pushed up from their seats and looked at the new object of interest. It was large, about the size of a manila folder, with a window cut out showing the address to be for 'Current Resident'. On the front, stamped in big, red letters was the title, Shower Survey, -open immediately-.
Being quick to the draw, Lucia asked, "Well that's pretty presumptuous of them, what if the current resident doesn't take showers?" which was followed by a round of laughter from the table.
"Well I take showers," and Billy grabbed the envelope from the table. Without waiting for an invitation he opened the envelope with a quick rip of the top flap. He procured two pieces of paper and a smaller return envelope. Tossing the two envelopes back to the table he began to read the first page. To the chagrin of the others, he read it to himself first.
As Pam lost her interest and patience with the neighbor, she turned to the rest to finish her childhood anecdote about the song long finished on the radio when Billy burst out with a laugh that made everyone jump.
Holding up the paper, he recited, "Thank you local citizen for taking time out of your busy day to help better our community by filling out the attached survey and sending it back to our office. With your help and insightful input, we will be one step closer to achieving our collective goal of existing in a world free from unwanted pollution and wasteful actions. Yada, yada, yada, it just goes on from there to preach about some sort of bullshit on Proposition 257," glancing farther down the page, "Yada, yada, yada. Huh, wonder why I didn't get one of these in my mail?" Billy tossed the papers onto the table, "I mean, hell, I live right next to you. What's so special about yours and not mine?"
"Maybe they're looking for opinions from someone who bathes more than once a month, perhaps?" shot back Marley, lighting one of her long Virginia Slims with a match.
"Ha, you wish," it was the best Billy could ever hope for in quick responses.
"I'm still wondering what this 'wanted pollution' is that they're implying at?" Lucia chimed in.
"Very superstitious, writings on the wall, Very superstitious, ladders bout to fall, Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin glass Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past..."
"Sing it Stevie, sing it, woo!" Lucia called, holding her glass up. "It just doesn't get anymore phunk-ier than Stevie. Hey, did I ever tell you guys about the time Stevie Wonder's driver ran over my foot!?"
Rolling his eyes, Avi replied - along with the other two ladies -, "Yes."
"Well, excuse me for having a life. Cooler story than anything you guys got," Lucia threw back. She slunk back into her seat and began to play with her shell necklace. She snapped the hemp cord tight between her fingers and watched the shell spin in the middle.
"Well, I haven't heard jer story, but I'm sure its got nothin' on mine," piped in Billy. Perhaps it was the power of Stevie, perhaps it was the 8th beer he was on, whatever it was, though, the new neighbor was in rare loquacious form tonight.
He lifted his well worn tank top to expose even more of his glorious tummy and said, with a certain amount of pride, "Take a look at this." He turned to make sure everyone had a clear and unencumbered shot of his gorillaesque midsection. "Yous see it?"
Looking to swallow back her bile, Pam reluctantly answered, "Yeah, we see it, now put that thing away before you hurt someone with it." Chuckles followed.
"No, no, not my sexy belly," still holding his shirt up, "The tat. Guess what this is suppose to be?"
"Do we have to?" Marley asked, taking another drag off her cig.
"Sunshine go away today, Don't feel much like dancin' Some man's gone, tryin' to run my life, Don't know what he's after…"
"It's Greco-Roman," huffed Billy.
"Honestly, not the response I was expecting at all, Billy-boy," said Lucia. "How the hell does one go about getting Greco-Roman carved into their belly?" The table was now fully intrigued.
"Wait, I'd love the hear your tale of wonder, but could you put your shirt down first?" Lucia was never one for holding her true feelings back.
"Sure, doll. I knows how much trouble yous 'ave keepin' your hands off 'a me, hehehe," Billy inched his shirt back down, leaving everyone with the usual vision of him and his never-fail, fitted tank.
Billy slid back into his seat, which groaned in protest, lased his fingers over his midsection, stretched his legs out, crossed them at the ankles and readied himself to deliver the story of a lifetime. "Like I says, it's Greco-Roman. The boys and I were stationed off a' the coast when I took my shore leave…"
The air was suddenly broken by the deafening squeals of tires coming around the corner and blasting down the street. The whole party jumped and turned to look across the front lawn just in time to see a hearse screech to a stop in front of their neighbor's house across from them, losing a hubcap in the process. A middle aged mad jumped out. His silk shirt was unbuttoned halfway down and several long gold chains went flying passed his shoulder as he quickly ran out and around the back of the elongated auto. He stopped just shy of the walkway and started screaming at the house.
"Wake up, you son-of-a-bitch! I know you're in there! I want my money and I want it now!" He bent down suddenly, where no one could see him. Just as suddenly he stood up and started throwing rocks at the house screaming for the occupants to "Wake UP!"
Lights turned on in one of the front rooms, flooding the window with an orange glow. A shadowed head popped out of the now broken window and screamed in response, "Listen, mother-fucker, you'll get your money when we get our hot water heater! You want to fight? Well, then come on, mother-fucker! Come on!"
The screaming head disappeared from the window, then a moment later the front porch light turned on.
"You wanna get it on, mother-fucker, come on, then!" Apparently the renter was not only lacking a hot water heater, but clothes as well. Standing before the angry gilded driver was a very angry, very naked man ready for action.
As if there was nothing wrong with this picture, the landlord screamed back, "You have my rent in my hands tomorrow by noon or, clothed or not, you and your boyfriend are OUT! And next time I won't be as nice!" The man then turned, growled and ran back to the driver side and got in. He checked his hair in the rear view mirror, running his hand over the top of it once, fluffing the sides up, then peeled out, losing another hubcap on his way out.
The scrawny, naked man still stood, poised for action in his front yard. As he watched the hearse take off around the corner, he shot the finger in the retreater's direction and stormed back into his house, opening his screen door and slamming it shut just before all the lights were once again extinguished in the house.
Lucia turned around and looked at Avi, "Bring back any childhood memories there, Avi?"
