Not Hip

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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.

Red-Handed

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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

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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

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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.

Fencing

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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

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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.

Continuing

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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.

On Diesel

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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?

I Thought You Would Never

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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

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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

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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.

Proud To Be An AMERICAN!

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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!

Top of the Food Chain

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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

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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

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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.

Double It

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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!

Four Legs

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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.

R & R

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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."

Safety Glasses

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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."

Chores

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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.