Plugwatch 2099

Not Hip

2010-10-21T20:06:00.019-04:00

The old man turned off the radio
Said, "Where did all of the old songs go?
Kids sure play funny music these days --
They play it in the strangest ways."
Said, "It looks to me like they've all gone wild.
It was peaceful back when I was a child."
Well, man, could it be that the girls and boys
Are trying to be heard above your noise?
And the lonely voice of youth cries, "What is truth?"

-- Johnny Cash, 1970

Come on, Reed. The Man In Black told you what-for forty years ago. Yes, the world is a complex, changing, and often scary place, but if you're willing to see good things among all that scary newness, you'll actually find a surprising lot of them! Even in the music that young people listen to these days! For instance, one of my favorites over the last few years, Iron and Wine, is a fella singing softly alongside little more than an acoustic guitar. Sometimes his music feels as though it is coming from a sort of sweet and gentle world that never actually existed but that I think would be comforting to live in, at least for a while. I think you would like it.

Obituary Page

2010-10-19T21:08:00.007-04:00

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That morning Charlene Whitcomb sat down after breakfast to peruse the obituaries, just as she did every day.

"Hmm, hmm, let's see," she muttered to herself, pulling her chair up to the old card table that her computer sat on. She set her mug of coffee down beside the keyboard long enough to sign on, then had a drink as the modem issued its regular set of beeps and screeches. At last it finished, and she was online.

"Let's see," she said again. "'Ilsa D. Jackman, age 83, of Beetown, died peacefully surrounded by her loving family...' ah, that's good, that's good..." She scrolled down a bit. "'Leonard E Brouillette, age 60, of Fitchburg, crossed over to his eternal world'... how sweet!"

She reached out for her coffee mug with one hand, and continued scrolling with the other. Her eyes flitted back and forth over the top of the mug as she drank, reading one obituary after another... and then pausing.

"'Charlene Whitcomb,' she read aloud. "'Age 58, passed away at her apartment home in Black Earth on Tuesday, October... nineteenth...'" Abruptly she lowered her coffee mug back to the table. Some of the coffee slopped over the edge onto her hand, but she paid this no particular mind. "But... that's today," she whispered.

Charlene looked blankly around the room for a week, as though expecting to see some sort of explanation there. "This must be a joke," she muttered to herself. "I'm obviously not dead, so..."

She turned back to the computer, except it wasn't there. Neither was the card table; she was standing in the middle of what should have been her living room, except there wasn't a stick of furniture in it. Her curtains were gone, too, which meant any old lookie-loo could see through the windows, and... was that new paint on the walls...?

The front door opened suddenly, admitting the landlord and a young couple Charlene didn't recognize. "...since last month," the landlord was saying, "ever since the last occupant passed away."

"Mr. Ewers?" Charlene called to him. "I don't -- "

"This is a nice living room," the strange woman interrupted. "I love these huge windows -- they let in so much light."

"I'm -- " Charlene started again.

"Oh, and check out the skylights," the strange man said, pointing up.

"Nice!" replied the woman.

"Excuse me -- "

"You said the last tenant died, though?" the strange man asked Mr. Ewers. Charlene was right in front of him, waving her hands wildly before his eyes, but it was like he didn't even see her -- just looked right past her at the landlord.

"Y... es," Ewers replied hesitantly, "that's true." Charlene whirled about and stalked up to him, repeating the hand-waving experiment on him. "She was an older lady," Ewers went on, "and, well. She just passed away one night in October."

Charlene hauled off and slapped him.

And her hand passed right through his face.

"Oh," she said softly. "I see." She looked over at the young couple -- who were talking together now, obviously discussing the apartment -- and sighed. "Well, I do hope they'll at least put up some nice curtains in here. I don't want to have to haunt a place that looks slutty."

I pulled most of the obit text from what was on my local paper's website between the day this comic was published (October 19) and the day I got around to writing the fic (October 22). Scrambled the names, but not the locations, because seriously, "Beetown"? Awesome.

Red-Handed

2010-10-15T10:05:00.010-04:00

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What, seriously, Brookins? Seriously? You're just taunting me now, aren't you? Fine:

"Y-yep! Pistachios! Boy, I sure do love 'em!"

He could feel the sweat beading on his forehead, hear the roaring starting in his ears, and she still wasn't letting go of his hands -- his hands that were still stained, he'd scrubbed and scrubbed but still the stain was there...

She let go. "Well, don't spoil your dinner," she replied with a little smile, before walking away.

His eyes narrowed. He knew he'd been sloppy, worn out after his work out in the woodshed; he should have kept scrubbing, should have cleaned his hands until no trace of blood remained. But there was so much work to do, and he was just so tired...

But that smile. That smile she had given him, as she released his hands.

Had she been out there to the woodshed? Had she seen his work, or the signs it left behind -- the remains that had to be disposed of, the bodies dumped in the woods, or burned and scattered out by the old gravel pit? Had she seen something there? Or had he left other signs for her to discover?

Did she suspect?

His red hands flexed.

Did she know?

There you go, Gary. I took the bait and addressed the obvious, and, frankly, only interpretation of that dog-man's expression given the situation. I hope you're happy.

Also, I should figure out a way to distinguish italic me-comments from italic fic-text. Let's try a different font and color, see if that works. Any color-deficient folks out there? I wanna make sure this dark reddish is clear enough for everyone.

I Used To

2010-10-10T23:07:00.003-04:00

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Of course, I knew that wasn't the right thing to say as soon as it was out of my mouth; and if I hadn't already realized it, then Danny's reaction would've clued me in pretty quick. All the happy went out of his face, so fast that it was like I'd slapped it off of him. He bowed his head low as if something very interesting had just sprung out of the mossy ground between his bluejeaned knees. His knobby little eight-year-old shoulders slumped. I've never been what you'd call good with words, but this was downright apocalyptic.

I waited a few seconds before clearing my throat. "I'm sorry, Danny. I know how much you must be missing him." Then I reached out and laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. "If you want to quit fishing and go back up to the house..."

"Nuh uh," he muttered. He swiped at his eyes with one hand, then looked up at me. He'd been doing a lot of crying these last few months -- which was good, because if an eight-year-old loses his father and doesn't cry about it, then there's something pretty wrong with him -- but he wasn't crying now. Misting a bit, maybe, but not crying. "Grandpa, was he good at fishing? My dad?"

That threw me for a loop briefly; Danny had been living with his grandma and me since the accident, and in all that time he'd never actually started a conversation about his dad. "Well, now," I said in a thoughtful tone, stalling for time until my brain could kick into gear. "Well, now, let's see... what do you think it would mean to be good at fishing?"

"Like if he caught a big fish," Danny answered promptly. He dropped his fishing rod to the grass and stretched his arms apart. "Like thiiiiis big."

"Nope, can't say I ever remember him catching a big fish here. Lot of smaller ones, sure, but none as big as you're asking for!" Of course, I had my doubts that this stream could even handle a fish like Danny was asking for -- he'd measured out a span big enough to fit a deep-sea tuna, while as far as I knew all that'd ever been caught here were minnows, perch, and the occasional bad-tempered catfish. Not that generations of boys hadn't tried otherwise, of course.

Danny was looking out at the stream, and I wondered whether he was still thinking long thoughts. A second later he unknowingly answered me. "Was he better at fishing than me?" he asked softly.

Which, of course, was a question about more than just fishing. "Danny, your grandma and I loved your dad, because he was our son." He looked back down at the ground, and I went on in as firm a voice as I could manage. "And we love you, because you are our grandson. Nothing will ever change that."

We were both quiet for a moment, him likely thinking about his dad, and me trying to think what to say next. Finally I decided to try to bring back some enjoyment into his day, so I picked up his fishing pole and handed it gently back to him.

"Now, come on, how's about you show your ol' grandpa up?" I smiled at him, not expecting him to smile back, though I thought I saw his mouth twitch ever so slightly. "After all, those big fish aren't going to catch themselves."

Even A Lady

2010-09-29T19:00:00.002-04:00

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It would never have worked back home, of course; not for long, not for real. Everyone knew the O'Connells back in Dillimore. Charlie O'Connell had lived there his whole life, the only son of a one-time mayor, and when he came home from a stint in the army with a Puerto Rican wife, he'd stirred up probably three years' worth of talk amongst the whitebread community. They'd raised up five kids in that heartland-of-America town, and if any of those kids wasn't one hundred percent normal? Why, that'd make the gossip rounds too. Whispered comments whenever Mama went by; cheap jokes at Dad's expense. Hell, the younger kids would never see the end of it from the playground bullies, and they wouldn't even have any idea why.

So Maria Inez waited until she was good and shut of that town before she started living as Alex.

Thing about Fort Carson was, it wasn't much bigger than Dillimore. But the army base and the highway between San Fierro and Las Venturas meant that a lot of people passed through, for a few hours or days or even weeks; and it was close enough to Greenglass College for the commute to not be too painful. So a short-haired woman with a penchant for wearing men's clothes left Dillimore, and a small, somewhat delicate guy showed up the next day in Fort Carson. Simple enough. And no one in Carson had ever known Maria Inez, so she just... went away. There was only Alex here. He'd let a couple of friends in on the secret over the last three years, but for the most part it was easier to just let Maria die.

Of course, now Maria's mom -- Alex's mom, even if she wasn't aware that her second-born had been a son underneath all those pesky double-X chromosomes -- had run through Alex's entire stock of excuses, and was finally coming up for a long-overdue visit.

"So you're gonna tell her, right?" his friend Richie had asked. Alex had replied in the affirmative then, but now that he could see Mama's car pulling up in the parking lot outside his apartment building, he was wondering how quickly he could work up a disguise. He had to have an old blouse or bra or something at the back of his closet, didn't he? Or maybe he could just escape through the bathroom window or something, there was always that option.

The doorbell rang, and Alex opened the door, and exclamations and hugs were exchanged as Mama stepped inside. The disguise option was out, then, and the bathroom window even moreso. Which left...

"Um. Mama? There's something I should probably tell you..."

Frickin' continuity. I couldn't even come up with something particularly good for this one, but it was pretty much required, given the groundwork I'd already laid.

Mother-in-Law

2010-09-28T22:18:00.004-04:00

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Merv turned on her then, one hand clamping down on her bony shoulder, the other rooting itself in the thin hair on top of her head. Her endless carping turned into screams, beautiful screams as the muscles in his wrists and arms and back flexed; and when her head tore loose from her neck, it did so with a glorious meaty rending sound and a fierce spatter of hot blood.

"Well?" she added, in her finest buzzsaw screech -- the woman was old and frail, but still had a pair of lungs on her. Merv sighed inwardly as his fondest daydreams once more made way for reality. Not that Julia wasn't a hell of a woman, better than a man like him deserved, but goddamn, her mother...

"No ma'am, Mrs. Feldman," he replied -- seven years he and Julia had been married, but God forbid he refer to his mother-in-law by her good Christian name; nossir, that was one liberty that Mervin J. Kincade was not in a position to take. "I most definitely am going to do that first thing tomorrow -- just as soon as the boss comes back from vacation, y'see."

"Hmph," the old bat replied. She craned her neck forward, glaring up at him as though expecting to skewer him with just that look in her eye... that haughty you-never-deserved-my-daughter look that he didn't know how he had managed to put up with this long. That, in fact, he couldn't put up with anymore. And wouldn't. The force of his clenched hand smashing into her face was enough to slam her back against the wall; he pinned her there with the other hand, and kept punching, and punching, and punching. She wasn't giving him any look, now, not through the welter of blood that had previously been her face.

Merv blinked. "Are you even listening to me, Mervin?" she snapped, hands on hips, practically sneering at him. "You'd best get your act together, young man, or my Julia may just start realizing just what a mistake she made in marrying you -- "

"Yes ma'am," Merv interrupted, speaking quickly so he could maybe get out of this conversation before she could get on his case for that, too. "I'm real sorry, ma'am, but I promised I'd help Julia set up for dinner, and you know how I hate to disappoint her."

He hurried out of the room, though not quite quickly enough to avoid hearing her mutter something about how it was already too late for that.

The story about promising to help Julia was, of course, a lie; but she was pleased enough when he showed up to help carry things to the dining room table. They all managed to sit down and start eating with a minimum of snark... and then the smoke detector in the kitchen went off.

Julia jumped up from the table. "Oh, my pie!" she exclaimed, and rushed back through the kitchen door. They could hear her in there, pulling open the oven door and muttering over its contents.

A flicker of movement caught at the corner of Merv's eye, and he felt another of those stifled sighs coming on. Mrs. Feldman was taking in a deep breath, no doubt to fuel her latest nagfest at his expense. He started to turn toward her --

-- and froze.

She was choking.

The old bat hadn't bothered to actually finish chewing before starting in on him again, and now she was actually choking on something.

For a moment he sat there, listening to his wife's movements in the next room, and watching the weak struggles of his mother-in-law across the table.

Finally he rose from his chair, set his napkin down carefully beside his plate, and headed into the kitchen to see what he could do to help.

Are mothers-in-law really that shrill in real life? I realize that in the wacky wacky sitcoms and whatnot they are awful harridans that exist only to torment and humiliate their put-upon sons-in-law (assuming we're talking about the wife's mother, which is the case in the comic). But does that actually bear out in reality? I can't really speak from experience, seeing as I don't have a wife; but, I mean, people aren't nearly as simple as TV tends to make them out to be, so I'm thinking that this relationship is probably generally more nuanced.

Also: every character name in this one is lifted from a webcomic which, in its original incarnation, was one of my favorite Keenspot titles back in the early days of that particular collective. This is because I randomly decided to name the husband Merv and then found it amusing to go with the theme. A delicious ham sandwich to anyone who spots the ref! (Void in the state of Idaho.)

Fencing

2010-09-21T12:15:00.001-04:00

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"...and they say that to this day, you can still hear his footsteps in the night when the moon is full... The Phantom Fence-Stringer!"

For a moment, there was silence.

"That's it?" The fire had died down considerably, casting those gathered on the other side of it more in shadow than in light; Evan's laid-back drawl was recognizable enough, though, especially as strained by abject terror as it currently wasn't. "No. That's just dumb, Bran."

Brandon slouched back and crossed his arms. "Oh, like you could tell one better?" He glared around the circle at everyone he could see. Liz was visible enough on his right, with Ken sitting primly on a square of blanket beside her; Camellia was sitting with her back propped up against a stump on his left. Patty on Ken's other side, and Mara and Evan across the circle, were almost invisible. Everyone else looked bored, though. Except Cam, who mainly looked embarrassed for Brandon.

"Of course I could tell one better," Evan replied. He reached out to throw another log on the fire, and the flames kicked up enough to illuminate his grinning face. "Hell, Patty could probably tell a scarier campfire story than you can, and she can't even tell a knock-knock joke without messing it up."

"I know a good one where it's a rabbit," Patty chimed in helpfully.

"Exactly."

"Look," Brandon replied, glaring across the circle at Evan. "It was my idea to go camping, and my idea to go camping here in what is, like, the spookiest forest in the world. So if none of you have big enough imaginations to be the least bit scared when I tell a totally awesome ghost story? Hey, that's not my problem."

Mara shifted uneasily. "Look, I think maybe we're all getting a little too involved in this whole 'scary story' thing, so why don't we -- "

"I've got one."

Ken had been pretty quiet all day, so when he spoke up now, everyone looked toward him. He was still sitting on his blanket, shoes removed and set carefully by on the grass. He was staring straight ahead, whether into the fire or beyond it, Brandon couldn't tell.

"I've got a story I could tell," Ken went on evenly. "It is a tale of sorrow and vengeance, of horror and loss. It is not -- " His eyes narrowed. " -- for the faint of heart."

"Showoff," Brandon muttered.

"It begins on a night much like this one..." Ken began...

"...and the heads were still there," he finished up some time later. He rose from his seat, calmly slipped on his shoes, and nodded to the rest of the group. "It's pretty late, so I think I'm going to turn in now. Good night, everyone." A flashlight clicked to life in his hand, the circle of light dancing ahead of him as he made his way across the campsite and into his tent.

For a moment, silence.

"So," Evan said finally, in an almost unrecognizable voice. "I'm never sleeping again. How about you guys?"

The opening bit came to me when I first saw this rerun come up yet again; the rest was written after a night spent watching about four episodes of the anime series I'm currently working my way through on Hulu. All the character names and personalities in the story are at least partially based on characters from this particular series, although I had to take some liberties since I'm not *actually* writing about, say, the hilariously neurotic son of the Grim Reaper.

At least I'm not taking the liberty of putting up a rerun without even admitting it's a rerun, though.

Obituaries

2010-09-15T16:27:00.005-04:00

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That was Arthur, though -- he didn't wear all black and hang around in graveyards or anything, but he still had a few peculiar hobbies. One of those hobbies was reading the obituaries. Any time he was out somewhere like a restaurant or a coffee house, chances were good that he'd round up all the abandoned newspapers and page through them till he found what he was looking for, sandwiched in right before the classifieds or on its own page at the end of the Lifestyles section (a placement that Jim always found hilarious). Right now he was looking at last Thursday's New York Times. Any set of obits provided the potential for some interesting entries, but major papers also gave Arthur the chance to do some celebrity-spotting as well.

"Oh, hey, sweet!" he added, around a sip of the double-mocha-whatever that Lindy had foolishly left behind when she got up to use the restroom. "Here's someone famous... Austrian opera singer. 'Peter Johann Martin Franz Kiesl died blah blah, former Lieutenant blah...' oh, a Nazi opera singer, nice, I bet he got all the chicks... 'buried at Zen... Zensomething Cemetary in Vienna.'"

"Zentralfriedhof," Emma provided. She actually did enjoy graveyards, or at least reading about them on Wikipedia. The biggest one locally was Valhalla Gardens, which was one of the modern ones that looked like a golf course when you drove by, and therefore bored Emma to tears.

"Yeah. That thing. In Vienna." Arthur took a swig of coffee... his own, this time. "Well, one less Nazi left in the world, I guess. And a famous musician! I'd say that counts as my dead celebrity for the day."

"Oooh, dead celebrities? Who croaked?" Lindy asked, coming up from behind Arthur and slipping back into her seat next to Jim. "Was it Glenn Beck? Please tell me it was Glenn Beck."

"Nazi opera dude," Emma replied. "Peter Johann Maria Something Something."

Arthur picked the paper up again. ""Martin Franz Kiesl. Died in his bed, aged eighty-six." He paused. "Oh. Didn't have any family, apparently. I guess Nazi opera singers don't get all the chicks after all."

Lindy frowned. "Peter Kiesl? He's not dead."

"He wha?"

She leaned forward. "Arthur, my parents are opera nerds, remember? Kiesl's not dead. Dad was going on about this at dinner the other night... they got mixed up and buried some other guy in his grave, or something. 'A minor industrialist', whatever that means."

Arthur looked disappointed. "Hell. An industrialist? That doesn't count as a celebrity at all."

Yes, that's right. I just wrote a crossover between Pluggers and 9 Chickweed Lane. And I am not one bit sorry about it either.

I think I managed to do it slightly less wall-of-text-fully than McEldowney, too.

Devices

2010-04-24T23:39:00.002-04:00

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"But Mr. Phillips?" Stevie held up his own compass, a birthday present from his parents. "I think -- "

"Bob," the scoutmaster replied, still wearing the little smile he'd had on for almost this entire trip. "Call me Bob, sport, remember?"

"Um. Bob." Stevie looked again at his compass. "I think actually camp is south of here."

"What, sport?" the scoutmaster smiled. "Let me see that." He snatched the compass away and glanced at it briefly. "Nope, you're mistaken." The compass disappeared into his pocket.

"Hey -- " Stevie cried.

"Your compass must be broken, sport," Phillips replied cheerily. "Come on, boys! We've got maybe an hour before we get back to camp, so let's keep at it!"

"He said that an hour ago," Jed muttered, and several of the other boys nodded. None of them had any idea where they were, though -- especially now that Stevie's compass was gone -- so they pushed on.

Their usual scoutmaster was Kevin Lee's dad, a wisecracking used-car salesman who they all deeply admired for his ready willingness to use the word "fuck". Mr. Lee had gotten sick right before the camping trip, but rather than calling the whole thing off (thereby crushing the months-long dreams of a dozen ten-year-old boys), somehow a substitute scoutmaster had been procured. Nobody was sure how that had worked -- Kevin said he thought maybe his dad had asked around some of the other troops in the area -- but they did know that when they'd arrived at the state park Saturday morning, a cheerfully smiling stranger had been waiting for them. The smiling stranger had greeted them all, introduced himself as "Bob Phillips -- just call me Bob", chatted with their parents; then he had gathered up the boys and led them all into the woods. They'd quickly set up their tents at the campsite, and then "Bob" had announced that it was time for a hike.

Now it was Saturday night coming on, and they had been walking in what felt like circles for a couple of hours.

"'Just a little farther, boys,'" Matt said from his place near the back of the troop, mocking the scoutmaster's voice and constant smile. "'I got no idea where I am, but I figure you're too stupid to know that, so I'll just keep saying that it's -- '"

"Just a bit more now, boys," the scoutmaster's voice floated back to them. "The place we're going is just... over... this hill."

Kevin and Matt looked at each other. "The place we're going?" Kevin asked. "Weren't we heading back to the campsite?" Matt shrugged uneasily, looking up at the sky. It was nearly dark in the forest by now.

By the time "Bob" led them into a clearing and announced that they had reached their destination, most of the boys were too exhausted to argue. They all set to work putting down their sleeping bags, except for Wally, who had left his in his tent back at the campsite; Wally limped over to the scoutmaster, explaining the problem and trying his tired ten-year-old best not to cry.

The scoutmaster's calm little smile never faltered as he put a heavy arm around the boy's shoulders. "That's all right, sport," he replied cheerfully. "You can bunk with me."

Thanks, Mom

2010-04-18T23:27:00.004-04:00

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The old woman's eyes brightened, and she clasped her hands together. "Oh, how nice to see you! Why, it's been so long since you came to visit --" Then the smile slipped from her face. "You... are here to visit with me, aren't you, dear?"

The younger woman shrugged, not actually making eye contact. "Let's go on a trip, ma."

The old woman sagged. "Oh, Megan..."

"C'mon, ma, it'll be fun." The younger woman -- Megan -- reached into her purse and pulled something out. A roadmap and a magnifying glass. "You know how I hate tryin' ta navigate while I'm drivin'."

"Oh, but Megan." The old woman resettled her glasses on her face. "Why don't we have a nice evening here at the Home? They're serving meatloaf tonight, and -- and there's a new jigsaw puzzle I haven't done yet, and..." She trailed off, only looking at her daughter, who was still looking at nothing in particular. "Please, dear, it's been so long since we've visited together."