Everyone had been privately engrossed in the mind-numbing exchange in their neighbor's. Lucia's comment broke the tension like an icy smack to the face. They all turned then and laughed so hard, Billy had to leave for a "pee break before I really embarrass myself."
Still laughing at the hysterics of the whole event, Lucia noticed the papers lying on the table. She gestured to them and asked, "Well, are you going to fill 'em out, Marley?"
"A long, long time ago, I can still remember, How that music used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance, That I could make those people dance, And, maybe, they'd be happy for a while…"
"Yeah. Sure. In fact, I already know what I'm going to answer on every question." In all her gracefulness, she stood and plucked the survey from the table. She held a corner of it over one of the dripping candles and lit the paper on fire. To the woops and jeers of the her onlookers, Marley danced around the front yard waving the flaming survey like a sparkler. Scout, her mutt who had been happily dosing under the table, enjoying the occasional caress of various feet, suddenly jumped up and began to bounce and bark, running circles around his flaming Siren.
Just before it went out, she threw it into the air and watched the embers slowly fall to the grass where Scout pounced on it.
"A befitting end to such a tragedy," called Lucia holding her own sweaty glass high, then downing the rest of its contents with a quick swig. "Everyone with me now, Bye, bye Miss American Pie, Drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry. And good ol' boys were drinkin' wisky and rye, singin' THIS'LL BE THE DAY THAT I DIE….." even Billy joined in on the last chorus.
Week 9 Topic: If I Were From Mars bonus points (hard, 2 points): Incorporate a scary raccoon bonus points (easy, 1 point): Use the phrase "aluminum siding"
I have been thinking all week about a particular story for Topic 10. It's a good one, but I just do NOT have the time this week to develop it into anything more than a rough idea.
While researching the topic, -J- reminded me of a fantastic short story by of a great author we both have enjoyed for more than a decade. Neil Gaiman was nominated for a Nebula Award last year for this short. Even though it has nothing to do with my idea, it so perfectly fits this week's topic. He even managed to work in one of the bonus points. Ha!
I've decided to re-post his short here with links to his site. If you enjoy it, check him out. He's a fantastic writer who has coupled with some really great people in the field throughout his ever growing fame. And if you really enjoy it, he'll be touring the U.S. this summer for meet and greets. You can find his schedule for the summer on his website.
With that said, I would feel pretty bad, though, if I didn't add a little something myself. Here is the very first thing I thought of when I read Week 10 Topic:
If I were from Mars, (COME ON, YOU KNOW THE TUNE, SING ALONG!)
"I'd like to teach Martians to sing In perfect harmony I'd like to hold them in my arms And keep them company"
"I'd like to see Martians for once All standing tentacle in hand And hear them echo through the hills For peace throughout the land."
"No, it won't," I said, although I'd lost this fight hours ago, and I knew it.
"It'll be brilliant," said Vic, for the hundredth time. "Girls! Girls! Girls!" He grinned with white teeth.
We both attended an all-boys' school in south London. While it would be a lie to say that we had no experience with girls -- Vic seemed to have had many girlfriends, while I had kissed three of my sister's friends -- it would, I think, be perfectly true to say that we both chiefly spoke to, interacted with, and only truly understood, other boys. Well, I did, anyway. It's hard to speak for someone else, and I've not seen Vic for thirty years. I'm not sure that I would know what to say to him now if I did.
We were walking the backstreets that used to twine in a grimy maze behind East Croydon station -- a friend had told Vic about a party, and Vic was determined to go whether I liked it or not, and I didn't. But my parents were away that week at a conference, and I was Vic's guest at his house, so I was trailing along beside him.
"It'll be the same as it always is," I said. "After an hour you'll be off somewhere snogging the prettiest girl at the party, and I'll be in the kitchen listening to somebody's mum going on about politics or poetry or something."
"You just have to talk to them," he said. "I think it's probably that road at the end here." He gestured cheerfully, swinging the bag with the bottle in it.
"Don't you know?"
"Alison gave me directions and I wrote them on a bit of paper, but I left it on the hall table. S'okay. I can find it."
"How?" Hope welled slowly up inside me.
"We walk down the road," he said, as if speaking to an idiot child. "And we look for the party. Easy."
I looked, but saw no party: just narrow houses with rusting cars or bikes in their concreted front gardens; and the dusty glass fronts of newsagents, which smelled of alien spices and sold everything from birthday cards and secondhand comics to the kind of magazines that were so pornographic that they were sold already sealed in plastic bags. I had been there when Vic had slipped one of those magazines beneath his sweater, but the owner caught him on the pavement outside and made him give it back.
We reached the end of the road and turned into a narrow street of terraced houses. Everything looked very still and empty in the Summer's evening. "It's all right for you," I said. "They fancy you. You don't actually have to talk to them." It was true: one urchin grin from Vic and he could have his pick of the room.
"Nah. S'not like that. You've just got to talk."
The times I had kissed my sister's friends I had not spoken to them. They had been around while my sister was off doing something elsewhere, and they had drifted into my orbit, and so I had kissed them. I do not remember any talking. I did not know what to say to girls, and I told him so.
They're just girls," said Vic. "They don't come from another planet."
As we followed the curve of the road around, my hopes that the party would prove unfindable began to fade: a low pulsing noise, music muffled by walls and doors, could be heard from a house up ahead. It was eight in the evening, not that early if you aren't yet sixteen, and we weren't. Not quite.
I had parents who liked to know where I was, but I don't think Vic's parents cared that much. He was the youngest of five boys. That in itself seemed magical to me: I merely had two sisters, both younger than I was, and I felt both unique and lonely. I had wanted a brother as far back as I could remember. When I turned thirteen, I stopped wishing on falling stars or first stars, but back when I did, a brother was what I had wished for.
