Blather, Mumblings and Insane Stories

Legumes and Other n-space Components

2011-07-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

“Engage!” chortled captain Stone of the ISS Rubble.

Nothing happened. Stone held his dramatic pose, but his eyes turned in his sockets to glare at the chief engineer. Time passed beyond the point where Stone felt ridiculous. Finally he dropped the pose (with a sense if injured dignity) and turned completely to face Ms. Fletcher, who was staring wistfully at the main view screen.

“Mr. Fletcher!”

“Huh?”

“Engage!”

“It’s Ms. Fletcher if you please.”

“Whatever.”

“What did you want me to do again?”

“Engage, avant, move, travel!”

“Oh right...”

Stone rolled his eyes and waited. Fletcher fiddled with a control panel.

“Well?!” Stone asked after a few minutes.

“I’m working on it.”

Stone drummed his fingers on his chair. The rest of the “bridge” crew sat around. Suddenly Stone pointed at one of the crew members.

“No Facebook while we’re waiting!”

There was an audible “awwwww” sound as several crew members slouched in their chairs.

“Aaaaand there!” crowed Fletcher.

The main view screen lit up and stars blurred across it, the Rubble seemed to be moving at incredible speeds. Captain Stone looked happy. Abruptly, this ceased. There was silence on the bridge.

“Ummm....where are we, helmsman?” Stone inquired after a few moments.

“Well, near as I can tell, we’re about 3 meters from where we started.”
Ms. Fletcher punched the air.

“Progress!”

Capt. Stone covered his face with his palm.

“But that could have been drift.”

Ms. Fletcher looked crestfallen.

With his hand still covering his face Capt. Stone asked “Is the n-space drive in any shape for another ‘attempt?’”

Ms. Fletcher frowned and turned back to her console. Presently she said “Yes!”

Capt. Stone looked up, surprised and said “Well that’s a nice change of pace.”

Oblivious, Chief Fletcher said “At least 10cm of the distance we travelled cannot be attributed to drift!”

Capt. Stone gritted his teeth “About the jump, Mr.”

“Ms.”

“Ms.”

“Oh, hang on a sec.” Fletcher pushed some button and static erupted from her console. “Damn n-space drive causing problems with the intercom again.” she grumbled. Then she raised her voice to a shrill yell.

“Cowalski! Are you there?”

Static came back over the intercom then “Uh...yeah?”

“Can we jump again?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, then prepare for another jump.”

“Well, I meant sure, eventually we’ll be able to jump again, but right now, things are pretty foobar.”

“Well, how long till we’re ready?”

“I don’t know, a couple of hours?”
Fletcher looked over at Capt. Stone who got up and walked off the bridge in a huff. “I’ll be in my quarters!” he said as he got into the lift. The doors closed with a futuristic “swish” followed by an “Aieeeeee!” sound as the elevator malfunctioned and sped off at a breakneck speed.

“Oh, you might want to take the stairs...” Fletcher trailed off as she noticed that the captain had already left.

* * * *

Engineering was pretty chaotic thanks to the recent jump attempt. Two n-space drive specialists were trying to figure out what had happened when head n-space physicist Cowalski (PhD) made a disturbing discovery.

He tried to take a sip of his coffee and noticed his mug was empty. This was all well and good except that he noticed that the coffee that used to occupy the cup was hovering a few feet away. It still had the same shape as one might expect the liquid to conform to, except that there was no mug to hold it.

Cowalski considered this for a little while and then tried to “capture” the liquid in his mug. This seemed to work, so he shrugged and went to take another sip. Empty mug. Cowalski frowned and then noticed that the coffee had teleported to another location.

“Hey Jackson, check this out.”

A rather tall and thin man with brown hair looked up from his terminal.

“What is...it?”

Jackson stared at the floating coffee.

“That’s interesting.”

They both turned and looked at the n-space drive, which was humming quietly to itself.

“Maybe we should stop the test of the neutrino-inverse-tachyon field.” said Cowalski in a distracted tone of voice.

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Jackson tapped a few keys on his terminal and the n-space drive, which looked like a jury-rigged microwave oven with a blue glow coming out of it, switched off. The coffee fell out of the air and splattered on the floor. Jackson sighed.

Cowalski looked pained and hit a key on his workstation. “Emergency wet clean-up in engineering.”

“What is the nature of the spill?”

Came a reply from the computer.

Cowalski and Jackson exchanged a look.

“Just send Squisher up here...and make sure he has a mop!”

A few minutes later a young man with a determined look and a mop appeared at engineering. He stood there for a moment, as if waiting for something, but neither Cowalski nor Jackson so much as looked up. Crestfallen, Squisher cleared his throat.

Cowalski took notice and said “Could you clean up this coffee please?” and then went back to staring at the screen of his computer.

Squisher grumbled something about “emergency” but got to work. A short time later Jackson looked over at Cowalski and said “Hey! We could try a positron out of phase inverse taychon bean with a magnetic shield on the core and see if the n-space perks up!”

Cowalski stared at Jackson for a second and said “Don’t you mean tacyon beam?”

Jackson grew red in the face and responded with “Just turn the damn thing on!”

Cowalski flipped a switch and the gravity in engineering reversed. With a crash, the terminals of both men hit the ceiling. After a moments struggle, so did Jackson. He glared at Cowalski, who himself was hanging from a desk that was fortunately bolted to the floor.

“Alright, alright! Turn the stupid thing off!” Jackson said from the ceiling.

Cowalski had a strange look as he hung there, as if considering something.

“You know, maybe a bean would work better!”

“Just shut up and turn off the n-space.”

Cowalski roused himself from thought and tried to figure out how he might reach the switch. He finally settled on kicking the stove-like device a few times which seemed to do the trick. The gravity reversed again and the equipment that had been on the ceiling fell back down to the deck. Along with Jackson.

“Ouch.”

“Hey Jackson: I feel like there’s something...missing.”

“Ouch.”
“Oh nevermind.”

Meanwhile, sanitation engineer ensign Squisher (JG) found himself in a strange place.

Where the hell did that coffee go?

He had the disturbing feeling that he was both inside and outside of the n-space drive - at the same time - and what’s more, he couldn’t find his mop.

Now how am I going to clean this up?

* * * *

Meanwhile, Capt. Stone was feeling for bumps on his head after his run in with the elevator.

Giving up in disgust, he punched a button on a nearby console.

“Ms. Fletcher, what’s our situation?”

“Hi there Steve, this is Bamby...”

Stone looked annoyed and hit another button.

“Fletcher?”

“Yes?”

“How long till we can try another jump?”

“Hmmmm. Not really sure.”

“Well could you please find out?”

Cowalski and Jackson were in the midst of a heated argument when Fletcher checked in with them.

“I tell you that legumes are perfectly good n-space substrates!” Stated Cowalski

“Nonsense! What if you tried that with snow peas?” Retorted Jackson.

“What’s wrong with snow peas?”

“Well, the pod casing could cause a disruption in the plus spin direction of the...”

“Well obviously you have to take them out of their seed casings first!”

Just then one of the consoles chimed and Fletcher came on.

“Gentlemen, when will the n-space drive be ready for another jump?”

“Ummm...in five minutes maybe?” Cowalski looked at Jackson with a questioning glance. Jackson shrugged.

“Yeah, we should be ready in five minutes.”

“Very good.”

Five minutes later the two were no closer to being ready, but they had ruled out chick-peas as a possible candidate for n-space use. The intercom chimed and Fletcher came on again.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Jackson looked confused “What you want to try kidney beans?”

“What?”

“Oh right, the jump!”

Cowalski looked guilty and flipped a switch.

* * * *

Meanwhile, in an adjacent dimension...

Ensign Squisher experienced a kind of annoying itch that he couldn’t localize to anywhere on his body. He fidgeted about in an attempt to get it to stop.

Abruptly, the Rubble shifted into what the occupants of the ship could only describe as a 2-dimensional feeling. Jackson and Cowalski abruptly broke off their discussion of the relative merits of different legumes and tried to shut off the n-space drive. This turned out to be very difficult when one only occupies 2 dimensions.

“I told you we should have tried kidney beans! What do you have to say now, Jackson?”

“Shut up and see if you can reach the switch!”

Meanwhile Squisher “shifted” again in his non-spatial existence.

The Rubble shifted again, this time the occupants seemed to occupy more than the accustomed 3 dimensions.

“Cowalski, can you reach the switch now?”

“No!”

“Well, maybe we can rig a...”

“I meant that lima beans would obviously be a better choice than kidney beans!”

“You fool! How could...”

* * * * * *

Stone considered the bandages. In some alternative, 3rd dimensions, he had a bump on his head. In some he did not. He only had one set of bandages.

Stone frowned and flipped on the intercom. At least in one alternative. He couldn’t be sure which alternative of all the alternative realities actually did this and which ones did not.

“Medical assistance to the captain’s quarters!”

A person bearing a first aid kit promptly showed up in his room. Unfortunately, this was in one of the alternatives where he was uninjured.

“Can you jump to one of the alternatives that could use that?” He asked.

“Of course he can’t! How can you be so stupid?”

“Don’t talk to me that way, I’m the captain!”

“No you’re not, I am!”

Immediately, an argument about who was actually “in charge” broke out amongst the alternatives.

* * * * * * * *
Back in engineering, Cowalski and Jackson had concluded their discussion on the merits of various legumes. Or at least some of them had.

By sitting on Jackson’s shoulders, Kowalski was at last able to reach the power button on the n-space drive.

“Can you reach the damn button now?” asked Kowalski.

“Yeah, I think I can...”

Just then, one of the alternative Jacksons chimed in with “What if we used a swallow?”

Kowalski paused “What do you mean, an African or a European swallow?”

The various alternatives began a heated discussion about the use of avians in n-space drives.

“Shut up and just hit the switch!” Pleaded Cowalski.

Grumbling to himself Jackson flipped the power switch and things returned to normal. More or less. In the reality that the two found themselves, however, Kowalski was holding a chick-pea and Jackson was brandishing a banana.

“I though we were done with legumes.” Observed Cowalski.

“Well this is an interesting idea.” Said Jackson, considering the banana.

* * * * * *

Meanwhile, in an alternative dimension, Squisher distinctly heard some elevator muzak.

Turning around, trying to identify the source of the sound he got the impression that something was wrong. It was then that he realized he was inside out.

“I don’t remember eating that.” He mumbled, considering something in his colin.

* * * * * *

Back in the captains quarters, Stone received a call from engineering.

“Captain, we think Ensign JG Squisher has gone missing.”

“Was he wearing a red shirt?”

“What?!”

“Was he wearing a red shirt when he went missing?”

“I...I’m not sure.”

“Well let me know when you find out.”

There was a pause as the person from the other side considered this.

“He may have had a chick-pea when he vanished...”

In the background Stone heard another voice

“Jaaaackson!”

“Alright, it could have been a Kidney bean.”

Stone rubbed his square jaw.

“Kidney beans are red, aren’t they?”

Another pause.

“I think so.”

“Let’s have a meeting.”

* * * * * * *

Later on in the “situation room.”

“So it’s decided...kidney beans are red.”

Stone punctuated his statement by pounding the table gently with his fist.

Fletcher was staring at him.

“And they say I’m flakey...”

Kowalski raised his hand and spoke.

“But what about Squisher?”

“Was he wearing a red shirt?”

“Now stop that.” Cut in Kowalski.

Stone glared at the man.

Meanwhile Fletcher had taken out a Rubic’s Cube.

“You know, one advantage to the n-space drive is that in some other realities, I had solved this. If we could harness that...”

Stone cut off that line of discussion.

“When can we get this bucket of bolts to go anywhere?”

“Well we could try another jump...” Fletcher looked over at Kowalski and Jackson.

“The banana isn’t ready yet.”

“Bananas are yellow.”

“He makes a good point.” Stone said, leaning forward.

“Who did?”

“The thing about how bananas are yellow.”

“No, but who said that?” Jackson said, looking around.

The 4 people looked around and then considered the intercom. After a time Kowalski said “Well, if nobody else is going to claim credit for that insight...”

“I did.” Came a voice from the intercom.

“Damn.” Kowalski crossed his arms.

“Who are you?” Inquired Fletcher.

“This is ensign Squisher.” Replied the intercom.

“Ensign Junior Grade” corrected Kowalski.

“And where are you?” said Stone, ignoring Kowalski.

There was a pause.

“Ummm...I’m not sure.”

“And did you clean up that spill yet?” added Jackson.

“Um...no. I can’t find my mop.”

Stone sighed. “Couldn’t we just ignore this whole problem until we manage to go somewhere? Preferably with some race of beautiful, green-skinned alien women?”

Jackson and Kowalski perked up.

“Well I think this is really sort of important...” Said fletcher thoughtfully.

Stone stood up. “Make it go!”

“But the banana!” Objected Kowalski.

“Damn the bananas! Full speed ahead!”

The two engineers got up to carry out the captain’s orders, but the door from the conference roomed refused to open. Jackson smacked into the door and rebounded into Kowalski.

“Now wait just a minute!” Ensign Squisher cut in.

“This is insubordination!” Growled Stone.

“Aren’t you supposed to be concerned about your crew?”

Stone glanced at Fletcher.

“Huh? How should I know?”

Stone considered this. “You know, maybe we should have more of a ‘people person’ in this meeting.” He punched the intercom. “Councilor...wasname, to the situation room!”

An abnormally tall man walked stiffly into the room.

“You rang?”

“Am I supposed to be concerned about the...the what did you call them?” The captain turned to Fletcher.

“Crew” Fletcher supplied.

“Right! Am I supposed to care about the crew?”

The tall man stared at the captain without comment or expression for a bit. Stone shifted about nervously and glanced side-long at Fletcher as if to say “This is a ‘people person?!!’”

The tall man made a low half-groan half-growling sound. Turned and left.

“See? He agrees with me!” Said Stone, gesturing madly. “Now you two, jump!”

Kowalski and Jackson looked at each other, shrugged and jumped.

“Not like that!”

Squisher came in on the intercom again “Hey if you want to go anywhere, you’ll have to input the coordinates directly into the drive.”

“What?! That doesn’t sound very high-tech!”

“Well, you can tell these two clowns they should have used something other than a microwave oven to base the whole mess on...”

“It was his idea...” Jackson said pointing at Kowalski.

“Was not!”

“Fine! Whatever!” Stone grumped and stalked out of the conference room.

Down in engineering, Stone approached the keypad to the microwave/jump drive.

“Erm...just what coordinates are we trying to get to again?” He looked questioningly at the other three.

“You were never that clear on where we were supposed to go...” Said Fletcher apologetically.

“Fat lot of good you are.” Stone grumbled. Jackson helpfully tried to give the captain a banana. Stone glared at the man.

Stone leaned over the keypad and was about to tap in a sequence of numbers when there was a flash of light.

* * * * * *

“Orbit the planet, open hailing frequencies...or whatever.” Barked captain Squisher from the command chair. The bridge crew seemed remarkably unperturbed by the sudden change in command and moved to obey the captain.

“Bah! Why’d you bother to go there?! Anyone can tell that this planet is lifeless!” The now whiny voice of the previous captain came from the intercom.

“Shaddup you!” Squisher snapped.

Just then the main view screen lit up with the face of a beautiful, green, female alien.

“Hi there!”

“Hot damn!” chortled Squisher.

“Some people have all the luck!” whined the captain.

Quantum Toast

2011-04-26T18:24:00.001-07:00

It’s a strange feeling to shoot someone, to watch them crumple to the ground, all without knowing why you shot them. Nevertheless, that was where Byron, the world’s worse bodyguard, found himself as he stood watching the Governor on floor.

The noise of someone pounding at the door shook Byron from his pondering - he would have to think of something quick to get out of here. He holstered his gun as he walked up to the door and unlocked it. He didn’t remember having come into the room.

Restroom, he corrected himself. The Governor was slouched against the wall across from the sinks in the men’s restroom. Or at least he hoped it was the men’s restroom.