Megan rolled her eyes and glanced at her watch. "You done, ma?" She finally looked at the other woman long enough to shove the map into her hands. "Come on, I gotta be in Roca Escalante by nine or I lose my deposit." She looked around, nose wrinkling. "And I wanna get outta here. This place smells like a damn diaper."

"You did pick it for me, dear," the old woman murmured; but she was already being overruled, Megan's strong grip on her arm propelling her toward the door.

"Now let's get goin', huh ma? You get me where I'm goin', an' I'll drop ya back off on th' way back. Teamwork, right?"

"I suppose," the old woman answered quietly, beginning to actually follow her daughter instead of just being dragged along. "Although... I don't suppose we could at least eat something this time?"

Megan snorted. "Christ, ma, I'm not made of money."

Ordinarily I don't do the Sundays -- in fact, I think I never have before, ever -- but this one just spoke to me. Who says the mom actually wants to be in that car?

Continuing

2010-04-13T23:20:00.003-04:00

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She pours the coffee out again, into the same cracked mug, in the same weathered hand, that has been held out to her a thousand times before. It doesn't matter that Steve doesn't actually come in all that often; that the diner has an army of coffee mugs; that she has only been in this job a couple weeks. The coffee, the mug, the hand are the same, are eternal. The coffee is poured. It's still in the pot in her hand. It's disappeared down the throat of her customer, who's already left his dollar on the counter and gone. She tips another measure into the waiting mug before her.

"Ellie."

She is pretty sure that she's in hell, that this is hell, this endless no-time of Now, of Here, of Pluggerville. She is the waitress at this diner, and has been, forever. The small town has slumbered around her forever, it is always a Saturday in early summer, and the coffee is in her hand. She is pouring, she is brewing, she is opening up the cash register. The tireless bell dings as she puts in the same dollar bill, a hundred, a million, uncounted infinities of times. The mug is out. She pours. It's a gorgeous day outside.

"Ellie."

The diner is maybe half-full of men talking, drinking coffee, eating eggs and hash and Micah's special biscuits-and-gravy. Soon they will disperse, to mow their lawns, or tinker with their cars (good Detroit rolling iron, every one!), or play ball with their kids. They have always been here, and they have always been in their yards, their garages, in Strawford Park by the creek. It is always a beautiful lazy Saturday in this peaceful little town. The world has always been theirs, been all of theirs, a gorgeous oyster cradling every pearl there ever was.

"Ellie."

The mug is out, she is pouring, not taking her eyes off that large chapped hand, just as she has done, is doing, will always do; but she doesn't remember ever hearing her name spoken in that tone before, not Here, not Now, and she looks up for what she thinks may be the first time.

Steve is looking at her with much the same expression she feels must be on her own face: the look of calm and serenity that everyone else Here has, that seems to come with existence Here, but with an undercurrent of fear, of honest horrified bewilderment that she had thought no one else felt. She had assumed she was the only one out of tune, the only one who hadn't asked for this, wasn't here by choice.

"Ellie." Steve has her attention, has it in full, and as he casts a quick glance around the diner she marvels at how quickly things can change, even in this unending Now. Steve is just another Pluggerville resident, middle-aged, affable, who likes his truck and his dog and the occasional brewski, and she had assumed he was here by choice, just like everyone else but her, but --

"What the hell, Steve," she murmurs through her Pluggerville smile, "what the hell."

"You feel it too?" He runs both hands through his thinning hair. "My god, I thought it was just -- that I was the only one who -- "

Mike Andrews comes in; has always been here; seats himself at the counter and orders the same plate of ham and eggs he has ordered infinite times before, and she is taking, has taken that order, over and over her coffee pot filling the same endless eternal mug held in the hand of the man, all of them, it's always the same hand and the same mug and the same Now; but she has hold of the thread that connects her to Steve, and when the Now turns again to the two of them and the coffee pot and his slightly trembling hand, she is ready.

"It's like hell," she says, and he only nods, not the least bit surprised that she has stated his own belief. "It's like the whole world's gone except this one town and this one day and this one damned -- damned --"

"I think it is," Steve replies simply. "Or the whole world's still there -- still out there, somewhere -- and we've just stolen this place. Here. Now."

She pours coffee, Steve melts into one after another of the various townspeople asking for coffee, sausage, pancakes, toast. It is either a few seconds or a trillion years, or maybe both, until she can answer him. "God, can't they feel it?"

Steve looks at her over the rim of the eternal mug of coffee, and in his eyes understanding, sorrow, and pity do a brief dance. "Don't you think that's the whole point?"

Ellie is about to answer -- something along the lines of how they can't possibly understand what's going on, understand that this Saturday morning and this summer day is stuck, it's stuck and it's not ending -- she is about to say something like this, except there's no one to say it to, because Steve isn't sitting there. It's Bill Evers who has come in and taken a seat at the counter, spending some time with his buddies before he goes back to the game of catch he will always play with his two young sons. He comments again on what a day it is, what a god-damned gorgeous day, and Ellie agrees as she always has, as she always will, because it will never not be a gorgeous summer day Here and Now. She pours the coffee, always, in this place that is peaceful and static and exactly as its handful of inhabitants want it, forever. She is remembering the look of pity in Steve's eyes, the look that was there, will always be there, and for a brief instant she understands; but as the bell over the door jangles and Steve sits down again the coffee pot is in her hand, and she has forgotten again. She is pouring the coffee into the same cracked mug, in the same hand, that will always be held out to her on this endless perfect day.

Apparently when I come back I come back in long, wordy, run-on-sentence-y style.

There is something fascinating about the way the waitress-dog is standing in this comic, coffee pot at the ready, as if she has been there for a million years; it spoke to me, and made me want to spend a thousand words saying "look at me, I've read 'You Know They Got A Hell Of A Band'!"

There is also this thing people do, perhaps especially the "plugger" types but all kinds of people, where we think that if we could just put things back to the way they were at some point in the past, then everything will be awesome. These days people complain about how fast-paced and competitive the world is, and long for the simplicity of the 50s. But I've been going through my box set of the original Twilight Zone, and it seems like back in the day people spent a lot of time complaining about how fast-paced and competitive the world was and longing for the simplicity of, say, 1888. And when you get right down to it, wouldn't everything just be easier if we could just freeze time while the world was on a nice calm peaceful day? Surely that would be a nice thing to experience for all eternity with no variation whatsoever.

I explain things too much.

Meta: The hell?

2010-04-13T21:44:00.003-04:00

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What'd I do, die or something?

Jeez.

Meta: Hey, kids.

2009-02-28T00:21:00.004-05:00

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So.

I managed to fall off the Internet again, thanks to my ten-year-old laptop deciding one night a few months ago that it was time for its modem to become a small, light, actually-relatively-useless-for-the-job paperweight. That kind of sucked.

Now I have a new laptop. And its modem works -- see, I'm posting and everything.

So basically, maybe with the Plugfics again, dammit.

Collection

2008-11-03T01:03:00.003-05:00

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Cora watched the boy hobble into the classroom, feeling an unpleasant suspicion twisting around in her gut. Third time this year that Robbie had broken a bone; and while some children were just unlucky, Cora didn't think it was just bad luck dogging this child. Not unless you counted the luck of the draw when it came to parents.

Robbie's mother had run off with a trucker when the boy was three years old; Robbie's father was rumored to be a prodigious and violent drunkard, although he was apparently smart enough to do most of his drinking out of town. Robbie himself was a small child, with the kind of face that always looked bruised around the eyes. Cora sometimes wondered whether he ever got any sleep at all. A bit of prying had revealed that he and his father lived out by the woods in an old Airstream trailer, but nothing beyond that. She didn't like to get too nosey about her students.

The problem, she found herself thinking as the clock edged towards 7:30, was that Robbie's case was so... unusual. He acted enough like any second-grader, and seemed only a little shy. Loud voices or noises did not cause him any apparent fear. He committed the usual number of classroom transgressions, and responded to discipline just as well as the other children. But there was that look he got, sometimes, when no one was paying him much attention, as though he were sadder than any little boy had a right to be...

And there was the fact that he kept breaking bones, of course. And the oddly-shaped bruise she had once found on his arm, that he had refused to talk about. That was the one time he had seemed... fearful. As though the bruise was part of some guilty secret. Cora wondered now, for the millionth time, whether she should say something to someone, or whether she was just being paranoid.

The morning bell rang, and Cora forced herself to smile as she rose from her desk. "Good morning, class," she said, and "Good morning, Miss Sedgwick," they all chorused back at her. Except Robbie, who was looking down at his fresh white cast as if afraid to meet her eyes. By the end of the week, she knew, it would be covered with the names of classmates; more well-wishing signatures for a collection already bigger than any child that age should have.

Polling

2008-10-24T19:10:00.002-04:00

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Martha fancied she could feel a sweatdrop roll down her forehead. "Oh, well. They were both... so good," she managed to reply. "I really couldn't say which I liked better." That much was true, anyway. Edna couldn't cook to save her life, and she couldn't throw together pre-cooked ingredients together to save her life, either. That three-bean salad had tasted like death on toast... in part because Martha was pretty sure Edna had actually added lumps of toast to it. Something had been oddly soggy in there, anyway.

"Hmm. Really? No preference?"

"Not a bit," Martha answered with as much cheer as she could muster. Then, to try to allay Edna's suspicions: "In fact, I was thinking of asking you for both of the recipes. You know how my husband is looking for that big promotion? -- well, it also so happens that Susie Mitchell is married to one of his managers, and they're both coming over for dinner Thursday night. I was thinking of making them both dishes!" A harmless enough lie; it would turn out that Mr. Mitchell was allergic to both tuna and... whatever might have been in the bean salad... and thus she would be excused from bringing either food-related abomination into being.

"Why, how lovely!" Edna exclaimed. She sounded pleasantly surprised. "In that case, no need for the recipe -- I'll bring them over to you myself! You'll have enough on your hands with trying to impress Ronnie's manager!"

Oh no. "That's really not necessary at a -- "

"No, no, dear, I insist. You needn't trouble yourself about it at all. And I'm sure my casserole will make a real impression with that Mr. Mitchell!"

Martha rubbed her forehead. "That's what I'm afraid of," she mumbled into her hand.

"Hmm?"

"Nothing, dear." Martha eyed the wall of the room she was in, and wondered vaguely just how hard it would be to torch the place and give herself an excellent reason for not serving Edna's food.

Huh. The dread specter of continuity? Really? How terrifying.

At least, I'm pretty sure the Edna here is the same Edna as this one.

Property

2008-10-21T10:23:00.002-04:00

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She signed it just a little larger this time, the words "PROPERTY OF" just a little bit more prominent, in the hopes that maybe this time Harriet would actually return the damn thing.

Somewhere on the other side of the phone, Harriet herself laughed. "Oh, dear, you are too good to me," she said, and Edna privately agreed. "I did so enjoy the book I borrowed from you last year... such a delicious little turn of story, it was."

"Yes, well. It's always been one of my favorite books. Every year or so I pick it up and read it again." Hint, hint, Harriet. Maybe fourteen months and counting is too long to hold on to a book you've "borrowed"...

Harriet laughed again. "Oh, Edna, you are too much."

"Quite," Edna managed to reply, instead of groaning. Dealing with Harriet and her irritating way of speaking and her infuriating way of never returning borrowed things was enough to drive a saint to murder; but since they were both on their church's Events Planning Committee, a certain degree of amicability was required.

Of course, if Edna had been thinking, she never would have volunteered any information about her reading habits in the first place. And if she had to say anything, she could just claim to have taken up Stephen King. Harriet didn't approve of all the curse words in conjunction with all the sex; that was why she preferred clean-talking trashy romance novels. The twit.

"...yesterday," Edna suddenly realized Harriet was saying, "and so I really can't see my way clear to it, you know? -- as much as I would like to. You see my problem, dear, don't you?"

"Uh, yes," Edna replied; and then, since this call had gone on long enough to count as amicable, "Look, Harriet, I should -- "

Harriet fairly crowed. "I'm so glad you'll help, Edna dear," she burbled, and Edna found herself sinkingly wondering just what she had agreed to. "Oh, it is rather a lot of work, but so rewarding, and I am so terribly glad that you can take over for me. They'll expect you there at four AM -- sharp, dear, but you understand, I'm sure!"

"Uh," Edna offered.

"It's been so lovely talking with you, Edna dear! I'll see you in church this Sunday; and you can tell me all about how the good work went!"

"Er."

"Good-bye, dear!" Click.

Edna muttered something foul.

On Diesel

2008-10-14T12:46:00.004-04:00

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Phoenix rolling up behind him now, rearview eventually giving way to rock-strewn emptiness, and he was on his way. North to Flagstaff, east to Albuquerque, a quick run through Amarillo. Nick had christened his truck the Yellow Kid a few years back, once it became apparent that the Phoenix-to-Oklahoma-City drive had sort of unofficially become his. Nobody got it.

Nick flicked through the radio spectrum for a while, trying to find something that wasn't either brimstone or steel guitars, but finally gave it up as a lost cause. Instead he hummed to himself, some song he'd heard recently about a cat in the rain, or something, he wasn't sure; it was in Spanish, which he had known as a kid but managed to mostly forget somewhere along the way. Probably the song had nothing to do with cats, or rain.

Once or twice he glanced at the photo taped to the dashboard; it was an old one, and the kids were still frozen at four and six and running laughing through Teresa's backyard. There were newer photos at the house in Wichita, he knew, but he preferred the ones that still had Charlie in them. Teresa's daughter Julieanne was in high school now. Every Christmas Teresa sent him family pictures, which he kept in a shoebox. On his dashboard Charlie and Julieanne laughed and ran, and neither cousin betrayed any knowledge of the fall that would neatly remove Charlie from future scenes. Nick was pretty sure you could see the offending tree in the background of that photo. He'd never asked which one it had been, though. Hadn't even been there in the first place. He'd been on the road.

He worked the gears, babying The Yellow Kid up a hill, and then eased it down the other side. In a couple of hours he'd stop at the same diner he always stopped at outside Phoenix. Clara or Berenice or Steph would be there, one of the waitresses who'd served him coffee a hundred times before, and she'd ask him as she poured how his family was, and he'd lie and say fine. As far as Clara and Berenice and Steph were concerned, his wife was still around and his son was still alive. They all lived in a pretty little ranch house in Phoenix. Rhonda wasn't tired of him being gone all the time. Charlie's six-year-old neck hadn't snapped against the hateful ground. Nick enjoyed the fantasy.

Tonight he would sleep in the cab of his truck, and tomorrow night, and probably the night after that, before catching a Greyhound up to Wichita. He'd sleep on his sister's couch, say hi to his niece, and then go back to The Yellow Kid and get back on the road. He didn't have a home; or if he did, then the Kid was it. The pretty little ranch house in Phoenix had been sold years ago, once he no longer had a wife or child to share it with him. Now all he really had was the road.

It was enough, Nick told himself firmly.

Yeah, I don't know. It was going to be a quiet little reflection about a guy with a quiet little life, rolling from job to job, occasionally seeing his sister but otherwise being very much alone. Then I started channeling Richard Bachman at his weakest. Next I guess I die of cancer of the pseudonym?

Coffee Mugs

2008-10-07T23:31:00.003-04:00

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George set the coffee maker going, then looked up as the doorbell rang. "Little early, ain'tcha?" he muttered under his breath; then, "Come in!", he yelled. He listened to the door open and close, and nodded to Jason as the latter man ambled into the kitchen. "Coffee's not ready yet."

"'m early," Jason agreed. He rubbed his hands together. "Cold out there. Glad I don't hafta walk down to the bus stop an' wait around in this weather."

George nodded curtly. "How's the truck coming along?"

"Might have it fixed this week."

"Good. Good." Sooner the better. Jason was a decent neighbor and coworker, but that didn't mean George wanted to keep giving him a lift out to the plant every day. Especially since the bastard never chipped in for gas.

Jason interrupted his thoughts. "You get a raise this year?"

George frowned. "Ain't your business, I suppose, but no. Didn't get one."

"I gotta friend in HR, says this year's round of reviews finished yesterday. Says nobody got raises, and a lotta guys got laid off besides."

"So?"

Jason shrugged. "It's a hard life, is all I'm sayin'. Blue-collar grunts like us, there ain't much left for us no more."

"Ain't you a cheery guy." George reached up to grab a couple of mugs from the cabinet. "You must be the life of every party."

"No, really," Jason replied, as George handed him a mug. "information tech-naw-lo-gee, that's where it is these days." He sipped at the coffee. "Here I am just hopin' to make it to retirement."

George glared at his own mug. LONNIE'S CB MART, it read. Jason's mug read ANTON'S HOUSE OF PORK. "You get to be my age, you'll be more or less used to losin' your job. Eventually you find another one." Not that it was the kind of thing he wanted to be thinking about, but since Jason never knew when the hell to shut up... George sighed, kept talking. "My brother came to me, ten, fifteen years ago now, asked me for help. Said he was starting up a new company. He just needed a couple thousand bucks and an extra pair of hands. Was goin' into computers, just like you're goin' on about now.

Jason gaped in a manner that George found supremely annoying. "An' didja help him?"

"Course not. I thought he was crazy. Flint County didn't need no internet -- we needed manufacturin', we needed the GM plant and men like you and me to work it." He rubbed his forehead. "Last I heard he was worth three million. Guess one of us was crazy, at that."

"Wow," Jason replied helpfully.

George glared at his mug again. "Fuggin' LONNIE'S CB MART," he muttered.

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

I Thought You Would Never

2008-10-02T21:26:00.003-04:00

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Here's how it was supposed to happen:

After college, I packed up and moved. Fled. Flew to you, literally and figuratively. When I got off the plane and past security and saw you standing there waiting for me, the only thing I could think about was how, this time, I wouldn't be leaving again in a week. I was here to stay this time. I was home.

I got a job, maybe at the hospital near where you lived, maybe not. You'd gotten your degree about the same time I had -- maybe a little before, maybe a little after, the details aren't important. We got married. Six, seven years waiting for life to begin, and now it finally had.

We had an apartment and a cat -- or two, or three, though I would've balked at four. Life wasn't perfect, and it wasn't always easy or even pleasant, but we managed to muddle through somehow. Sometimes in the evenings we would watch Star Trek together and I would pity all the rock stars and kings and millionaires of the world because they weren't here, arms wrapped around you, feeling your heartbeat, your breath.

We never had kids, of course. Neither of us ever wanted them in the first place; and our lives were full enough without them. We never needed them. We had each other.

Eventually we left the apartment for a house somewhere, a small one, enough room for you and me and the cats. Maybe even a place on the street you showed me once -- remember? -- sweet little homes on garden lots with tall, leafy shade trees lined up by the curb. Walking distance to the international market, all the Pocky we could carry. You used to pass that street on the bus and dream. Wherever we wound up, though, it was home.

We grew older together, and it turned out to be as simple and good as we had always imagined, back when we were stuck thousands of miles away from each other. Life went on, and we went with it, and it was the same as it had ever been since it started that day we married. Mostly happy. Mostly good.

Eventually we both retired, still together, still you and me and maybe a cat. You were my world. I was happy to be yours as long as you wanted. We had forty years, fifty? -- not much more, probably, I was already edging towards 30 by the time I graduated -- but we had decades, and we never fell apart like my parents did, never drifted away like your parents did. It was like a fairy-tale romance, if there was ever a fairy tale with more frogs than princes.

But eventually, of course, one of us died. Maybe both. Maybe there was a gas leak, both of us going peacefully in our sleep. Our bodies found together with your head still on my shoulder. Better that than the alternative. If it came down to that, though, I'd be willing to be the survivor. Waking up each morning, knowing that this is yet another day in a long, long string of them without you: it hurts more than anything else I've ever experienced; and I've had an organ slowly fail, undiagnosed, over the course of years. I wouldn't want you to have to go through this, and so I'd be willing to be the survivor, again. At least I'd be at the end of my life, instead of still staring decades more of it down. Nobody bats an eye when one eighty-year-old dies and the other follows a week later.

That's how it was supposed to happen, plus or minus a few details: you, me, a good half-century of happy married life together.

Apparently it would've made us Pluggers, but who cares about that?

Way to go, Pluggers. I know that you're better than me because you don't bother with ridiculous citified things like computers, cable TV, paved roads, or basic sanitation; but do you have to rub it in by reminding me that you get to have your Twu Wuvs not die young, too? I mean, really. Apparently I missed the one where Brookins illustrated "Pluggers are big mean jerks".

All of this fic is true, or at least as true as an alternate history of the future can be. I have school notebooks going back to about 2001 where the back pages, unneeded for class, are filled with daydreams of a similar nature... though of course there was more hope involved when it was still, y'know, actually possible. Mine is a sad and kind of pathetic story. I'm just glad I got my gothy-poetry phase out in high school, so I haven't had to sink quite that far again.

"Mostly happy. Mostly good." is a bit I have lifted from Neil Gaiman's "The Wedding Present," from Smoke and Mirrors. It's in the introduction, not in the table of contents. It's very good, although I can't really read it anymore. Maybe because it's too good. Way to go, Gaiman.

But Not in the Same Box

2008-09-27T21:03:00.003-04:00

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Oh, that's too fancy. Put it back and get something a little simpler, would you? Maybe some nice vanilla. Or even chocolate chip, I suppose, if you want to go a little wild.

It's not that I don't like chocolate, mind. Or even strawberry now and then. And certainly you'll never see me turn down a little dish of vanilla after dinnertime. Only, I'm a simple woman. You know that. I've always believed that it's not good to make things too complicated.

French vanilla? Oh, no, no. It's so exotic!

And please understand, I'm not trying to seem ungrateful. Heavens no! All grandmothers love to spend time with their grandchildren, especially with a sweet young granddaughter who's willing to help run errands. Your brother would never help me shop for groceries -- so busy with his work! Is it true he's moved his practice to New York City? My! I could never live there. No, I'm happy here, same place I've lived all my life. Blueberry may not be a big city, but you know I've always been one for the simple life!

Oh, dear, I know I could just eat the vanilla bits of the neapolitan if I wanted, and leave the rest for guests, but that just seems so wasteful. And even if I decided to indulge a little and try one of the other flavors... well. It's like with the French vanilla. "Neapolitan"? You know what they say about continental cuisine! No, dear, I'm an old woman now, too old for such fancy things.

Thank you, dear. Now, we've got the vanilla ice cream, the potatoes, the oatmeal... was there anything else on the list?

It's really, really hard to decide whether I should change New York to Liberty.

Why do I keep setting fics in San Andreas?