We went up the garden path, crazy paving leading us past a hedge and a solitary rosebush to a pebble- dashed facade. We rang the doorbell, and the door was opened by a girl. I could not have told you how old she was, which was one of the things about girls I had begun to hate: when you start out as kids you're just boys and girls, going through time at the same speed, and you're all five, or seven, or eleven, together. And then one day there's a lurch and the girls just sort of sprint off into the future ahead of you, and they know all about everything, and they have periods and breasts and makeup and God-only-knew-what-else -- for I certainly didn't. The diagrams in biology textbooks were no substitute for being, in a very real sense, young adults. And the girls of our age were.
Vic and I weren't young adults, and I was beginning to suspect that even when I started needing to shave every day, instead of once every couple of weeks, I would still be way behind.
The girl said, "Hello?"
Vic said, "We're friends of Alison's." We had met Alison, all freckles and orange hair and a wicked smile, in Hamburg, on a German exchange. The exchange organizers had sent some girls with us, from a local girls' school, to balance the sexes. The girls, our age, more or less, were raucous and funny, and had more or less adult boyfriends with cars and jobs and motorbikes and -- in the case of one girl with crooked teeth and a raccoon coat, who spoke to me about it sadly at the end of a party in Hamburg, in, of course, the kitchen -- a wife and kids.
"She isn't here," said the girl at the door. "No Alison."
"Not to worry," said Vic, with an easy grin. "I'm Vic. This is Enn." A beat, and then the girl smiled back at him. Vic had a bottle of white wine in a plastic bag, removed from his parents' kitchen cabinet. "Where should I put this, then?"
She stood out of the way, letting us enter. "There's a kitchen in the back," she said. "Put it on the table there, with the other bottles." She had golden, wavy hair, and she was very beautiful. The hall was dim in the twilight, but I could see that she was beautiful.
"What's your name, then?" said Vic.
She told him it was Stella, and he grinned his crooked white grin and told her that that had to be the prettiest name he had ever heard. Smooth bastard. And what was worse was that he said it like he meant it.
Vic headed back to drop off the wine in the kitchen, and I looked into the front room, where the music was coming from. There were people dancing in there. Stella walked in, and she started to dance, swaying to the music all alone, and I watched her.
This was during the early days of punk. On our own record players we would play the Adverts and the Jam, the Stranglers and the Clash and the Sex Pistols. At other people's parties you'd hear ELO or 10cc or even Roxy Music. Maybe some Bowie, if you were lucky. During the German exchange, the only LP that we had all been able to agree on was Neil Young's Harvest, and his song "Heart of Gold" had threaded through the trip like a refrain: I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold. . . .
The music playing in that front room wasn't anything I recognized.
It sounded a bit like a German electronic pop group called Kraftwerk, and a bit like an LP I'd been given for my last birthday, of strange sounds made by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The music had a beat, though, and the half- dozen girls in that room were moving gently to it, although I only looked at Stella. She shone.
Vic pushed past me, into the room. He was holding a can of lager. "There's booze back in the kitchen," he told me. He wandered over to Stella and he began to talk to her. I couldn't hear what they were saying over the music, but I knew that there was no room for me in that conversation.
I didn't like beer, not back then. I went off to see if there was something I wanted to drink. On the kitchen table stood a large bottle of Coca-Cola, and I poured myself a plastic tumblerful, and I didn't dare say anything to the pair of girls who were talking in the underlit kitchen. They were animated and utterly lovely. Each of them had very black skin and glossy hair and movie star clothes, and their accents were foreign, and each of them was out of my league.
I wandered, Coke in hand.
The house was deeper than it looked, larger and more complex than the two- up two- down model I had imagined. The rooms were underlit -- I doubt there was a bulb of more than 40 watts in the building -- and each room I went into was inhabited: in my memory, inhabited only by girls. I did not go upstairs.
A girl was the only occupant of the conservatory. Her hair was so fair it was white, and long, and straight, and she sat at the glass-topped table, her hands clasped together, staring at the garden outside, and the gathering dusk. She seemed wistful.
"Do you mind if I sit here?" I asked, gesturing with my cup. She shook her head, and then followed it up with a shrug, to indicate that it was all the same to her. I sat down.
Vic walked past the conservatory door. He was talking to Stella, but he looked in at me, sitting at the table, wrapped in shyness and awkwardness, and he opened and closed his hand in a parody of a speaking mouth. Talk. Right.
"Are you from around here?" I asked the girl.
She shook her head. She wore a low-cut silvery top, and I tried not to stare at the swell of her breasts.
I said, "What's your name? I'm Enn."
"Wain's Wain," she said, or something that sounded like it. "I'm a second."
"That's uh. That's a different name."
She fixed me with huge, liquid eyes. "It indicates that my progenitor was also Wain, and that I am obliged to report back to her. I may not breed."
"Ah. Well. Bit early for that anyway, isn't it?"
She unclasped her hands, raised them above the table, spread her fingers. "You see?" The little finger on her left hand was crooked, and it bifurcated at the top, splitting into two smaller fingertips. A minor deformity. "When I was finished a decision was needed. Would I be retained, or eliminated? I was fortunate that the decision was with me. Now, I travel, while my more perfect sisters remain at home in stasis. They were firsts. I am a second.
Soon I must return to Wain, and tell her all I have seen. All my impressions of this place of yours."
"I don't actually live in Croydon," I said. "I don't come from here." I wondered if she was American. I had no idea what she was talking about.
"As you say," she agreed, "neither of us comes from here." She folded her six- fingered left hand beneath her right, as if tucking it out of sight. "I had expected it to be bigger, and cleaner, and more colorful. But still, it is a jewel."
She yawned, covered her mouth with her right hand, only for a moment, before it was back on the table again. "I grow weary of the journeying, and I wish sometimes that it would end. On a street in Rio at Carnival, I saw them on a bridge, golden and tall and insect-eyed and winged, and elated I almost ran to greet them, before I saw that they were only people in costumes. I said to Hola Colt, 'Why do they try so hard to look like us?' and Hola Colt replied, 'Because they hate themselves, all shades of pink and brown, and so small.' It is what I experience, even me, and I am not grown. It is like a world of children, or of elves." Then she smiled, and said, "It was a good thing they could not any of them see Hola Colt."