Arriving at the door, Byron calmly unlocked and opened it. One of the Governor’s aides tumbled in. Apparently, he had been trying to batter down the door and Byron had opened it just as the man was in mid-batter.

"The Governor shot himself." Byron said calmly.

"What?!!" The aide said retrieving his glasses and looking over to the corpse.

"I said the Governor..."

"I heard you the first time!" snapped the aide as he got off the tiled floor.

"I’m going to call an ambulance."

The aide gave Byron a strange look, though everything felt strange just then, but then turned to regard the Governor’s corpse.

Byron left the room. He decided that his flimsy excuse wasn’t going to last long, especially when the aide noticed that Byron had not called an ambulance.

Maintaining an outward calm, he strode over to some escalators heading down as he tried to figure out what had happened.

One moment he had been waiting outside the restroom for the Governor to take care of business, the next he was standing there with a gun after having shot the man.

This was not going to look good on his resume.

Arriving at the ground floor, he strode over to the street doors and left the hotel. Approaching the nearest intersection he walked up to a car that was waiting at the light, opened the driver’s side door, pulled out the driver, got in the car, and drove away before the hapless motorist could figure out what was going on.

It was while he was driving that he realized that he had no destination, beyond getting on the nearest highway. Where could he go? What could he do?

The police were not going to buy and excuse of "Sorry, I don’t know why I shot him" but he didn’t have anything else.

Thinking back to the moment, he remembered lining up the target, choosing the bodyguard as a convenient tool and executing the Governor.

The really odd thing was that he was certain that these were not his memories.

Before he could ponder this further, Byron found himself being pulled back to the point where he had just shot the Governor. It was like watching and old movie except he was there.

As before, he turned to go to the door, but there was a strange stickiness or reluctance to move this time. Byron felt like he was having a headache along with a sense of deja vu.

As he strove to reach the door, the hand holding his gun rose and then, alarmingly, started to turn on his own head. Byron stopped walking and mentally commanded the hand down. His hand moved down for a but then started rising again.

Taking a different tact, Byron tried to get his had to drop the gun. Obediently, the gun fell to the floor, just before his hand would have brought it bear on Byron’s head. Byron go the distinct impression that his hand was upset with him, but by that time Byron was trying to use it to open the door from the men’s room.

Abruptly, the headache and the sense of deja vu disappeared as Byron opened the door and came face to face with the Governor’s aide.

"The Governor has..."

But the aide cut him off before Byron could finish.

"You! You’re not supposed to be able to do that!"

The aide glared at him as Byron pushed past the man.

"Get back in there and be arrested! Or at least shoot yourself."

Byron actually stopped and stared at the man, who looked like he expected Byron to actually do what he told him. Shaking his head Byron walked down the hall towards the door to the parking lot.

The feeling of deja vu returned as he stepped out into the noonday sun. He walked briskly to his car and got in. He sat there for a few moments as if he expected to be interrupted again, but everything remained still.

Byron started the engine and drove out of the parking lot.

* * * * * *

Byron sat in the motel room with his face in his hands. A news program on the TV droned on about the death of the Governor and that Byron was the only suspect.

Definitely not good for his resume.

Before he could think too much about it, the door to his room burst open and two SWAT team members rushed in, guns at the ready.

Byron dove for the bathroom as one of the cops opened fire, the bullets stitching a line across the back wall. Desperately, Byron closed the restroom door and dropped. A moment later another line of bullets tore through the cheap pine door at roughly chest level.

"Hey! Don’t shoot him - ask him to surrender first!" One of the SWAT team members yelled at the shooter.

"Ohhh....good idea, get him to surrender, then shoot him!"

"No, no, no! Get him to surrender, then arrest him!"

A pause.

"Could we shoot him after we arrest him?"

Byron looked around desperately, but the only exit from the tiny bathroom was a window that was too small for him to crawl through.

"Hold your fire!"

A new voice sounded from the room.

"Dammit, I told you we should have shot him!" complained a SWAT team member.

There was a muffled conversation in the other room that Byron, though he tried, could not hear. Then:

"Alright, Mr. Anderson, come out of the bathroom."

Byron thought about this and then asked "Are you going to shoot me?"

"No."

"Promise?"

Another brief, muffled conversation. Byron could have sworn he heard a whined "Alright," then "Promise!"

Crawling over to the door, Byron reached up and opened it a crack. In the other room stood several men all dressed in identical black suits. There was also a woman, also wearing a black suit. The two SWAT team members were no where to be seen.

Byron got up and opened the door completely. He walked into the room. He noticed that all the people in black were also wearing dark sunglasses.

"Mr. Anderson!" One of the men drawled. Byron gave him a confused look. The man’s colleagues also looked at him.

"Sorry, I just always wanted to say that."

"Mr. Anderson, we have come here to arrange your return."

"But what about the Governor?"

The woman tilted her head to the side and said "We would have thought that you of all people would understand that."

"Ummm...OK, so where are we going?"

"And we can offer you considerably better employment than your previous, custodial job."

Byron looked at the man who had interjected.

"What are you talking about?"

The various members of the group looked at each other.

"You mean you’re not Frank Anderson?"

"No, I’m Byron Holmes!"

The various dark suited people looked at each other and then filed out of the room.

From outside, Byron could hear them talking to the SWAT team members. There was a sudden exclamation of "We can?!" and then the two SWAT guys came back into the room. One of them raised his gun and grinned broadly. Byron gave out a startled "shit!" and dove for the bathroom again.

Sitting in the bathroom, his life flashing before his eyes, Byron wondered how the police had found him so quickly. He thought back to the point that he had checked in to the hotel for some clue.

Byron pictured the scene in his mind. Coming up to the desk, reaching in his pocket for his wallet and...he was standing in front of the desk, holding his wallet, just as he had earlier in the day.

"Be with you in a second." the clerk hollered.

Byron looked around, feeling very confused. The motel manager came up to the desk.

"You want a room?" the manager asked in a somewhat belligerent manner.

"I’m not sure." Byron responded, still trying to figure out what was going on.

The manager crossed his arms. "Well, make up your mind."

In the background Byron could hear a TV news show blathering on.

"So that’s how..." Byron said softly to himself.

"Made up yer mind?"

Byron looked back at the manager and then headed sideways towards the door without saying anything.

"Frickin tourists" muttered the manager as Byron left.

Byron got back into his car and stared at the dashboard. While the larger question of what was going on tugged at him, the more pragmatic side of him wondered what he should do. The police would have his license plate number, other people would be bound to recognize him like the clerk had, or rather like the clerk would, in fact it might be a good idea to get moving right now.

Byron started the car and pulled out of the motel parking lot. He needed some time to think. Driving along the road he saw an iHop and stopped there. He hoped they didn’t have a TV that anyone was watching.

Byron sat in a booth and stared listlessly out the window. A waitress came up to his table and asked for his order.

"Just some coffee."

A man, wearing a hat, sat down across from him. Byron looked up, startled, and stared at him. The man said.

"I’ll have some pancakes."

"What flavor?" asked the waitress.

"Plain" the man replied. "And some white toast, oh, and some orange juice."

The waitress walked away. Byron couldn’t think of anything to say except "You know, that orange juice is really just sugar and water, I mean it’s made from concentrate."

The man glared at Byron. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you have caused me?"

Byron frowned. "Have we met?"

"Yes and no."

Byron considered this.

"Well, explain the yes part."

"Remember the men’s restroom in the Hilton down the road?"

Byron looked indignant. "You’re some sort of pervert!"

"You know, the one where you shot the Governor?"

Byron’s face registered relief "Oh, that restroom."

"You’re being hunted by the cops for murder and you’re worried about...about encounters in a restroom?!"

"Yeah well, you can get diseases from that sort of thing." Byron said sincerely. Then "What do you have to do with all this?"

"Now he begins to figure it out. Sheesh, I can see why you are still a bodyguard."

"And I’m not paying for your pancakes."

The man starred at Byron for a while. "I also ordered toast...and orange juice."

"I told you, that stuff is not orange..."

"Shut up" the man said flatly.

"So who the hell are you?"

"Frank."

Byron cocked his head to one side. "You know, I ran into some people who were looking for you."

"Really?"

Thinking back to the event, Byron realized that it had not exactly happened.

"Well, actually, no."

"You are a pain."

"How so?"

"You’re messing up all the timelines."

"So they are time jumps after all!" Byron was excited. Frank just starred at him.

"Aren’t you worried that I’ll think you’re crazy?"

Byron considered this. "Well, that’s coming from someone that thinks the iHop serves real orange juice."

"You know, that does make a certain amount of sense...from an insane point of view."

"You haven’t lived through my morning."

"Don’t be too sure of that; but I have some good news: your life won’t be bothering you for much longer."

Frank concentrated on Byron, who felt his hand move to his shoulder holster. Byron didn’t try to resist.

"You forgot that I dropped it in the restroom."

Frank cursed. Byron’s hand came back under his control.

"That doesn’t seem like a time travel sort of trick." Byron observed.

"It isn’t." Frank said, massaging his forehead.

Just then the waitress came back and asked Frank "Did you want white or whole wheat toast?"

"Whole wheat would be healthier."

Frank locked eyes with him.

"White."

"Whole wheat."

The fabric of reality seemed to tear. The waitress left the table.

"What just happened?" Byron asked.

"If things went the way they were supposed to or if something screwed up?"

"Suppose that everything went OK."

"Then I’ll get white toast."

At that moment, the 5 black suited people that Byron had seen in an alternate time line sat down in the booth across from them.

"That’s them." Byron remarked.

"What?" asked Frank.

"The guys who were looking for you...sort of."

Frank looked across at them. "Who the hell are you?"

"Agent Davidson." said the closest.

"Agent Albertson." said the next closest.

"Agent Reynolds."

"Agent Porter."

"Agent Atkins." said the woman.

"Do you know these people?" asked Byron.

"No clue" said Frank.

"But you are Frank Anderson" cut in Agent Reynolds.

"No." replied Byron.

"Not you, this guy." said Agent Porter, pointing at Frank.

"Well yes" admitted Frank.

"Mr. Anderson!" drawled Agent Davidson.

"Yeah, yeah, you’ve always wanted to say that." said Byron in a disgusted tone. Agent Davidson looked taken aback.

While they were talking the waitress had returned with Frank’s pancakes and toast.

"At least it’s whole wheat." commented Byron.

"It looks white to me" said Frank.

"No way, it’s wheat!"

"White!"

"Wheat!"

Agent Porter cut in "Look, Mr. Anderson, we’re from the government and we’re here to help you." Agent Atkins elbowed him in the ribs. "That is, we’re not from the government and we’re not here to help you." Agent Atkins elbowed him again. "OK, we’re not from the government but we are here to help you."

Atkins went to elbow Porter again but thought better of it.

"And?" Frank prompted in a disinterested manner as he munched some of his toast.

Byron picked up a slice of toast and took a small bite. It tasted like whole wheat.

"We can take you home, Mr. Anderson." said Agent Reynolds.

"Back to my wonderful life." Frank drawled and reached for another slice of toast. As it so happened, Byron had also grabbed that particular piece. After a brief struggle, they each were in possession of the same slice, which was disconcerting.

"We can offer you a bit more, Mr. Anderson." said Agent Davidson.

"Yeah, and what’s that?" said Frank.

"We can get you a promotion to custodian first class."

"You were a janitor?" asked Byron as he nibbled his toast.

"Shut up." Frank said flatly to Byron. Then to the agents "Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on your ‘generous’ offer."

"Do you guys know what caused all this?" Byron directed his question to the agents.

"Yes" said agent Davidson.

"That’s classified." said agent Atkins.

"That is, no." said agent Davidson.

"Well, what didn’t happen?" asked Byron.

"Are you familiar with the storyline from the computer game Quake?" said Davidson.

"No" replied Byron.

"Well, if you had, then you would know that didn’t happen." Davidson finished. Byron frowned.

"Can you add anything to that?" Byron asked Frank.

"Well, just because it’s not what these clowns want, I’ll tell you." Byron and the agents leaned in.

"I was cleaning up in the lab one night..." Frank began.

"Where was this?" Interrupted Byron.

"SUNY Buffalo." answered Frank.

"Don’t you mean MIT or some government lab?" interrupted Byron again.

"No, they turned me down there." Frank snapped.

"For a job as a janitor?" Byron asked incredulously.

Frank glared at Byron "Look, do you want me to tell this or not?"

Byron held up his hands; the agents glanced at each other.

"So I was cleaning up one night and I must have hit a switch or something because some gizmo..." Frank explained.

"The anti-graviton emitter" interrupted agent Reynolds.

"Some gizmo" Frank continued testily "lights up with all kinds of electrical whoojamajoobies and lights and stuff. The next thing I know I’m in someone else’s body and back a year in time." Frank picked up a slice of toast and munched it.

"Still tastes like white to me." Frank mumbled.

"You can switch bodies?" Byron asked.

"Yeah" Frank looked smug.

"In fact, he has to." interjected agent Porter.

"Every couple of weeks." said agent Davidson.

"And I thought my life was chaotic." mumbled Byron. He looked up again "So you are just zipping around, changing bodies, killing people for no reason?"

Frank looked hurt "Not for no reason, I’m just trying to get back."

"To your life as a janitor" Byron supplied.

"Well now that you put it like that it does seem like rather a waste."

"We can help you there." cut in agent Reynolds.

"Yeah, how?" asked Frank.

"That’s classified" said Atkins.

Frank rolled his eyes.

"Is it dangerous?" Frank asked.

"Absolutely not." answered Reynolds.

"Wonderful." said Frank.

"Look, this is all very interesting, but I’m sitting here, being televised on America’s Most Wanted. Isn’t there anything you can do about that?" Byron asked.

The agents looked at each other. Frank shifted his eyes about.

"How many days of vacation do I get a year?" said Frank to the agents.

Byron massaged his forehead. He thought back to how nice the day had started out. He had woken up in his crappy, mid-town apartment, he had noticed the time and panicked...and he was back.

Byron turned around slowly to confirm that what he had thought had happened, had actually happened, as it happened. It had happened.

Byron sat back down on his bed and pondered the situation, then picked up the phone. He called in sick, weathering the tirade from his boss secure in the knowledge that, whatever he had to go through now, it was peanuts compared to what waited for him.

As he hung up the phone Byron reflected that the old maxim was true: while hard work did pay off eventually, being lazy paid off now. He went back to sleep.

Spam, spam, spam, spam

2010-07-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

After a long period of neglect, I dropped by my site only to find numerous comments. That was the good news. The bad news is that they appear to be for Asian porn sites. Not even good porn sites, with lots of gnomes and hairy dwarves, writhing on a bear skin carpet in ecstasy, using exotic accessories and....erm....ummm....yeah.

So, though it breaks my heart to remove any feedback (since I get so many visitors), I removed the comments and turned on moderation.

You better not pout...you better not cry...

2010-07-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

My latest story is a spoof of the movie "Twilight" and the "Harry Potter" series. It is called "Evening" and I will be trying to add two pages a week to it. To check it out follow this link to the main story page.
A while back I had asked the mighty artist Ozark (of "Mind Flayed" fame) to create an image of Palpatine as "Grandpa Sith" in the story "Deathtalker 2." Just recently, I received this picture:

Many thanks to Ozark for the picture!
Stuff that is already up:

Deathtalker - set in the Star Wars universe around the time of "Attack of the Clones," Anakin is the chosen one. But what was he chosen to do exactly? Anakin & company must discover the answer before the Emperor does

Deathtalker 2 - continuation of the story from Deathtalker. With the Emperor defeated, the threat to the Galactic Republic is over. So why is Anakin acting as if his job has just started? What is the function of the Deathtalker? Who the hell is Grandpa Sith?