Meta: Past Expiration

2008-09-24T22:04:00.006-04:00

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Funny thing... I was going to write the Plugfic for this one, and then I realized that Arthur Machen beat me to it over a hundred years ago.

Pluggers are stuck in 1895.

Out In The Rough

2008-09-19T21:20:00.004-04:00

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It took a while to hunt him down, although finding the bodies helped. After all, a half-dozen corpses in the woods by the golf course meant that all those missing persons cases really were related. And it gave the cops somewhere to stake out and wait for the perp to show. If there was one thing the Ashland cops loved, it was a stakeout.

The bodies weren't too mutilated, and the families of the most recent victim were even able to do an open-casket funeral, after the mortician put in a few hours of reconstructive work. So the guy was crazy, but it could've been worse. Most of his kills were even adults. Sergeant Douglas had a cousin on the force in Colorado, and he'd had to clean up a quarry full of dead kids last spring. Their murderer was still at large.

This guy, though, there didn't seem to be too much pattern to his victims. They came from all over town, and some from out of town; they were all ages, both sexes, and of no particular note but for the fact that they were all rotting a couple hundred yards from the green. No one had even realized, except the last couple he'd apparently gotten lazy and hadn't buried properly. People'd thought the stench was from a dead deer.

The selection of bodies confused the hell out of the cops at first, until someone figured out that they'd all had dealings with Ed Cobbs at one time or another. The guy who'd briefly dated Ed's daughter despite the old man's vehement disapproval, who'd seemingly run off one spring day; the drifter who'd panhandled outside Ed's hardware store for maybe a week before apparently moving on; even Petey Marsh was here, who'd delivered Ed's newspaper until one went through a window. When he disappeared six months later, his parents thought he'd run off.

It didn't take long to get a warrant.

When they got to the Cobbs residence, Ed and his wife were out in the front yard. She was raking leaves, obviously not paying him much attention as he recounted his golf-related exploits.

"...by the fourth hole," Ed was saying excitedly, "weeds up to my thighs, mosquitoes the size of small schnauzers swarming around my face..."

"Uh huh," his wife replied, frowning at the drifts of leaves still covering the lawn, and obviously mostly ignoring him.

Ed bared his teeth in a manic grin, eyes wide in his sweating face. "It's so much easier to drag them to my special place in the woods now, since the hole was redesigned and I don't have to go around the water trap anymore." He giggled.

"That's nice, dear. Maybe you should get a rake before you finish telling me about your golf game..."

They both looked up as the cops crunched across the leaves towards them. "Ed Cobb?" one of them said. "You're under arrest for the murder of Sarah Linwood, Albert Frohm, James O'Sullivan, Petey Marsh..."

Ed twitched a little as each name was read, then flung his arms wide and laughed. "Hole in one!" he yelled gleefully; and that was about as much sense as they were able to get out of him, so they put him in handcuffs and led him away.

What, two serial-killer fics in a row? Yeesh. It smells like the dread specter of continuity around here.

But you tell me what I was supposed to make of those eyes.

Left At The Railroad Tracks

2008-09-09T18:20:00.005-04:00

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The man drove hunched over the wheel, knuckles bulging yellowly beneath the skin of his hands. He cast the occasional quick glance at the truck's passenger seat, but mainly he kept his eyes forward. He had the headlights off, and the last streetlight had been about twenty miles back.

"Just a little farther," he muttered yet again. "Almost there. Almost there."

The boy stirred fitfully on the seat beside the man. It'd been a trick to get him into the vehicle with his wrists and ankles all bound up together like that, but once that was done, he hadn't moved much. A couple of blows to the head with a chunk of wood had helped. Now the boy barely moved but for the occasional twitch, or a flutter of lids over unfocused brown eyes. It'd been those eyes that had caught the man's attention in the first place.

"I guess you didn't want to play anymore," the man muttered, as he turned from the country road onto an even smaller one. "And that's fine. That's fine. But if playtime's over, then everyone has to take their toys and go home." The man glanced over at the boy again. "Time to put my toys away."

Woods grew up thick to either side of the road as they traveled on. At last the man slowed to a stop. He flicked his headlights on briefly, and the set of railroad tracks crossing the road reflected dimly back.

"Left," he said to himself, turning the truck in that direction. "Left. Left at the railroad tracks."

There was a faint path through the woods by the tracks, where a set of wheelruts could be seen if you knew enough to look; he followed them now, the truck bouncing along the uneven ground. A tree branch snapped against the passenger window, and the boy moaned thickly. His eyes opened fully for the first time since the trip had started.

"Hey," he said now, his voice fearful, but not panicked yet. "Hey, mister. Please. I just want to go home."

The man glanced over at the boy. Those were really wonderful brown eyes; dark, deep, promising all sorts of secrets. The man had learned lots of secrets from the boy during all those lovely days down in the basement. The boy had called for help, of course -- they all tried that, all the boys he had played with since discovering this game -- but to no avail. The man lived far from any neighbors, alone but for the playmates he would sometimes smuggle home in his truck.

"Please, mister," the boy tried again. "I won't tell anyone. Just... just let me go." He swallowed. "Right here is fine, even."

The man didn't answer, and the boy seemed to give up, falling silent again. When they reached the abandoned quarry, though, he tried one more time. "I just want to go home," he said to the man, and now he began to cry. "Why won't you let me go home?"

He struggled when the man tried to get him out of the truck, of course, but a couple swings of the tire iron and the boy went limp. The man dragged him to the quarry and sent him tumbling over the edge. The boy's body hit the still water with a loud splash. It was too dark for the man to see, but he imagined the boy sinking, falling to rest alongside all the other boys that the man had played with over the years.

"All done," he murmured, returning to the truck. "All cleaned up from playtime." He swung the truck around until it was pointing back toward the trail through the woods, and smiled as he started driving back toward the road. "Maybe I'll find some new toys to play with tomorrow."

Okay, so let me explain.

The comic shows a dog-man and a dog-dog. There is an obvious imbalance of power and of -- for lack of a better word -- humanity between the two of them. Why is this? Why does the dog-man get to drive the dog-dog around wherever he wants? Why should the dog-dog be subservient to the dog-man?

If you translated them into a human-man and a human-boy, what kind of relationship might you wind up with?

Serial killer and hapless victim, that's what.

See? It makes perfect sense!

The Original Cost

2008-09-06T15:23:00.005-04:00

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"An' it's a genuine Rolex, too," Joe finished happily, holding his wrist up to eye level again. "Says so right on the dial." He shook it and smiled. "Just watch that baby go. Tick-tick-tick-tick. Like clockwork."

"Funny," Steve replied colorlessly. The others continued to work on their sandwiches.

Joe's grin got a little bigger. "Aw, don't worry, buddy. I ain't too good fer bowlin' night with the guys now that I'm runnin' around with the big boys."

Marv raised one eyebrow above his egg salad. "With the big boys, huh? Funny, I hadn't heard that bein' named Employee Of The Month carried such priv'leges with it."

"Well, they don't give you that $200 bonus check for not bein' an asset to the cump'ny," preened Joe. "Which is why I went for the watch -- show I'm up to th' job, y'know? Watch like this mebbe even says a man is management quality." He shook it by his ear, and smiled at the rattle. "Cost just 'bout my whole bonus, but it was worth it."

Roger spoke up for the first time. "You got a Rolex for two hundred bucks?"

Joe beamed. "Do I gotta eye for a bargain, or what? I figger that's why th' brass is takin' an interest in me, too. They can see just how good I am at makin' decisions."

"It's fake," Marv replied.

Heads nodded all around the table, and Joe turned a delicate shade of green.

"Faker'n a three-dollar bill," Steve added, "and never mind that the guy at 7-11 swore it was legal tender when he gave you your change that one time, Joe; you're an idiot, and that's all there is to it."

Joe held the watch up to his face again, as though expecting it to have changed since the last time he'd looked. "Look, this guy told me it was for-sure real..."

"Oh, for Chrissakes," groaned Marv. "'This guy'? You buy your watches from 'some guy'? What, did you meet him in an alley? Did he insist on unmarked bills? What?"

"He did say cash only," Joe mumbled.

"Jesus wept."

"Now, hold on, fellas," Joe exclaimed suddenly, glaring around at them. "I see what this is. You're just jealous, right? Because I'm movin' up, an' you're all stuck... stuck... stuck not bein' employee of the month." His jaw set. "So you hafta tear down alla my accomplishments insteada makin' your own. Yeah, I get it."

"No, it's a fake, all right," Roger replied calmly. "Real Rolexes tick so fast you can't see 'em do it. And they don't rattle." Then he smirked and pointed at Joe's wrist. "And they don't say 'Rolox'."

Joe's wrist snapped back up, and he peered at it again for the umpteenth time in the last half-hour. "It doesn't say that... it, uh... shit."

Roger slapped him on the back. "Yeah, you sure showed us, big spender," he grinned, adding a wink to twist the knife that little bit extra. None of them'd ever much liked Joe.

Biofuel

2008-09-05T11:47:00.004-04:00

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Looked like the backyard hummingbird feeder needed a refill again. Well, that was easily enough done.

Ben stepped outside to grab the bottle from the feeder, then carried it into the garage, humming idly. He rinsed it out in the sink by the clothes washer, letting the hot water run for a couple minutes before adding a bit of bleach to kill any mold. Once the bleach was rinsed out, he stood the bottle on an old towel while he fetched his nectar solution from a shelf.

His ma had used a homemade mixture of sugar and water, boiled and stored in the freezer till needed; for a while after she'd died and left him the house and its hummingbird population, he'd tried various commercial solutions. Eventually, though, he'd tired of the results those gave him. After a few tries he'd come up with the mixture he used now, which had the benefit of being easy to whip up while also managing to not attract any bugs along with the birds. Ma's old sugar-water do had always wound up getting pillaged by ants.

Ben half-filled the feeder bottle from the gallon jug of nectar solution -- almost empty, now, he'd have to make some more soon -- then put the jug back and carefully carried the bottle back out to the backyard. Still humming, he screwed the bottle back onto the feeder, then stood back and admired his handiwork. He turned to go, and something went "crunch" under his shoe. He looked down.

"Heh," he said, scraping dead hummingbird off his shoe. "Guess you just couldn't help yourself, huh, little guy?" He surveyed the lawn around the feeder, where maybe a dozen dead hummingbirds lay in various stages of rot. "Was it tasty, fellas? I sure hope it was." He sneered. "Little bastards."

He went back into the house, careful to take off his shoes before entering. "Almost out of nectar..." he muttered to himself as he walked into the kitchen. Stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a cow was the beginnings of a grocery list; eggs, milk, toilet paper, Hamburger Helper. Ben rummaged through a drawer until he found a pencil, then walked over to the list.

Antifreeze, he wrote.

Ben grinned. "Little bastards," he said again.

Proud To Be An AMERICAN!

2008-08-29T19:59:00.005-04:00

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I knew this trip had been a mistake almost as soon as I crossed the state line. Problem was, I had to get to Grandma's funeral, and it just wasn't worth the cost to fly from Pennsylvania to southern Ohio. And that meant a trip through West Virginia.

About three miles in, I passed over a stretch of road stained a dull red. My first thought was an upended truck full of paint. Then I realized it was blood, and spent the next half-hour trying to convince myself that it hadn't been human. Just a deer that wandered into the path of an oncoming car. Sure.

I'd left late, figuring it would be easier to make the trip at night, when there wouldn't be much traffic. Now I found myself cursing that decision as I carefully negotiated an increasingly narrow road winding crazily between mountains where maybe one light shone every couple of miles. Several times someone came barreling up behind me, passing me at what had to be eighty miles an hour, and each time I shrank against my seat and prayed to survive the night.

Eventually I decided to take a break, which meant trying to find something open at 11:30 at night. Of course, there are easier tasks than to find something open in the middle of West Virginia at almost midnight... say, grooming a wolverine with a toothache and a taste for human blood. That sounded good right about now. Thirty miles on, though, I found a truck stop, and since no wolverines seemed to be in evidence, stopping and getting some food seemed an acceptable second choice.

I pulled in next to the top half of a pickup truck, connected by a delicate tracery of rust to its chassis and shored up by a wealth of bumper stickers. Proud To Be An AMERICAN!, declared a flag on the left side of the bumper. Love It Or Leave It, added another flag to the right. On the tailgate was another sticker, with a picture of Barack Obama next to the words If We'd Known It Would Turn Out Like This, We'd Have Picked Our Own Cotton! Charming. Maybe I'd get my food to go. I was driving a Rustmobile too, but the two stickers I'd thrown on there -- one for the Human Rights Campaign, one for my favorite band -- really didn't seem to mesh with the local politics.

A tired-looking waitress looked up as I entered the truck stop diner. "Can I help you?"

"Uh, yeah. Can I just get, like, a sandwich or something?"

She nodded toward a booth by the door. "There's a menu there, if y'wanna take a look."

I slid into the booth, opened the menu, and pondered whether I wanted the Hootin' Holler Burger or the pulled pork sandwich advertised alongside a drawing of a psychotic-looking pig in overalls. Then the door opened.

"Damn, Edda! Who parked that thing out front?"

"Which one?" the waitress replied.

"Th'one with th'stickers!" I shrank back into the booth. A huge mountain man strode past me towards the counter, and I swore I heard banjos. He settled onto the stool in front of the waitress and slammed his keys onto the counter. "Now, what th'hell d'I pay m'taxes for, Edda? Can't we just get ridda these people already?"

I decided to practice becoming invisible.

The waitress shook her head as she poured out a cup of coffee for the man. "People gotta right to their opinion, Luke. Can't help that."

"Hell I can't. I gotta shotgun, don't I?" Then, just as I was about to run screaming from the establishment, he swung around to glare at me. "That ain't your ve-hickle, right, boy?" he growled threateningly.

"Uh, er. Which... one? Sir?" I added helpfully.

"That damned truck with all the bumper stickers!" He pointed a grimy forefinger out towards the parking lot. "If I get my hands on whoever that racist asshole is, I swear I'll--"

"You won't do nothin, Luke," the tired waitress broke in.

"It ain't right," he grumbled.

By this point, I was starting to understand that mister Deliverance guy's anger wasn't actually directed at me. My heart decided to maybe stay inside my chest, after all. "N-no, sir. I'm driving the blue Chevy." I held up one hand. "Honest."

The mountain man sighed, turning back to sip his coffee. "Goddamn people," he muttered unhappily. "What the hell makes a man think like that, anyway?"

"I sure don't know, Luke," the waitress replied.

I decided to get back on the road and worry about taking a break later.

West Virginia is a state of incredible natural beauty, with an insanely depressed economy and drivers who really do go ninety miles an hour down unlit, winding, mountainous roads, in the rain. It's not all toothless hicks, but I have family there, and lived there myself briefly, and I'm sorry, some of it really is Deliverance country.

Someone of my acquaintance really did see that Obama/"picked our own cotton" bumper sticker on a car in Clay County, Indiana. Heartland American values, folks!

Young Men

2008-08-27T18:31:00.004-04:00

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The restaurant was already crowded when Alex and Richie got there, even though it had only opened twenty minutes earlier. "Frickin' office drones," Richie muttered as they waited by the front counter. "It's almost noon, so naturally they all gotta go out for lunch at once."

Alex held up two fingers to the waiter currently approaching them, meanwhile grinning at Richie. "Hey, that hurts. I'm one of those office drones you apparently hate so much."

"Telecommuters don't count. When's the last time you saw the inside of your office?"

By now they were seated at a table near the door to the kitchen. Behind Richie was a family with two screaming babies and an unruly toddler. Behind Alex were a couple of teenage kids currently sharing a milkshake. Alex hooked a thumb over one shoulder at them. "Is it just me, or does the redhead look like me as a kid?"

Richie snickered. "Been nice knowin' you, buddy. Ancient wisdom has it that seeing your doppelganger means you're about five minutes from death."

"Convenient for you. You always did want my PS3."

Behind Alex, the teenage couple stood up, the boy unsuccessfully trying to rush around and pull out the girl's chair before she could rise. In the process, he smacked into Alex's elbow. The water glass that Alex had just picked up went flying.

"Sorry, mister," the boy said quickly to Alex, before hurrying after his girlfriend.

Richie turned to watch them leave. "Man, you're right," he said. "She looks just like you did in middle school." He turned back to Alex, then blinked at the shocked expression on his friend's face. "Hey. Yo. Anyone home in there, man?"

Alex's face broke into a wide grin. "Oh, wow. Wow."

"Wow?"

"Did you know," Alex went on, leaning in towards the table, "there is nothing awesomer than having someone call me 'mister'?"

"Ahh, of course." Richie raised his water glass in a toast. "Congratulations. You just passed."

Their waiter emerged from the kitchen, pen poised over a pad of paper. He smiled at Alex, who had been born Maria Inez, and said, "Ready to order, sir...?"

Richie stifled a laugh at the goony smile on Alex's face.

Mom Said

2008-08-23T17:40:00.003-04:00

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From the patient record for JESSUP,TIMOTHY

Progress note by Dr. Major, MD

Patient is a 43 y.o male admitted to surgical unit after presenting to emergency department with acute back pain and concussion coincident with recent fall. The history is provided primarily by patient's wife.

The current episode started today. Onset was result of a fall from roof of the patient's home. Pain is continuous and is described as sharp and extremely severe. Pain is worsened by activity.

Patient was put on saline glucose and #3 morphine drip upon arrival in emergency department. Patient reported decreased pain upon receipt of morphine, but has become disoriented and semiconscious. Recommend remaining on #3 only until admitted to med surg, at which point pt should be switched to #2 morphine drip.

Episode history as provided by pt's wife is as follows. Pt's wife reports pt's injury is due to a fall from the roof of their house. Pt was attempting to adjust exterior television antenna when he lost his footing on the roof. Pt landed on his back on concrete patio. Wife reports that pt lost consciousness briefly, but regained it before ambulance arrived. Pt reported pain at that time as extremely severe.

Tentative diagnosis at this time is spinal cord injury at multiple sites with possible spinal fractures. Consulting surgeon scheduled for examination and probable surgery at 1300 hours.

Prior history of back pain: none.

Prior history of falls: none.

Diet: NPO.

Activity: strict bed rest.

Next round on pt scheduled for 0800 tomorrow.

Bank

2008-08-20T22:19:00.002-04:00

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"But I spent it all, mommy," Billy whined. "I got some candy an' some gum an' bet Franklin fifty cents he couldn't eat this worm I found."

Monica paused in the act of folding the laundry, staring at her son. "You bet him what?"

Billy shrugged. "It was a big worm. I didn't think he'd really do it."

"Okay, fine," Monica replied, shuddering. "It doesn't matter how you spent your allowance, it's still gone. You'll have to wait until next Saturday."

"But I want more money now! Joel's got a Grimlock action figure he doesn't want anymore an' he says he'll give it to me for only three dollars!"

Monica dropped a clean towel onto his head, and smiled at his outraged squawk. "Funny thing, I seem to remember your allowance being only two dollars a week."

"Yeah, well." Billy gazed studiously down at the towel as he balled it up in his hands. "I was kinda hopin' you'd give me a little bit extra, too."

"Oh really." She reached out to tousle his hair. "Maybe I should ask my boss for a little extra money, too, if it works that way."

Billy gave her a wide-eyed look. "So... no money?"

"Not a cent till Saturday, champ."

"Aww, mom," Billy replied, but he left easily enough. Monica chuckled to herself, then paused.

Maybe he'd given up a little too easil --

CRASH!, went something in Billy's room, and Monica hurried there to see if her suspicions were correct. They were. She groaned.

"Billy, sweetie, your piggy bank does have a removable plug in the bottom."

He looked down at the hammer in his hand, the coins scattered amid ceramic shards on his desk; then he looked back up at her. "Oops?" he replied.

I've had about five piggy banks throughout my life.

Every single one had a plug on the bottom.

Has anyone in the real world ever actually had to smash one to get at the money inside?

R&R

2008-08-08T19:49:00.007-04:00

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At the end of a long day -- the stressful morning commute, the exhausting hours of work, the mad rush-hour struggle to get home -- Bob did not, he felt, ask for much. Dinner on the table, and not burnt. A half-hour with his pipe in the alcove of the living room that he called his den. A quiet, relaxing evening in front of the TV.

He didn't feel that these were too much to ask for, and so felt himself justified in becoming angry when they were not provided.

"I'm sorry," Cheryl repeated tiredly. She kept her hair dyed blonde at his insistence, but hadn't touched it up in a while, and the brown roots were showing. The sloppiness only added to his irritation. "I didn't mean to have dinner late, but I didn't get Lynn back from the doctor until three-thirty, and then there were still the other kids to pick up from school..."

"Then you should've made them walk home," Bob snapped, even though it had been he who decided that Cheryl should take their school-aged children to and from school in the first place. "Maybe then they wouldn't have the energy to whine all through dinner. And for Christ's sake, could you maybe put some damn salt in the meatloaf next time? It was like trying to eat shoe leather." From somewhere down the hallway that led to the bedrooms, three-year-old Lynn started crying again. "For Christ's sake," Bob repeated in disgust.

"The doctor said you needed to cut back on your salt," Cheryl murmured, but he could tell she wouldn't try to pull that health-foot shit again.

Bob shifted position on the couch. "Now hand me the remote and shut that kid up, will ya?" he grunted.

"Oh, but before you get too into your show," Cheryl began.

"But nothing." She handed him the remote, and he shook it at her. "I've been working my ass off all day to make money for you to spend, Cher; I need to relax now, and you are going to let me relax."

She retreated quickly down the hall. He heard her talking to Lynn, but softly, as though she was afraid to make too much noise and thus incur his wrath. Well, fine. It was nice to be shown a little respect for once. Maybe she could even get the kid to quit whining. Hadn't the doctor prescribed any damned pills?

Maybe five minutes passed; in the kids' room Cheryl tried to soothe the pain of their toddler's ear infection, and on the couch Bob flicked idly through the channels. He had just about decided which of the two currently-playing episodes of CSI to watch when his son advanced cautiously into the room.

"Uh, hey, dad?" Terry's voice was just starting to change, and the words came out in a sort of squeak. The boy cleared his throat and tried again. "Dad? Can I, uh, have the TV now?"

"What the hell is wrong with you people?!" Bob snarled. "Can't you see that I work all damn day for you, and that the least I ask is to have some peace and quiet when I finally come home?!" He glared at Terry. "Get out of here before I really lose my temper."

Cheryl emerged from the hallway just as Terry tried to disappear down it. "Honey, that's what I was trying to tell you." She made a helpless little gesture. "Terry has to watch that special on PBS tonight for his honors English class."