"Um," I said, "do you want to dance?"
She shook her head immediately. "It is not permitted," she said. "I can do nothing that might cause damage to property. I am Wain's."
"Would you like something to drink, then?"
"Water," she said.
I went back to the kitchen and poured myself another Coke, and filled a cup with water from the tap. From the kitchen back to the hall, and from there into the conservatory, but now it was quite empty.
I wondered if the girl had gone to the toilet, and if she might change her mind about dancing later. I walked back to the front room and stared in. The place was filling up. There were more girls dancing, and several lads I didn't know, who looked a few years older than me and Vic. The lads and the girls all kept their distance, but Vic was holding Stella's hand as they danced, and when the song ended he put an arm around her, casually, almost proprietorially, to make sure that nobody else cut in.
I wondered if the girl I had been talking to in the conservatory was now upstairs, as she did not appear to be on the ground floor.
I walked into the living room, which was across the hall from the room where the people were dancing, and I sat down on the sofa. There was a girl sitting there already. She had dark hair, cut short and spiky, and a nervous manner.
Talk, I thought. "Um, this mug of water's going spare," I told her, "if you want it?"
She nodded, and reached out her hand and took the mug, extremely carefully, as if she were unused to taking things, as if she could trust neither her vision nor her hands.
"I love being a tourist," she said, and smiled hesitantly. She had a gap between her two front teeth, and she sipped the tap water as if she were an adult sipping a fine wine. "The last tour, we went to sun, and we swam in sunfire pools with the whales. We heard their histories and we shivered in the chill of the outer places, then we swam deepward where the heat churned and comforted us.
I wanted to go back. This time, I wanted it. There was so much I had not seen. Instead we came to world. Do you like it?"
"Like what?"
She gestured vaguely to the room -- the sofa, the armchairs, the curtains, the unused gas fire.
"It's all right, I suppose."
"I told them I did not wish to visit world," she said. "My parent-teacher was unimpressed. 'You will have much to learn,' it told me. I said, 'I could learn more in sun, again. Or in the deeps. Jessa spun webs between galaxies. I want to do that.'
"But there was no reasoning with it, and I came to world. Parent-teacher engulfed me, and I was here, embodied in a decaying lump of meat hanging on a frame of calcium. As I incarnated I felt things deep inside me, fluttering and pumping and squishing. It was my first experience with pushing air through the mouth, vibrating the vocal cords on the way, and I used it to tell parent-teacher that I wished that I would die, which it acknowledged was the inevitable exit strategy from world."
There were black worry beads wrapped around her wrist, and she fiddled with them as she spoke. "But knowledge is there, in the meat," she said, "and I am resolved to learn from it."
We were sitting close at the center of the sofa now. I decided I should put an arm around her, but casually. I would extend my arm along the back of the sofa and eventually sort of creep it down, almost imperceptibly, until it was touching her. She said, "The thing with the liquid in the eyes, when the world blurs. Nobody told me, and I still do not understand. I have touched the folds of the Whisper and pulsed and flown with the tachyon swans, and I still do not understand."
She wasn't the prettiest girl there, but she seemed nice enough, and she was a girl, anyway. I let my arm slide down a little, tentatively, so that it made contact with her back, and she did not tell me to take it away.
Vic called to me then, from the doorway. He was standing with his arm around Stella, protectively, waving at me. I tried to let him know, by shaking my head, that I was onto something, but he called my name and, reluctantly, I got up from the sofa and walked over to the door. "What?"
"Er. Look. The party," said Vic, apologetically. "It's not the one I thought it was. I've been talking to Stella and I figured it out. Well, she sort of explained it to me. We're at a different party."
"Christ. Are we in trouble? Do we have to go?"
Stella shook her head. He leaned down and kissed her, gently, on the lips. "You're just happy to have me here, aren't you darlin'?"
"You know I am," she told him.
He looked from her back to me, and he smiled his white smile: roguish, lovable, a little bit Artful Dodger, a little bit wide- boy Prince Charming. "Don't worry. They're all tourists here anyway. It's a foreign exchange thing, innit? Like when we all went to Germany."
"It is?"
"Enn. You got to talk to them. And that means you got to listen to them, too. You understand?"
"I did. I already talked to a couple of them."
"You getting anywhere?"
"I was till you called me over."
"Sorry about that. Look, I just wanted to fill you in. Right?"
And he patted my arm and he walked away with Stella. Then, together, the two of them went up the stairs.
Understand me, all the girls at that party, in the twilight, were lovely; they all had perfect faces but, more important than that, they had whatever strangeness of proportion, of oddness or humanity it is that makes a beauty something more than a shop window dummy.
Stella was the most lovely of any of them, but she, of course, was Vic's, and they were going upstairs together, and that was just how things would always be.
There were several people now sitting on the sofa, talking to the gap- toothed girl. Someone told a joke, and they all laughed. I would have had to push my way in there to sit next to her again, and it didn't look like she was expecting me back, or cared that I had gone, so I wandered out into the hall. I glanced in at the dancers, and found myself wondering where the music was coming from. I couldn't see a record player or speakers.
From the hall I walked back to the kitchen.
Kitchens are good at parties. You never need an excuse to be there, and, on the good side, at this party I couldn't see any signs of someone's mum. I inspected the various bottles and cans on the kitchen table, then I poured a half an inch of Pernod into the bottom of my plastic cup, which I filled to the top with Coke. I dropped in a couple of ice cubes and took a sip, relishing the sweet-shop tang of the drink.
"What's that you're drinking?" A girl's voice.
"It's Pernod," I told her. "It tastes like aniseed balls, only it's alcoholic." I didn't say that I only tried it because I'd heard someone in the crowd ask for a Pernod on a live Velvet Underground LP.
"Can I have one?" I poured another Pernod, topped it off with Coke, passed it to her. Her hair was a coppery auburn, and it tumbled around her head in ringlets. It's not a hair style you see much now, but you saw it a lot back then.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Triolet," she said.