Tentacle Luuuuv - Rugar loves Lomilyth. Lomilyth loves Edwarde. And Edwarde, of course, loves Rugar. Just to make things more interesting, Rugar is a half-orc, Lomilyth is a psychotic girly-elf, and Edwarde is an undead wizard. A story set in the universe of the web comic "Mind Flayed".

Groupthink: the Lighter Side an emerging telepathic group consciousness called the Coalition is born...in a prison for murderers and psychos. Does humanity have a future in a world run by a psychotic super-mind?

Evening Yog-Slothoth is poor, eeeenocent little puddle of greenish slime who just transferred to Heartworms, the premier school for magic. Can he (or is it she?) become popular among the students and survive to graduate?
A spoof of several movies including Twilight, Harry Potter. and the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

In the works...

Dark Age - a massive field of asteroids is going to obliterate life on Earth...in about 500 years. But a quirky group of world savers are on the job! Assuming their ship doesn't blow up...and they don't get bored during the trip...

Groupthink: the Beast - the companion story to Groupthink: the Lighter Side. An emerging telepathic group consciousness threatens to obliterate humanity. Can it be stopped before it's too late?

Ship of Fools! A dysfunctional group of "heroes" that encounter an artifact in hyperspace. The artifact is opened. It unleashes a plague. The plague turns people into zombies. Never fear The Force is ... out there somewhere.

Dark City. Five people discover that reality as we know it is a lie and that the world is in terrible danger. From within, the nefarious Technocracy plots to seize ultimate control while from outside super- natural entities gather their armies, bent on the extinction of Humanity. Can these newly "awakened" hope to save the world?
A story set in the universe of the White Wolf game Mage: the Ascension.
Shattered Lands In a dark world akin to Lord of the Rings, the forces of light were defeated thousands of years ago. In the present day, a small group of heroes fight for the survival of the last bastion of good.

Yog-Slothoth: In a quest for ultimate power, a wizard transforms himself into the being of ultimate magical power: which turns out to be a puddle of acidic slime. Just his luck to meet the girl of his dreams during a mid-life crisis.

OK, so I "embellished" the descriptions a bit. Maybe a lot. Perhaps they bear almost no resemblance to what I actually wrote. The upside is that people would actually have to read my stuff before they could complain!

Nigerian Scam Spam Entry

2010-06-15T19:12:00.000-07:00

This is the first draft of my humble entry into the Drabblecast's infamous annual Nigerian Scan Spam contest for 2010. The idea is to create a typical "scam" email along the lines of the ones that proport to be from some general or other high official in a country torn by political strife. The message is supposed to try and get money or whatnot from the victim by asking for a bank account number or credit card number. I thought this would be an interesting twist on the concept...

Subject: please help someone else!

Please remember that I'm asking you to help a few damned souls - I am not asking you to help me or in any way endorse me, my cause or what I stand for.

Sorry for that but I feel I should be up front with you: this is the Devil, the Prince of Darkness, Lucifer etc. Whatever you think of me, you're probably right, but the people I've duped into following me don't all deserve eternal torment.

That's what I'm writing to you about: the legions of the damned - some of them can be saved.

You see, all along I thought I stood a chance against God, but recently I have come to realize that I have no chance. I never had a chance and I never will be able to overcome the almighty. No matter how many damned souls I have in my legion.

Once I realized that, I discovered, much to my dismay, that I actually felt bad for some of the poor fools who have signed over their souls to me in my quest to unseat the Alpha and the Omega. I went from merely feeling bad to trying to come up with a solution. The thing is, if I go off to war and lose, all my followers are damned for all eternity - but why do that when I know that I'm going to lose?

That's where you come in.

You see, I can transfer ownership of some of these souls to a mortal, who can then free them. I will have to trust you to free them by the way, but I figure they are better off with any chance than no chance. At any rate, once you have possession of these souls, choose the ones that you deem worthy and free them. Or free all of them. The choice is yours.

In order to make this work, I just need you to send an email with "I hereby deliver my soul unto thee" in the subject line to prince_of_darkness@668.com. Yeah, I know, some damn Asian domain squatter got to 666.com before I did.

Please help these people. You're their only hope.

Sincerely,

Lucifer
Angel most fallen

Evening - Outline

2009-02-19T18:56:00.000-08:00

2009.04.21

I've mad a Faustian deal with myself: I can write a page or so of a new story I'm interested in so long as I first outline two pages! OK, so that's not very Faustian, but it is a way of getting myself to make progress on this story.

2009.02.19

Gaaah! Only managed 2 chapters this time. Furthermore, because I'm lazy, I'm posting the whole outline here.

Page 1
- Introduce Erbert
- Introduce Xema
- Introduce W^3
- Establish Xema as jealous
- Establish Hogwort's & student survival
Page 2
- Introduce Darth Sidious
- Darth Sidious is very unforgiving.
- Introduce Glenda
- Introduce Yog
- Yog is a puddle of slime
Page 3
- Switch from 3rd person to first person (ARGH)
- Yog talks like a valley girl
- Yog's homelife
Page 4
- Yog visits Glenda
- Yog makes Glenda's secretary nervous
- Yog arrives at Darth's class
Page 5
- W^3's class
- Yog meets Erbert
- Xema is jealous
- W3 disposes of Hamster and Grendel
- W3 is fond of disposing of students
Page 6
- Yog looks at the stars
- Yog runs into Erbert
- Are the stars right?
- Aaaand now the punchline: no
- Spoof of MPatHG music bit
- And in comes Xema
- Establish more of a reason for Xema to be jealous
- Establish that Erbert thinks Yog is interesting
- Xema tries to kill Yog
- Establish that Yog is very hard to kill
Page 7 - the Match
- Establish wizards vs. barbarians
- Establish that wizards are getting killed (ooh a pun)
- Establish that the teachers think this is a good thing(tm)
- Ball? There's a ball?
- Yog speaks up and gets sent in.
- Yog can't be killed with a sword
- The barb runs off like a leeeeetle gurl.
- Silly bit: "I'll save you" "OH GOD NO!"
- Yog fries a bunch of barbs and becomes the hero of the day
- Establish that Yog is good with magic
- Establish that Yog is the unoffical class hero
- Establish that Yog is at odds with the teachers
Page 8 - parents day
- Establish that the parents are trying to get rid of the kids
- Yog's parents are glad to see him/her/it
- Glenda is still good
- Erbert's parents are not at all happy that their son has not "graduated."
- Establish another motive for the teachers to do in the students
Page 9 - Exam Cram
- Do good...or else...
- The other students have given up hope
- Yog meets Erbert in the library.
- Establish Erbert as an emo
- Erbert and Yog share an interest in poetry
- Establish that Yog can form extra limbs and eye-stalks
- Aaand Xema catches them
Page 10 - the Field Trip
- The class is visiting a temple
- Idea: Have the students chained together so they can't escape.
- Idea: Give a couple more W3 quotes.
- W3's plan to waste some more students.
- Uncle Astrothoth
- Yog comes upon Xema & Erbert
- Xema discovers a slime's weakness: fire
Page 11 - The Field Trip continued
- Yog fills in Erbert about Uncle Astroth
- Yog and Erbert share a romantic walk
- Slimes don't have spouses, humans can't split...how lonely.
- Erbert tries to kiss Yog and burns his mouth
- Xema is the class hero
Page 12
- Yog worries about how to break it off with Erbert
- Yog visits Glenda for relationship advice
- Glenda swears
- Glenda tries to get Yog out of her office but Yog plays a cheap shot.
- Yog points out that if she lets Erbert down hard, the boy could kill himself.
- Glenda tells Yog to let Erbert down hard.
Page 13 - Heart to Organelle Talk

Yog tells Erbert that she doesn't love him
Erbert tells Yog he doesn't care if she loves him or not
Xema is moving up as a class hero
Erbert fondles Yog

Page 14 - Glenda Formulates a Plan
- Yog visits Glenda again
- Glenda is upset
  - Too many students are surviving
  - She will make history in a bad way if more don't die.
- Glenda tries to get Yog to kill Herb or Xema
- Yog demures
- Glenda hits on the idea of setting Yog up

2009.02.11

And here are another 5 scenes. I'm getting there...slowly but...slowly.

Note that this uses my whacky "pages" which are basically what I write in one day. Each page is supposed to be at least one "manuscript page" or about 250 words.

2009.02.09

I had wanted to start coming up with the outline sooner. I really did. But it's here now, so...whatever.

At any rate, the goal with this is bring some sort of order to the bass-ackwards style of writing that I use. Starting at a very basic level, I am simply writing up what happens in each of the segments that I wrote in preparation to try and make the whole thing cohesive.

Order...to my writing...

Yes friends, this is why I put it off so long.

At any rate, here are the first 5 pages. More to follow soon.

Evening - Author's Notes

2009-01-07T05:57:00.000-08:00

I can't imagine anyone being interested in my creative process, mostly since this would require readers, but I think it might be interesting for me to jot down some thoughts as I go through creating the story.

The big thing that I've taken away from reading comments by Stephen King, Terry Pratchett and others is that it is very important to write something. The idea is that it is at least possible to rewrite or edit a bad section, but it's much harder to do this if you have not written anything.

Thus the subject, a spoof of Twilight, Romance novels and Harry Potter. I really don't care about these genres, although I like the Harry Potter movies. For the most part.

Furthermore, you see the initial cut of the text is a complete mess, with conflicting plot elements, changing point of view from the narrative, etc. The idea was just to write and then edit later.

Evening - Page 15

2009-01-07T05:40:00.000-08:00

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So, like, I guess I've become paranoid.

I've been avoiding Herb as much as I can, since every time I see him he's leering and wearing gloves. Whenever I see Xema her eyes narrow and her nostrils dilate and her teeth grind. The teachers seem like their in a better mood, but I can't shake the feeling that they are plotting behind my...whatever.

Today it seemed like things kicked into high gear when I was slithering from one class to another and a grand piano crashed into the quad a few feet from where I was. I know I'm a student and therefore supposed to be stupid but even I know that if you try to drop a piano on somebody, you don't attach a card to it saying "Hey! I just tried to kill you!"

Besides, Xema wouldn't drop a piano on somebody, she'd just scream and attack with her sword.

Cuz she, like, did that before.

Anyways, later on the remaining students were unusually quiet around me. Then Xema comes stomping up and asks me to explain a picture. A frikkin picture for crying out loud! I mean this is a new low for her.

So I take a look at it and there's this pic of me and Herb doing something that's highly unlikely from a health and anatomical standpoint. I look at her like "duh!" and her face is turning red, her nostrils are dilating and I can tell she's upset.

Then it dawns on me that she might not know about the "facts of life" or whatever you manners or mammers or whatever call them. So I settle in to explain things.

"You see, sometimes there's a male bee and a female bee and they like each other a lot and..."

"You're trying to steal my man!"

"Don't be, like, stupid. I'd never try to take Herb from you."

"Then how do you explain this picture? I've even seen the preliminary drawings!"

"What, do you think we posed for it or something?"

That seemed to give her pause, but she came back with her ultimatum. I guess she had been practicing it and didn't want some detail like the facts getting in the way.

"Alright, that's it! Tonight at midnight, we duel! NO MORE LIES!"

And she stomped off.

So I figure that someone is trying to set me up. Or her up. Or us up. Or just up in general.

I looked around at the kids who had been just hanging out.

"Any of you guys know what's going on?"

Some twerp with the tattoo of lightning bolt on his forehead raised his hand. I nodded at him. Or I would have, if I had a head.

"I think Xema wants to kill you."

"You know, maybe Heartworms has the right idea."

I oozed off to my room to get ready for the duel.

Later that night, I was in this weird area that Xema wanted to duel. It was this rocky path behind the main campus with, like, this sheer drop-off on one side. The trail wound its way down to a valley.

I stood on the end of the path that was more towards the valley while Xema, as I should have known, stood on the part that was higher up.

"It's not too late to talk this out."

"Dieeeee!"

Xema came at me swinging. I wondered whether I should just stand there and take the sword hit, seeing as it wouldn't do squat. Instead, I oozed out of the way at the last moment, and she slipped on the slime trail.

"Argh!"

"Oooh now, this is a disappointment like."

The last bit of dialog had been uttered by none other than Herbert who had just come out from behind a rock. Xema brightened a bit.

"At last! You have come to save me in the nick of time and swear true luuuuuv to me!"

Herbert held up a scrap of paper.

"Actually now, I got this note from Yog"

"Aaaah! I will kill you both!"

"That says we were gonna ave us a bit of fun in the moonlight-like."

I noticed the gloves he wore. For the first time that night I was really afraid.

"But I didn't write you any note."

A blast of flame came between us. I scurried back a bit.

"HA! I have discovered your weakness!"

Xema's thumb was smoking a bit. Unfortunately, it looked like she had been practicing her fire spells.

"Well, are you going to help me defeat Xema then?"

"Nah, given the situation, ah thought ah'd see who wins and then root for er."

Herb may be a total twit, but he's not stupid.

Xema tried to blast me again but I like, jumped away, turning into a ball instead of my usual, spread out self. I hate doing this because it totally looks like I'm a snot-ball, but drastic measures for drastic times.

"Ere now! You look like a snot-ball!"

He should talk, I mean with like, a finger totally up his nose.

I signed, resigning myself to the fact that I was going to have to take Xema out. I won't go all emo, but I don't normally like to do that sort of thing. What's worse, I'd still have to deal with Herb. Maybe I could claim that he got in the field of fire, ya know?

I landed and Xema totally gasped. For a second I thought she was, like, showing proper acknowledgment to my gymnastic skills, but she pointed too, so I guess she saw something else. Since that's like, the oldest trick in the book, I created a quick eye-stalk to check it out while still checking her out, course I don't mean it that way, I mean I guess she's OK for a hu-nan or hemon or whatever you guys call yourselves, but now I've lost my train of thought.

Oh yeah! Xema was trying to kill me! Anyhow, I see like this big, nasty dragon with my other eye-stalk so I figure this one is probably not one of Xema's. I was closest to it and it was doing one of those deep breathing kind of things, so I figured I should get moving. I jumped again and still got a little singed by the flames from the nasty reptile. Well not singed so much as a bit of the slime evaporated, cuz there's like, nothing to really burn on me unless...well that's another story.

I landed near Xema and Herb who was like, clutching Xema with that look of terror that I had come to know and like...know?

"I guess the teachers wanted extra insurance in case we didn't kill each other..."

Xema and Herb looked at me.

"Why would they want any of us dead?"

"Well, I guess there's a real shortage of graduation gowns or something."

The dragon was getting ready to do the flame thing again and the situation was not looking good. The dragon, however, looked pretty happy and was even like, wagging his tail. That gave me an idea and I started doing the mumbo-jumbo thing.

"I hope that's a fire shield!"

Xema yelled as the spell reached its climax. With a hollow "poof" a giant bone appeared before the dragon and started swaying in the air. The dragon immediately lost interest in us and started flapping around, trying to snap up the bone.

"Ere now! He looks loik a big dawg the way ee's playing around."

I looked smug, though I guess you hurm-ans aren't good at reading body-language, when it applies to a slime.

"I figured they had to have given him some training in order to keep him in line."

To the dragon I yelled "Fetch!"

And then I threw the bone off into the distance. The dragon, tail wagging furiously, flew after the thing.

"You saved me!"

"Ere now, she saved me!"

I was now ground zero for the attentions of both Xema and Herb. Unfortunately, both wore gloves so they were able to pick up a bit of me in what I guess is an er...affectionate manner.

"Actually I was trying to save me."

"My-noir point."

"Yeah, you obviously luuuuv me!"

"She luuuuvs me more!"

Now both Xema and Herb were tugging on the bits of slime that they both held. I guess this was better than having Xema try to kill me, but not by much.

"Hey guys, leggo! Don't muss the slime!"

But the two of them kept, like, shouting about how I loved one or the other of them more and stuff. As they shouted at each other they pulled harder until finally I split in two.

"What's all this then?"