"The hell he does!" Bob roared. "Terry, you're grounded for a week and don't you dare tell me any more lies." The boy pelted out of the room, and Bob turned his attention to Cheryl. "I knew you were stupid, but falling for a twelve-year-old's lies? Christ, woman. Christ."

Lynn began wailing in pain again, and Bob winced. "And now I've got a headache. Great job, Cheryl. Way to ruin my evening, again." Then his voice dropped. "I ought to just strike you," he muttered, glaring at her. "God knows there's no other way of getting any sense in your head."

Cheryl took a step backwards, and he noticed that. Terry, listening from just outside the room, clenched his fists and then held them to his mouth to stifle a sob. Fortunately for him, Bob didn't notice that.

This one's for you, dad. Are you dead yet? I honestly have no idea. If so, how's the weather down there?

Sometimes I wish you'd beaten up on us kids, instead of just always telling us we were worthless, and screaming at us if we were ever in the living room/bathroom/kitchen/wherever when you Needed To Be There, and regularly threatening to hurt mom while being just crazy-crafty enough to not actually do it. Maybe if I'd shown up to school with my eyes blackened and my teeth knocked out when I was eight, then you wouldn't've still been around to make our house a place of fear when I was eighteen.

For the record, this scene never happened, and Terry isn't me. The scene just kind of popped into my head when I saw how happy that bear was to have his R&R.

*adds the 'sidetrack' tag*

What The Hell, Man, Since When Can I Not Form A Somewhat Relevant Title From The Comic Text

2008-08-05T19:50:00.005-04:00

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(Seriously, "crude awakening" does not contain anywhere within it the seeds of a title for this'un.)

"Hey, you gotta dollar?" the man asked as Evan got out of his car. "Change for a dollar?"

Evan closed the door to the Suburban, after carefully making sure it was locked. "No, I don't got no money," he answered a bit too loudly. Then he mentally cursed himself as he entered the gas station convenience store. Don't got no? What kind of language was that, anyway? The guy was going to think Evan was trying to talk street to seem tough, except he really hadn't been, it had just been a slip of the grammatical tongue...

He forced himself to smile as he approached the register. "Hi," he said, setting a bottle of Fanta down on the counter. Then he held out his Visa. "And pump three." The clerk grunted and hit a couple of buttons on the register.

Evan took a swig of his Fanta as he walked back out to the pump. "This is gonna hurt," he muttered, grabbing the gas nozzle and starting it pumping black gold into his Suburban. He winced at how fast the "THIS SALE" number was going up.

Suddenly something hard pressed against his right side. "You got that right," a voice said quietly. "Wallet. Keys. Now." Evan opened his mouth, and the pressure against his side increased. "Bullets move faster'n yells. Gimme the money."

"Bu -- but I don't have any money," Evan managed to choke out. His eyes felt about ready to pop out of his head. "I told you. No cash."

"Whaddaya mean, you told me?" Evan risked a glance to his right, and realized his mistake. The man asking for change had been black. The one with a gun jammed into his ribcage was white.

The gas pump clicked off with a loud THUNK noise that drew a terrified whimper from Evan. The man with the gun didn't flinch. "Give me the money or you die," he snarled.

Evan squeezed his eyes shut. Please let this be a nightmare please let this be a nightmare please -- "My bank card is in with the store clerk. Go in, tell him Evan sent you to get his card. My PIN is 8510 and I've got a $200-a-day ATM limit. It also works as a Visa." He drew in a sobbing gasp. "Take it, it's yours."

The gunman made an irritated noise. The pressure against his side miraculously disappeared, and Evan fell thankfully to the ground and listened to the sound of rapidly receding footsteps. Then common sense returned to its post inside his skull, and he fumbled for his keys, unlocked the car and all but threw himself inside, and cranked the engine.

As he squealed out onto the street and fled towards home, he spotted the man who'd asked him for change, waiting to cross the street three blocks south of the gas station. Evan roared past him without so much as a second glance.

Don't Need a Key

2008-07-31T19:27:00.004-04:00

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"Back in a sec" Ray grunted, setting down his drill and stepping around a pile of two-by-fours. "Gotta make a visit to the Executive Washroom." The others laughed, as they always did whenever someone used their standard term for the onsite john. Ray wasn't even sure who'd started it, anymore. Might've even been him.

He hummed along to no particular tune as the freight elevator carried him down to the ground floor. The building was really taking shape; he'd be sorry when this job was over. The work was good, the crew got along. Even the onsite boss was an okay guy. One of those "hands-on" guys, the type who started every conversation with a hand on your shoulder and ended it with a slap on your back, but at least he didn't ride your ass all the time. Ray'd had bosses like that.

Dirt puffed up from his footsteps as he made his way across the lot, toward the "executive washroom". A couple months back, someone had taken a marker to the side of it, changing the Os in the "COOPER" logo into the breasts of a naked, grinning woman. Ray had his suspicions as to the culprit's identity -- it was a pretty good drawing, and there was only one guy on the crew who'd been a commercial artist -- but so far there'd been no noise about it from up top. She'd acquired a nickname of "Goldie", for some reason.

"Heya, sweetheart," Ray greeted Goldie now, as he eased open the door to the john. "You may not have a lotta fashion sense, but boy do I like your style."

"I'm glad to hear it, Ray."

Ray froze, one hand still on the door, not quite processing what his eyes were telling him yet. When it clicked, he became aware that he was staring at the boss, seated on the portable john, and in a definite state of less than total dress.

"Uh," Ray began uncertainly, feeling the pink slip coming. "I, uh, sorry, boss -- I didn't realize -- the door wasn't locked--"

The boss smiled. "Oh, I know. I left it that way on purpose." He shifted on the seat, then crooked a finger at Ray. "Care to join me? There's room enough for two, if we get cozy."

Ray stared, blankly, feeling his brain try and fail to make sense of this situation. "Uh. No thanks? I." He pointed spastically back toward the building. "I gotta get back to work."

"Oh, all right," the boss answered with a mock-sigh, and Ray carefully shut the door and went back up to where he'd left his drill.

"Everything come out all right?" someone quipped.

Ray shuddered.

Red

2008-07-19T20:25:00.005-04:00

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Marty peeked over the fence again, then ducked down before Old Man Seeger saw him. "Nah, it's just watermelon juice," he reported. "I'm pretty sure."

"Nuh uh," Greg said from his position atop the slide. "It's blood 'cause he killed a guy. And then he cut the body up an' threw the parts in the creek. I saw 'im."

"You didn't see nothin', Greg Morrison," Terry replied scornfully. "You saw someone walkin' around by the creek, an' then you found somethin' that mighta been a guy's leg all rotted up but was prolly a dead raccoon."

"It was a leg," Greg said for about the tenth time. "I could see the little toe-bones."

"Because there for sure aren't any little bones in a raccoon," Terry concluded triumphantly. She was a year older than the rest of th em, and tolerated despite her know-it-all nature (and her status as Marty's big sister) primarily because she was the only one of them who could always think of something fun to do. It had been her idea to start using the old Catholic school playground, even though nobody else really did anymore. Brookhurst Elementary's playground was better, really, but since St. Clare's had closed two years back, its swings and slides went basically unused. Unless Old Man Seeger came over from next door and used them, that was.

Greg launched himself down the slide, then climbed back up its curving surface. "Nobody uses a knife that big just to eat watermelon," he argued. "So even if the stuff on his knife is just juice, Seeger's still a crazy killer. A completely crazy killer who stabs guys in their sleep." He sounded rather chipper about the matter.

Throughout all this Pat had been listening silently, idly tracking one sneakered foot through the dirt as he twisted back and forth on a swing. He laughed now, and the sound cut across the quiet spring evening. "Bet you ten dollars you can't go up to Ol' Man Seeg's and knock on the door," he said to Marty.

"No way!" Marty scrambled away from the fence separating the playground from Seeger's yard as if the old man himself might come leaping over at any second. "I don't think he's a murderer, but he's still all creepy."

Pat grinned. "Anyone?" He rooted around in his pocket for a few seconds, at last extracting a grimy ten-dollar bill. "Just go up to his door an' knock, an' if he answers, say somethin' to him." He wiggled the bill at them.

"I'll do it," Greg answered. He came down the slide again, walked over to Pat, and held out his hand. "I'll ask 'im if he's seen my dog."

Terry looked doubtful. "I don't think that's a good idea, Greg. I mean, he is creepy. And it's getting late."

"Yeah, Greg, it's almost dark," Pat added mockingly. "Ain't you scared?"

"No way!" Greg shouted, and snatched the money out of Pat's hand. "You wait right here, an' I'll prove it!"

None of them moved much as he stalked off the playground, headed for the house next door. When eventually Marty thought to peek over the fence to try to see what was going on, the house was still. Neither Greg nor Old Man Seeger was in evidence. They waited maybe half an hour more, and then Terry's watch beeped. "Eight o'clock," she announced softly. "Time for me an' Marty to go home."

"Yeah, me too," Pat replied. He glanced again toward the Seeger house. "I bet he just took my money an' ran," he added, with little conviction. "Sure. Just took it an' went right home."

"I hope so," Terry said.

Pat went on to his home, and Terry and Marty to theirs. Sometime after midnight, a dark figure dumped something by the creek, but no one was there to see it.

Slow to Adapt

2008-07-18T20:58:00.006-04:00

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He reached out one gnarled hand to fiddle with the television. "Now, let's watch some TV, hmm? I think Happy Days is on." He grabbed for the knob, and seemed surprised to find instead a row of sleek buttons. "You like Happy Days. Why won't the channel change?" He burst into tears.

"Okay, Mr. Dalton, okay," the nurse said soothingly, taking his arm and gently leading him back to his bed. "It's all right. I can change the channel if you like."

Wyatt raised one withered old arm to scrub at his eyes before lying down. "All right. At least I got that damned VCR clock fixed."

"I know, Mr. Dalton." The nurse pulled his blanket up over him.

"I wanted to tell Sara. Where's Sara?" He looked panicked. "Sara?!"

The nurse took his shoulders as he started to rise. "She'll be here soon, Mr. Dalton. Just rest for now."

"She'd better get here soon," Wyatt grumbled, though he allowed himself to be put back to bed. "She's going to miss Happy Days."

The nurse smiled at him, patted the cover over his spindly chest, and let herself quietly out of the room. As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, she slumped.

"Wyatt giving you trouble?" asked one of the other nurses as he passed.

"No, it's okay." Wyatt's nurse put a hand to her head briefly. "Just my first day on the job. He's kind of... draining."

The other nurse nodded sympathetically. "You'll get used to it, a little. If that's any consolation."

Wyatt's nurse uttered a humorless little laugh. "Not really."

"Yeah."

She grabbed a cup of coffee from the lounge, then headed back to Wyatt's room. He had moved back to the TV, and was doing something to the VCR again.

"Look, Sara! I figured out the clock on the..." He turned to her, and his face fell. "Sara?" he added doubtfully.

"She's not here," the nurse said gently. "Why don't we get you back in bed, Mr -- "

"I don't want to go to bed!" Wyatt snapped. "I'm tired of bed! And I want Sara!"

The nurse tried to smile again. "She'll be here soon, Mr. Dalton. And if you don't want to rest, why don't we watch TV?"

"All right," Wyatt replied, reaching once more for a nonexistent knob on the television. The nurse quickly stopped him before he could get upset again, then picked up the remote and began flicking through the channels.

"No, no," Wyatt muttered irritably. "None of these shows are any good. Bunch of junk. Is Happy Days on?"

"I don't think so," the nurse replied doubtfully.

"Hmph."

She left the TV on some nature show; Wyatt was still sulking, but she preferred that to more tears. Or more questions about--

"Where's Sara?" Wyatt asked suddenly.

The nurse sighed. "She's not here, Mr. Dalton."

"I can see that. I'm not stupid." He glared at her from watery eyes. "But where is she?"

She's dead, the nurse thought to herself. She's been dead for three years, and they stopped telling you that because they couldn't bear to keep breaking your heart. Your wife's dead, you don't remember because you have Alzheimer's disease, and you're rotting away what's left of your life in a second-rate nursing home. "She's just stepped out, Mr. Dalton. She'll be back soon."

Wyatt smiled. "Good. She wouldn't want to miss Happy Days." His eyes lit up. "And maybe I can get the VCR clock set before she gets back, too. She's been on me about that for ages."

Lunch Alone

2008-07-09T20:05:00.003-04:00

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Bill hung back as the other workers stowed their tools and headed towards the break area. They were joking and laughing amongst themselves; he might've joined in, but didn't see the point. If any of them noticed he was still around, they gave no sign. He busied himself with his gloves, making sure they were lined up neatly on the I-beam.

Eventually he couldn't hear their voices anymore. He ambled across the construction site to the parking lot, where the other workers had already gotten their various lunches and picked a tailgate to congregate around. Today it looked to be Fred's. PJ was regaling them all with what was undoubtedly a profoundly filthy story. Bill had a pretty good one from the time his cousin had gone to a prostitute while on business in Australia, but when he had started to tell it his second week on the site, he'd only been met with stony stares. Today, as every day for the last three months, he ate his lunch sitting alone on his own tailgate. His wife's tuna salad was probably as delicious as ever, but it generally tasted like ashes when she packed it for his lunch.

Loud laughter erupted from the knot of workers around Fred's truck, and Bill glanced over there briefly. They all seemed to be okay guys, Fred and PJ and the rest, except when they were talking to him; and then they all clammed up, mouths drawn down, eyes narrowed. He wasn't sure what he'd done wrong. All the guys at his old job back in Rockford had liked him just fine. He'd even been on the bowling team, after Jimmy had retired and left his spot vacant. But the Rockford job had ended, and there didn't seem to be any more jobs anywhere closer than Pike Creek, and so Bill and his wife had moved. Now Bill was that one guy on the crew that nobody else ever wanted to talk to, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out why.

He finished his sandwich, washed it down with warm Pepsi. The others were still talking by Fred's truck, although by now PJ had surrendered the floor to someone else. Eventually they'd finish up and head back over to the site. Then he'd trail behind them again, slinking back to his post, quietly returning to work without making eye contact with anyone. When the day ended, the others would all exchange their various farewells, while he went quietly back to his truck and went home. And then he would do it all over again tomorrow.

Bill wasn't ordinarily a contemplative man, but sometimes even he had to stop and wonder just what the hell was wrong with the world.

Top of the Food Chain

2008-07-07T19:16:00.006-04:00

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"But they're people!" cried the woman, struggling against the grip of several riot cops. "How can you do this, how can you when they're just people!" Her voice grew fainter and was swallowed up by the crowd as she was dragged away.

"Amazing," Clyde murmured, surveying the view from his seat by the window. "There must be hundreds of them."

"Thousands, according to CNN," Maria replied. She swung her laptop around so he could see the screen. "They've got aerial photography from the police helicopters."

"Hm." Clyde turned back to the window. Outside the restaurant, a mass of protesters still seethed against the police barricades, their shouts and chants audible even though the reinforced glass. "You'd think they'd have something better to do."

Maria raised an eyebrow. "Apparently Flavio's is considered quite the violation of basic rights."

Clyde chuckled, then hummed appreciatively as their waiter appeared, a steaming plate in each hand. Both plates were set before them, their wineglasses were refilled, and t hen the waiter disappeared as silently as he had come. Flavio's was renowned for its staff almost as much as for its food.

Clyde bit into his burger, then hummed again. "Superb, as always."

They both jumped as a loud CRACK resounded through the room; it became apparent that one of the protesters outside had thrown a rock at their window. Clyde laughed uproariously as the culprit was first teargassed, then pulled back towards a group of SWAT vans. The glass remained undamaged. "Ha! I love it when they bring a good beating down on themselves." He took an extra-large bite, leaning into the window to make an elaborate show of chewing. Several of the protesters outside gestured rudely, but none appeared ready share the fate of the rock-thrower by doing anything more.

Maria dabbed primly at her mouth with a napkin. "You know, Clyde, one of these days, you'll antagonize them too far."

"And what?" replied Clyde, "-- they'll throw a rock at me? And then the nearest cop will work them over with a baton." He grinned evilly. "Wouldn't be the first time a protester'd accidentally fallen down the stairs seventeen times in a row."

Maria merely smiled. "Never underestimate the power of the little people," she murmured, before going back to her burger.

Outside, another woman had worked her way to the front of the crowd and begun shouting. Clyde had observed more than once that it always seemed the middle-aged old cows who were the loudest. Younger people were more into petty vandalism; the husbands and fathers were too busy actually working to bring in money for their middle-aged old cow wives to spend.

"Flavio's is murder!" this particular middle-aged old cow was screaming now. "Flavio's kills our friends -- our neighbors -- our families!"

On their side of the glass, Clyde erupted into laughter, spraying crumbs of bread and meat. "Hey, you!" He shouted at the window. "Hey! Yeah, that's right, over here!" He bared his teeth at the woman outside. "See this?" he called, pointing to the remains of his burger. "I hope it was your family!"

The woman struggled furiously against the cops. She was screaming something at Clyde, but he was laughing too hard to pay attention. "I hope it was your cousin!" he screamed gleefully. He took a huge bite, and grinned madly at her through it. "An' i' wa' DELISHUSH!"

The woman outside screamed something incoherent, and actually managed to break free of the police line. In an instant she was at the window, clawing at it, pounding with her fists, her horns. It took seven cops to finally pull her back, and she went down fighting, her hate-filled eyes never leaving Clyde.

Maria only raised her eyebrow again as Clyde resumed his meal. "Goddamn cows," he chuckled, shaking his head.

Honestly. It's a world of animal-people. If you're not a vegetarian, then aren't you just eating your fellow sentients?

And yes, the restaurant is named after an Animaniacs character, I have been making use of my Netflix account lately, why do you ask?

Low-Mileage

2008-06-25T10:13:00.004-04:00

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Oh, well. I see you got a new car, huh? Oh, a Toyota. A foreign car. Huh. Funny, good ol' Chevrolet always did fine by me. But I guess everyone's priorities are different.

And I see it's a Prius. Kind of expensive, I hear, not the kind of thing a blue-collar workin' man is likely to be drivin' around. But you've got that job workin' with computers, so it's probably no problem, you bein' able to afford to pay extra.

Sure, sure, the mileage, I hear ya. Seems all them foreign cars have the fancy engines these days... how much does it get? Forty-eight miles per gallon? Very nice. That'll almost make up for the cost of the car. Plus I suppose you're doin' your part, savin' the environment by drivin' this thing. Guess you feel pretty good about yourself, huh? Guess I'm not quite the hero you are. Not when my old Chevy gets eighteen, twenty miles a gallon, tops.

You'll fit right in when you go drivin' to Whole Foods to buy your arugula, now. Heck, you might even have trouble figuring out which car is yours next time you go off to your little voter-registration rallies. Meanwhile I'll keep drivin' my old Chevy to Wal-Mart, an' try to not think too much about how much a better person you are'n me.

Damn kids these days.

I recently [as I type this up in September 2008] moved to Unnamed City in Unnamed State; the car population here has to be at least 5% Priuses. Then I drove 400 miles (in a 20-year-old van that gets a little over 20 miles to the gallon, if anyone's keeping track) back down to Other Unnamed State, which I had moved from, and saw one Prius over the course of an entire weekend there.

There are a lot of farmers and rustic types in Other Unnamed State What I Moved From, who maybe aren't so much into the whole elitist leftist arugula-eating hybrid-car thing, and while I know they are not all cantankerous old bastards, I'm still allowed to make up what I think they might say if they were to see the shiny new Prius coming to me in Local Toyota Dealer's October shipment. Whee!

Suit

2008-06-21T23:35:00.003-04:00

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She looked at him silently, just staring for a moment from heavy-lidded eyes. Then she snorted. "But not a receipt for dry-cleaning, I'm betting," she muttered, just loud enough for him to not be quite sure if he'd heard her right. He thought about asking her to repeat it, but settled for rubbing futilely at the oyster sauce stain that still showed faintly on one sleeve.

"It's a good old suit," he mumbled to her back as she turned away. She didn't answer, so he added, "Good for a marryin' or a buryin'." He smiled a little, but she still wasn't looking at him. Apparently there was something more interesting in her purse.

At last she snapped it closed again, then glanced over her shoulder at him. "Well, given the options, this is definitely more of a buryin'." He winced, and finally a thin smile touched her lips. "Are we ready yet?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so."

"Fine." She strode out of their bedroom, although lately it had really been more his bedroom. He'd glanced in at the guest room the other night, as he passed by on his way to the bathroom; it was a nice little setup she had in there. Her grandmother's quilt was on the old twin bed, the one she had never wanted to put on the bed they'd shared.

"Well?" he heard her call. She didn't sound all that eager to go -- seeing the counselor had been his idea, not hers -- but he knew her basic philosophy on life. Soonest begun, soonest done. Or as she usually put it, "Get it over, already."

"Coming, dear," he called back, and pretended not to hear her irritated sigh.

Reunion

2008-06-14T14:32:00.004-04:00

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They had been the hellraisers of their graduating class, although the be-pink-mohawked waitress assigned to them would probably not believe it. Said be-pink-mohawked waitress was currently ignoring them in favor of the teenagers three booths down. They were wearing approximately enough black leather to re-cover the cow.

Herb and Tricia had come off the worst from the last forty years, really. Tricia had wound up a born-again kindergarten teacher with diabetes, who looked the first two and wouldn't quit talking about the third. Herb -- "H.B." back in those days, thank you, "Herbert Bloom" was his father and the old man was a square -- had done a bout with cocaine in the 80s, done another one with cancer in the 90s, and now mainly sat there nodding his head constantly. Lorraine didn't think he was actually agreeing with anything; she was pretty sure he just couldn't help it.

Jerry had always been the creative mind of their group, the one who came up with the really good gags. Gluing the mackerel to their English teacher's windows had been his idea -- fifty pounds of expired fish, salvaged from behind the butcher's shop, carefully arranged in smelly lines across the windowpanes and stuck fast with industrial-strength adhesive swiped from his dad, all while the old woman slept. Or Lorraine's personal favorite, swapping the mayor's wife's prized terrier with another one they'd found by the train tracks, and dumping the "missing" pet in the yard of a woman suspected of being the mayor's bit on the side. That'd been good for a month's worth of laughs. Jerry had probably aged the best of any of them; and as if to prove it, he was wearing his sunglasses even in the dim restaurant, and somehow managing to pull it off.

As for herself, Lorraine supposed she had done all right. No drastic personality changes like Tricia, no drug problems like Herb (at least not after the 70s, and not so much that you could really call it a problem)... she hadn't managed to make her living as a free-wheeling poet, despite all her youthful plans, but being an art historian wasn't bad either. It certainly let her visit a lot of museums, where she could reflect on the past and how many, many stupid decisions it held.