"Pretty name," I told her, although I wasn't sure that it was. She was pretty, though.
"It's a verse form," she said, proudly. "Like me."
"You're a poem?"
She smiled, and looked down and away, perhaps bashfully. Her profile was almost flat -- a perfect Grecian nose that came down from her forehead in a straight line. We did Antigone in the school theater the previous year. I was the messenger who brings Creon the news of Antigone's death. We wore half-masks that made us look like that. I thought of that play, looking at her face, in the kitchen, and I thought of Barry Smith's drawings of women in the Conan comics: five years later I would have thought of the Pre-Raphaelites, of Jane Morris and Lizzie Siddall. But I was only fifteen then.
"You're a poem?" I repeated.
She chewed her lower lip. "If you want. I am a poem, or I am a pattern, or a race of people whose world was swallowed by the sea."
"Isn't it hard to be three things at the same time?"
"What's your name?"
"Enn."
"So you are Enn," she said. "And you are a male. And you are a biped. Is it hard to be three things at the same time?"
"But they aren't different things. I mean, they aren't contradictory." It was a word I had read many times but never said aloud before that night, and I put the stresses in the wrong places. Contradictory.
She wore a thin dress made of a white, silky fabric. Her eyes were a pale green, a color that would now make me think of tinted contact lenses; but this was thirty years ago; things were different then. I remember wondering about Vic and Stella, upstairs. By now, I was sure that they were in one of the bedrooms, and I envied Vic so much it almost hurt.
Still, I was talking to this girl, even if we were talking nonsense, even if her name wasn't really Triolet (my generation had not been given hippie names: all the Rainbows and the Sunshines and the Moons, they were only six, seven, eight years old back then). She said, "We knew that it would soon be over, and so we put it all into a poem, to tell the universe who we were, and why we were here, and what we said and did and thought and dreamed and yearned for. We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable. Then we sent the poem as a pattern of flux, to wait in the heart of a star, beaming out its message in pulses and bursts and fuzzes across the electromagnetic spectrum, until the time when, on worlds a thousand sun systems distant, the pattern would be decoded and read, and it would become a poem once again."
"And then what happened?"
She looked at me with her green eyes, and it was as if she stared out at me from her own Antigone half-mask; but as if her pale green eyes were just a different, deeper, part of the mask. "You cannot hear a poem without it changing you," she told me. "They heard it, and it colonized them. It inherited them and it inhabited them, its rhythms becoming part of the way that they thought; its images permanently transmuting their metaphors; its verses, its outlook, its aspirations becoming their lives. Within a generation their children would be born already knowing the poem, and, sooner rather than later, as these things go, there were no more children born. There was no need for them, not any longer. There was only a poem, which took flesh and walked and spread itself across the vastness of the known."
I edged closer to her, so I could feel my leg pressing against hers.
She seemed to welcome it: she put her hand on my arm, affectionately, and I felt a smile spreading across my face.
"There are places that we are welcomed," said Triolet, "and places where we are regarded as a noxious weed, or as a disease, something immediately to be quarantined and eliminated. But where does contagion end and art begin?"
"I don't know," I said, still smiling. I could hear the unfamiliar music as it pulsed and scattered and boomed in the front room.
She leaned into me then and -- I suppose it was a kiss. . . . I suppose. She pressed her lips to my lips, anyway, and then, satisfied, she pulled back, as if she had now marked me as her own.
"Would you like to hear it?" she asked, and I nodded, unsure what she was offering me, but certain that I needed anything she was willing to give me.
She began to whisper something in my ear. It's the strangest thing about poetry -- you can tell it's poetry, even if you don't speak the language. You can hear Homer's Greek without understanding a word, and you still know it's poetry. I've heard Polish poetry, and Inuit poetry, and I knew what it was without knowing. Her whisper was like that. I didn't know the language, but her words washed through me, perfect, and in my mind's eye I saw towers of glass and diamond; and people with eyes of the palest green; and, unstoppable, beneath every syllable, I could feel the relentless advance of the ocean.
Perhaps I kissed her properly. I don't remember. I know I wanted to.
And then Vic was shaking me violently. "Come on!" he was shouting. "Quickly. Come on!"
In my head I began to come back from a thousand miles away.
"Idiot. Come on. Just get a move on," he said, and he swore at me. There was fury in his voice.
For the first time that evening I recognized one of the songs being played in the front room. A sad saxophone wail followed by a cascade of liquid chords, a man's voice singing cut-up lyrics about the sons of the silent age. I wanted to stay and hear the song.
She said, "I am not finished. There is yet more of me."
"Sorry love," said Vic, but he wasn't smiling any longer. "There'll be another time," and he grabbed me by the elbow and he twisted and pulled, forcing me from the room. I did not resist. I knew from experience that Vic could beat the stuffing out me if he got it into his head to do so. He wouldn't do it unless he was upset or angry, but he was angry now.
Out into the front hall. As Vic pulled open the door, I looked back one last time, over my shoulder, hoping to see Triolet in the doorway to the kitchen, but she was not there. I saw Stella, though, at the top of the stairs. She was staring down at Vic, and I saw her face.
This all happened thirty years ago. I have forgotten much, and I will forget more, and in the end I will forget everything; yet, if I have any certainty of life beyond death, it is all wrapped up not in psalms or hymns, but in this one thing alone: I cannot believe that I will ever forget that moment, or forget the expression on Stella's face as she watched Vic hurrying away from her. Even in death I shall remember that.
Her clothes were in disarray, and there was makeup smudged across her face, and her eyes --
You wouldn't want to make a universe angry. I bet an angry universe would look at you with eyes like that.
We ran then, me and Vic, away from the party and the tourists and the twilight, ran as if a lightning storm was on our heels, a mad helter-skelter dash down the confusion of streets, threading through the maze, and we did not look back, and we did not stop until we could not breathe; and then we stopped and panted, unable to run any longer. We were in pain. I held on to a wall, and Vic threw up, hard and long, into the gutter.
He wiped his mouth.