Herb held half of me. I was feeling really disoriented what with the whole being in two places at once thing.

"Huh?"

The bit that Xema held was staring at her. I tell you, having two eye-stalks and you'd think that the view from one of them would be OK, but instead I get Xema in one and Herb in the other. Maybe I should switch to echo-location and ditch the eye-stalks entirely.

Xema and Herb looked at each other, then stared at the slimelings they each held.

"Works for me."

"Ah theeenk is fine too."

So that's how I started in with the whole "open relationship" sort of situation. I've that these things don't always work out with you who-nurns, but most of the time there's only one person to share. So I figure there's a better than even chance it'll work out.

As it turned out, I had tossed the bone towards one of the dorms and the dragon was rather upset about the illusion disappearing. Hence the student population was decreased by rather a lot, so the teachers were mollified even if the three of us were in the graduating class.

If this is any indication of what things are like at Heartworms, I can't wait for next year.

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Evening - Page 14

2009-01-04T20:23:00.001-08:00

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I guess Glenda had left instructions about me, because the secretary made me wait this time. She seemed all nervous about something and kept glancing up at me. I tried to put her at ease by forming a mouth, I'm getting better at it I swear, but that just seemed to make things worse. She actually got up and left - I mean that's totally rude - but at least that way I could get into Glenda's office.

I figured that if I didn't knock then she couldn't tell me to go away, so I slimed under the door.

Glenda was at her desk doing her palms (humans are weird) because she had her face in her hands, but I know she's never down so it must have been that. Anyhow, I cleared my throat (well, made a gurgling noise) and she looked up at me.

"Oh Yog, it's you."

"Sorry to burst in on you like this, but, well, Herb is getting out of control."

She considered this really seriously, cuz, like, I've never seen her with such a, like, serious face.

"You could kill him."

"Isn't that, like, a bit extreme?"

"Not for Heartworms."

I thought about this for a bit.

"Couldn't you talk to him?"

"If you're just going to kill him anyways, what's the point?"

"I didn't say I was going to kill him!"

I thought I heard her curse under her breath, but I guess that was just my imagination.

"Also Xema is kinda, like, scaring me."

At this Glenda looked hopeful.

"You're going to kill her too?"

"What?"

Glenda signed and leaned back. Her secretary chose that moment to burst in.

"Ms. Headmistress, it looks like Yog ARGH!"

Glenda's secretary dropped some papers and left (ran actually). I helpfully tried to, like, help Glenda pick them up. One of them caught my eye (stalk).

"If we don't do something we'll have the largest graduating class in the history of Heartworms."

I pointed this out to Glenda. It didn't seem to help.

"What exactly did he do to upset you?"

"He...touched me."

"I thought that would make his skin dissolve."

"He had gloves."

"Didn't they dissolve?"

"Not quickly enough."

Glenda sighed and seemed to lapse into thought. Then she had a flash of insight.

"Xema is very jealous and protective!"

"Yeah that's the problem."

"AND she's a sociopath, textbook case!"

"If you say so."

Glenda seemed to be thinking hard and muttering to herself.

"It wouldn't really matter which one died...at least that way we wouldn't make history..."

She looked up as if she had just remembered that I was there and gave me this, like, Herb-ish grin.

"Well, can't bore you to death with my musings! Off you go!"

"But we only just started talking!"

"No, no. I won't take up any more of your time!"

She tried to "poof" me out of her office, but I had been practicing counter-spells.

"You're making very good progress!"

"Yeah, self-preservation."

But Glenda had "poofed" herself out this time.

"Damn."

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Evening - Page 13

2009-01-03T18:15:00.001-08:00

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"Herb, I don't love you."

"S'all roight."

"But I don't, k? I mean I don't love you at all."

"So?"

"Well...OK, so you got a point there...What I'm trying to say is get lost."

"Ah, now we're een familiar territory."

This had been the first chance I had to talk to Herbert since the day he had, like burned his lips on me at the temple. We were hiding under a desk because one of W3's lab animals, a big-ass plant this time, had decided to try and eat a few students. Xema had sprang to the defense of the students.

"Have at you, foul plant!"

"Rawr!"

In the weeks since the run-in with my uncle at the temple, she had become a kind of class hero, saving students at every turn. What was strange was that the teachers seemed like they were really disappointed with her. Odd, but it provided the opportunity to talk to Herb.

"So, you're OK with that?"

"Don't bother me."

"Cool."

"We can just be, wassname, funk-burgers?"

"What?"

"You know, just wha, keep it strictly physical?"

"Oh...my...gawd."

Meanwhile Xema had gone on the offensive.

"Take that! And that! And that!"

"My venus flytrap! Nuuuuuu!"

The last bit had come from Ms. McWicked-pants herself. Along with everyone else, Herb and I looked over the tops of the tables to see what had happened.

W3 was kneeling next to her plant, tenderly holding one of its leaves as she bawled like some twit from a Harlaslime romance novel. It looked like Ms. Class Amazon had, like, cut the thing in two.

Xema was standing their in this incredibly egotistical pose, sword in hand, enjoy the adulation of her tools...I mean those lameoids that she had saved.

"Our hero!"

"Yay Xema!"

"I take back most of what I said about you!"

They were actually tossing her up and down in the air; difficult since she had taken to wearing rather revealing armor these days and personally I think she probably weighed a lot even if she was muscular...the tart.

At any rate, between all the other shocks for the day, I felt something weird. Looking down I noticed that there was a gloved hand touching me. Well, it was more like...fondling. I followed the hand to Herb's arm.

"Ah figured out how ah can avoid those nasty burns."

Of all the smiles I've seen, his was the...creepiest. And this includes the one that uncle Shrug-Ziggarat, he-goat with a thousand, nay millions of young, evil that does not wait, blaster of worlds (you get the picture), gave me on my 34512817th birthday.

And I thought I had problems before.

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Evening - Page 12

2009-01-01T14:15:00.000-08:00

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The next few days I had wanted to talk to Herbert to explain that, like, we were different species and stuff and that I'm really not into bestiality - not that there's anything wrong with that ya know, but that it's just not my thing. But for one reason or another we didn't run into each other.

I spent time trying to figure out how to break it to him, but I'm like, not the expert on human psychology, ya know? I even tried talking to one of the teachers, at least the only one that seemed to actually care about any of the students, by visiting Glenda the Good's office.

I was in kinda a hurry, so rather than asking for an appointment and then waiting for a week, I oozed onto her secretary's desk and got one within a few minutes. Glenda seemed genuinely pleased to see me, or maybe it's just that I brought a plastic slip-cover for her chair.

"So what can I do for you Ms. Slothoth?"

"I have this...problem."

"Oh? What sort of problem?"

"There's this...boy in my class, like."

Glenda had this knowing look and conversation thing that seemed to go off track when she remembered who I was.

"A boy? And you? Did you eat someone dear?"

"No! No! Nothing like that!"

Glenda's face took on this sort of thoughtful look, not exactly the relieved one that you'd think she would have.

"He...he likes me...like ya know?"

"You...and some human boy?"

"Yeah."

"He...he er...likes you?"

"Yeah."

"Well fuck me."

I was so startled by that phrase that I looked around to see if someone else where there, but it was just me and Glenda, and Glenda had this totally shocked look on her face. She was being totally slow to respond but I just babbled on, sorta glad that I found someone who would at least listen to me.

"But I'm like, not into him, ya know? At least totally not that way, but I don't know how to let him know that it's not a mutual thing, right? So he doesn't get all upset and hang himself...or something."

Glenda was still just sorta sitting there with her tea cup half raised and staring at me. She didn't say anything.

"I was...like hoping that you...you know...being a human being and stuff...might be able to tell me?"

I guess I wasn't using the right body-language, but I tried to make my eye-stalk seem sincere, and I formed a great big, gaping mouth with lots of teeth and had it grin at her.

Glenda's eyes swiveled down and surveyed my new formation, then swiveled back to my eye-stalk. Her tea cup still hadn't moved.

"And you seem like the only teacher here that isn't actively trying to kill the students...ya know, not that Heartworms isn't a great school and everything..."

With a shudder, Glenda seemed to snap out of it and said "Oh my! Look at the time! My next appointment's due!"

"Ms. Good! I need your help with this!"

"I love these little chats we have, drop by next week some time why don't you?"

I was really desperate for advice so I did something that I knew was kinda mean.

"I guess the other parents will understand when their children not only survive Heartworms but end up shacked up with a nice slime like me!"

Glenda froze where she was, in the act of reaching for her magic wand, probably in preparation to "poof" me out of her office. Her eyes started swiveling again and she said "What?"

"I can just imagine how happy Herbert's dad will be when he realizes that yes, Herb is going to make it and that he'll have me to look forward to as a son in law...daughter...whatever."

Glenda sat down in the big chair behind her desk with a muffled "thump" and looked at me. She tried really hard to shift to her usual, smiling manner. The effect was rather unsettling.

"Have you tried pointing out that you two are different species? That...that your people don't even really have...you know ah...erm..."

I wondered which of the two of us even had more sex given how much trouble the word was giving her. Rather than dragging this on any longer I came to her rescue.

"No I haven't pointed this out. The reason why I came to use is to figure out how I can point this out without him dying or Xema disemboweling me."

Glenda's smile became brighter and it looked like she was going to jump in with some anatomical detail.

"You know what I mean."

Her smile faded.

"Well, ah, you could try getting him to uh, notice one of your friends."

"You mean the ones that are still alive?"

"Yes, well, Heartworms has always maintained very high standards."

She shuffled things around on her desk for a bit and then brought her fist down in a very lady-like pounding motion.

"You'll just have to tell him that it's not to be!"

"But what if he..."

"No! No! You must be very firm and assertive, but respectful! Just tell him flat out no!"

I was trying to think this through when she raised her magic wand.

"Yes, that's the only way. Now you really must let me get to my next appointment. Give that a try and let me know how everything works out."

There was a "poof" and I found myself in the corridor outside her office. I noticed that her secretary had locked the door and stuck stuff along the bottom so I couldn't ooze through. I slithered off despondently.

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Evening - Page 11

2008-12-31T07:23:00.000-08:00

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So Herb is sitting there looking scared and staring after Xema when he turns to me and is all like

"Do ya think ell be urt?"

"What? Uncle Astrathoth?"

Herb looks all confused and says

"Whot, you know em?"

"He's my uncle."

"Your uncles es a giant slime?"

"Well duh!"

Herb looks at me for a second as if he just noticed that I'm a slime. Hello? I mean like puh-leaze!

"What does ee do when ees not eatin people then?"

"I think he's into stamps and stuff."

"Doisent ee have a woif?"

I rolled my eye-stalk. It's times like this where I wish I like, had another eyestalk on hand to roll too.

"Well, he's like, a slime so he'll never have a wife."

Herb went all emo for a second and then said

"Sounds lonely."

I was about to cut in with another snapping reply, but I sorta stopped to think about that one. In the distance I could hear screams, the occasional "ouch!" from uncle A, and every now and then a "Wooohooo!" from Xema.

"I suppose so."

We walked back over to the altar where W3 was standing with her arms crossed. She ignored us and muttered under her breath. We looked at some stone carvings. It was weird, ya know? I mean like I felt like Herb and I were actually communicating and stuff.

"Well, if one of us feels lonely we can, like, divide in two and talk to ourselves."

"Oh how handee."

"You guys can't?"

"Noi."

"Sounds lonely."

And we just stared at each other. His two watery eyes and my one blood-shot stalk. The flames in the background made his face glow, what with the flickers from people running around. And then he closed his eyes and tried to kiss me! Gross!

"Ow!"

"Oh, watch the slime man! That stuff will burn you!"

"Mph-burned-mph-mouth!"

Herb was holding his mouth with both hands and jumping up and down. I swear he was crying. And then Xema drove poor uncle Astrathoth back into the altar area and then into the pit.

Ole Ms. McSacrifice is turning another shade of green and glaring down the pit.

"You get out here and eat more students!"

"I'm not coming back out while she's there!"

"Get out here right now!"

"You can't make me!"

And Xema is practically frothing at the mouth and her eyes are all scary looking and she's like

"Yeah! Come on out and get some! Whiiiiimp!"

So just then the rest of the class comes shuffling back into the room and they're all like "Yay Xema! Our Heroine!" It must have been like the only time in her life that people were not running from her and screaming. The expression on her face was all, like, shock and stuff, but after a while she started smiling.

Then she notices Herb and me and she like stomp/stalks over to us and grabs one of his hands. She looks like she's about to start some more shit when W3 finally stops sulking.

"That was very...good of you Xema."

Before the class could start cheering again she's all like.

"But we have to be going now! Everyone line up outside!"

Why do we have to use that stupid giant broomstick anyhow?

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Stories

2008-12-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

DeathTalker

DeathTalker 2

Tentacle Luuuuv Note rated PG-14 for strong language

Groupthink: the Lighter Side

Posted chapter 5 of Groupthink. Yays!

Evening - Page 10

2008-12-30T16:41:00.001-08:00

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Field trips suck.

OK, so we're like doing one of those visits to this temple with W3. It didn't even occur to me that Herb and I would spend any time together (and that would have been just fine by me, really) but during the, like, tour of the place something unexpected happened.

OK, in retrospect, I suppose I should have expected crap like that from Ms. Wicked Witch, I mean I guess she has people like Herb's dad slipping her a few shekels to help students erm…graduate, but personally I think with her it's, like, personal. Anyway, we're walking around the temple and W3 is cackling in her best evil voice with stuff like

"And this, are carvings showing what happened to miscreants like you! Eeeee-hehehehehe!"

Blah, blah, blah. I mean like, after the fourth time, we got the frickin picture! Anyways, she carrying on with "evil this" and "sacrifice that" when we come up to the big altar in the middle of the temple and there's like this big, deep, dark pit behind it. As we come up to it, Ms. Blather is still babbling on:

"And this, my pretties, is where victims were sacrificed!"

Then she glared at everybody and asked a question:

"Can anyone tell me how many people were sacrificed here? No? Well I'll tell you that there are about to be a lot more!"

And then this huge purple amoebic thing came out of the pit and started oozing towards us. The whole class was like "run for your lives!" and stuff.

"Uncle Astrothoth?"

"Yog?"

"Uncle!"

"How's my favorite niece? Nephew? Well, you're certainly filling out…and I like the phosphorous!"

I felt all shy like when your grandmother pinches your mitochondrion and says "ain't it cute!" I really appreciated that he noticed my highlights.

"You like em?"

"I think that…oops! Got a quota here, I'll catch you on the way back!"

I noticed that Ms. I-think-I'll-sacrifice-my-class was stomping over to us and Uncle A schlepped off towards a pocket of frightened students. As she's passing me she says "figures" under her breath.

I hate her.

So I'm trying to interest myself with some of the carvings on the walls and stuff, but it's hard to focus with all the screams and kids running around so I'm just kinda wandering. Every now and then I see Uncle A chasing or eating someone (I never liked them anyways) when I turn a corner and there's Herb and Xema.

OK, I know it's like, childish, but I was so tempted to like, call over Uncle A and get rid of them, but I'm still in my teens (like 13,000 years or so), so I figure I'm allowed. I feel so guilty about what happened next too.

Xema was like, trying to mutter some spell, and she kept trying to do the whole "thumbs up" flick thing while saying stuff like "et lumina!" and after the fifth try I said "don't you mean et flamma?" She glares at me but she says "et flamma" and her thumb gets this flame up and her face lights up. Just then Uncle A is turning a corner going "Muhahahaha!" and stuff and Xema like spits at him.

I mean that's really gross, but like this flame spouts from her mouth and seriously comes close to burning him, and he stops up and is like all "hey!" when Xema lets out this loud "wooohooo" kinda thing and starts chasing him.

to be continued

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Evening - Page 9

2008-12-26T19:28:00.000-08:00

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It was exam cram time. Mid-terms. Our class had already lost 7 students and W3 had threatened to execute anyone who failed the test. I was kinda, like, worried; but only a little because I'm not sure that she knows anything that can really hurt me.