Suddenly Jerry grinned. "Remember the time we filled the principal's trunk with limburger?"

"In the middle of July!" Lorraine replied, laughing. "You and Tricia were so mad about having to go to summer school."

Tricia's mouth turned down. "What little monsters we were back then. Shameful, really." Herb nodded vaguely, staring in no particular direction.

"So we pooled our money together -- " Jerry continued.

Lorraine snorted. "Sure, 'our' money in that we acquired it somehow -- "

"Bought out the town's entire supply, I think -- "

"And Herb jimmied open the trunk with a paper clip!"

Lorraine and Jerry both laughed. Tricia tweaked at the cross hanging around her neck, muttering something about forgiveness; Herb scratched his arm vaguely.

One of the teenagers three booths down leaned over to yell past the be-pink-mohawked waitress. "Howzabout you shut up, huh, y'old geezers? Go talk about your bingo or whatever somewhere else." Then the waitress said something, and the entire group of teenagers erupted into unkind laughter.

Jerry looked at Lorraine again, and there was a hard light in his eyes. He ignored Herb and Tricia completely. "There's a cheese shop a block away, and I saw which car those kids came in. What say we go for Stinking Bishop this time?"

If you think about it, the principal would've had to have his "new '39 Ford" some sixty-nine years ago. Assuming these folks were all early bloomers, and already in high school at a mere ten years old, that would still make them older than John McCain.

They've actually aged remarkably well.

Well-Balanced

2008-06-11T01:25:00.004-04:00

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Kevin’s doctor’s appointment at four Elsie’s soccer practice at six Matt’s permission slip signed sometime tonight so he can go on that field trip tomorrow and sometime tonight, the bills paid.

MATTHEW, YOU PUT THAT DOWN RIGHT NOW

More bills every day, it seems sometimes, and really no money coming in to pay them. Rent and utilities, clothes and food, and Kevin’s medicine and Matt’s inhaler and the new glasses the doctor swears Rachel needs though how he can tell when she’s only three I just don’t know –

KEVIN I TOLD YOU TO STAY OUT OF THERE

If I could just get more hours at the diner it’d be something. Or if Paul could ever cough up on child support. Maybe I should just try to sell the car, instead of getting it fixed again.

ELSIE, KEVIN, NO

And Rachel’s cough just isn’t going away. Still paying off the bills from when she got sick last year, and we just can’t afford another hospital stay like that, but if I don’t take her in and it turns out to be serious –

BOYS NO FOOTBALL IN THE HOUSE

And of course I’ve still got to mop and vacuum and get the dishes done, and the laundry soon too if Elsie’s to have any clothes to take to camp.

MATT I SAID NO FOOTBALL, GO TO YOUR ROOM YOUNG MAN

Well, hopefully I can get to the chores sometime after the kids go to bed and before it’s time to leave for work…

MATTHEW I SAID GO AND THAT MEANS RIGHT NOW

I need to calm down. Calm. Maybe do the dishes. That’s relaxing. Nothing but me and the dishes and –

ELSIE YOU QUIT IT RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR I’LL

No no calm now just me and the dishes.

Just me and this plate, and this sippy cup, and this spoon.

And this knife.

Calm.

Calm.

Because kangamom there is very obviously about two seconds from snapping.

Smith-Corona

2008-05-15T03:30:00.005-04:00

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Warren sighed as he extracted himself from the truck and carefully shut the door behind him. Damn thing was near rusted to pieces, and here he was driving all over creation for a typewriter ribbon. Of course, he hadn’t expected to have so much trouble actually finding the ribbon; but he’d already tried the Harpersville Office Depot, the Staples and Frederick’s Office Supply in Dillimore, and the Wal*Mart and other Office Depot in Blackwater Point, all with no luck. He was starting to worry he’d have to go up the city to find what he needed. There were over five thousand souls in Palomino Creek, and being surrounded by that many people always made Warren feel claustrophobic.

A puff of hot air hit him in the face as he passed through the sliding doors, and then he was in the air-conditioned cool of yet another store. He made his way toward the back wall, where a huge sign reading “OFFICE SUPPLIES” hung from the ceiling. Rows of computers and fax machines and other technological marvels seemed to glare at him disapprovingly as he sought out the customer service desk.

“Helpya?” muttered the bored-looking employee behind the counter. Warren tried to give him a friendly smile, but was stymied by merit of the man’s apparent unwillingness to look up from the computer in front of him. It looked like some kind of card game on there – poker, maybe, though whatever it was, Warren doubted this fellow was being employed to play it –

“Helpya?” the man repeated, interrupting Warren’s mental rambling. This time he deigned to glance up briefly before returning to the computer.

“Well, I.” Warren cleared his throat. “My Smith-Corona T34 needs a new ribbon, and –”

The employee looked up at him again, and something about the expression on his face made Warren falter. “This a joke, buddy?” he drawled. "We don’t sell beer here, and we don’t sell guns neither.”

Warren sighed, seeing the long drive to Palomino Creek ahead of him. “No, it’s a typewriter.”

“Uh huh. Got a lot of writing to do, buddy?”

“Yes,” Warren answered, brightening somewhat. Maybe he wouldn’t have to brave the big city after all…

“I got a recommendation for you, then,” the employee sneered. He pointed toward the aisle Warren had just walked through. “It’s not the nineteenth century anymore. Buy a goddamn computer.”

Warren sighed again. “Thank you anyway,” he said, and walked back out to his car. People these days, living crammed five thousand to a town, going in for all this strange new technology when they already had ways that worked just as well. He just didn’t know what the world was coming to.

Throughout most of my high school career, I did not have a computer; when it came time to write a paper, which was quite frequently in my honors English classes and not too seldom in any of the others, I had to use an electric typewriter that we’d picked up at Office Depot for a hundred bucks. It was extra-fun when we had to do a rough draft, submit it for peer evaluation, then “edit” it and bring in the final version… because while my classmates got to make their edits, print out their new versions, and go off to have fun, I got to sit down and type the entire thing over again. Good times.

These days I honestly cannot think of a good reason to stick with a typewriter instead of a computer. I guess some people really, really like the idea of having to type an entire document over just to correct a couple of typos.

Back In My Neighborhood

2008-05-14T03:21:00.002-04:00

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"Of course, that was assuming you didn’t ask where the car’d come from," he added offhandedly, pulling the Porsche back onto the highway. "You could be particular about that if you wanted, but then you’d have to pay a bit more."

"Oh?"

"Local guy ran the biggest stolen-car operation in the state," he replied. "Small-time mobster, name of Magliore. Half the teenagers on my block were working for him – running errands, or… ‘supplying’ him with stock. All under the table, of course."

His passenger frowned. "How dreadful. I assume you weren’t involved in all this."

"Are you kidding?" he asked, eyebrow raised. "I was one of Magliore’s boys before I’d even learned how to ride a bike. How did you think I learned how to hotwire cars?"

"Well," his passenger sniffed, her frown deepening. "At least you’re old enough to know better than to mess around with any stolen cars."

There was expectant silence for a moment; finally, he coughed. "Sure. Of course I am."

Mushroom Soup

2008-05-08T13:23:00.002-04:00

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The mother ladled what was left of that night's dinner into the container, scraping the pan clean. No sense in wasting food, after all, and the leftovers would make a lovely meal some other day. She set the pan down, fitted the lid over the container of leftovers, and then carefully placed that container on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

The son pushed it to the back of the shelf ten minutes later, while rooting about looking for the last can of Coke.

Nobody gave much thought to the leftovers, not even the mother who had so carefully saved them; and as days turned into weeks, it quietly brooded beneath a package of stale flour tortillas. The life stirring within it went unremarked, its original contents long since forgotten.

At last the tortillas were pushed aside, and the daughter's hand closed upon the plastic container. "Oh, here's something," she said over her shoulder. The leftovers were once more brought out into the light.

"What's in it?" the mother asked from her post at the stove. Pots simmered and bubbled, though the saucepan on one burner yet lay empty.

The daughter peeled back the lid and looked into the container. "Looks like mushroom soup," she replied.

The mother smiled, took the leftovers and their new growth from her daughter, and began preparing them to serve to her family.

In The Trunk

2008-05-05T11:36:00.005-04:00

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Norm started getting a bad vibe from the guy from almost the first second he set foot on the huge lot, but he needed a car bad enough -- and right now, if he wanted to make it to the plant tonight and thus keep his job -- that he forced himself to overlook it. No sense walking back around the woods to the car lot on the other side of town, just because the salesman seemed a little odd.

After all, it was kind of a warm day. Maybe that was why the guy -- "Vincetn", to go by the nametag, although Norm assumed that was a typo -- was sweating so much. And there were plenty of non-sinister explanations for why mister "Vincetn" had quickly agreed to sell him the old Chevy, rather than trying to take him around the lot and interest him in something more expensive. And so he kept grinning at seemingly random moments. What of it? Probably was swapping dirty jokes with the other salesmen back at the office before Norm showed up. Probably that was why he was in such a hurry, too -- Norm'd interrupted his break, or something.

Dammit, he is not a serial killer who is thinking about just where in the woods to dump my corpse, Norm thought to himself as "Vincetn" handed over the paperwork. He signed in all the appropriate places, then looked up as a thought struck him. "Hey, uh, I don't suppose you could throw in a pair of jumper cables while you're at it...?"

Vincetn's face twisted up alarmingly. "They are already in the trunk," he replied, oddly formal, and then grinned his biggest grin yet.

"Uh. Right. Thanks." Norm handed back the paperwork, got into the car, and drove away from the lot as fast as he possibly could. Vincetn's grinning, waving form dwindled to nothing in the rearview.

A half-mile down the road, the strange gravity with which Vincetn had spoken of the trunk finally registered on Norm, who pulled over and walked reluctantly around to the back of the car. He took a deep breath, then popped the trunk.

The jumper cables were there as promised, though Vincetn had said nothing about the dead racoon around which he had lovingly wrapped those cables.

"Ah, Christ!" Norm shouted.

A half-mile back, Vincetn giggled, then scurried back into the woods before the actual salesman could find him and chase him off again.

Side Mirror

2008-04-29T20:30:00.007-04:00

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His eyes drifted closed for the thousandth time, and somehow he managed to wrench them open yet again. Couple more miles, now, and then he'd be back home, where he could actually get some goddamn sleep. The very thought was soothing enough to send him drifting off again. He blinked himself back awake, cursing, then laid into the accelerator a bit more.

Just had to concentrate, that was it. Keep his mind on the road for just twenty more minutes. He rolled the window down, hoping the cold air coming in would wake him up a little, but it didn't seem to help much. He reached out to fiddle with the side mirror, peering at it through heavy eyes; eventually he gave up and turned back to the windshield, to find it oddly filled with tree. "Hey, what -- " he began, now fully awake.

Then his car slammed into the tree, and he died.

Just a short one, because DAMN that dog does not look safe to drive.

Preparing Next Week's Medications

2008-04-26T23:19:00.003-04:00

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She watched him out of the corner of one eye as she worked, carefully removing the cap from each of her prescription bottles, measuring out seven or fourteen or twenty-one of each pill and depositing them carefully in her pill organizer. He was doing the same, brows furrowing every time he had to twist open another bottle. His arthritis had been so bad lately, despite the medication.

She waited patiently, and at last he raised his head to look at her. "Could you do the rest of mine, dear? My hands..." He flexed them, once, then winced.

"Of course," she answered calmly, reaching across the table to take the bottle from him. "Shall I do all the rest of them for you, too?" He nodded gratefully, and she busied herself with the task as he rose and padded to the fridge. She could have offered to help without waiting to be asked, of course, but it was better this way. He wasn't even paying attention to her, now; he was up to his shoulders in the refrigerator, looking for the milk that she had buried at the far back of the shelf.

She worked with unhurried efficiency, opening the bottle that had stymied him -- the big orange pills, prescribed by Doctor Farson for his blood pressure -- and carefully placed one pill into each of the seven compartments of his pill organizer. Next were the pills for his kidneys; two small green pills each day, tik-tik, tik-tik as she filled out the container. The last bottle was his arthritis medication, nondescript yellow things with numbers embossed into them far too small for his failing eyes to detect.

Without pausing, she uncapped this last bottle and measured out a week's dosage. Then her hand slipped quietly into her pocket, to emerge bearing seven nondescript yellow pills, which she distributed methodically into each compartment. No numbers showed on these pills; there were, in fact, no markings of any kind, but she needed none to know what would happen to him if he kept up this dosage. Very soon they would start doing more than simply fail to help with his arthritis. Perhaps even this time next week she would be preparing her medications alone.

She closed up the prescription bottle and set it back with his other pills on his side of the table. When he finally came back over, glass of milk clutched carefully in both gnarled hands, she was just finishing up with her own medications. She smiled briefly at him as he approached.

"Thanks, love," he said, reaching out to take the container of pills. She smiled again at the sight of it in his hand, seven little boxes in a row, each with its own little secret of a clever yellow pill that was not for arthritis.

Ran

2008-02-13T14:59:00.006-05:00

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"Spare some money for gas?" Elly called, as a smartly-dressed man approached her on the sidewalk, head tucked down into his collar against the cold. The smartly-dressed man gave no indication that he had heard her, and she sighed inwardly and pulled her jacket a bit tighter. It was starting to snow, and she wished yet again that she had on something warmer.

For about the millionth time in the last couple hours she glanced back over her shoulder, checking that her car was still parked by the curb. Not that anyone could steal it with the tank dry as it was, of course. She'd run it till the very fumes were used up. Run it as far and as fast away from home as possible. "Or what was home, anyway," she muttered to herself, and then made a sound something like a laugh. Not that the situation was particularly funny.

"Spare some money for gas?" she repeated yet again, as two women passed by. One of them gave her an odd look, then quickly turned away; they both sped up slightly, as though wishing nothing more than to escape from Elly's request. One of them tittered brief laughter as they disappeared into the thickening snowfall.

Elly shivered, then uttered a series of deep coughs. Stupid to have left without coat or hat or even a pair of gloves; stupid to have left with a dollar sixty-three in her wallet. Stupid to have even done this in the first place, but she'd had to do it, she just couldn't take any more...

Making that not-quite-a-laugh sound again, Elly felt gingerly at the latest bruise on her face, the one that had been the reason for her sudden flight. "Never again, you bastard," she said through a humorless grin. "I don't even care if I freeze out here, as long as you never get to hit me again."

Meta: Post Slowdown.

2008-02-12T20:52:00.003-05:00

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At least I'd posted more recently than the Viscount Stokington. I mean, geez.

I blame the slowdown of plugfics partially on school, but -- it must be confessed -- mainly on knitting. Yes, the art of moving bits of yarn through other bits of yarn. I have recently taken it up, and am now obsessed. There is simply so much power in looking at a basically formless lump of yarn, telling that formless lump that you have decided it will now be something else, and then actually bringing about that metamorphosis through sheer force of will.

My guess is, this is what it's like to be God.

Fortunately(?), the God of Moving Bits Of Yarn Through Other Bits Of Yarn is still interested in writing about Pluggers now and then. Thus this is not a blog abandonment, but only a post slowdown.

Feel free to enjoy reading about towels, below.

Towels

2008-02-12T14:02:00.001-05:00

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I never go anywhere without my towel.

All right, so that's not entirely true. I go plenty of places without my towel, mainly because it's sometimes rather inconvenient to lug a lump of terrycloth around. But it's always in my backpack, which is always with me on campus, so I at least only sometimes go anywhere without my towel. It's one of those life lessons you pick up from such people as the late great sage Douglas Adams.

The towel I carry is one that could easily be considered an antique, as bath towels go. I've had it in my possession since the last century, and before that it belonged to a friend; the pile was already worn to nubbins by the time I gained possession some time around 1997. I have no idea how long its previous owner had it. It could well be older than some of my fellow-students at Good-Sized Midwestern University, on whose campus I happen to be sitting right now.

Its design was, at one time, a swirl of brightly-colored musical notes, though by now everything's sort of munged together into a vaguely purply-blue-reddish-yellowish blur. Its seams are holding up wonderfully well, though I should probably take a needle to it at some point, because it's not going to last many more washings before something gives. If I could do something to make it last forever, I probably would.

The thing about a bath towel is that it isn't necessarily only for bathing with. You can soak up other things with it -- a spilled can of Coke, for instance. You can wrap a book or an mp3 player in it on a rainy day, so that said object stays dry, safe, non-warped and non-shorted-out. You can whip it out when the temperature's below freezing, lay it on a cement bench, and thus sit down without acquiring frostbite of the butt. You can lay it on the muddy ground by a beautiful lake, sit on it with the person you love most in the world, and enjoy one of the very last days you will ever spend by that person's side before they suddenly die without warning.

These are just some of the things I have done with my towel.

Never Tired

2008-01-19T20:49:00.002-05:00

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"Again," came the command, and he winced. Small hands tugging at his sleeve; small eyes boring up into his own. "Again, Grampa, please?"

He rubbed his aching eyes. His mouth was dry, his throat parched. He had a feeling that he had been hungry for a very long time.

"Grampa." The thing tugged at his arm, harder this time. "Read it to me again." Its voice still didn't sound quite human, but it was eerie how close it was. He could almost believe that it was his granddaughter seated on his knee, begging for another recitation of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".

Of course, the illusion was weakened somewhat by the presence of his actual granddaughter's corpse a few feet away.

He forced his attention from little Vera's body, back to the book he had already read so many times before. He cleared his battered throat, once more wishing for something to drink, or eat; or for sleep; or for death. "Once upon a time," he began again.

The thing which was not his granddaughter -- which was not human at all, but only some thing which had somehow taken her place, tossing her aside like a broken doll -- leaned into him, a grotesque mockery of the little girl whose form it took. He had no idea what it was, or where it had come from, or even why it was making him read the same storybook for what had to have been weeks on end. He didn't even know how that was possible, but it was true all the same. Vera's body remained unchanged on the floor; he knew neither sleep nor any more permanent form of respite; yet here he sat, reading Goldilocks over and over again.

The thing looked up at him with wide eyes, so much like Vera's, only strangely offset, as though the skull itself were somehow distended. It had not looked much like her at the start. No, when he had come into the room, seen Vera on the floor and the thing standing by her bed, book clutched in one... he could not properly call it a hand... there at the start, it had not looked human at all.

It appeared to be learning, though. He wondered what would happen to him once its transition was complete.

"There were three bears," he continued, once more; and the thing offered a contented little sigh.

Look, you tell me what's with that kid's eyes. I mean, yeesh.

Can I really be blamed for assuming the Lovecraftian worst?

Of course, after this and "Typewriter", I should probably go back to the regular kind of depressing, existential, properly Pluggers-esque horror for a while. Ia! ia!, and such.

Typewriter

2008-01-14T13:22:00.001-05:00

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Oh, the typewriter?

I just dragged it in from the garage for a little project. Kind of a secret, really... oh, what the heck, I might as well tell you. But don't tell anyone else, all right? Eventually I'll want everyone to know, of course, but not quite yet. I'm still getting it off the ground.

Complexity.

That's what starts it, you see; all the complex things they can do with computers now, things that people couldn't even dream of a hundred years ago. Huge math problems, and genes, and whatnot. And all of it stored on computers. Think about that for a second -- how many tiny little bits of information there are. It's actually zeroes and ones, my nephew told me, and then they get translated into English. Like Morse code for computers. Ones and zeroes and zeroes and ones until there's enough to bury the whole human race in 'em. And that's just in one computer.

The problem is, you don't necessarily know where all the ones and zeroes go. Maybe you put a picture of your cat on the computer, and the ones and zeroes go somewhere in there. And then maybe you write to your sister on the e-mail, and in go all those zeroes and ones. And then your nephew puts on a game when he comes over to visit and the ones and zeroes just get all jammed in the middle somewhere. He explained it to me. The information isn't all in the order you put it there in; it's all broken up and mixed around because that's how the computer works. So all the ones and zeroes get all mixed up.

So how do you know just what the computer actually says inside?

What stops the numbers from lining up just so to unlock something that wasn't there before?

There's a lot of computers in the world, after all. Billions, I suppose. And every one of them with billions of zeroes and ones in nearly every combination. But there are some combinations that open locks that you just don't want to mess with, aren't there?

That's why I've got the typewriter out, and why I've been working so hard -- you can see what I've got so far in the drawer on the left there. I typed every copy myself. By hand. Because we can't trust computers or copier machines or all these new things -- we can't -- we're courting a fate worse than death if we do.

Yes, every copy's the same, or as close as I could manage. I think there's a couple thousand so far, even though that's not nearly enough. Every single man, woman and child in the world needs one of these flyers -- everyone has to know the danger we're in, and how close we might already be to unlocking Yog-Sothoth -- he is the gate -- he is the key --

Wait, where are you going?

Take my flyers with you!

Warn the world!

Grand Theft Auto

2008-01-11T23:14:00.003-05:00

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Within ten seconds of deciding he was tired of walking, Carl was already speeding away -- "speeding" being a relative term in the aging Walton, but whatever. He'd jumped into the road in the path of the oncoming truck; its driver, some aging redneck in a greasy baseball cap, had come to a screeching stop; with practiced ease, Carl yanked the unlocked door open, threw the driver to the ground, and took his place behind the wheel. "This is a jacking," he snarled. "Don't make it a murder."

Then he was off, the truck's former occupant too stunned to even think of fighting back.

* * *

It took a couple hours before Mack's outstretched thumb got any response. The ride back to town was a bumpy one, sprawled in the back of a truck that must've had even worse shocks than his did. Than his had. Mack rested his head in his hands. Of all the people who used this road, why'd that bastard have to carjack him?

The guy who'd given him a lift dropped him off at the El Quebrados town limits before chugging off, trailing a rooster-tail of dust behind it that left Mack coughing for several minutes afterwards. His house was at the far end of town, maybe a two-mile walk from here, but this was as close as his ride had been willing to take him. The desert night was cold, and Mack wasn't wearing anything heavier than a worn flannel. Too late to worry about that now. Too late to worry about what he'd do without his truck, either.

Mack coughed a few more times, then started walking.

I have logged literally thousands of hours playing Grand Theft Auto III: San Andreas, along with a few hundred playing Vice City and vanilla III. I have spent some time thinking about how much woe I'm causing my carjacking victims... but not much.

In a Pluggerverse, everyone is a victimized NPC. Poor bastards.

Double It

2008-01-09T23:50:00.001-05:00

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I stared at the clerk for a second before answering. "So... you'll repair or replace it free for... two lifetimes?"

"What? Oh, heavens no."

"But that would be double what this says." I pointed to the requisite paragraph of the paper lying on the counter. "Free repair or replacement, depending on blah blah blah, for the life of the original owner."