"She wasn't a--" He stopped.
He shook his head.
Then he said, "You know . . . I think there's a thing. When you've gone as far as you dare. And if you go any further, you wouldn't be you anymore? You'd be the person who'd done that? The places you just can't go. . . . I think that happened to me tonight."
I thought I knew what he was saying. "Screw her, you mean?" I said.
He rammed a knuckle hard against my temple, and twisted it violently. I wondered if I was going to have to fight him -- and lose -- but after a moment he lowered his hand and moved away from me, making a low, gulping noise.
I looked at him curiously, and I realized that he was crying: his face was scarlet; snot and tears ran down his cheeks. Vic was sobbing in the street, as unselfconsciously and heartbreakingly as a little boy.
He walked away from me then, shoulders heaving, and he hurried down the road so he was in front of me and I could no longer see his face. I wondered what had occurred in that upstairs room to make him behave like that, to scare him so, and I could not even begin to guess.
The streetlights came on, one by one; Vic stumbled on ahead, while I trudged down the street behind him in the dusk, my feet treading out the measure of a poem that, try as I might, I could not properly remember and would never be able to repeat.
"Three more bodies were discovered last evening. Local police are still working on their identities…"
"Local authorities are again asking all citizens to stay indoors at night. Lock all entrances and if possible to extinguish any unnecessary lights…"
She buckled her sequined shoes, rustled through her feathered accessories, and gathered all of the various necessities for a sugar party. This was to be the last sugar party, as a matter of fact. She had received Grandmother's call that evening.
"Who or what is this creature plaguing our streets, our homes? No one has been able to answer…."
"…indescribable carnage…"
The little girl carefully packed her basket of goodies for Grandmother: silk flowers gathered from the florist's back alley twined into a delicate wreath, a baggie of multi-colored miniature marshmallows, two embroidered napkins, and leftover candy canes from last Christmas, one slightly crushed at the tip.
After absent minded kisses goodnight, the little girl was abandoned once more to the paralyzing darkness of her room. Once she was sure of the adults' full retreat, she dressed in her hooded sweater, the one with 'LOVE' knitted on the front, it was her favourite. She slipped out the side screen door with the faulty latch, placed her basket in the seat of her soapbox car 'Desire' and peddled off for Grandmother's house. People had initially questioned her about the choice in names for her racer, but she felt that people who needed to question didn't deserve answers.
The ride to Grandmother's house was always nice. Down the block, two turns over and straight on 'till morning. At least that's how she always thought of it. These were her streets, her houses, where she had grown up. How could anyone tell her she was supposed to be afraid. Afraid of what? Afraid of the dark? It wasn't the dark that ever hurt anyone. No, but the things in the dark, her Grandmother once said. But there was nothing in the dark. Only and always just her; alone, silent.
No porch lights on, no dogs barking at her pass, only rubber tires padding on and on along the sidewalk. The songbirds weren't even cooing tonight. How strange. How wonderful. The night truly was just for the two of them. Just as Grandmother said.
She turned the first corner and could see flashing lights up ahead. How pretty, a dancing rainbow flashing patterns on her slippers.
"Dear God, another one, Sarge." "Have you located her legs yet?" "Not yet, Sir. But Officer Moralez found three of her fingers. Don't bother with him right now, though, Sir. He's in the back puking his guts out. Poor rookie." "Well get him presentable, I'm sure the media will be here before we know it. Those god dammed cockroaches."
As she peddled around her next turn, she glimpsed the moonrise. It was a late harvest moon according to Grandmother. It was only a breath ago that she sat on the wrap-around front porch, side by side in Grandmother's swing, sipping mint lemonade made from the grove in the woods out back. As the late harvest moon rose over her front lawn, they recited odes to Her in honor. 'Desperate Moonwalk' was her favourite. They swung until she finally fell asleep, hood drawn over her head, wrapped in her Grandmother's apron.
Up the road she peddled, passing two, dark mounds of befouled blankets, flesh and hair. They stirred at her passing and began to squeal.
"Beez! He's come for us." "Shut it, Swine. Brother said he left the offering. He won't touch us tonight."
By this time the sweets were calling from the basket at her side. She helped herself to a miniature pink marshmallow, relishing the puffy sweetness. Grandmother won't miss this one.
Ahead the ornate, rusty gates stood outside Grandmother's land. One was already open in anticipation of her arrival. Just as she was closing in on them, she heard a rustle in the distance to the right. A trash can fell over and rolled into the gutter, but the little girl never glanced up, keeping her eyes fixed on Grandmother's house and thoughts on their sugar party.
Through the gates and down the path she peddled, stopping just shy of the front door. She collected her basket and climbed out of Desire. Just as she had been instructed, she picked up Grandmother's ugly vase sitting in the dirt to the right. With some effort, for she had trouble getting her arms around the porcelain, she held it up as high as she could, arching her back and dropped it with all her might to the ground, shattering it with a satisfying *crack*.
Pushing the broken bits aside, she found the weatherworn, metal key and wiggled it into the lock on the large wooden front door. With both hands and some serious grunting she finally managed to unlock the door and pull it open just enough for her and her basket to fit through.
Inside there were no lights, just the moon streaming in through two small, stained glass windows set high on the walls. Sitting cross legged, atop the casket in the middle of the room was Grandmother. Dressed in her best yellow dress with the high collar and ruffled ends.
"Hello my sweet."
"Hello Grandmother. I brought treats."
"So you did. That's wonderful, sweety. Come and sit with me."
The casket was set on a large stone table and was too high for the little girl to get up on. Still holding her basket she looked around for a prop, but there was no other furniture in the little room.
"It's too high, Grandmother."
"That's what the handles are for, my sweet. Give me your basket and you can climb up."
The little girl stood on her tiptoes to lift the basket up high enough for her Grandmother to grab it. With her own hands now free, she reached for one of the brass handles and hoisted a knee onto the jutting table edge. After some more grunts and a snag in her striped, pink tights the little girl was able to roll onto the top of the casket.