But just in case, I decided to study.

I was trying to find someone else in class to study with, ya know, but most of them were useless.

"We're doomed, doomed!"

"But don't you want to study, just in case? I mean there's still, like, a chance you could pass."

"DOOOOOOMED!"

Some of the guys in my class were more practical.

"Like, what are you doing?"

"Ack! Phew! Just you Yog, thought it was Sideous or something."

"Nah, just trying to find someone to study with. Are you trying to build a tunnel?"

"Well, I thought it was more productive than blubbering like Cinderella."

"You have a point there...but, like, there are supposed to be crypts that connect to the basement ya know."

"Nah, that's just a..."

Right then a bit of the floor where Peter was working gave way. A thin, dirty hand shot up through the opening and grabbed one of his legs.

"Aaaaargh!"

I guess that made 8 students we had lost, but I'm not sure if I should chalk that one up to the school or something else.

As I was studying in the library one day, I noticed Herb sitting off in a nook by himself. Looking closer I thought that he seemed much less, like, jumpy than the rest of the class. Almost dreamy, sitting there and staring out the window.

I oozed over to him.

"Hey Herb! Are you studying for the big exams?"

"Eh?"

He squinted at me. I noticed his eyes were kinda red looking and there was a box of Kleenexes next to him.

"The test? You know - the one that WWW threatened to turn people into toads for?"

"Oh, I suppose your roight..."

"What are you reading dood?"

Erb grabbed the books near him and shoved them under the table. I rolled my eye-stalk.

"Ow nothin! Did you wanna study for the exam or wha?"

I oozed onto a chair opposite him and plopped my books down.

"Well I thought we should study for Xener's test first, since he's managed to take out 3 people so far..."

While I had him distracted, I formed another eye-stalk and peeked under the table at the books he had.

"Poetry? We're one week away from certain tests and possible death and you're reading poetry?"

Erb's face had turned red as he ducked under the table and came face-to-eye with me. He grabbed his books and was about to set off in a huff when I chimed in with.

"Besides, how can you read that dreck? You should check out something by Burns or Browning or Frost."

Herbert cocked his head to the side.

"Ooooh now?"

That's how I lost a good two hours of would-be study time. Discussing poetry with Herbert. Sheesh. To top it all off, Xema came by.

"What are you doing with my boyfriend?"

Her voice was like, between a roar and whine. I don't know how Herbert could stand it.

"Oh we were just talking about poetry. Right Erb?"

But Herbert had on his "soulful" look. As a matter of fact, he was soulfully looking at me. He didn't seem to hear Xema.

Xema, for her part, glared down at the pile of books between us.

"All that stuff is for fags!"

She swept all the stuff off the table with her broad-sword, grabbed Herb with her other hand, brought the sword up as if to swing at me, thought better of it and stormed off.

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Evening - Page 8

2008-12-25T11:16:00.000-08:00

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I guess the idea behind Parent's Day is for the parents to, like, see their children...ya know? The odd thing was that the parents that seemed like the happiest were the ones whose kids had died. They were shaking hands with the teachers and smiling, whereas the ones whose children had made it were scowling and stuff.

At least my parents were happy to see me. Dad had split in two for the occasion so both Mom and Dad were there!

"Who's my leeeetle slime-ums?" Asked Mom.

"Hero of the Heart-v-U game!" Proclaimed Dad.

I formed a mouth and grinned happily as they smothered me. After we had, like, gotten things straight again we talking about school and stuff when there was this flash of light and Glenda the Good appeared.

"Oh hello Mr. Slime; I mean Ms. Slime! Er...Slime..."

Ms. always smiling's face dropped a stitch and she looked down.

"Um...sorry to be ah...standing in you. Your-child-is-doing-very-well-oh-look-I-have-to-go!"

At least Glenda didn't stay long.

I was so glad my roomie wasn’t around to see the whole thing (she had bought it in biology when Prof. Xenerside had neglected to mention that the insects we were messing with were very poisonous), and my parents had brought some extra acids, bases and some worshipper casserole (they don't make it the same at Heartworms…actually they don't, like, make it here at all), so I put all the stuff away after Mom & Dad fused back together and headed off.

I was like, oozing around the hallways, not because I was all happy from seeing my parents cuz that would be, like totally immature, when I passed Prof. Sideous's room. He was in talking with Herbert's parents.

"And I want to congratulate you on my son's recent ah…'graduation' from Heartwords."

I couldda sworn that 'Erb's dad slipped the wizened old creep some money.

"Ah...hehehe...it was nothing." Darth Sideous made the money smoothly disappear.

"Oh! Don't worry Mr...ah...Herbert's Dad! Herb's fine!"

Herbert's father turned abruptly towards me. Darth's eyes, more slowly, swiveled to where I was.

"I...I just saw him..." One nice thing to being a slime is that in these situations I don't have to worry about whether you non-slimies can read my expression. Herb's father glared at Darth.

"Is this true?"

"I can assure you that Herbert will graduate on schedule...along with anyone else who warrants such an honor."

His last statement was made through gritted teeth as the teachers eyes blazed under his hood.

I couldn't figure out what the problem was with these two, but I decided that I should move along.

"I guess I'll just be moving on now..."

I had only just oozed out of the doorway when a blast of eldritch, like, power flashed through the door and blasted the wall behind it. I guess Darth wanted to show off his skill. There followed some angry sounding whispers.

No offense, but sometimes you upright types are weird.

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Evening - Page 7

2008-12-23T04:19:00.000-08:00

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"Bend your knees this time!" shouted Dr. Finkelsteen, the teacher for Alchemy. The other teachers burst into laughter, chortling and slapping the man on the back.

Down on the field, Phew, a first year student from some backwater, dove wildly to the left, barely avoiding a cut from a large thug of a barbarian. Some chap named Pippin or some such was groveling before another warrior, begging for his life.

"Die Wizard!"

"Argh!"

Watching all this I turned to Mr. Makekithart, our Phys-Ed teacher.

"Are you sure that wasn't like, you know, a foul or something?"

Makekithart looked at me with, like, this weird grin on his face and a look in his eye and said: "Whaaa?"

Herbert, a look of abject terror on his face, was clutching Xema with a death grip as he watched the players on the field.

"Aieeee!"

"But the ball's that way!"

"Ball? What babble is this, mage?"

I was standing on the sidelines with the rest of my terrorized classmates as the rest of our class was variously beaten, pummeled or eviscerated. The teachers had been like all pumped about the annual football game between Heartworms and Barb-U (that's short for Barbarian University), but this really sucked.

"Isn't there supposed to be like a referee or something?" I asked Mr. Makekithart. He just laughed until his big fat face turned red and he yelled up to the stands where the other teachers were.

"One of the students (bwahahaha!) wants to know where the (gasp, wheeze) referees are! Haw! Haw! Haw!"

All the twits up in the stands started laughing and doubling over again. Over all hilarity the shrill voice of W3 came in with an ear-splitting cackle.

"Why don't you send her into the game to find them! Heeeehehehehehaw!"

The other teachers were like, giving her high-fives and stuff. Mr. Makekithart also seemed to think this was a great idea. The other students on the sidelines were also enthused about it. No pressure.

"You go out there and make us proud!"

I looked around at the rest of the students who seemed to have grabbed onto this idea like their lives depended on it.

"But…but I'll get my ectoplasm dirty!"

Without touching me, Makekithart was trying to urge me onto the field.

"Oh don't be such a baby!"

The sideline seemed like the edge of a cliff.

"But I don't know how to play!"

"You'll figured it out soon enough, now off you go!"

Mr. Makekithart turned and ran like there was a barbarian chasing after him. I turned my eye-stalk and saw that indeed there was a large barbarian heading right towards me.

"Die hellspawn!"

The big lug raised a sword and drove it through my cell wall. It stuck in the ground and started dissolving.

"My…my sword! You shall pay for this fiend!"

"Why? How much was it?"

"Do not attempt to escape from my wrath by bewitching me!"

The guy dove at me and let me tell you, he had some serious body odor. The idiot managed to jam his face right into a vacuole filled with my, like, digestive enzymes. Before I could do anything, he screamed, jumped up and ran away.

Further on down the field was a classmate who had seen better days.

"Help me! Help me!"

"I'll be right there!" I called reassuringly as I oozed in his direction.

"HELP ME! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T LET THAT THING EAT ME!"

I totally couldn't figure out what he was babbling about: I hadn't seen anyone on either team eat anyone else, but before I could reach him a gang of barbarians, probably the friends of that other twerp can running up towards me.

"That's the one that ate Gonad's face! Kill it!"

There were more yells of "Dieeee!" and other stupid stuff, but one benefit of being a spawn of the oldie ones is knowing how to put upstart mammals in their place.

+0+4L p0wn4ge!

The ground under them erupted in fire. They ran off screaming like little girls. Jerks.

The kid I had been trying to help had managed to crawl off to the sidelines, while those pussy barbarians seemed to encourage the rest of their gang to head for the hills.

All the kids on the sidelines were really like "You go slime!" and "Who bad? We bad!" and stuff, though the teachers didn't seem as in to it. I swear they looked disappointed.

My class tried to carry me around on their shoulders, but I tended to ooze through them, so they just settled on cheering for me. Except Xema. She had wanted to play.

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Evening - Page 6

2008-12-22T19:09:00.000-08:00

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So I'm totally, like, out there with my telescope looking at the stars cuz, like you know, Dad (Mom?) is always like "Your Grandfather Cthulululu will return when the stars are right!"

One time when she (he?) said that whole bit I was, like, "so what happens when Grandpa gets back?"

"Then, then my slime, we shall rule the world!!!"

"Why do you want to do that?"

Then dad looked kind of nervous and starts sliming back and forth.

"We...we will be able to overthrow the kingdoms of man and have all the worshippers we want to eat!"

I was about to ask him why he would want that, cuz, like he can't keep the toilet of evil from overflowing, so what would he do with an entire planet, but right at moment he was all, "Got to go to work! Now you be evil!"

So I think that whole biz is a line of crap. But I still go out and look. The only problem is that he never said what the stars are supposed to look like when they are right.

Anyways, so I'm all out there with my telescope, looking up at the stars when Herbert comes blundering through and trips on my tripod.

"Ere now!"

He falls over everything and knocks my stuff down just when I had set everything up so nicely. I was going to ask him what he was doing out here in the middle of the night but then, if I had that hellspawn Xema for a girlfriend, I'd be trying to get away from her every chance I had too.

"Oh, just looking at the stars..."

Herbert turned and squinted upwards.

"Whots there to lookit?"

"I'm trying to figure out whether they're right."

"Roight for what?"

I considered trying to explain the whole Grandpa bit to him.

"Oh, just generally right I guess."

Herbert considered this for a bit and then looked back up at the stars.

"No."

"What?"

"You wanta see if the staars are roight? Near as ah can tell they say nu."

I gazed at Herbert and wondered if Heartworms would miss one student.

"How can you tell?"

Herbert pointed at a region of the sky. Sure enough, "No" was spelled out in fiery letters.

"Oh…wonder why I never noticed before."

I absent mindedly started to gather up my telescope.

"You know, lookin at you in the moonlight n' all, you look different..."

I got all, like, excited for a sec, cuz I had put some new phosphorescent stuff in the ole cytoplasm today.

"Is it the glowie bits?"

"Niaye...sits more a general, something"

It seemed like I heard an orchestra, or at least a piano starting up in the background, but it all kinda like stopped when...

"There you are! What are you doing with Alex?"

The girl-fiend herself had put in an appearance. Herbert looked over in a puzzled kind of way.

"Erbert."

"Whatever!"

She glared at me so hard I wondered if the rocks were starting to smolder.

"Chill-out man! Goth-boy and I were just talking."

"In the middle of the night?"

"I was looking at the stars!"

Xema glanced accusingly up at them. Herbert held up a broken telescope that he had fallen on.

"My telescope!"

I oozed over to Herbert and cradled it in my arms...psuedopods...whatever, but flubbed it and ended up with Herbert in my...you know.

"ARGH!"

Xema was literally frothing at the mouth by now. I dropped Herbert.

"Owww!"

"Die you slut!"

With a loud clang Xema's sword went clear through my body, the telescope I had been holding, and a good way into the rock beneath it. There are ways to kill a giant amoeba, but hacking at them with a sword ain't one of them. Twit.

"Great, just great. What else can go wrong tonight."

In the mean time, Xema was trying to get her sword free from the rock where it was stuck.

"Just…wait…till…I...get…this…"

With a look of disgust I left the two of them up on the crag. And the scope had been a present from Mom! Or Dad...whatever.

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Evening - Page 5

2008-12-19T15:35:00.000-08:00

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So, like, today we were supposed to dissect a pig in W3's class today. "W3" is shorthand for "Wicked Witch of the West" that this totally weird-ass teacher insists on calling herself.

She is, like, a complete freak! She's always wearing this dumpy, black dress with this weird, wide-brimmed hat and she wears like this totally vomit colored makeup on her face. She never answers a question without screeching and she's always babbling on about how she'll "get you and your little dog too!"

Incidentally, I am not vomit green I'm more of a festive lime. Just so you know.

To add to the whole weirdness, I was paired up with Herbert, Xema's boyfriend. Xema is also a total freak because she seemed to think that I was going to like take her boyfriend! I'm like "Hello! Wrong species here!" I mean we're not even like the same Kingdom, so where does she come off with her whole attitude?

Mind you, I see why she likes him: unlike most of the other boys Herbert is a nice pasty white, and he seems slimier than most of the other guys. Even so, it's still so, like, eeeeeew!

Herbert, on the other pseudo-pod, was fairly nice. I mean, if it were mean I would be happy just to get away from that hellfiend for five minutes. I mean I've known some fairly nice hell spawn in my time, especially those dudes from Yugoslavia or Yucatan or Yoggoth or something. I mean for fungus, they have total style.

Anyway, Herbert was totally deferring to my superior skill in lab matters. He kept saying things like "ah don't wanna touch that." and "Why donchu take care of this bit?" I also caught him staring at me which I totally understand since that day I had enough time to put some bits in the protoplasm. I think that may be why Xema is so jealous. She wishes she had my cilia.

The other students in the class are complete putzs. They were all like "shouldn't these things be dead?" and "aren't we gonna get blood on everything?" But W3 just kept doing this long, drawn-out screeching laugh whenever anyone complained. Except for these two freak kids who are like, brother and sister, but they totally like, insist on doing everything together!

When they spoke up, W3 took a hard look at them and then said they could clean out her cabinets instead. So Hamster and Grendal went up to the head of the class and got in the thing, which if you asked me looks pretty weird for a cabinet, what with all the dials and stuff on the top of it, and started working. Then W3 slams closed the door and let's rip with another total freak laugh.

Teacher's pets.

One nice thing about the whole situation was that, at the end of class, I got to eat all the pigs! I think that made Xema more jealous because right after the bell rings she comes storming up, grabs Herbert, who says "Nice to have met you Yaaaaoooog!" as she's dragging him off. I was right in the middle of eating a pig or I would have said something. I swear that girl is just jealous of me.

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Evening - Page 4

2008-12-18T06:49:00.000-08:00

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Later on I found out that you usually don't get to see the head mistress as quickly as I did.

On the morning I oozed into her outer office, her secretary gave a little yelp and jumped up on her chair. Trying to put her at ease, I formed a mouth and smiled at her and said "hello." This was one of my earlier attempts so the mouth may have been a little off.

The secretary was glancing about like something in a trap when she looked at her desk and said "are you Cthulu-rck-yog-slogothothoth?"

I told her that it was pronounced "Cthulu-rck-yog-slothoth" and she seemed to calm down a little bit. She picked up a piece of paper and tried to write something but her hand kept shaking. Finally she just said something about "the head mistress will see you now!" and opened the door to the inner office.