He nodded rapidly. "Yes sirree, that warranty lasts for the life of the owner."

"But if you're doubling it, then it would be free for twice the lifetime of, well, me in this case -- "

"Ahh," he interrupted, smiling broadly in a way that did not seem to go far north of his mouth. "I think you're confused with our Ultra Platinum Waranty Program."

"Am I."

"This is only our Premium Platinum Warranty Program, you see."

"Of course."

He pulled out another paper and laid it alongside the first. "You see, with the Ultra Platinum Warranty Program, you get free replacement or repair for the life of the product, regardless of ownership. Assuming of course only regular wear and tear, and so on." He beamed meaninglessly again. "And of course we double that too. We double all warranties."

I rubbed vaguely at my forehead. "Why do you double your own warran... never mind. Look, I just want this thing to get fixed if it breaks down, so -- "

He interrupted again, the smile replaced by an equally meaningless frown. "Oh, no, all warranties are void in the event that the useful life of the product comes to an end." He chuckled smugly. "After all, in that case why would you even need a warranty any more?"

I snorted. "Do you double the lack of a warranty too?"

"Of course!" he promptly replied.

Why does the rhino look so shocked, anyway? Is he still reeling from the difficulty of distinguishing between the Premium Platinum, Ultra Platinum, and Super Double Ultra Platinum warranties? Or is it just that, since his life is naught but a pit of darkness and woe, he is simply unable to deal with the possibility that something relatively nice might be happening to him for a change?

Inquiring capybaras want to know!

X'd Out

2008-01-08T23:18:00.001-05:00

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"Wait, what?" Ryan broke in, his voice sharp enough that Cliff stopped to favor him with a raised eyebrow before answering.

"That's what it says, anyway." Cliff refolded the newspaper so that the obits were on top. "'Mr. Burnapple is survived by his sister, Flora Burnapple, 58, currently residing in Omaha, Nebraska. Services were held at -- '"

Ryan let out a loud whoop, again startling Cliff into silence and a hoist of the eyebrow. "Where's the fucker buried?"

"At, uh. Valhalla Gardens." Sudden understanding flooded Cliff's face, followed by a species of surprise tempered by the knowledge that worse would probably be forthcoming. "Please tell me you're not planning what I think you are."

"Oh hell yes," Ryan replied, pulling his wallet from his pocket. Carefully he extracted a much-worn slip of paper, smoothing it out on the table before grabbing Cliff's crossword-working pen. "Principal Burnapple rode both our asses all through high school -- and, if you'll remember, tried three separate times to get a shrink to certify me as crazy so he could have me expelled and locked up. And you know what I've wanted to do ever since."

Cliff groaned. "I'd kind of hoped you'd forgotten by now."

"Never," Ryan answered cheerfully. Carefully he X'd out one of the names listed on the ragged slip of paper. "And now I'm finally gonna get to dance on his grave."

"Burnapple"?

Corporate

2008-01-04T19:44:00.001-05:00

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Milt found himself unable to tear his gaze away from the piece of paper in his hand. It was as though, if he only watched long enough, it would disappear, turn into something else. Something a little less... final.

"...nderstand that this was not an easy decision," the HR drone was saying. Milt realized vaguely that the other man had probably been talking for some time. "The company is simply taking a new direction at this time, and as a result we unfortuna..." The drone's voice faded out again as Milt returned his full attention to the pink slip clutched in one slightly trembling hand. What the hell was this? He should've already been to that downed line on Kirkwood by now; had been on his way out the door, before suddenly being called into this cramped little office.

"Six years," Milt said suddenly, interrupting the HR drone mid-speech. "Six years I've been a lineman here, and in all that time, not one promotion. Not one raise beyond the cost-of-living increase back in '05." He looked up at the drone, who was looking faintly fishlike, as though not quite sure what to do with his mouth now that he wasn't talking. "And now you fire me?"

"Yes, well, ah -- "

"And it isn't just me," Milt mused, half to himself. "'Fact, I'm fairly sure none of the linemen've gotten a raise in that time. Although I noticed in the company newsletter that the executives got a nice bonus last Christmas." He gave the HR drone something that faintly resembled a smile, albeit with a bit more tooth in it.

The drone blinked a few times. "I'm afraid I'm not party to the financial decision-making of -- "

Milt waved his pink slip. "I'm the best lineman this company has. Ask any of the others, and they'll tell you the same thing. And my reward's a firing? What the hell kind of a decision is that?"

"Erm," the HR drone replied. "I'm afraid we simply don't currently have the resources to increase pay commeasurate with your experience -- "

"So when I get too good, you just fire me," Milt interrupted again. "And hire some new kid to take my place, who you can pay even less than you did me." He grinned again at the now slightly greenish HR drone. "No corporate ladder here, huh? It's more of a corporate kill chute."

Mrr. Google seems to indicate that "kill chute" is vegetarian-ese, but I can't think of what the "real" term might be for what I'm thinking of. Just as a clarification, I'm not being all anti-meat-y. I look at vegetarianism in vaguely the same way that I look at spending a few years on the ISS. Humans were neither evolved to avoid eating meat nor live in space. We can do these things, especially with the aid of modern science to, say, produce non-meat sources of needed nutrients, or protect us from the deadly deadly vacuum. But I still don't have the small intestine needed to eat only plants, and I still can't live unaided in space, and -- most importantly -- I have no interest in taking on the added expense and difficulty needed for the simple task of thumbing my nose at evolution. There may be benefits to having someone do it, of course, and other people can go right on ahead if they like. I'll pass.

On the other hand, I have a whole ton of respect for anyone who's gone through all the hoops necessary to get into space, whereas my opinions on vegetarians range from "I don't care what you eat as long as it isn't my stuff you're eating" to "GRARR SMASH KILL", based roughly on how much the person wants to beat their choice into my head. So I guess it's not the best analogy.

Super Sidetrack Powers Activate!

More And More

2007-12-31T19:41:00.001-05:00

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"Oh lord," Prudence groaned.

Jill laughed delightedly as she held her prize aloft. "Ohhh yes, this little guy is a real gem... and won't Uncle Henry just love him?" She laughed again at the expression on her sister's face.

"That," Pru said deliberately, "is the ugliest lawn gnome in the long and ugly history of yard decór."

"Which is why Uncle Henry will love him."

"Ugh," Pru groaned again.

Jill set the gnome down on the table next to the box it had been packed in -- packed with rather a lot of care, Pru thought, seeing as it would've been a blessing to humanity if the thing had shattered in transit. Its chipped plaster hat and clothing were all the same delicate shade of puke-green, and the garishly painted face leered from behind sculpted tangles of beard. One hand was raised in what looked like a drunken salute. The other was behind the gnome's back, as though he was hiding something back there, even though if you turned him around you could see that the hand was empty. Not that Pru would touch him to turn him around; that expression of his looked a little too knowing for her.

"Doesn't he look just evil?" Jill asked, unconsciously echoing Prudence's thought. "Like a tiny little serial killer."

Now it was Pru's turn to laugh. "Well, when you put it that way, it makes it seem like such a lovely gift for Henry," she teased.

Jill grinned as she picked up the gnome and placed it back in the box. "He's got so damn many of these already, it's hard to keep from duplicating one of his old ones unless you really look for something strange. Thus, Chuckles the Deadly Lawn Ornament."

"He just keeps collecting more and more gnomes the last few years, doesn't he?" Prudence mused. "Why does he even need so many? I mean, most of them just sit in the garage and gather dust anyway."

"Last time I asked, he said he needed them close to 'keep an eye on them,'" Jill replied, one eyebrow cocked ironically. "I'd say our dear uncle was going loopy in his old age, except he's always been that way."

"Which is why you two get along so well," Pru grinned.

Sure, I already did this one, but if Brookins can recycle then so can I. It is up to you whether Uncle Henry is the same guy as in the earlier post! I could go either way.

Also, yes, I did get all the character names by listening to A Shoggoth On The Roof while I worked; why do you ask?

Meta: Prettification.

2007-12-31T19:35:00.000-05:00

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I got bored of the old gray-blue layout, so I changed all the colors and a bit of the HTML. (Did you know you can add color variables to your template HTML and then they'll show up in the WYSIWYG color-picker? I didn't!)

That is all.

Little Pluggers

2007-12-27T18:23:00.002-05:00

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"Goddamn little perverts!" Jeannie cried, hurling her tin of clothespins at the fleeing boys. It bounced off the leg of the youngest, who was trailing the pack, but the effort garnered nothing but a brief "ow!" for her troubles. Little bugger didn't even stumble, and all four children easily made their giggling escape. The fluttering bit of blue cloth in the grasp of the eldest was all too recognizable.

Jeannie sighed loudly, casting a jaundiced eye in the direction of the Martin house next door. All four of their boys were utter hellspawn, pure and simple. This was the second time this month that one of her bras had gone missing from her backyard clothesline, and even though she hadn't caught them at it till just now, she'd still known well enough who the little culprits were. Filthy monsters. Didn't they have an older sister to spy on?

Grumbling, Jeannie bent to pick up the basket of fresh laundry she'd dropped when she saw the boys at her clothesline, grateful at least that none of it had tumbled out to the ground. Then she remembered that the clothespins were still over by the hedge where she'd managed to peg one of the Martin spawn.

"And I'll do worse than that if I catch him again," she muttered as she began gathering up scattered clothespins. "Nothing like a good old-fashioned thirty-fifth-trimester abortion to brighten up the day."

I figure since I already did this from the one angle, I'd go ahead and try it from the other.

Damned little perverted children. Brookins and/or Fulcher, you are a filthy, filthy man and/or men.

Four Legs

2007-12-21T19:39:00.002-05:00

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Brad glanced up as his roommate wandered vaguely through the living room. "Finally woke up, huh?"

"Mnuh," Charlie replied vaguely. "Been up for a while, actually. I was just thinkin'."

"Uh oh."

Charlie fwumphed down onto the other end of the couch. "Yeah, see, that book." He pointed at the copy of Animal Farm in Brad's hands. "So the animals take over 'cause they're mad at the humans enslaving them. Right?"

"Well, gee, thanks for spoiling it for me," Brad deadpanned.

"The animals do all the work, and they still have to sleep in cold barns and eat hay and whatever else." Charlie nodded, as though agreeing with himself, then raised a finger. "But what if it happened today?"

Brad blinked. "What if farm animals, having turned out to actually be sentient and capable of holding a grudge in the first place, revolt against humankind... today?"

"Mmmyep. Just think how much more screwed we'd be just because of 'Old Yeller'."

"Huh." Brad closed the book and tilted his head. "Dog befriends family, dog defends family, dog gets shot for his trouble. You do have something there."

Charlie started ticking off on his fingers. "Babe: pig buys into the establishment and spends his life slavishly imitating his human masters. Lassie: dog spends its life getting the same damn kid out of every well in the tri-county area. Mister Ed: horse has nothing to do except stand around talking to some loser. We are not in good standing with the animal kingdom, my friend."

Brad laughed. "I still think you're kind of exaggerating the problem here, man."

"Two words," Charlie answered, grinning wickedly. "Air Bud."

"...point taken," Brad replied.

My immediate response on viewing today's Pluggers was something along the lines of "So, the animals... prefer movies starring... animals. Gotcha. Next startling revelation, please." Then I thought of the Orwell angle.

And no, I never had to read Animal Farm for school. I'm just a nerd.

Meta: Yes.

2007-12-17T05:21:00.000-05:00

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Soon, I think. Trying to fight the backlog was a huge mistake, so that's out; all the Pluggers comics I missed will simply have to remain forever un-ficced, at least by me. (Is ficced a word?) I think at least one post a week to start, whenever an installment strikes me. And we'll see what's what.

Answers to your potential questions:

The capybara is the world's largest living rodent. It is also known as the "water hog" due to its propensity for living in and around water, and its resemblance to a hog. It is a sadly underappreciated creature, and if you're going to draw a fictionalized animal-creature-thing version of yourself, there are far worse choices.

I sadly do not have a huge, slightly-off-perspective flatscreen monitor, nor a wireless keyboard with strangely misshapen keys. However, I will graciously accept donations of either.

I do indeed own this hat. Although to be honest, I don't generally wear it while using the computer.

And the change of blogging moniker to Blog Post Frank? Well, seein' as Google told me that nobody else had started using it yet... why not?

Current top-of-the-page post.

2007-02-24T19:37:00.000-05:00

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Hi, welcome, and drag up whatever passes for seating in Pluggerland. I got behind on the plugfics for a while there, but updates are still continuing; in fact, I just finished January 9th's entry not five minutes ago. Eventually I'll get caught up.

Stick around if you want, and feel free to comment no matter what your opinion. I've got plenty of green bean casserole, leftover meatloaf, and gallon-jug wine for everyone.

Edit 2/28: Also, since Blogger forced me to switch to the new version (boo change, boo having to get a Google account), I have tweaked the layout (boo the helpfile on post summaries being no use whatsoever¹, forcing me to look elsewhere). I hope the new color scheme looks okay on monitors that are not elderly and over-dark.

1. Mainly it just lied about where to insert the conditional in the template, but that was sure enough to break everything. Mr. Chen actually leaves out the endif statement on his first code snippet, but that's a lot easier to debug than "this code goes somewhere but not actually the place the helpfile claims".

Getting Carded

2007-02-17T18:43:00.001-05:00

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"Huh?" Manny replied, not sure if he had heard right.

The girl working the ticket stand rolled her eyes. "Your ID, sir. Can I see it, please?"

"Oh, uh, yes." He fumbled out his wallet and began rooting around in it, meanwhile wondering why he needed an ID just to get into a movie. It'd make sense if he were a kid trying to sneak into a gory picture. Thing was, he was 37 and the movie he wanted to see was rated PG. He found the ID card before he found an answer, and held it aloft, somewhat confusedly.

The ticket girl, for her part, idly thumped a few buttons on the register. "Eight-seventy-five, please," she said in a bored voice. No explanation seemed forthcoming, so Manny forked over the money silently and escaped with his ticket.

He kept an eye on the ticket line as he made his way to the concession stand. The guy who'd been behind him in line didn't get carded, just got charged the better part of nine bucks without incident. Manny looked at the mirror behind the concession workers, wondering if perhaps he'd acquired the face of some famous criminal since this morning; but no, the usual mug stared back at him, slightly tired-looking beneath thinning red hair. Maybe the ticket girl was just bored.

He ordered popcorn and a Coke from a gangly kid with braces, this time managing to complete the transaction without having to show his ID.

...am I the only one with deja vu?

Peek

2007-02-16T10:43:00.001-05:00

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Sheriff Louie paused in the act of riding an imaginary horse across the backyard. "Now I gotcha!" he yelled, and plugged the grim outlaw Bad Bart with a few imaginary bullets.

The grim outlaw, for his part, seemed to be paying no notice to the little drama in which he was involved. He was kneeling in a manner wholly unbecoming to a corpse, hands pressed up against the wooden fence that separated their yard from the one next door, one eye glued to a knothole. The sheriff tried shooting him a few more times, then gave up in disgust.

"Hey, Bart, what are you -- "

The older boy whipped his head around and fixed Louie with a glare. "Shh!" he hissed, turning back to the fence.

Louie joined his brother at the fence, sitting down cross-legged beside him. "What are you doing?" he repeated in a loud whisper.

"'M watching Missus Lee be naked," Bart replied in the tone of voice often used to describe religious experiences.

Louie, for his part, merely sat there for a few moments, digesting this. Then he cocked his head. "Yeah?"

Bart nodded. "She's sittin' in a chair by her pool an' I think she's sleepin', and she's naked. All she's wearin' is just a little thing of underwear." He gave his little brother a meaningful look. "And not nothing on top."

"If she's got underwear on, she's not naked," Louie argued. Bart shrugged, his attention turned to the knothole again. After a second Louie raised up onto his knees. "Come on, Bart, I'm bored. Let's play some more."

"You can play stupid little kid games if you want," Bart replied, not looking at him. "But I don't wanna."

Stung, Louie stood up and backed away a few steps. "Fine," he replied; then, pitching his voice to a shout, "If you wanna look at Missus Lee be naked, go ahead!" He turned and pelted back to the house as from the other side of the fence came the sound of another set of footsteps, hurrying away across poolside concrete.

Sleeper

2007-02-15T22:07:00.001-05:00

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Shelly sighed, then prodded at the sleeping form of her husband. "Nate." Another poke, harder this time. "Nate. Nathan." At last he twitched, uttered a particularly loud snore, and then looked blearily up at her. "It's nine-thirty."

Nate stretched luxuriously on the couch, uttering a huge yawn, then blinked at her a few more times, scratching idly at his side. "Yeah?"

"I'm going to bed now, Nate."

His eyes cleared slightly. "Oh, nine-thirty PM?"

"Either that or you've been napping for fifteen hours," she answered, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

"Man. That was a gooood nap," he said, smiling as he gave another stretch. "It's great just having a nice relaxing evening, Shel, you should try it sometime."

Shelly's mouth twitched into a brief frown, which went unnoticed by her husband. "If I ever get an evening where I have the time, maybe I'll try it."

Nate rose from the couch and ambled out of the living room. "Bedtime, huh?" He yawned again. "Sounds good to me; I'm beat."

Four Eyes

2007-02-14T21:47:00.001-05:00

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Tim blinked a few times, squinting against the sudden blurriness of the world. "Now, keep in mind, it takes those just to make my vision almost normal," he said, handing his glasses to one of his friends. "Don't look too long. Most people get nasty headaches if they try."

The green-clad blur that he knew to be Ben laughed. "Oh, wow, I can practically see through time with these! You sure you're not legally blind, man?"

"Hell if I know," Tim answered with a grin. "All I know is, if I wanna see six inches in front of my face, I need those things."

The green blur shifted suddenly, and Tim squinted again. He could barely make out the movement as Ben handed the glasses over to Garrick. "Don't drop 'em," Ben said humorously, and Garrick mimed doing exactly that before putting them on.

A half-second later he whipped them off again, holding them back out to Ben. "Gah!" he exclaimed, "I think I have a headache already!" The three chuckled, and then Ben began to hold the glasses back out to Tim.

"Here you go, buddy, you can have back your eyes no -- "

As Tim reached out for the glasses, Ben loosened his grip on them; the former man's poor vision betrayed him, however, and he misjudged the movement, accidentally batting at the glasses instead of grabbing them. Knocked from Ben's hand, they fell unceremoniously to the sidewalk. There was an apologetic cracking noise.

Nobody said anything for a few moments, until finally Garrick broke the silence. "Uh. You want us to walk you home so you can get your extra pair, Tim?" he asked hesitantly.

"I don't have an extra pair."

"Oh," Ben replied.

Home Security

2007-02-13T21:17:00.001-05:00

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To Bill's surprise, the front door swung open as soon as he tried to put his key in the lock. He gave the knob a turn, and found it unlocked. "Um," he said. "Didn't you lock the door when we left?"

"Huh?"

He pushed on into the apartment, feeling his heart sink as he looked around at the chaos within. "Dammit, someone broke in! I can't believe this! The one time we get to take a vacation, and someone breaks in!"

Irene appeared in the doorway, and slapped a hand over her mouth as her eyes went wide. "Oh my god!" she choked out in a high-pitched voice. "My crystal!"

"Yeah, and the TV and DVD player," Bill replied grimly. "And probably just about everything else of value in the place -- they obviously wanted to be thorough." He groaned and ran his hands through his hair. "How the hell did they get in? We locked up on the way out!"

There was a pause, during which Irene's face colored. "Um," she said finally. "I didn't, um. Actually lock the front door."

Bill's hands dropped, and he looked at her with an expression of utter shock.

"I didn't figure we needed to!" she added hastily, face now bright red. "I mean, no one in this neighborhood's ever been burgled before..."

"Gnrfle!" Bill exclaimed incoherently, burying his head in his hands again.

Cowlick

2007-02-12T20:29:00.001-05:00

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"Neil!" Cora called toward the staircase, setting the casserole dish down on the table. "Dinner's ready, sweetie!"

There was no answer, and after a few moments Tony walked over to the stairs, cupping his hands theatrically around his mouth. "I'm comin' up after you, kiddo! You better not be into anything you shouldn't be, or there's going to be ticklings!"

That got a response, and both parents grinned. "I'm coming!" Neil replied from somewhere upstairs, sounding vaguely panicked. "No tickling, I'm coming!"

From the kitchen, Cora could see her husband at the foot of the stairs, and could hear her son come padding toward their top. Suddenly Tony's jaw dropped, at what, she could not see; she felt a little trill of fear go through her. "Is something wrong? Neil, sweetie, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, mommy!" the boy answered as he came thumping down the stairs. She smiled, watching him come into view -- first his feet, still clad in socks with dinosaurs printed on them; his legs and body, one little arm reaching up to grip the bannister; and lastly, his head --

"Oh dear," Cora managed, before dissolving into shocked laughter.

Tony favored her with a mock glare, then squatted down beside Neil. "Now, son, I know you want to be just like me when you grow up. And that makes me feel really good as a dad, believe me." He paused. "But from now on, don't give yourself any more haircuts, okay? Let us take care of that."

"Okay, daddy," Neil answered cheerfully. Cora resisted the urge to giggle again at the sight of them together, both of them now bald as eagles, save one springy cowlick on each head.

R & R

2007-02-10T12:26:00.001-05:00

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Evan's eyes lit up as soon as Vivian entered the room. "Nana!" he cried, holding his arms up. "Story? Please?"

With a laugh, Viv scooped her grandson out of his bed -- which was harder now than it used to be; good lord, was he really almost three already? -- and sat down in the rocking chair with him on her lap. "All right, dear. But only one, all right? Your mom doesn't want you staying up too much past bedtime."

"I wanna hear the one with the bunny!" Evan declared, tugging at her arm. "Please? The bunny?"

"All right, we'll do the bunny," she answered, smiling. She leaned over to the bookcase by the chair, one arm holding the child firmly on her lap while she grabbed the book that was his current bedtime favorite. Then she straightened, smiling at him as he curled up comfortably on her lap. "Ready?" Evan nodded enthusiastically. "All right then."

The boy tugged at her arm again. "Nana?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Can I be a bunny too?"

Viv chuckled a little and ruffled the boy's hair. "Maybe in your dreams tonight," she answered. "Let's read the story and get you to bed, so you can find out."

Garden Gnomes

2007-02-09T12:24:00.001-05:00

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Eventually I got tired of watching him watch the yard, so I cleared my throat. He jumped, gave one last look out the window, and then turned to me; I gave him my best attempt at a smile, though it was probably looking pretty threadbare by this point. "Honestly, Mr. Pratchett. I don't think the gnomes are actually trying to kill you."