As she sat facing her Grandmother she eyed her new hole and smoothed her skirt down to cover it. Grandmother laid the small embroidered napkins out between them and placed all the treats out on top.
"Marshmallows, you always remember," her smile was warm and comforting.
"I made this for you, Grandmother." The little girl handed over the ring of flowers.
"They're lovely, sweet. I'll keep them always."
There was a rustle outside the room. Her Grandmother looked over to the open door behind the little girl. She lost all expression in her face. The little girl just sat and waited.
"Child, I do believe he has come." She looked back at the little girl, now. "Do you remember what I told you?"
"Yes, Grandmother. I remember."
"Then my sweet dear, it is time."
Her Grandmother was now standing, hands folded together before her. The little girl pulled up her red hood, reached over to grab the gift her Grandmother had brought to the sugar party and turned to stand, as well, facing the door.
Clutching the gift behind her back, she listened in the dark. Something was circling the house. It stopped just outside the slightly opened door. Its shadow filled the open space.
One clawed hand opened the massive wooden door, marking the edge with wicked foulness. His eyes caught the moon's glow and reflected it with double intensity. *sniff, sniff*
She looked from him to her Grandmother. They whisper words into my ears, one speaks of truth and one speaks of my fears.
"Hello there," the little girl beckoned him. "Would you like to see something shiny?"
He hesitated for just a breath. With a growl that aborted mortar from the walls, he leaped at her throat.
A flash. His claws dug furrows into the table top, but he did not question why they were not slicing into her abdomen to shred her entrails. His head rolled into her basket as she completed the movement, flicking black, viscous blood from the tip of the Samurai sword. Grandmother's gift had served her well.
With the beast now vanquished, she sat once more before the sugary spread, laying the blade down in front of her.
"Just leave the mess dear. I'll take care of it later. Come sit down and have a candy cane with me."
Week 8 Topic: When In Rome bonus points (hard, 2 points): Use 3 words that start with the letter Q. bonus points (easy, 1 point): Mention Komodo Island.
"Hey Kate, sorry I'm late.The bus stopped 10 blocks south.I had to hoof it all the way here.For crying out loud, is it always this frantic at these events?"
Kate brushed back silvery bangs from her glittered eyelids that followed up to her penciled-in arched eyebrows and just glared for a moment at the girl."Yes, it is.I told you what to expect.You should have been here 2 hours ago."
The young lady was taken aback by her co-worker's brusqueness.Kate was normally a smiler, but 7am on opening day brought out a whole new, and uglier, side of the woman."Yes, I remember.I guess I just didn't realize.I thought you were joking about most of it."
"Well honey, this is just the beginning," and with that Kate continued with her interrupted dressing.The young woman began stocking drinks onto the shelves behind them inside the kiosk while watching the other woman in confused awe as she fastened a chest plate, a utility belt, some sort of extended knee pads and various trinkets to her coiffed hair and shoulder attachments.So enthralled by her partner's dressing, she was surprised when she turned to unpack a second box of products only to see several severed heads staring back at her.
"Ugh, what is this?" She gingerly picked up one of the olive heads by its coarse ponytail and held it at arm's length for Kate to inspect.With little more than a glance up as she snapped a metallic choker high around her neck she replied,
"Press the trigger on the handle behind the head."
She twirled the head around and saw a round handle attached to the back; in shape with the other ponytails.Just inside was a small push-switch.She slid her finger in and pushed it.The top of the head flipped up and a gravelly, guttural voice said, "NUQNEH."
"QURGH VIPARHA." The young woman jumped as she realized the second bit of gibberish didn't come from her weird cup, but rather a person standing in front of their concession stand.He was very tall and very brown; from his over-sprayed shoulder length hair, to his multi-ridged forehead, right down to his own utility belt and extended knee pad…. thingies.
She blinked for a moment, taking in this deranged figure before her, "I'm sorry, what was that?"
"He said he likes beans," chimed in Kate.
"Why would he say that?"
Kate turned to her, placed a ridged headpiece on her own forehead and replied, "Because, TLHINGON MAH."
"Eh?"
The other two just rolled their eyes in exasperation."It means 'We're Klingon' and if you want to survive this weekend, you better get used to it - and fast."
The man walked off, his interest now peaked by an unveiling of a life-size Captain Picard statue made out of what appeared to be American cheese.Several other fans now trickling in from the gates followed.
"Well, looks like we're officially on our way.Before things get too harry-carry I better give you the breakdown of our station.Learn it.We're going to go through a lot of merchandise this weekend and if you don't stick with the layout we'll be QOP."The young woman gave her a blank stair."Screwed my friend.So here we go.To our right we've got our T.N.G. mugs, Official Starfleet Academy mugs, Cloaking Klingon mugs and Disappearing Latte mugs; remember with these last ones that each purchase comes with a trial membership in the Interstellar Language School.
"Next in line are the T-shirts.Sizes range from 3mnths here at the bottom to 4XL found on the top shelf.You'll find the larger sizes with sellout first so we keep them the closest.Red ones are 7-of-9, Grey ones are W.W.P.D. - what would picard do? -, Dark blue ones are Women Power, Light blue ones are Vulcan Peace and last, but not least, Green ones are Property of Starfleet Command.
"Here in the middle we have various collectables; Wrath of Khan action figures, sold individually and as a group of 4; the Enterprise in 6 inch keychain size as well as 29 inch signature collecting size; Starfleet Assault Phasers with pressure sensitive sound and throttle commands; and for the kids Minimates.
"And finally to the left are all the Trek snacks.We got Capt. Spock Pockets, Uhura Vittles, Chekov Chews, Data Bubble Tape, and our always popular KirkRods.Don't ask what's in them, I don't even know and I honestly don't ever want to know."Kate looked the young woman up and down once more and bent down to retrieve something from under the counter.