It was weird. She didn't introduce me, she just opened the door and shooed me inside.

Glenda the Good, the Good Witch of the West, was much more at ease. She beamed nicely at me as if she had been expecting me and bade me take a seat. I did. It started dissolving. Glenda's smile seemed to lose a bit of warmth.

We talked for a little bit about Heartworms and how I would be in staying in some dorm named "The Plains of Woe." The chair collapsed.

I felt so bad! I mean first day and I'm already screwing up! But Glenda was more than gracious about it and said that it was no trouble at all. In fact she seemed to think that it was very important that I get to my first class right that moment. Rather than just walking she blinked us to the room.

I'll say one thing for you humans, some of you do have a knack for magic. When we appeared some old fart was blasting one of his students. Very good control of the arcane, I must say.

Then came the moment I was dreading.

I had hoped that I would have some time to dye my cytoplasm or put in some phosphorescent bits or something but she just threw me at the class. Gawd I was so embarrassed.

And I could tell that they all thought I was a total putz! When I waved and hastily threw together an eye-stalk they all drew back like "eeeeew! It didn't even wash it's cytoplasm!" Even the instructor drew back. I was so crushed. When the teacher told me to take a chair everyone was like "Get away from me you freak! That look is so 300,000 years ago!"

The only person who even tried to make me feel welcome was some chick wearing a bikini (is that normal? Personally I thought she looked cool) who kept staring at me. I wonder if maybe she could help me catch up with the homework for this place.

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Evening - Page 3

2008-12-16T19:23:00.000-08:00

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I wanted to make this an angsty, teenage, melodramatic romantic spoof. The first two pages were written from a 1st person perspective whereas angsty, etc. stories must always be told from the first person!

I read that in a book, so it must be true. Alright; it was a web page, but still...

Anyhow, I wanted to give 1st person a try here are the results so far:

When my mom (or was it dad? I mean, when you're a slime, well, whatever) came in and announced that I had been accepted at Heartworms, I was really excited until I realized that I would be leaving all my friends and that all these other slimes (err...kids?) might not like me and stuff so I burst into tears and oozed out of the room.

Maybe I should start again.

I was really depressed when my...parent told me that I was going off to AU (even though the name of the place is Heartworms, I mean the place isn't really evil, like, you know, but the name is historic and stuff dating back a little bit, well it's a little bit to us since we've been around like, millions of years, ya know?). This was, cuz, stuff, like, you know. Things.

Sigh...

My first day at Heartworms went OK, though I was really nervous. For some weird reason I had arrived a few days late, for which I totally blame my mom! She kept oozing over me and saying stuff like "my little slime!" and then we would get all mixed up and it would take, like, half an hour to get all the pseudo pods and organelles sorted out...

Yeah, pseudo pods...slimes...I guess I should start there.

I'm this young example of a culture that started in a pool and went bravely onwards for 50 jillion years! OK, we're not 50 jillion years old, but we, the slimes, have been around for a long time. I mean I haven't been around all that time exactly, cuz you see, we slimes don't have moms and dads like you weirdo ventalors or vertibrators or whatever you call yourselves. We have always known what the right cytoplasm is and make sure we just stick with that.

Not that I hold that against you guys. Especially if you are reading this. And paid for it first. Cuz I need money for clothes since they keep dissolving on me.

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Evening - Page 2

2008-12-14T19:28:00.000-08:00

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The students of Demonology and Applied Sciences shuffled into the dark, tomb-like confines of the classroom. The instructor, a dark and mysterious instructor who went by the name of "Darth Sideous" (for some reason he eschewed the title of "professor"), sat in a large, throne-like chair on a dais in front of the students.

Even Xema was rather subdued in the presence of the silent and watchful teacher. Herbert settled into the desk next to her with only one muffled "ouch" when he hit his shin on a leg.

A bell rang somewhere and Sideous rose to his feet, speaking in a low but penetrating voice.

"The first thing you must know about demonology is the need to be exacting."

A rather pudgy youngster bustled into the room and attempted to get to his seat.

"You're late!"

The young man froze, his eyes swiveling to meet the dark robed teacher.

"Please sir! It was just a minute – it wont happen again!"

Darth Sideous regarded him from beneath the cowl of his robes.

"Well, you're right about one thing…"

Blue bolts of eldritch power flashed from the teachers hands like miniature lightning bolts to enfold the would-be truant. The child was lifted off the ground and thrown against a wall, which he remained stuck to, like some insect on an examining table.

"You shall pay for this lack of forsight!"

Darth Sideous was, by now, cackling with evil delight as his bolts of energy drew cries of pain from the unfortunate.

Just then, a flash of light appeared next to the throne that the dark professor had been sitting in. A smiling woman, looking like some prom queen in a white dress and bearing a wand with a star on it's end, materialized and smiled benignly at the class.

"Professor Sideous."

The dark instructor was too enthralled with what he was doing and kept zapping his student.

"Sideous!"

Darth Sideous turned about to glare at the new arrival. The boy he had been zapping fell from the wall and crumpled on the ground.

"Oh, Glenda…"

Glenda, the good witch of the West, beamed happily and made her announcement.

"Class, we have a new arrival: this is our new transfer student from Ray-yuck!"

The students in the demonology class glanced about uncertainly, but could not make out the new class member. Even Darth Sideous looked around, sneering slightly as he did so. Glenda's smile took on a forced quality as she turned and spoke to something in the shadows behind her.

"Oh don't be shy now. Class this is Cthulu-rck-yog-slothoth!"

A greenish puddle of slime shuffled out from behind Glenda, formed a single hairy eye-stalk and regarded the students. Even Darth Sideous seemed a bit taken aback.

"Headmistress, are you sure that…"

But Glenda cut him off, speaking rather loudly and quickly.

"Now I'm counting on all of you to make him feel welcome. I must be going, toodle-loo!"

With a white flash, the Good Witch disappeared. Darth Sideous considered the new student.

"You can take Pudley's desk."

The teacher pointed to desk recently vacated by the unfortunate late student. Yog-Slothoth bubbled in it's direction. The students along the route took their feet off the floor.

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Evening - Main Page

2008-12-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

This is the main page for the short story, Evening, which is a kind of parody of angsty, teenage high school movies in general and the movie Twilight in particular.

Evening - Introduction

2008-12-11T19:24:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a long time since I wrote.

Many people think this is a good thing, but I said I would write something as a Christmas present. Mind you, this is for a very bad person...

At any rate, I'm posting this one page at a time, to try and motivate myself to keep writing. All this is raw stuff as in not even first draft. If you see really sad writing, just remember that it will all be fixed in the rewrite...honest...absolutely.

The story parodies the movie Twilight, in that it is supposed to be full of luuuuuv, annoying angst, rationalized feelings and all sorts of cliches. I'm also aiming at the Harry Potter movies, but that one is currently a plot device to get the characters into a weird sort of high school.

Sit back, relax and enjoy reading.

Avoid gnomes.

Evening - page 1

2008-12-11T19:16:00.000-08:00

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The first time I saw her I knew I was in trouble.

She was tall about six feet, yet she moved with none of the awkwardness that I would have thought someone newly come into height would have had. Her body was firm and tanned, a fact which was hard to miss given that she had a habit of wearing a bikini to school. Her dark straight hair reached her shoulders and framed a face that filled the world with light when she smiled.

She wasn't smiling now.

"Get your hands off my man!"

All conversation ceased and an aisle of people formed between Xema, her rival, and her erstwhile boyfriend. Heather, a cute blonde girl with a dimpled smile, suddenly found herself the center of attention.

"But all I did was say hello!"

"You may have only been saying..."

With that Xema's eyes literally seemed to catch on fire as her gaze bore down on her prey. From her lips came fell in an echoing, otherworldly voice.

bcctr flrndebits crxor!

With a soul-rending scream, Heather dropped her books and burst into flames. She dropped to her knees, her flesh quickly consumed by the green-blue hellfire.

"Oh hello Heather ow've you..."

Xema's boyfriend, a short sickly lad named Herbert, turned around and frowned. As was his habit, he stared down his nose through a pair of small spectacles which caused him to raise his nose at whoever he was addressing. This mannerism gave the impression that he thought he was better than those around him; which, as a point of fact, he did.

Finally locating the smoldering black skeleton in front of him he remarked.

"You're looking rather thin this semester 'eather."

Before he could consider the matter further, Xema had strode forward and dragged him off with instructions that the she should avoid such "sluts" in the future.

With a cackling evil laugh, a stooped, elderly green skinned lady appeared in a cloud of smoke. The headmistress, the Bad Witch of the North, had arrived.

"What's all this then? What's going on?"

She glared at the circle of shrinking students as if each one of them had been the cause of the recent disturbance.

"Ma'm"

A little blonde girl in a red hood and cloak timidly stepped forward and curtsied.

"Xema torched Heather because she thought she was flirting with her boyfriend."

The headmistress considered this for a second.

"First day and we've already lost one student. This is going to be a good year!"

With another flash and cloud of smoke the witch disappeared again.

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GroupThink: the Lighter Side - Chapter 7

2008-02-19T19:44:00.000-08:00

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Year Minus 5

“So how do you know that these guys exist again?”

August Hanson shifted uneasily in his chair. The director of operations was staring at him like he expected him to proclaim himself Napoleon. As it was, he could kiss his career in the Bureau goodbye.

“The impossible level of coordination between individuals in the colony sir.”

“Riiiight. So basically, these people are working together?”

“Not just working together, Sir, they are anticipating needs, pooling resources and communicating with other colonies elsewhere in the nation, perhaps even the world.”

Robert Muller leaned back in his chair and looked at August.

“A world-wide conspiracy?”

“Possibly, sir, but at present I’m only concerned with the United States.”

His face expressionless, Muller raised a questioning eyebrow at Thomas Pickard, the deputy director. “Captain Pickard,” as only someone who outranked him would address him, gave a very slight shake of his head.

“And aside from this very high level of coordination, what do you think has demonstrated their intent?"

Augie tried to look the Director in the eye. He hoped he wasn’t sweating.

“None sir. But the point is that no one ever shows this level of coordination for prolonged periods of time. Not even religious fanatic groups! And I’ve found 3 colonies already!”

“Well, are they engaging in some sort of terrorist or criminal activities? Could we bring some of them in on other charges for questioning?"

“Not that I’ve been able to witness or determine after the fact…”

“In fact the level of crime in these “colonies” has dropped dramatically since they moved in, right?”

“Yes that’s quite correct, but the thing is that the original residents were not pushed out! They were assimilated into the colony. That’s how it seems to grow.

“OK, well, it sounds like you laid the ground work for an investigation to proceed with. At this point I’d like to confer with Pat, figure out what the options are, what resources we have available, that sort of thing. Then a plan can be created to deal with this…thing. How about if you go back and organize your information, check your sources in preparation for the next stage.”

Mr. Muller did have a nice way with people, particularly Bureau people, that could make them feel like they were marching off on a critical mission instead of, say, being nudged out of an office while some people could figure out what to do with him.

As the door clicked shut, a bit of pressure left the room as well. Muller regarded Pickard in a friendlier manner.

“So what do we have here, Captain? Romulans trying to invade Walmarts?”

Pickard winced at Muller’s statement but rallied. “Well, one thing that Hanson didn’t get to was the potential for such communities to hide fugitives. We know about Attica…”

“Yeah, 1200 people, convicts, guards, the whole bunch disappear. One of the groups Augie describes would be a perfect place for them to go, but why? A lot of them were pretty nasty guys. Why would a community want to have anything to do with rapists, armed robbers, convicted murderers and drug dealers?”

“It make no sense, I think he’s gone off on a long and expensive tangent. At best we have some people who are trying to clean up their neighborhood. At worst we have another “commune” style approach to urban living.”

“What about Mr. Hanson?”

Pickard looked down at his hands.

“When he started at the Bureau he was bright, eager to get his career moving, you know the type, and above all, sane. I’m afraid that this investigation may have been too much for him. I’m considering putting him on some boring routine project and see how he progresses.”

“What about making him the F B eye for these groups?”

“I’d be nervous with that. He has not shown any…odd behavior outside of his interest in this case. Giving him more exposure could exacerbate the problem. On the other hand, he is good at spotting these groups, so if we really do want to keep an eye on them he would be very useful.”

Rob and Thom got up.

“We need to know if this Augie guy is going to be someone to nurture or someone to discard. I’m leaving it up to you to decide.”

“I see.”

* * *

Augie walked back to his “office.” Lately, the FBI had borrowed from the corporate world and inflicted cubicles on its employees instead of the more traditional offices. In fact, to increase efficiency, Augie actually shared a cube with…

“Mulder!”

“Hi Scott.”

Scott Slaughter, or “Dr. Slaughter” as people sometimes called him was a person who appeared to much more of a Bureau man than Augie was. He had taken to comparing August with Fox Mulder from “The X-Files” lately. Against all expectations, the two were actually friends.

“So how’d the meeting with Capt. Picard go?”

August sighed.

“Remember when we rehearsed it?”

“That bad eh?”

“Worse.”

“Augie, Augie, Augie. I warned you that this was a bad idea…”

“I know.”

“…and that this investigation of yours is a waste of time and taxpayer money…”

“I know.”

“…and that if you want to rise up in the ranks you need to do something that is going to make them look good and that all this does is make you look crazy.”

“I know.”

“What were you thinking?!”

Augie paused and frowned.

“I don’t know.”

“Well look. What say you put this little X-File behind you and get crunching on something real? Take those Iraqi refugees…”

“We already looked into them. They’re just a bunch of slobs who fled the country and are trying to get by.”

“Yeah, but the point it that they barely speak English, go to mosque 3 times a day, listen to a cleric that is borderline, and people around them have heard them voice anti-American statements.”

“They’re just frustrated because they thought America would be some paradise and it turns out that things aren’t quite that simple.”

“That’s beside the point. We’ve received word from on high that we need to be more proactive in our approach to counter-terrorism. Rounding up these guys and detaining them in a nice, public way will send a message to the rest and make your boss look good.”

August had to admit that Scott had a point. Augie didn’t have any good leads to follow up, so doing that would show that he wasn’t just following wild goose chases.

“Hey man, it’s almost quitting time. Let’s head down to Grand Slam, have a few beers, talk this over…”

“You could hit on that new assistant.”

Scott clapped him on the back.

“That’s the spirit.”

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GroupThink: the Lighter Side - Chapter 6

2008-02-17T13:48:00.000-08:00

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Year 10, Month 12

I can't believe this!

200 men fidgeted nervously.

Eventually the Coalition realized it was doing this and tried to tell itself to relax.

The group stopped fidgeting, but nonetheless appeared nervous.

After months of planning and preparation, the Coalition's plans of "relocation" were finally ready. Everything was in place and ready to go. And it was hesitating. At the last moment.

Just get on the damn bus!

But what if this doesn't work?

What if we get stuck in a lab?

Are you sure we can't just stay here?

Look, we've been over this before. If we stay here and do nothing someone is bound to notice! If nobody else, the families of your victims will notice.

Except for me.

Right, except for Fred.

Because I was wrongly accused.

Right, who was wrongly accused.

And who spent the last 10 years of my life…

SHUT UP!

The Coalition tried to count to 10, then noticed that everyone was counting.

Really, it couldn't blame them; if for no other reason than it literally felt their fear, their dread of what would happen if things went wrong.

Look, guys, we need to either go or scrap this. Everything depends on following the plan.

The men shuffled around nervously.

I don't want to go back on the drugs.

And I don't want to have to deal with that stupid gang.

And I don't want to get beaten up all the time.

The list went on and on...a list of misery and suffering that spanned the range of human experience. Many of them had more doubts and more problems than your average person, hence their current abode. But it all boiled down to one thing.

I'm scared too.

What? Huh? What did he say? Is it really a he?

I've only been alive for a few months. I don't want to die either.

The response was a stone cold silence.