"Exactly!" he hissed, thrusting a finger towards me. "You don't think the little buggers are up to anything, which makes it all the more easy for them to work unnoticed beneath your very nose!"

"Aha." He turned back to the window, apparently well satisfied with his logic. Granted, it was pretty hard to argue with on anything resembling rational grounds, but I still gave it a shot. "Or maybe it's just that they're not up to anything at all. I mean, how could you ever tell the difference?"

He grinned over his shoulder at me. "The tiger rock argument, right?" I stared at him blankly, and he continued. "I could show you a rock and say that it keeps away tigers. You might then ask how I know a simple rock could possibly do such a thing. And I would then reply that, well, I don't see any tigers around, do you?"

I nodded. "So the gnomes are like a tiger rock."

"No!" he exclaimed, whirling around again and beginning to pace the small room. "They're not, because while the rock has nothing to do with why there's no tigers in North Carolina, the gnomes are hiding something!"

"Yes, murderous intent, I know." I sighed. "And you know that it's not just that they're inanimate lumps of plastic because...?"

He returned to his post by the window, leaning in close, shoulders hunched. "Because of their eyes," he answered quietly. "Every once in a while, you can see it in their eyes."

Almost in spite of myself, I shivered.

Safety Glasses

2007-02-08T22:20:00.001-05:00

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"Ah Christ!" Dave yelled suddenly over the sound of grinding metal. He whirled away, one hand clapped to his face. "My eye! That went right in my eye!"

The foreman was at his side almost immediately. "Shut it down!" he shouted to the man at the controls; as the machinery spun down, he turned his attention back to Dave. "All right, talk to me."

Dave gestured randomly toward the machine with his free hand. "Damn thing just blew a cloud of metal shavings right into my eye." He winced audibly. "Christ, that hurts!"

"Okay." The foreman pointed at a couple of the other workers. "You: get the eyewash kit. And you: call an ambulance. Now, people!"

"I don't have any more sick days -- " Dave began.

"Doesn't matter. You don't want your cornea all scratched up, and you definitely don't want to go blind." The foreman's face darkened. "Although I would like to know just why the hell you weren't wearing your safety glasses."

Dave barked a short laugh, utterly without humor. "There's only five pairs to go around, and six of us on shift," he answered. "Guess who drew the short straw today."

Preservatives

2007-02-07T22:04:00.001-05:00

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He put down his spoon, swallowing with some difficulty. "This soup's awfully salty, ma," he said. "Is this what you actually eat for lunch?"

"Of course," she answered, refilling his just-emptied lemonade glass and then sitting down across the table. "All that fancy free-range hippie food is fine for when you're young, but when you get to be my age and have to start buying your groceries on a pension, you really start to appreciate canned soup."

"Ma," he sighed, putting a hand to his forehead. "I keep telling you, I'd be glad to help you out with your bills if you needed -- "

"There's nothing wrong with living frugally," she interrupted smoothly. "Besides, that salt you're complaining about is good for you. Canned soup is full of preservatives. Who couldn't use a little preserving?"

He paused in the act of drinking, glass suspended halfway to his mouth. "Um. You know, that's not actually how it works. That stuff preserves the food, but it's actually pretty bad for people."

"I'll tell you what," she replied archly. "You know Mrs. Vernon? That nice lady down the street? Ninety-six years old and counting, comes over to have lunch with me every other day?" He nodded. "If she dies and the doctors say it was the soup, I'll stop eating it."

Down Further

2007-02-06T13:06:00.001-05:00

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Vince paused briefly on his way out, one hand on the open door, to call "Goin' now, bye mom!" Before he could make his escape, though, he could hear her coming down the stairs. He groaned. So much for getting out before she could catch him; she'd follow him right outside if she had something to say, meaning he might as well stay here and get it over with.

As she came down the stairs and caught sight of him, her eyes went wide for a second. Then they narrowed and she heaved a sigh. "Vincent, my child, my dear little boy, what are you wearing?"

"I'm not little, mom," he grumbled. "I'm almost fifteen. And this is what all the kids are wearing."

"All the kids are wearing pants down around their knees? Really?" She leaned on the bannister and crossed her arms. "I seem to remember that being the style back when I was in school, and it was ridiculous then, too." Then, almost as an afterthought, "And close the door, please, you're letting the cold air in."

Vince complied, even though he'd rather be on the other side of the door right about now. "C'mon, mom, I don't want the other guys to think I'm weird or anything..."

His mother burst out laughing. "Oh, because certainly there's nothing weird about walking around with your underwear showing." Her eyes twinkled. "I seem to remember that not so many years ago you were wearing underwear with little rocket ships on it. Funny, you didn't seem so excited about showing that off for your little friends."

"Mo-om," Vince protested.

Close At Hand

2007-02-05T22:27:00.001-05:00

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He'd started out small, when he was younger. A few scribbles on the back of his hand when he was bored. Maybe he'd write something down on the palm so he could remember it later.

As he went through high school, either classes got more boring or his attention span just got shorter, because the patterns began to grow more complicated. Some days he would come home with ink all down his left arm, and since he tended to wear shorts, sometimes his legs would get the treatment as well. He did well in all his classes and behaved quite normally in all other ways, so while his ink-tattooing habit got him a lot of strange looks and a few trips to the school psychologist, it didn't really harm him any. Doodling, after all, is a common enough behavior; his choice of just where to doodle was the only peculiar note.

It was during his senior year of high school that the drawings reached their highest point of creativity. Jagged blocks and lines marched across his arms and legs, melding into graceful whorls and curves; they sometimes seemed almost to spell out messages in some unknown pictographic language. Every once in a while he would detail a fractal pattern in there somewhere, shapes splitting off into smaller versions of themselves, down into the most intricate levels of detail that he could get with a fine-point pen on skin. His art was a constant work in progress, for as older portions faded with time and soap and water, new drawings would take their place. He never considered himself an artist. Still, his skin was a canvas on which more than a few pens bled their last.

In college the patterns stopped. He was enrolled in the pre-law program at a fairly prestigious university; his classes were more interesting, now, or at least more challenging. There were other things to do besides doodle. By the end of his first semester, there was no sign that the ink had ever stained his skin at all.

He never considered himself an artist. But perhaps his life would have been a little more interesting if he had.

Financial Advisor

2007-02-03T21:59:00.001-05:00

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He'd hoped that would be the end of the conversation, but she followed him into the study. Too bad. He'd been hoping to have some time alone tonight -- the new issue of American Rifleman had arrived today, and there was an article on the Ruger that had caught his eye -- but apparently his wife had other plans.

"And another thing," she said, signaling that there was indeed to be another chapter of the current tirade. Joy. "I know you got a raise at the plant last week, because Caitlyn Marsh told me her husband got one too, and don't think I haven't noticed that you're not actually bringing home any more money! I suppose you're spending all the extra at that little club you and your friends go to." He started to protest, but she rolled smoothly on. "Well, I expect that to stop! It's bad enough you spend any money at all there, when it's such a dirty, sinful habit, but you won't be lying to me on top of it! You bring that money home!"

"Now, hold on!" he interjected. He scrubbed a palm over his face. "Look, Lonnie Marsh got his raise last month because he's on the floor, and all the floor workers got their raises last month. Us guys in shipping are in for a raise, but it doesn't actually start until next year." He sighed, knowing it was useless to try reasoning with her, but forging ahead anyway. "I bring home every penny that I make -- yes, every bit, don't tell me I'm lyin' about this because I'm not -- and I reckon I don't waste nearly as much at the Flamingo as you do on your lottery tickets and your goddamn church bingo."

The color drained from her face, and she gasped as if slapped. "That's the Lord's name, mister! You watch your language!"

"Fine," he replied, irritated. "I'll watch my language in here, and you," he pointed out at the hallway, "go watch something else out there." As she turned and began to stalk away, he called after her, "And next time you hear something from Caitlyn, try makin' sure she knows what she's talking about before you come yell at me!"

No Deal

2007-02-02T21:22:00.001-05:00

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"Come on," Cal wheedled. "Every damn day y'come here with the best lunch, an' every day we all slog through stale peanut butter and cold soup while you're enjoyin' gor-may on-trays. Least ya could do is trade somethin' once in a while!"

Pausing in the act of unwrapping his sandwich, Shawn cast a glance at the older man. "So bring something else if you want a change. Nobody's stopping you."

"Well, see, that's just what my wife says," Oscar exclaimed, plopping his lunchbox on the table and sitting down across from them. "She figures if something she slapped together isn't good enough for me, then I can just feed myself." He winked at Shawn. "Most of us aren't still enjoying that first year of marriage, when everything is love an' kisses an' fancy lunches every day."

Shawn colored slightly, but said nothing.

"And she knows I can't cook, too," Oscar went on, with the air of one enjoying an old gripe. "Some people say they'd burn water; me, I'd burn salad. So it's what she makes, or the cafeteria... and anything's better than the cafeteria." He laughed heartily at that, then took a large bite of his own sandwich.

"Yer a lucky bastard, Shawn," Cal said with a grin. "A bastard who won't trade lunches, but still lucky."

Out With The Boys

2007-02-01T20:26:00.001-05:00

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Jim locked the door behind them and shouldered the pooper-scooper. "Okay, boys," he said, "off we go."

Most days he walked the dogs right after getting off work; they had a backyard to run around in, but he still felt guilty if he couldn't find time to take them out. Prince was a mutt with a touch of German Shepherd, and Cookie was a good-sized Lab. Between the two of them, they added up to rather a lot of doggy energy.

Now, as they set off for their nightly jaunt, the sky was just starting to go golden as the sun wandered toward the horizon. There was a slight breeze blowing, a bit cool, but still pleasant enough as it rustled through the trees. Jim more or less let the dogs lead the way, keeping an eye out for cars and other concerns, but not otherwise paying much attention.

Eventually they wound up by the lake. He found himself smiling as they walked along its shore. This was a good place, maybe his favorite place in the world. He'd spent a lot of time here since moving in to his current house; the fishing wasn't bad in the summer, and the scenery was gorgeous just about all year 'round. It had been miserable, rainy weather the last few days, so the trees were looking bedraggled, but that lake itself was a sight to behold, with the sunset sky reflected in its gently rippling surface.

They stopped maybe twenty feet back from the lake, Prince and Cookie snuffling around the base of a good-sized oak, and Jim took the opportunity to watch a few birds flit lazily about the bushes by the little fishing dock. Then something caught his eye, and he frowned. It looked like someone had dumped a bag of trash in the lake. But who around here would do something like that...?

"Hold up, guys," he said, and made his way to the dock, dragging both dogs behind him. He still couldn't make out whatever that was floating by one of the dock supports... a bag of trash? But it didn't look like that so much as like a bunch of old rags... or...

"Holy God," Jim breathed, stopping up short. Cookie nosed about a nearby tree, but Prince had caught wind of his owner's change in mood -- or maybe just the source of that change -- and whined, ears laid flat. "Holy God," Jim repeated. Then he abruptly turned and gave the leashes a sharp tug. "Come on, guys," he said, casting a glance back at the body floating in the lake. "Back to the house. I've got a phone call to make."

Ice Cream

2007-01-31T22:09:00.001-05:00

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Kim shook her head. "It's been so long since we've done this... why's it been so long since we've done this? Spending time with you here used to be the highlight of my week. I wonder why we ever stopped."

"Because you skipped town with that boy," Penny answered quietly.

They both were silent for a moment then, Penny idly stirring her milkshake, Kim looking down at her sundae. All around them, the ice cream parlor was full of the sounds of talking and laughing, washing over their little island of awkwardness.

Finally Kim looked up again. "I know it's been a long time, and I haven't called or written or anything. But that doesn't mean that our friendship wasn't important to me. Hell, it used to be just the two of us against the world, remember?"

Penny smiled slightly. "I remember."

"And then I went and did something stupid, and ran off with some guy who dumped me a month later." Kim sighed. "Luckily my aunt took me in, and I managed to get my life back on track even if I never could bear to come home again, but... still, that's almost ten years that we've lost." She looked around the room, her eyes reflecting the overhead lights rather more than they had been doing a few seconds ago. "We used to come here every week, and talk, you know? Just talk. Only now we've lost that."

Penny smiled again, this time looking like she meant it. "Seems to me that this is as good a time as any to get caught up. So? Let's talk."

Protective

2007-01-30T21:12:00.001-05:00

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The man waved his knife threateningly, eliciting a gasp from Audrey. "I said give 'em," he snapped. "Wallets, watches, the lady's necklace. Right now!"

Fred could feel Audrey trembling as she pressed close to him; he shifted his weight slightly, trying to put himself between her and their attacker as much as he could without actually moving. The last thing he wanted to do was spur the guy into coming at them.

"Look," he said as calmly as he could, slowly spreading his hands out in a conciliatory gesture. "We don't want any trouble, so -- "

"You've got trouble unless you do what I say!" the man snarled, waving the knife again.

Audrey pulled on his sleeve with trembling hands. "Please, sweetie, let's just do it and then get out of here, okay? And we can just go home."

"I -- " Fred began. Then there was a loud clattering at the other end of the alley, startling them all, and the man with the knife reacted with a sudden lunge.

Not even thinking now, Fred grabbed the assailant's wrist as he came forward, bending it back and causing the knife to drop. In the next second he had the man pinned to the ground.

"Call the cops," he said over his shoulder to Audrey, then turned back to their would-be mugger. "Figured we'd be easy marks, huh?" he asked through gritted teeth, grinding one knee savagely into the man's back. "Just a big fat guy and his woman, no problem, right?" He uttered a humorless little chuckle. "Well, this big fat guy happens to be a bouncer with a black belt in judo. Bet you wish you'd known that five minutes ago, huh?"

Hats

2007-01-29T15:43:00.001-05:00

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The room smelled of sawdust and machine oil, of old sweat and the ghosts of a thousand fresh-mown lawns. Marie couldn't remember a time when it had ever been otherwise. She might have grown up, and grown away, and left home to live all the way across the country, but this had always been her father's space, all down the years and decades.

One full wall was taken up with his hat collection, hung from rows of pegs that went from her waist to well over her head. As a little girl she could spend hours in here with him, pointing to one hat after another, asking where did you get this one, when did you get it, tell me about it. Even then he had had an impressive collection. They were baseball caps, mostly -- promotional items from long-since-defunct farm-supply companies; souvenirs from places he had visited; gifts given him for dozens of birthdays and Christmases and Father's Days. Other dads got ties; hers got hats.

She pulled one down from the wall, turning it over in her hands and smiling a little. This had been one of his favorites, and even now the scent of sweat and Old Spice seemed to issue faintly from its worn fabric. He'd retired from the sawmill back in '86, after thirty-five years of working there and eight of actually running the place. This hat had been his parting gift from his former employees, more meaningful than any gold watch. "SAW BOSS", it read across the front. Their nickname for him at the mill. Marie smiled, remembering him describing it to her over the phone. He was usually so reserved, which made his excitement over the gift all the more touching.

Carefully Marie replaced the hat back on its peg, then looked around the room one more time, breathing in the air of the room where her father had spent so much of his free time over the years. Then she looked toward the doorway. "Yes, mama?"

Her mother attempted a smile. "Are you ready, dear? We have to leave pretty soon. Don't want to be late to the -- the funeral."

Marie crossed the room to give her mother a brief hug. Then she nodded. "I'm ready, mama. Just wanted to say goodbye."

Soap Opera

2007-01-27T00:11:00.001-05:00

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They talked about it for years to come, in that town: how a perfectly respectable man, a successful businessman and a pillar of the community, had somehow managed to go completely mad without anyone noticing.

Perhaps it is unfair to say that no one noticed, because for some time before the end, his wife Joy had been known to occasionally hint at something unusual. While it is impossible now to know whether she realized what was happening, one can still piece together a sort of narrative out of what hints she let drop to friends and relatives.

The first thing his wife seems to have noticed was the singing. It was not singing, exactly, to hear her tell it. Perhaps chanting would be a better word. Joy never gave any indication that she could understand him, and in fact, she apparently rarely heard it at all. He seemed careful to do it out of her hearing, and sometimes she would enter the room where he was, only to hear him suddenly stop talking, as if she had interrupted a conversation with someone. Mostly she heard him doing it in the shower -- not singing, exactly, but saying something in a kind of rhythmic pattern that defied comprehension. It had worried her in a way she could not quite articulate to anyone.

At some point a bizarre obsession with cleanliness apparently emerged, as well. Specifically he had become fixated on soap. Bars of soap appeared all over the house, tucked away in soapdishes on dressers and counters, in closets and boxes and one bar, for some reason, always kept in his left slipper. Attempts to move any of them met with loud protest. Joy had confided to one or two people that threats of violence were also involved.

During all this time he presented a perfectly normal face to the outside world, and it was only at home that his behavior began to degrade in a number of ways that likely Joy did not even begin to scratch the surface of in her talks with others. Eventually, of course, came the event that remains legend to this day.

The sight of his wife and three daughters, bound with electrical tape and murdered in their beds, needs no repeating, as much as it has fueled local gossip for ten years and counting. Nor does the fate of the man himself really need to be rehashed; he remains in an institution till this day, still half-singing, half-muttering things to himself whenever he is led, closely supervised, into the shower.

More peculiar by far, however, is an aspect of the crime that was never discussed with the public, being as police felt the family had already had a bad enough time of being massacred. So it is that few people know of the full story, and especially what the murderer had done, either before or after taking those four innocent lives.

He had written his Red Right Hand on the wall.

With a bar of soap.

I... don't know either. His eyes just look so mad in the comic, and, well.

If you're wondering, yes, I am referencing the thing you think I'm referencing. That is an amazing album.

Expiration Dates

2007-01-26T22:38:00.001-05:00

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Finally, he decided he couldn't put it off any longer. Oh, sure, he had known this day would come; he had done his best to prepare, though admittedly that more or less meant saying "I'll get to it tomorrow" a few more times than was healthy. Now, though, time was up.

It was time to clean the fridge.

Thus it was that he found himself staring in at three shelves of various substances, some of which were still edible. Half-empty mustard jars butted up against random wads of aluminum foil containing god-knew-what; a few random disposable plastic containers were rattling around in there somewhere, he knew, and down in the crisper was probably at least one package of raw meat that had never actually gotten used for anything. Man, this sucked. Maybe he should leave it for tomorrow.

"No," he said aloud. Then, "OW!" he cried, as, startled by the sound of his own voice, he jumped and slammed his head into the top of the open fridge. "Jesus," he muttered, rubbing the back of his skull. "Good one, man."

He returned his attention to the fridge, hoping that, perhaps, it had cleaned itself out while he was otherwise occupied. No such luck.

"Okay, then," he muttered, this time managing to not scare himself into any more blunt head trauma. "Let's do this." He pulled out the first thing that came to hand, a package of flour tortillas, mostly-full. "Expired... the tenth." Into the trash can it went. This wasn't so bad. Next came a tub of sour cream. "The 22nd. Close, but no." Ignoring a rather oozy-looking foil-wrapped something, he reached out and removed a bag of lettuce. "December fifth. Ouch."

He hesitated slightly, then steeled himself and fished a flat package from the very back of the bottom shelf. It turned out to be the remains of a steak, at once rather an expensive one, that had apparently gone into the business of supporting greenish life. Without hesitation he dropped it into the trash, figuring there wasn't much need to check that expiration date.

"Of course, there's still you," he said to the foil-wrapped something, which looked faintly disturbing in response. "But maybe I will save you for tomorrow. After I buy myself a flamethrower."

Pacemaker

2007-01-25T21:56:00.001-05:00

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"I -- " wheezed Glen, "I can't -- can't take any more -- " He gasped for breath a few more times, mopping the sweat from his beet-red face, before going on. "What was I -- ugh -- what was I thinking?"

Sophia smiled a little, though her eyes were more concerned than amused. "You were thinking that we could use a dog around the house again, which is true. I'm not sure why you decided to get a puppy the size of a small horse, though."

"'S not -- not that big," Glen replied, sitting heavily on the porch next to her wheelchair. He glanced briefly over at the side yard, where the creature in question was bouncing around excitedly, panting but still obviously full of energy. Then he uttered a short, breathless laugh. "I remember -- last time we had a puppy -- wasn't so damn hard just to walk 'im."

"Last time we had a puppy, you were twenty years younger," Sophia replied mildly. "Also, Skipper was... rather calmer."

Glen nodded. He was breathing somewhat easier now, although his face was still an alarming shade of red. "I think I see why this guy wound up at the shelter," he said, then coughed. "My heart's goin' a mile -- mile a minute, just from tryin' to keep up with him."

"Will you be okay?" she asked, looking worried. "If we need to call an ambulance -- "

He waved a hand to dismiss her concern. "I'll be fine," he assured her, "but that dog will have to go." He looked over at it again. "I'd ask Paul if he and Rosie wanted it, but..."

"But I'd rather not have one of my grandchildren trampled by the world's biggest chocolate Lab," Sophia cut in. Glen nodded his agreement.

Meta: Holy. (Updated 2/2.)

2007-01-24T10:05:00.001-05:00

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I, um. Er. Hi to anyone coming over from Curmudgeonland. It is rather surprising to be noticed by my comic-blogging hero, but it is also completely awesome.

I would just like to note that updates have in fact been continuing apace lately; they're just backdated. All the plugfics currently showing up on the front page were actually written in the last three or four days. I am finally up to December! Hooray.

So, uh, basically pull up a chair (or since this is Pluggerland and we can't afford chairs, then I guess a rock or an orange crate or a pile of newspapers from 20 years ago or something) and stick around if you like. Check out the About entry if you're at all confused, although it is somewhat out-of-date.

Whatever you do, do not feed the bears. They'll find some way to turn it into a source of defiant working-class pride.

[UPDATE 2/2] Incidentally, thanks to everyone who left comments on various entries over the last weekish! I did not reply to each one individually because there are only so many different ways to say "thank you" and I am not creative enough to think of most of them. Regardless, know that it gratifies me to know when I have managed to write something that strikes people enough to want to post about it.

I just did December 15th's entry, which means that I'm only about a month and a half behind instead of over two months like I was for a bit. Feel free to rejoice and eat Sir Robin's minstrels, if you like.

Spare Tire

2007-01-24T00:19:00.001-05:00

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Even after he had wrestled the truck to a stop by the side of the road, the sound of the tire popping seemed to echo off the desert hills. Or maybe the damn thing hadn't just popped; maybe it had altogether exploded. Sure sounded like it.