"Oh yeah, and you'll probably want to put this on.It helps to up the sales," and before she knew it, the appalled woman almost burst into laughs when she noticed the rubbery mass that had just been thrusted into her hands was actually a headpiece fashioned with it's own receding hairline and multi-ridged forehead.Without trying to seem too rude, she placed the headpiece on the shelf under her register and readied herself for the onslaught of the extraordinarily fashionable crowd of Treky fans.
"NUQNEH," said her partner to a young, queer couple that had just walked up.
"The Klingon Assault Group of Imperial Marine Ship IKAV will take DAQU'ITDQARYOQ, one BE'ETOR figure, and SOCH KirkRods."
"That will be DARSEQ HUTMAH ……"
Sometime around lunch, just as she was ringing up the total for her 36th Starfleet Quickshot communicator sale, something odd moving through the center of the lobby caught her eye.Lost in a sea of green-faced Vulcans, bouffant topped ensigns and nobby-eared Worfs, it would seem like nothing short of a life-sized Godzilla breathing fire could oddly stand out in this crowd.However, within the sea of amorous Trekies stood a strikingly handsome, tall, slender man with long silver hair, simple leather covers and a bow-and-arrow slung over his back.He stood in his spot slowly turning around, gazing intently in every direction with a most disturbed look on his face.As the quickly tiring young woman continued to smile and vacantly laugh with the never ending customers, repeating the line her friend taught her at the beginning of the day - "TERA'NGANBEJ NEH JIH 'ACH 'E' VIQIJLAH," -she kept an eye on the odd man slowly making his way towards their side of the lobby.
"CHA'BIP," called out a nearby woman to her friend."HEGHJAJ HARBE'WI'PU'," and she pointed at the tall, silver man that was now standing before them.
He shrugged her off, noticed the only person not in costume and made a beeline for her.The young woman saw him now advancing with more speed and by-pass all the people queued in line.He came right up to the counter with all the grace of an angel, skin porcelain pale, and eyes she could have melted into, looked into her eyes and said, "'Quel andune, Vanimle sila tiri.Manke naa i'omentien?"
"Oh, what the fuck?"She couldn't believe it, another freak-and-a-half!
"Excuse me, young beauty, but I'm looking for my clan.Have you seen the Great Elvin March come through?"His gaze never wavered, attempting to hold her captive.Her annoyance was now through the roof.
"Look buddy, I am obviously extremely busy right now.If there had been a 'Great Elvin March' I honestly couldn't say I would have noticed it.Besides, I don't remember any elves in any Star Trek episodes I ever watched."A very wide, sweaty woman in skin-tight Enterprise garbs took that moment to shove her way to the register and knock the silvery tall man out of the picture.
"WEJ KirkRods," she barreled and thrust a $10 bill in the young woman's face with her pink painted, swollen hand.As she waited for her snacks she wasted no time in shooting a dirty glance at the still waiting Elf.He was just about to correct what he imagined was a poor misguided girl when he was cut off.
A shelf bracing gave way as the young woman was retrieving the last snack pack and the whole box went tumbling to the floor.As she bent down to gather all the packs up again and put them haphazardly back into the box, the girthly gifted woman turned on the elf.
"Hey Elf!QUCHWIJ YIYACH!"Everyone in line burst into immediate roars of laughter.One scrawny individual was slapping his third hand as he laughed while another lost his teeth entirely and dove for the floor after them.
The tall man-elf stood a little taller and puffed out his chest in protest.He narrowed his gaze down to the wide woman with quirky eyebrows and speckled cheeks and replied, "Lle n'vanima ar' lle atara lanneina."Everyone stopped laughing at once and encircled the elf.Murder was in their collectively glued-on eyes.
"Did you just insult me?" her pudgy, pink hands were now like two pudgy, pink dough balls by her side, ready for the strike.
"I guess that all depends on how you feel about your mother," retorted the elven man.
A slight woman with over-sized framed glasses began to hiss at him; then the next, then the next; until all the people surrounding the man-elf were hissing like a badly beaten tire tube.The young woman had returned the box back to its place on the fixed shelf and turned around just in time to witness the QAD.Oh what the fuck, now? she thought.
At the far end of the circle two people parted.In stepped the challenger.The shining, double bladed batleth would have been quite intimidating if it weren't for the fact that the challenger's gorilla-hairy belly was so unfortunately exposed out and over his 'standard issue' Starfleet uniform pants.Which was only trumped by his 'standard issue' Starfleet red uniform top straining to hold back his massive manboobs.
However, disregarding all pretenses, the man-elf pulled off his bow and unsheathed an arrow from his pack that had been slung over his caped back.He locked the end onto the line and aimed for the unmissable Klingon's middle girth.
"Nadorhuan.Antolle ulua sulrim.Uuma ma' ten' rashwe, ta tuluva a' lle. Cuamin linduva yassen megrille," said the man elf, and with bow cocked, he waited for his opponent's surrender.
"TLHINGON MAH!QAPLA' BATLH JE.NUQ DAQ YUJ DA'POL!HEGHLU'MEH QAQ JAJVAM!HAGHJAJ HARBE'WI'PU'!"The last line being followed by raised arms and roars of agreement.
Kate leaned over to the young woman who was looking on in growing disgust and whispered in her ear, "Either my Klingon is getting rusty or that challenger just asked him where the chocolate was."That was the final straw.The young woman had had enough and was NOT about to be witness to any bloodshed-by-bollix.
The young woman jumped over the counter and rushed to the center of the circle, putting herself between the two men.She glared at one, then turned to glare at the other.
"What do you think you're doing?" neither dared to answer."That's what I thought, you have no idea what you're doing.You!" she pointed at the horizontally challenged man in red, "have GOT to be kidding me with that costume.Do us all a favor and go to the Hall of Favors, pass the Entrance of Yeomen and buy yourself something in your actual size.I don't recall ever seeing one ensign, captain or otherwise with such a disgraceful display of uniform order.
"And You!" now turning on the tall, silvery man-elf, "are so obviously in the wrong place.Before you do something you'll later regret….. strike that.Before you get into more pseudo-trouble, you better just turn around and go back the
adored
im on roblox!
tired