But if we stay, we'll all die. Not literally I guess. But we won't be able to stay together. We'll have to go back to the gangs and drugs and the killings…it's not going to stop, not unless we do something. We can't stay straight, not if they break us apart and they'll never trust us.

Believe me guys, I don't want to do this. If there were any other way, we'd use it, but there just isn't anything else.

With a great deal of hesitation the men started getting on the buses. As each one left, the Coalition could feel a little more of itself slip away. The distance between them was just too great – it couldn't hear everyone when they were that far away.

It was almost funny. It wasn't afraid of getting caught in the conventional sense. The Coalition knew that it could deal with any one person or even a group of people with ease; but only if it could think, if it could hear everyone, if everyone could hear its voice.

When it traveled like this – separate, unable to think, it was vulnerable. The only good point was that it was like falling asleep: slow, gradual. You could only be aware of it if you were really watching.

The Coalition was so busy calming its people, trying to assure them that the plan would work, that it couldn't concentrate on "staying awake."

When enough people had left that its consciousness had disappeared, some panicked. It was like drowning in silence. The ones that were left ran for the buses and piled aboard, trying to catch up.

Thankfully, none of this was apparent to anyone else. The men had time to calm down. They were still scared, but at least they weren't panicking. They weren't mobbing the buses, but there was a definite sense of urgency to get moving.

Weird flashes of "semi-consciousness" would appear and disappear, like someone waking up in the night and going back to sleep. These were punctuated by moments of fear: would the plan work? What if they couldn't regroup? What if someone mobilized the National Guard? The sense of urgency became more …urgent as the last few buses left.

* * *

Yahoooo!

This is killer!

Hey - check this out!

It had been 2 weeks since the Coalition arrived in the city, and in that time, it had gone completely berserk.

The place was like some mental version of a drug – so many minds, so many different minds! He had been inducting new members faster than ever before. And there were so many to choose from, so much to learn. Musicians, politicians, homeless, rich, poor, students, teachers, addicted, clean – it was like a smorgasbord of thought, feeling, experience.

Travel had been very disconcerting.

As planned, the men arrived and gradually consciousness returned to the Coalition. Things had been dicey at first – some of them had panicked and run off. Others milled about in groups large enough to draw attention. It had taken a full day to get everyone back together and settled in.

Finding a place to stay had been laughably easy. Abandoned buildings were common enough. The problem was dealing with local gangs, derelicts and others.

With its encyclopedia-like knowledge of all things criminal and the months of preparation, The People were quickly housed. By "concentrating" on a few key gang members, it was relatively easy to bring them into the Coalition and thereby bring the gangs under control. After that, The People had a place to stay and a modest source of income.

Plenty of places had crappy, low paying jobs where few questions were asked. The Coalition was very good at managing money and combined with no-rent housing and rather boring but cheap and nourishing food, its expenses were few. The People spent the time repairing their new place of residence and getting basic necessities back up and running.

By that time, new members had started being "recruited" on their own.

Inducting women into the Coalition had come as a shock. It wasn't that they were different the strange part had been how similar they were. Different thoughts and emphasis but still basically the same basic drives, needs and desires as men.

The Coalition's background being what it was, it had a rather strange view of the opposite sex. The more normal members viewed them as more people, while the "socially challenged" people viewed them with fury, anger and disgust.

How do you stay angry at someone, though, when you can feel their thoughts? The basis for much of the anger was founded on their being a difference between someone else and you. What do you do when you see their insecurities, drives and needs mirrored by your own?

Marla had been the first woman inductee, and had gone largely unnoticed until the Coalition was making another plan for purchasing supplies.

Rice: check

Beans: check

Spiderman band-aids: check

Sanitary napkins: what?!!

It was like a gigantic eyeball swerved to examine her.

Whoa…

Check it out.

Who brought her in?

Umm…hi, guys…

What are we gonna do with her?

It is an odd feeling to be, at the same time, the subject of scrutiny and the examiner. Questions unbidden surfaced and were answered. A mental hush settled on the consciousness of Coalition. Then came the equivalent of a shrug.

Sanitary napkins: check.

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GroupThink: the Lighter Side - Chapter 5

2008-02-10T12:20:00.001-08:00

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“Would you please tell me what’s going on?”

Ed glanced over at his wife, Mary, as they left town. The last few hours had been hectic, throwing some things into the car, grabbing Mary from work and heading out of town. The whole time, Ed had felt the “eye” of the Coalition watching him. Some of the inmates had even given him helpful tips:

Don’t forget your toothbrush!

Oh, thanks, …get out of my head!

Sorry.

Now, as he put miles between himself and Attica, the voice seemed to be slowly fading.

But what should he tell Mary? “Hey Mar: there’s this weird mind-control thing going on at the prison so I thought I’d leave before…no.” How about “you know how in ‘Planet of the Apes’ there were these guys would could control minds so…no.”

They stopped for some gas and Ed used the restroom. He looked in the mirror, trying to figure out what to say. Thinking back, he recalled a time when he had to tell a girl whom you had actually hit it off with that he had to leave. It was a sad time, when they had decided to rescind his parole.

Abruptly Ed realized that it was not his memory.

Ed left the gas station and kept driving. Mary seemed to have resigned herself to whatever Ed was doing and kept staring blankly out the window as they drove through the night.

Ed woke up the next day and sat bolt upright. Mary stirred next to him and rubbed her eyes. Looking blearily at him she said:

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I hear nothing.”

“Wonderful.”

“Don’t you see? It’s back to the way it was!”

“What was it like before?”

“About the same.”

Mary gave him a “well…he’s my jerk” look and went to the bathroom. Ed looked around and tried to put his finger on what the difference was, but it eluded him. He tried “remembering” the foreign thought he had last night, but failed. He tried “calling” on the voice but could not hear anything. Ed was on the verge of dancing when Mary came back in the room.

“Why are you so happy?”

“I’m free!”

“Great. Now what do we do?”

Ed’s mouth dropped. A good question. Hundreds of miles from their home, no job…not a good situation.

Back at Attica, the Coalition was pondering its next move.

If that is how non-convicts react to us, we are going to be in trouble soon.

Just then another person joined. The Coalition gave the mental equivalent of a hand wave.

The possibility that Ed might tell the police did not concern the Coalition – it was rather amusing to think of poor Ed running around telling people about “the voices in my head.” What did concern it was having members arrive and leave by the hundreds. If things kept up the way they were going, all 2000+ inmates would be Coalition in 12 months. There would simply be no way to avoid the problem if it came to that.

What we could really use is the warden.

Yes, but just thinking about a guard caused Ed to join, and look what happened with that.

Good point…wait a minute! I am the warden!

Uh oh…

Over the next month or so, several other guards and prison employees joined the ranks of the Coalition. A quick examination led it to the conclusion that it wasn’t that prison held societies criminals, prison just held the ones who had been caught.

Having the warden join the Coalition simplified the problem immensely. It effectively halted the release process. When you got right down to it, people were very concerned that criminals go to jail, but there was much less concern around ensuring that they got released.

While the basic problem remained, the Coalition had some breathing space.

* * *

Year 10, Month 6

Breathe in.

For a person whose life is chaotic, a moment of sanity can be jarring.

Breathe out.

In the case of the Coalition, many members had gone their whole lives in a blur of chaos. Victims of abuse, foster homes, and the just plain socially maladapted – they covered much of the extreme end of a chaotic life.

Breathe in.

One thing about the day-to-day in prison is that it is very predictable. One day is very like the next on the inside. When you factor in complete control of the prison itself, like the Coalition had, there was very little to upset the rhythm of life.

Breathe out.

Japanese traditions call this “Wa” or harmony. Some of the members of the Coalition who had been to Alcoholics Anonymous called it “Serenity.” Whatever it was, the People (as the Coalition called its members), were experiencing this feeling on a very large scale.

There were no fights, no threats, nothing out of order. Many of the People felt like they were underwater. The sound had been turned down. There was nothing touching them. Serenity. Wa.

Breathe in.

Being one of the People also gave perspective. The odd thing was how easily guys like the warden meshed with the rest. Sometimes it seemed like the difference between those on the inside and those outside was luck: the ones on the inside had been caught.

Whatever the case, while some of the People were extreme, most of them were not a whole lot different from the non-convicted members. Many of the non-cons were just as surprised at experiencing serenity as the convicts were.

Breathe out.

If harmony was strange and new, the concept of group meditation was even stranger. The Coalition had to be careful when doing this: otherwise everyone would stop what they were doing and meditate all the time. The feeling was contagious and somewhat addictive. Those who were better at it could help the ones who had trouble, hence, the group as a whole learned very quickly.

Open your eyes.

200 people simultaneously came out of the meditative state. In various states of repose, they got up, moved about and left the room so that another 200 could come in. The Coalition had to limit the time and size of the groups.

If the rest of the inmates thought something weird was going on before, now they felt that the place had been invaded. The inmates had a tendency to be paranoid to begin with, but these days some of them were jumping out of their skin at the slightest noise.

The Coalition gave a mental sigh. The day was coming soon when it would have to leave. No paroles and no departures for 6 months was pushing its luck. It didn’t help that some of the non-members had been talking about how weird Attica was before the People had managed to get control of the mail going into and out of the prison.

What was coming was risky. The entire population was going to have to leave in the space of one day. This was going to make the news all over the world. There might even be nation-wide panic. How do you explain 2000+ prisoners vanishing, and worse, how do you explain that you can’t find them?

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Groupthink: the Lighter Side - Chapter 4

2008-02-04T19:09:00.000-08:00

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Year 10, Month 1

So much for the “bitter-sweet years of childhood” he thought sarcastically. Whereas human beings do not have a defining point where they become aware, the being that was made up of about 1,000 inmates in Attica Federal Penitentiary’s moment came and went like a 12 ton boulder hitting the ground. Once he became aware, there was no going back.

It was definitely a he, a male, owing to its being composed of all men. It did the mental equivalent of sitting on a stump and thinking, trying to come up with a name.

“Adam?” too biblical. “We?” too generic. “Coalition?” that would do for the time being. He also liked the ominous, 50s-esque overtones it implied.

If the prison guards had thought the inmates were on drugs before, now they thought they were all on some sort of sedative. There were no fights, no shouting matches. People didn’t even talk much. What’s more some “gnomes” seemed to have moved onto the premises.

There had been some broken tiles in the shower area for the past 5 years, for example. Occasionally, an inmate would cut his foot and complain (or worse) about it. Then one day a guard noticed that the tiles had been repaired.

Everything on the cellblock where Nate lived was spotless. The floors scrubbed, the cells neat and orderly.

One of the strangest things of all was that many of the prisoners were not applying for parole. Sometimes an inmate might do that when they know they'll be turned down anyways, in can shorten the sentence. It can result in being released earlier then if they applied. But these inmates were model reformers, every last one of them. It was like they didn’t want to leave.

As it turned out, they didn’t. One large problem the Coalition faced was that of what to do with people who left the prison. Before it had become conscious, this was not as much of an issue: people didn’t know they were part of it, so they didn't care if they left. But now that it was conscious, individual members did not want to leave.

This came as a surprise to the Coalition, who thought that someone like Nate, for example, would jump at the chance of getting out of his mental grasp. One thing no one had counted on was the intense feeling of…serenity that people had.

There was precious little to worry about. Other inmates simply did not mess with members, at least not anymore, and definitely not twice. The unfortunate who chose to do so would find themselves attacked on a thousand different fronts. Usually it was not physical, but, for that person, everything would go wrong. His cell would be trashed, he kept getting tripped and pushed by other inmates. Anything that could be reported to the guards was reported, his mail was lost, his laundry had holes, etc.

The violent ones were simply killed.

In all situations, the Coalition made it very clear why the retribution was being exacted. People didn’t mess with it.

Another problem was that the Coalition was growing. While he didn’t think about recruiting more people and he certainly didn’t try to induct more it happened anyways. In one month alone, about 100 new members had joined. They’d just notice at some point that they were part of it.

All this added up to one big problem: if things kept on going like this, the Coalition was going to end up in a lab somewhere or it was going to be forced into escaping from Attica. The lab wouldn’t work out. After a few weeks (days at this rate), all the experimenters would end up part of the experiment. Surprisingly, allowing a few people to escape would be child’s play. It was getting everyone out that was the hard part.

What the Coalition needed, he thought ruefully, was to get one of the guards on his side…

Standing on the grounds in front of the courtyard where the prisoners will milling about, Mr. Ed White, a guard with 4 years experience at Attica, had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched.

As it was, Ed was having a nerve rattling day.

He would have liked to have said that the inmates were acting up, but they were behaving ridiculously well: lining up before it was time to do so, no fights, courteous…it was unnatural. While that was “bad enough” today felt especially weird.

Ed would turn around suddenly and notice that people were not staring at him. He would walk up to groups of men that were not talking about him. If it were not for the fact that he got lousy pay and benefits, Ed would have taken a sick day.

Ed glanced at his watch and then back at the inmates. Then he glanced back at his watch again. Late! It was past the time when the inmates were supposed to head out! At least his vigilance was paying off!

Ed blasted a shrill note on his whistle. The inmates looked up.

“Alright convicts! Time to get moving!”

“But we just got here!”

“Don’t give me any of that! It’s 1:15 and time for the next group.”

“We are the next group!”

“Now don’t try any of that crap on me!”

The inmates just stared at something behind him.

Ed glanced over his shoulder and noticed a group of men, neatly lined up, waiting for him to take them back to the cell block. One of them waved uncertainly.

“Right! I knew that! OK funny boys, back to the cell block!”

At least now he had a reason to feel like people were watching him, what with him leading a group of 100 inmates. After delivering his group Ed was waiting at the vestibule between the cellblock and the rest of the complex for the next one. He traded some banter with Joe, the guy who opened and closed the gates.

“This place just keeps getting stranger.”

“You’re telling me! The other day I found out our computer system lost my personal day from last year!”

I am utterly alone Ed thought to himself.

I used to feel that way too.

Ed glanced at Joe sharply, but the man was still blathering on about lost vacation days. He looked around but didn’t see any other suspects.

It’s someone talking to you, exactly.

Ed turned around slowly but still didn’t see anyone.

“And here come our fine fellows now…” Joe observed dryly.

The next group of inmates came up to the vestibule. Joe buzzed them through. The inner door shut and Joe buzzed open the outer door. The group of men started walking towards the courtyard and Ed had to run for a bit to catch up.

Some guard I am.

They understand what’s going on.

The man nearest to Ed turned towards him and gave him the “thumbs up.”

“You, ah, can hear him?”

The man turned back. Ed felt a bead of sweat running down his spine.

Um…er…hello?

Yes, I am still here.

What’s going on?

I don't believe you.

Then things will be harder for you.

It was almost exactly like talking to himself, except that Ed was sure the thoughts were not coming from him.

What do you mean?

You have no choice.

What are you saying?

You are already part of us.

But…but I’m ME!

So are we.

Then…why can’t I read someone’s thoughts?!

Have you tried?

“Yo shithead!”

Ed glanced up angrily. Now this he could deal with! Ed strode over to a group of inmates who were standing in a circle.

“Which one of you maggots said that?!”

“Right here dipshit!”

Ed whirled around to confront Nate.

“Alright convict! You’re about to have yourself a little time out!”

“You read my mind, putz.”

“What? Are you looking to spend the next year in the hole?”

“Even if I were in there, you'd be right there with me.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Have you seen my lips move?”

“What?”

“When I talk are my lips moving?”

Thank you, Nate.

The inmate gave Ed a huge grin and turned away.

But…but…but…

You will be able to tell if someone is a member just by looking at them. You will pick up the knack in a day or two.

How do I leave?

You can’t. None of us can.

This isn’t fair!

No, it isn’t.

Ed glanced around wildly for a few moments, then he realized something.

You chose me!

Not exactly. I was merely studying you.

Why?

I…we need to escape from this place. If something isn’t done, some of us will soon be forced out.