He sat there for a few moments, hands still on the wheel, listening to the silence roll back in to fill the space left by the truck's silenced engine. He'd thought about replacing that tire at the last gas station, but had been stymied by the simple fact that the attendant there hadn't spoken a word of English. You got that sometimes, out here in the desert; what language a guy spoke wasn't as important as whether he could be trusted to actually show up to a post halfway between Somewhere and Nowhere.

Of course, it meant that he'd been forced to continue on his trip on three tires and a donut. And from the sound of it, the donut had just blown.

His eyes went to the cellphone on his dashboard, but he knew there would be point in even trying it. There just wasn't any coverage out here. His son had tried to explain it once, how the craggy hills blocked out the signals, but all he knew from his many trips across the desert was that there was a large swatch where cellphones simply didn't work.

"Well then," he said to the silence, and lowered his hands to his lap. He was thirty miles from anywhere, in the desert, with a flat tire, and with night coming on.

He was also edging toward sixty years old, and too damn tired by far to even want to think about this predicament.

"Well, then. What now?"

Chores

2007-01-23T21:18:00.001-05:00

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"Kenny!"

He ignored his mother's voice wafting up from the kitchen; truth be told, he didn't even notice it. All his attention was focused on the words in front of him, on the world of gods and magic and ambulatory furniture.

"Kenny!"

He'd gotten two books for his birthday last year, had borrowed several more from the library. One wondrous day he had found, lurking in the back of the used-book store down the street, four ragged volumes priced at a quarter each. He had snatched them up immediately, bearing his plastic-bagged prize home as though it were made of glass.

At first his parents had only been glad to see him reading so willingly. Then, as his nigh-obsession became apparent, they tried first to ply him with other sorts of reading, then to curtail the hobby entirely. He had more or less become a junkie, and his drug was this author's work, this fantasy world that marched across the page. The only thing better than reading about it would be living in it.

"KENNETH MICHAEL YOU GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!"

Kenny's head whipped up, his attention dragged at last from the book. He recognized that tone of voice. It was the one that meant that it was likely already too late to avoid punishment; probably he should have taken out the trash when she asked, except he'd figured he could read a little more before dinner --

He hid the book back under his mattress, then hopped up and made a run for the stairs. Maybe someday he could find a way out of this world, find the one where he could be a powerful magician who never had to do any chores he didn't want to, but right now he'd settle for not being grounded.

Magic and ambulatory furniture... maybe little Kenny has discovered Terry Pratchett, and maybe he's discovered the Elemenstor Saga. You can decide for yourself, because I like both possibilities.

It's definitely not The Song of the Sorcelator, though. Even a child can see through that tripe.

No Cash

2007-01-22T20:39:00.001-05:00

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Phillip growled, more in frustration than anything else. "I should've known that guy didn't actually have anything on him. He was in Wal-Mart, for god's sakes."

"Probably there with a pocketful of food stamps," Tommy agreed, voice dripping with amusement. "You sure know how to pick 'em."

"Yeah? Well, what have you accomplished today, huh?"

Tommy held up another wallet, this one an obviously expensive leather affair. "Two hundred and twenty-eight bucks. Cash. And a debit card with his PIN written on a Post-It. Though I gave that to Sarah. I ain't gettin' caught on camera at the ATM, but if she wants ice that bad, she can go right on ahead."

"Dammit, you always have the luck," Phillip groused. He leaned on the railing, legs dangling over the edge of the balcony; were anyone to look up, they might wonder what someone was doing sitting around in an abandoned building, but nobody did. "Whoever said crime doesn't pay obviously never met you."

"Heh, yeah." Tommy flashed a grin, then carefully tucked the wallet back into his pocket. "You meetin' your parole officer tomorrow?"

"Yep. Ten-thirty AM, sharp." Phillip stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants. "Gonna tell him I've been a good, law-abidin' citizen, and that I sure have learned not to steal no more." He uttered a short laugh. "Might as well be true, for all I'm pullin' in lately."

Bowling

2007-01-20T11:46:00.001-05:00

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Afterwards, Vern couldn't remember whether it had been his imagination, or whether he actually had heard his wrist shatter. Well, not that any shattering had necessarily occurred; it certainly felt like it, and possibly sounded like it too, but probably that had just been his rather biased opinion.

"Shitshitshitshit," he remarked conversationally, abruptly sitting down and clutching his arm. The bowling ball, flung randomly from a hand suddenly unprepared to deal with its weight, had crashed down in the next lane over, and was now calmly disappearing down the gutter. "Shitshit," Vern added, in case anyone was confused.

He became aware suddenly that Brad and Lenny were squatting down on either side of him, and over by their seats, Marvin was gesturing frantically at the bowling alley's owner. Vern couldn't quite tell what the problem was, but after a moment the owner turned and hurried away, so probably it wasn't anything he needed to worry about. And a good thing, too. He had enough on his mind as it was.

"What?" he asked, realizing that perhaps he should be paying attention to whatever Len and Brad were saying.

Marvin hurried up behind him. "Okay, guys, the owner's calling 911," he said breathlessly. "Vern, man, you okay?"

Vern looked at his wrist, as best he could through the haze that kept seeping in around the edges of his vision. It was bent at rather a horrendous angle, but at least did not appear to be on fire. Or mauled by bears. "Maybe?"

Brad snorted. "Dammit, man, I told you that ball was too heavy for you," he muttered. "Didn't I? Didn't I just get done saying that?"

"Yeah." Vern swallowed. "You said I'd break my damn fool wrist."

Senior Tickets

2007-01-19T16:17:00.001-05:00

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"Senior ticket, please," Lina said sweetly, handing over the four dollars. She accepted her ticket with a smile, followed Debbie into the theater lobby, and calmly stood in the concession line.

Finally Debbie gave in. "You're not even 45 yet, woman! How do you get away with pulling that kind of trick?"

"Well, it helps that you only have to be 50 to get the senior discount here," Lina replied, grinning. "And apparently I just look older than I really am, so."

Debbie shook her head. "I'm 'in my late 30s' for about the ninth year running, and here you are going completely the opposite direction. I'm pretty sure that's not normal."

"I've always believed in owning my age... two Cokes, please," Lina added as an aside to the man behind the counter. "And, well, if owning a little more lets me save a little money, what's the harm?"

"Because there's no harm in fraud," Debbie replied, rolling her eyes.

Lina handed over one Coke and sipped demurely at the other. "They'll roll the movie whether I'm sitting there or not. Seems the actual amount I pay to get in doesn't actually matter too much."

Chuckling, Debbie nodded. "Tell yourself that if you want, I suppose. Me, I'll be happy to pay full price for a while longer."

Suitcases

2007-01-18T15:49:00.001-05:00

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Arnie pulled distractedly at one of the straps on his suitcase. "No, no, they said when I took the Greyhound to visit my son that my suitcases were just fine. I only brought the one bag, after all, and the rules say I can have two, so I'm well under my limit." He adjusted his glasses, looking up at the skycap. "I made sure to read up on that. I know my rights."

The skycap, a young man whose nametag identified him as CHARLES, blinked a few times. "Yes, airline regulations state you can have two bags checked as long as they fit the size requirements. Only, I'm afraid I simply can't check this bag for you."

"It's not oversize," Arnie replied, frowning. "I checked. I was very careful to bring my smaller suitcase, because I know it's not oversize." CHARLES looked as though he was about to say something, but Arnie soldiered on. "I'm going to see my daughter and her husband and my granddaughters in Milwaukee. I brought presents for the girls because I haven't seen them in two years. It's very important that I get my bag checked so the girls get their presents."

CHARLES nodded. "Yes, sir, I'm sure it is. And I'm very sorry, but your suitcase cannot be checked onto the plane."

"But the Greyhound people said it was all right when I visited my son." Seeing that he was not getting the desired results, Arnie fell back on an earlier point. "It isn't too big to be checked. I know my rights."

The muscles in CHARLES's jaw twitched. "Sir, I'm afraid that we may have different rules for baggage than Greyhound does. For one thing, all suitcases must properly close."

"It is closed!"

"Only because you have it tied together with rope," CHARLES answered.

Reduced Speed

2007-01-17T14:45:00.001-05:00

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Someone behind them honked, and James's eyes flared. "I know!" he roared, "what do you want from me?!"

"They can't hear you, but I can. And I'd rather you didn't completely freak out quite yet." Molly folded her arms across her chest. "Just... just give it a second, and then try to start it again. Maybe it'll work."

"I can't believe this," James snarled, pounding a hand on the steering wheel. "Almost made it home. I hate this goddamn car!"

"'m sorry," Molly answered quietly. Without even really noticing she was doing it, she hunched toward the passenger door, away from him; a moment later she realized her mistake, but by then James had already noticed.

"Molly, Molly, please," he snapped. "This whole recoiling-in-terror thing, it really isn't helping. I have to be allowed to get angry, and if you're just going to go all fetal-position then I'm just going to get more stressed out."

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do it!" She felt the tears coming to her eyes, as much as she was trying to hold them back. "Please, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean it, just... try it and maybe it will start now and we can go home?"

His hand drummed angrily on the dashboard. "I don't even know if I can drive home now even if it does start; my stomach is just killing me now. I need you to try to hold it together, okay? This emotional outburst thing has got to stop."

"I'll stop, I promise I'll stop, I really really will," she answered quickly.

James turned the key in the ignition, and the car started up readily; then he shifted into drive, hit the gas, and the engine died again.

Molly sat still and quiet, willing herself to not even breathe too loud, as he screamed profanities at the unmoving car.

Overlook

2007-01-16T21:06:00.001-05:00

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"It just doesn't seem fair," Katie said quietly. She glanced at their father, sitting by the window in the wheelchair one of the nurses had fetched for him. "This must be so humiliating for him, to wind up in a place like this."

Dean nodded. "He and I actually talked about it some earlier, while you were parking the car." Then, as she looked at him in surprise, "We didn't say much, really. I told him we were sorry about all this. He told me he was too."

Tears loomed in Katie's eyes. "He's just so helpless sometimes," she said in a choked voice. "He was always so strong, and now sometimes he can't even remember where the bathroom is in his own damn house."

"I know, Kay-kay, I know." Dean wrapped his sister in a hug, trying to comfort her, feeling her tears begin to wet his shoulder as he continued. "He knows too. He can't always take care of himself these days, and he said he hates it, but that..." He swallowed. "That he knows it's time for this. For someone else to take care of him. Someone who knows how."

Katie looked over at their father again, still sitting by the window. The slump of his shoulders matched her own. "God, aging sucks," she whispered.

Meta: Behind. (Updated again.)

2007-01-15T21:32:00.000-05:00

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Starting to come back from the extended downtime. As a reminder, first I was moving and getting set up for school; then I had to drive across a few states to deal with a minor family issue; then I found out that my fiance had died. It has been hard to get back to the point of wanting to do creative things, but really, random Internet-related creative endeavors have been a major part of my life for years. Heck, it's how the dearly departed and I even met in the first place. So I'm comin' back, slowly. Wrote a couple more plugfics today.

Thanks to anyone still interested in my bit of e-weirdness here.

Ben-Gay

2007-01-15T17:26:00.001-05:00

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Richard lowered himself into the bath gingerly, sighing as the warm water began its work. He'd have much rather run the water hot, except his doctor had nixed that -- warm was bad enough, she'd told him, it was cold that would actually help the inflammation in his joints. Thing was, there was nothing soothing about a cold bath. It seemed rather an oversight on the part of whoever was in charge of such things.

He lay there for a few minutes, not really thinking about anything, letting the warm water do its work. It had been a long day, with little opportunity to relax. He'd gotten a lot accomplished, though. Richard smiled a little. Yeah, it had been a pretty good day.

Eventually the water grew tepid, and then he rose, leaning fairly heavily on the bar installed in the bathroom wall. He stepped out carefully, then grabbed a towel and began drying off.

It was funny how much more he had come to appreciate a good bath since the accident. His broken leg and ribs had mended, and the pin in his hip had long since been set into place. Mainly he didn't have too much trouble with pain anymore, except on long days like today. But he was always up for a nice warm soak.

Finally, bathed and dressed, Richard exited the bathroom and walked slowly down the hall. He would watch a little TV, maybe catch the news, then call it a night. As he settled onto the couch, the lack of pain from his joints made him smile again. And since he'd done things the smart way 'round, he wouldn't even have to go to bed smelling of Ben-Gay tonight.

Dates

2007-01-13T22:10:00.001-05:00

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"Oh." He rubbed nervously at his chin. "Er. Look, I'm sorry, you know I don't mean anything by -- "

She raised an eyebrow, her expression cool, though he could tell she was genuinely bothered. "I know you don't mean anything by forgetting." She busied herself with the bookcase, straightening a few books that had been shelved hastily. Probably by him. "I'm beginning to think you didn't mean anything by anything, really."

"Sweetie -- "

"I don't think I'm particularly high-maintenance," she interrupted, not looking at him. "I don't care if you forget my birthday, or our anniversary -- hell, sometimes I forget them myself. I don't ask for anything for Valentine's Day, or Sweetest Day, or whatever holiday the greeting card companies have invented this week." Her eyes met his, and he realized that she was fighting back tears. "But this one thing, this one one-time thing that I ask of you? One evening ever, and that's it? Apparently it's too much to ask. Which makes me wonder if maybe I'm just not worth it to you. Or worth anything."

He took a step closer to her, meaning to try to comfort her, but thought better of it. "Look, I'm sorry I forgot. I know this... concert thing... is important to you -- and you're important to me -- I just... forgot, is all."

She looked down at the floor, her growing anger giving way to a sadness that hurt him far worse. "He's one of the greatest cello players in the world," she said quietly. "And I only got to study under him for three years before mom died and we had to move back to Wisconsin. I could've been up there making music for people all over the world, just like him. Now all I can do is hope he'll give a performance somewhere I can actually afford to get to, so I can sit in the audience with all the other nobodies." Then she looked back up at her husband. The tears were falling freely now. "Except I can't even do that, because you didn't bother to get the tickets. Were you too busy fishing with your buddies? Was that it?"

It was his turn to look at the floor now, unable to meet her eyes. "I deserve that."

"Which I guess means 'yes'," she replied.

My Space

2007-01-12T21:32:00.001-05:00

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Rebecca curled up tighter on the bed, despite the pain that shot across her middle. One hand cupped her face gingerly. She wasn't crying, in part because her left eye was already swelling up enough as it was, but mostly because she didn't want to draw any more attention to herself. She was safe in her room, at least for now. Better to keep quiet, and hope dad didn't find reason to come in here and continue their "conversation".

One shaking hand reached out and snagged the fluffy foot of a stuffed rabbit. Rebecca clutched it to her chest and allowed herself one small sob. She'd had no idea this would happen when she decided to go out with Shelly. Seeing a movie wasn't worth this. Maybe nothing was.

She'd come home from school at 3:30, just like always. No one else had been home, but that was normal. Rebecca had thought nothing of leaving the note on the fridge; she'd had a twenty burning a hole in her pocket since her birthday last week, and she and Shelly hadn't hung out in ages. "At the movies," she'd scrawled, "back 8ish." And she had pinned up the note with a magnet shaped like a tomato, and skipped right back out the door.

Now, alone in the silence of her room, Rebecca squeezed the stuffed rabbit tighter. Dad had been waiting in the living room when she came home for the second time. She should have realized something was wrong as soon as she came in the door, but the smell of beer hadn't registered at first. Then he'd fairly leapt across the room and seized her wrist like grim death. She wasn't to go out without permission again, it seemed. This became abundantly clear shortly. Dad supplemented the argument with his fists, as was usual when he'd been drinking; then, at last, he had sent her to her room. She'd gone gladly.

Now Rebecca lay on her bed, hardly daring to move, a few silent tears falling to wet the fur of the stuffed rabbit. The room softly faded to darkness as the last of the light drained from the sky outside. Finally she slept, and when her father left for the bar, she did not hear.

Loaned Out

2007-01-11T16:16:00.001-05:00

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Terry's smile lasted until the front door closed, then fell immediately into a scowl. He glared at the open toolbox for a moment before bending to close it up and shove it back into the closet.

Lanie leaned against the doorway to the kitchen. "Was that your brother?"

"Yeah."

"Well, why didn't you invite him in? I could've offered him some coffee -- "

Terry snorted. "He already got what he came for. 'Hey, Ter, mind if I borrow your belt sander?' 'Sure, Adam, why not? You've had it the last four weeks out of five, after all, what's one more?' Cripes."

"Language, dear," Lanie replied mildly, laying a hand on her husband's arm. "And anyway, why don't we just buy him a belt sander for his birthday? It's coming up soon, after all, and then you won't have to worry about him borrowing yours anymore."

"You know how much those things cost?" he grumbled. "Plus it wouldn't work. Remember how he used to always be over here borrowing my drill? Then his wife got him one for Christmas."

Lanie tilted her head to one side. "Didn't he stop borrowing the drill and start borrowing something else after that?"

"Uh huh. My angle grinder. Until someone got him one of those and then he switched to something else." Terry shrugged. "He's been doing this since he was a kid. If he wants something of yours, he'll just keep borrowing it until you give in and buy him one just so's you can get yours back. And I'm tired of having to keep up with that."

"Maybe you should actually talk to him about this if you want him to stop."

He gave a humorless little grin. "Probably," he agreed. "But right now it seems easier to just sacrifice my sander to the cause of savin' me that headache."

Banana Split

2007-01-10T19:43:00.001-05:00

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Lynn tapped her brother on the shoulder excitedly. "Can I have half? I want half," she exclaimed. "Share?"

Laughing, Howie held the banana up above her head. "Get your own if you want some! This one's mine!" He reached up with his other hand and continued peeling the item of contention, laughing again as she made a playful jump for it.

"But if I have a whole one, my ears will itch!"

Howie rolled his eyes. "You know, generally speaking, if you have a negative reaction to a food, you just don't eat it."

"A little is okay! I'm not that allergic! And I like bananas." Lynn pouted. "Pleeease?"

"All right, all right." With an exaggerated sigh, he lowered his arms and broke off the top half of the banana. "And I don't even think you can be allergic to bananas anyway."

Lynn stuck out her tongue, then gleefully devoured her prize.

Number-Crunching

2007-01-09T19:06:00.001-05:00

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"The problem these days is just keeping him occupied," Rose lamented. "I mean, he's a good boy, and he does all his schoolwork and all his chores. He's no more disobedient than any eight-year-old, really." She sipped at her tea. "Except as soon as he gets bored, he starts getting inquisitive. And that gets expensive."

Jessica clucked sympathetically. "My Billy used to always take apart his toys and then demand new ones. He gave up once he saw that it wasn't getting him anything but broken toys, of course, but still, it was awfully frustrating."

"No, no." Rose shook her head. "Scott isn't trying to be destructive, or breaking things and then asking to have them replaced. He just... wants to know things. Like how the bathroom scale works." She chuckled as she added, "I have to admit I'd never cared about it myself until I saw him with the thing in pieces all across my floor."

"Well, an inquisitive mind is a good thing to encourage in a child. He'll need problem-solving skills when he grows up, and all that."

"Oh, so they say. But they don't have to deal with the answer to an eight-year-old's question of 'how does a DVD player work'."

Jessica smiled over the rim of her teacup. "And what is that answer?"

"Now?" Rose answered wryly. "'It doesn't.'"

Shirts

2007-01-08T08:50:00.002-05:00

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After she left he had gone into the bedroom, flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. It was taking a while to sink in. Six years together, three of those in the same apartment, and now it was all over. "Not feeling it anymore," she said. Well, what did that even mean?

He lay there for maybe half an hour, not wanting to think about what had just happened, but unable to stop. He kept thinking back to the years they had had together, which was even worse. What good were all of the hopes he'd had for them, all the times they'd talked about finally getting married, settling down, buying a house -- what the hell had been the point? Six years of his life gone, and yet not nearly enough time. Why did it have to turn out like this?

Eventually he got up and went to the closet. The door was hanging partly open; she hadn't bothered to shut it after emptying her half. Absently he pushed it aside and stared at his own clothes. They seemed almost to be huddled together against the gaping emptiness on the other side. He knew how they felt.

He pulled out one of his t-shirts and stared at it for a minute. Band logo in blue and white on red. He remembered buying this one; it had been at that concert at the Coach House two years ago. Her favorite band, and she'd convinced him to come along. He had loved it.

Angry, now, he threw the shirt to the floor. She'd certainly done a good job excising herself from his life, so why didn't he finish the job? He tore another shirt from the closet. "No, I Will Not Fix Your Computer," it read -- a birthday present from her, back when he kept getting suckered into doing everyone's tech support at work. He hurled it at the floor with the first one. Here, one of those fancy-pants polo shirts with the alligator on it, which she had given him as a joke; there, a sweatshirt bought from their favorite vacation spot. Souvenirs of their life together, now as useless as he felt.

Finally he finished the job, and then only stood there for a moment, glaring at the pile of clothing. He stormed out to the kitchen for a trash bag to put it in. That was the ticket. He'd throw it all away. She'd thrown him away, after all, hadn't she? So he thought as he worked on bagging up the pile; but when he was done he only left the bag of shirts there, and sat on the bed to stare at it, thoughtfully.

Anti-Virus

2007-01-06T19:15:00.001-05:00

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"So we should have the third-quarter reports ready by Thur... by Th... Thursd..." Williams sneezed explosively, then scowled. "Damn this cold."

Liu chuckled. "You finally caught it, huh?"

"More like it caught me." Williams leaned against the wall by the water cooler. "I've been popping cold medicine like it was candy, but it doesn't seem to help much."

"Well, it's not supposed to help, not really. It doesn't make you better. Just hides the symptoms so you feel good enough to go out and infect other people, who will then buy more cold medicine."

Williams waved a hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a vast conspiracy." Then he gave Liu an appraising look. "I notice you haven't succumbed yet. Some Eastern miracle remedy us poor saps don't know about?"

Liu burst out laughing at that, earning a strange look from one of the secretaries who happened to be walking by just at that moment. "Oh, there is a secret to not getting sick, O foolish round-eye. But it's actually pretty damn simple."

"Do tell."

"Just be an antisocial bastard to almost everyone you meet," he replied, grinning. "Then you won't actually be around anyone enough to catch what they've got."

Williams pondered this for a moment, then glanced sidelong at the other man. "Your method appears to have a fatal flaw, ol'-buddy-ol'-pal."

"That'd be your fault, Typhoid Mary," Liu chuckled.

There's a nasty flu going around my campus right now, along with all the usual varieties of cold. Most of my classes are half-empty, and just about everyone who does bother to show up is a sniffling, coughing mess, but I have yet to catch anything. What's my secret, you might ask? Simple -- I have no friends on campus, and practically never interact with anyone while I'm out.

It might be sad, but hey, it works. Buncha plaguey suckers.