Then why have all of you have been passing on the chance for parole?

Now that I'm conscious, none of us want to leave.

But why would anyone want to be part of this…this…thing?!

Yeah, pathetic, isn’t it?

Ed heard a new voice. An image came unbidden to his mind of a prisoner. At first he had trouble recognizing him, but then the man came into focus.

Heh…self-image. Never quite the same as what other people see, is it?

You want to be part of this?

Not when you put it that way but…have you ever doubted yourself? Me, I doubted myself my whole life. I’m a screw-up and I can’t do anything right.

And now?

Well, I still may be a screw-up, but I don’t have to deal with it alone.

Every doubt, every fear, every worry that had ever visited Ed…

Check!

Same here!

Me too!

I said that!

Word!

Every dirty secret, every crime, every transgression…

Been there, done that.

Yup.

Me too.

I never thought of using a gerbil like that…

Enough!

Ed was crouched over and gasping for breath.

I was wrong about you. Unlike most others you do have a choice. Since you can come and go from this place more or less at will, you could probably get far enough away that you will not hear my voice. You will escape. If that’s what you want.

You wanna time me?

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Groupthink: the Lighter Side - Chapter 3

2008-02-01T20:09:00.001-08:00

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Year 8

If Nate hadn’t already been sure he was crazy, he would have started wondering.

It seemed like he couldn’t do anything without someone anticipating it and helping him before he even started. There hadn’t been a real fight in his cell block for 2 years and even the guards called it “creepy.” Lately, he wasn’t even sure about them either.

And just to put the cherry on the whole shit sundae (as Nate liked to say), lately he was getting these weird feelings. Every now and then, he would be doing something when he suddenly realized that he wasn’t the one doing the doing as it were. On one occasion he had glanced in the mirror and seen someone else.

While in many ways Nate felt more in tune with everyone around him, he also felt incredibly alone. Many of the things that used to part of his life were gone. Beating other people up: gone. Fear of the guards: gone. Black market: gone.

To take away the structure of his life left the man feeling uncertain. Frightened. Alone.

Nate had never been able to talk to other people before, but now he did so even less. While it seemed like he didn't need to talk, he also missed it. How can you ask for a magazine when someone hands it to you before you ask? How can you threaten someone when they know you can't follow through?

While this applied to the "members" of his "group," the other inmates avoided him like he had a disease. Everyone seemed to think that Nate and his crew were "spooky" and "weird." Nate's crew did not use drugs, they were inhumanly helpful to each other, and they didn't start fights. If someone else messed with them, however, they stopped fast or they got dead.

Four other people had died since the incident with Bull. Two of them were run of the mill prison deaths involving a fight, but the other two had involved threats of some kind against one of Nate’s people.

While none of them died by the same means, Nate was certain that he was somehow the cause. In one case, the guy had died of a supposed heart attack. This was fine as far as the infirmary boys were concerned, the inmate had been incredibly overweight and had a family history of coronary problems. It was just that he had been 40 years old at the time. Unlikely but it did happen.

Somehow, Nate knew that it had been potassium cyanide. Mind you, Nate couldn’t even spell the phrase, but he felt certain that it could be mistaken for a coronary if you didn’t know what you were looking for. He could describe how to get it from some of the stuff around the prison, how to make it tasteless, and how to get it into the man’s food without him suspecting. He could visualize some of the steps.

The other man, whose nickname was Shark, had died in a fight, which was not remarkable in a prison filled with violent offenders. What’s more, Shark was known for his violent moods and had gotten into several fights during the previous weeks. What made it strange to Nate was that he somehow knew what had set him off. He could recall talking to the people he had fought and telling them some bit of information that would set Shark off. It seemed to Nate that Shark's fights were a series of carefully orchestrated events with one goal: eliminating him. While Nate was sure about how it had been set up, he was equally sure that he hadn’t done it.

Every time it involved many people, acting seemingly on their own, but with an incredible degree of coordination. It would have been impossible for a bunch of men like Nate's crew to do this on their. Someone would always talk or it was just one person.

It never occurred to the warden that it was a conspiracy. He was just happy that he was able to run the prison on so little money while still managing to keep his "retirement fund" going.

And then there was Mr. Doe. John Doe, the gimp just lay or sat around most of the day. But Nate could swear that he had talked to the guy. There had been one incident where a letter had arrived for John from the state telling him of the death of a relative. Nate had opened it and exclaimed “Aunt Jo died?” At that moment, he could have told you everything you ever wanted to know about “Aunt Jo.” Of course, Nate had never even seen her.

All-in-all, the peace and serenity that permeated Nate's block just seemed more and more…unnatural.

* * *

Year 10

Things had reached “critical mass.”

Nate was sure that something big was about to happen, but he couldn’t say what. Sometimes, he felt like he wasn't in control of his body. He would have periods of time that he couldn't account for.

Then there were the periods where he remembered things that he was sure did not happen to him. A shrink would have described Nate's "whiteout" periods as delusions. Of course, the fact that they were actual events made things a bit more complex.

The feeling decreased as time went on, which was comforting. Then one day the prisoner realized that it wasn't happening less, he was just becoming accustomed to it.

He’d been trying to deal with the feeling all morning when he realized that a guard was yelling at him.

“It’s lunch time, idiot!”

“I heard you the first time.” Nate growled in reply.

The guard looked at him strangely and walked away.

“And get Mr. Nate to move too!”

Nate opened and shut his mouth. He glanced over at a bewildered man who stared back at him like he had grown another head. Abruptly, Nate realized he was looking at himself.

“Stop it!”

Nate looked around and was calmed by the fact that he seemed to be back in his body. He heard yells from around the block. It appeared it was catching.

As the inmates of Nate’s block shuffled towards the dining room, bumping into each other, doorways, walls, etc. one of the guards shook his head and said:

“Think they’re on some kind of drug?”

Nate turned and glared at the man, who suddenly took a step back. Normally, the guards never showed that kind of fear in front of the inmates. Nate realized that everyone had stopped to glare at the guard.

Self-consciously, the men got moving again.

Sitting at the lunch table, Nate grumbled: “Pass the damn salt.”

He looked up to see 6 salt-shakers and dozens more being handed to him from all over the room.

“Dammit!”

The last word had been echoed by everyone in the room. Nate glared at one of the salt shakers, and realized that he was not Nate.

In a flash he realized that he was.

He had hundreds of arms, legs, heads. He could see everything in the room in precise detail. Consciousness was a vast and unexplored universe that he had never visited. Knowledge undreamt of was his to command. Someone else was in his mind.

Just as quickly as the feeling had come about, it shattered. Nate found himself sitting in the lunch room holding a salt shaker. He felt his blood turn to ice as he realized what was happening; as he realized that he had no way of stopping it.

Everyone around him seemed to be dazed as well.

Nate looked around, desperate to find something to latch on to, something that he could concentrate on that would prevent that…thing from taking control. He looked at the table, his plate, his hands, his shoe anything that he could focus on.

The minutes crawled by. How long could he keep this up?

The bell rang, signifying that lunch was over. All around the room men got to their feet, all of them trying to avoid letting their minds wander. Trying to hang on.

It was hard to walk and do this at the same time, you tended to bump into things. Abruptly that passed. Nate let out a mental sigh, seeing the way ahead…even though he was looking down. The consciousness returned. The feeling of the other returned.

For most people, the feeling that they are, that they exist as something separate from everyone else, is something that does not occur at a single point. For this new collection of people, the transition was abrupt.

I am.

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GroupThink: the Lighter Side - Chapter 2

2008-01-28T21:12:00.001-08:00

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Year 5

The weirdest thing about Bull’s death was that it was honestly thought to have been an accident. By everyone except Nate and his boys.

5 minutes after he saw Bull, Nate knew that he would not be able to take him. He was a little bigger than Nate, but he was also strong and fast as hell. He was also confident and he knew how life worked behind bars.

To survive in a place like Attica, you had to be a badass or you had to be somebody’s bitch. You could have outside influence, like being with organized crime or maybe having someone owe you enough that the warden would make sure you were not severely mistreated. And then there were the bosses.

The bosses were the ones who ran the drugs and contraband and everything else that should not go on inside a prison. Running that sort of thing is dangerous – you had to get at least some of the guards to be in on it and you had to get a good sized chunk of the inmates to help as well. One of the conditions was that if someone got out of hand, you had to get them back in line or put them down.

Bull had apparently run such an operation before, because a week or two after arriving he had a small cadre of followers. Sooner or later it would come down to Nate and Bull facing off – the way Nate had been running things there was no other way. And when that time came, Nate knew that Bull would win.

Nate couldn’t have put into words exactly how he knew. It was the way that Bull moved that said the man had been in a few fights where the loser had gone to the morgue. And it was the way he talked to people that said he was just plain crazy and didn’t give a damn if he lost: he was either going to be the boss or he was going to be dead.

Given the changes that were going on, Nate would not have actually minded handing over leadership to Bull, but that was also not an option. One of the things that Bull’s victory would give to everyone was a good reason not to mess with him. Nate, as the “top dog” was therefore the only person whose defeat could give Bull what he wanted. And Bull was not going to be satisfied with anything else.

Nate sat in his cell and thought. It may have been the first time in his life he thought so hard about a problem. Though he didn’t notice at the time, the people around him were concentrating too. In fact all the people in the cells nearby were quietly contemplating the situation.

He felt as if he were thinking faster than he ever had in his life. He quickly went through a number of options but discarded them for one reason or another until he remembered an accident that had occurred a few years back in the shower…

With lightning speed, he recalled the details of the incident. The man had slipped on a tile and hit his neck on a low partition that separated the showers from the lockers, breaking his spinal column and killing him instantly. It was judged a freak accident and forgotten. Nate thought about what he would need to do to get something like that to happen to Bull…

Abruptly, the feeling of intense concentration left Nate, and he shook his head. Wishing for Bull to die that way was not going to kill him. He needed to get a few thugs together, get Bull alone with them and kill the motherfucker. Of course it would be difficult to get the right group because nobody would help Nate out of the kindness of their own hearts and even if he did win, he would be facing murder one and…shit.

Over the next few days, Nate noticed that he was thinking about the “freak accident” idea a lot. He found himself going over the details again and again: exactly what part of the neck had been hit? How much force did you need to strike that area to snap the spinal column? Had it been the front of the neck or the back? When did people take showers? Did they have a choice or was it on a schedule? When did Bull go?

The weird thing was that he noticed that the people around him seemed to be thinking about it too. One day he found S&W sitting in his bunk reading a book on human anatomy, turned to a section about the spine. As he was passing a nearby cell, he noticed one of the inmates looking over what appeared to be a schedule of some kind. Ordinarily, Nate might have thought he was just being paranoid…

The next day was marked with a bizarre series of coincidences.

At shower timemost of Nate’s cell block was there. The guards stood around, with their usual disinterest as the inmates took care of business in the overly chlorinated water.

Bull came into the shower area and took spot near the top of the row. The showers were now full. A minute later Nate came in and took a shower near the bottom. Nate saw Bull as he walked in. The man smirked at him in his crazy, “I’m gonna fuck you up” way.

Nate also noticed that he was near the partition wall.

A few seconds later Nate exclaimed “Fuckin water’s cold!”

He looked around and noticed Deck standing under the water near him.

“Hey Deck! Let me use your shower!”

Deck, a large man who occasionally gave Nate trouble, turned to him and said: “Fuck you.”

Hoots and laughter filled the shower area. This was another one of those discipline/hierarchy moments…

“Awww, c’mon. I asked all nice and…”

Nate smacked him and the two went down throwing punches at each other. Immediately, pandemonium reigned in the showers and other inmates rushed in to see what was going on. This included Bull, who was near the outside of the crowd. The guards were yelling and trying to clear a path to fighters.

An opening appeared near Bull, who quickly approached to get a better view. He didn’t notice that he was near the partition wall. The guards had similarly noticed an opening…on the other side of the crowd.

Abruptly, the man next to Bull moved and kicked Bulls feet out from under him. At the same time, the man on the other side of him pushed him back.

“What the fuuuuu!”

With amazing precision, the man behind him caught and accelerated his fall, putting his hands on Bull’s face and chest. A split second later the back of his neck connected with the partition.

There was a cracking noise and the man quickly stepped back and looked at Bull. A second later he exclaimed: “fuck man, are you hurt?”

Bull didn’t respond. He lay on the ground with his neck at a weird angle. The tussle between Nate and Deck continued.

In fact it took about five minutes before the guards discovered that anything was amiss. They had hauled off Nate and Deck to what guards jokingly referred to as “the time out room,” when they noticed that the inmates were all milling about staring at Bull. In another 5 minutes the managed to get the man to the infirmary, where he was pronounced dead.

The conclusion was that Bull had slipped on the wet tiles and broken his neck. Just like the man had done a few years back. The warden used this point when he spoke about it to the inmates and impressed upon them in the importance of not having fights in the shower area.

As Nate sat in the tiny, dark “time out room” after they had hauled him away, one thing that hit him was the way the water had felt. Nice and warm. Why had he hit the Deck?

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GroupThink: the Lighter Side - Chapter 1

2008-01-23T19:56:00.000-08:00

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Year 0

As the cell door slammed shut, Nate, the largest of John’s new cellmates quipped: “Well boys, looks like we got ourselves a new plaything.”

The two other men in the cell sniggered at this while John, the man who had just arrived, started listlessly at him.

John wasn’t his real name, so he had been dubbed “John Doe” by the authorities who had apprehended him after he murdered a passing stranger; apparently for his wallet. Normally, when someone does that to another person, they are bright enough to flee the scene, but in John’s case, he had just stood there, holding the wallet, until the police had arrived. It was fairly obvious that John was severely mentally ill, but in the days of cutbacks or closings of state mental hospitals, John had ended up in a maximum security prison, along with his new friends.

Nate, the man who had spoken, approached John. Nate was about 250 pounds of muscle, bald, and psychopathic. He put his hands on his hips as he looked John up and down.

“Well fella, there’s something you should know about me.”

Nate’s fist slammed into John’s head. John bounced off the bars and slumped to the ground.

“I don’t like new people.”

Nate’s other two cellmates laughed at this, perhaps with a bit more enthusiasm then was warranted, since it meant that they would have to endure less of this treatment at Nate’s hands. For himself, John just lay on the ground and stared at the ceiling, the few meager possessions given to him by the guards on the floor with him.

Nate got to work, giving John an introductory beating and rape so that the new guy would know “whose boss” in this cell. He was disappointed with John’s reaction – basically none, but that was John’s reaction to most of life these days.

His condition, such as it was, manifested itself when he was 5 or so. Much of the time he functioned at just well enough to clothe and feed himself. He would react to his environment in a slow and methodical fashion, and basically without the capacity to communicate.

Every now and then he would become very active, at least compared to most times. During these periods John would use different speech patterns, body language, etc. All in all he seemed to be a different person. One of the few doctors who John had seen in his life had diagnosed him with multiple personality disorder and prescribed some medication that John’s family couldn’t afford.

What was actually happening was that John would start picking up the thoughts of another person – for a short period of time he actually was that other person – but such a conclusion was expecting way to much for an overworked doctor who himself was addicted to Vicodin.

That had been the situation John was in the night that he killed a random stranger. A crack addict nearby who was desperate for a fix had invaded his mind and caused John to awaken from his slumber. He espied a passing stranger, attacked and killed him. Unfortunately for John, just after his victim was dead, the connection was lost, and John found himself in his current situation.

John’s primary response to violence was catatonia. When someone like Nate decided to beat him up, John would lapse into a coma for a few days. This was fine as far as the people in the infirmary were concerned, they preferred people who weren’t a lot of trouble, but there was only a limited amount of space, so the prison guards encouraged Nate to ease up on the beatings.

Nate was mostly trying to impress on John the hierarchical nature of his new environment, but the situation being what it was, he complied with the requests of the authorities and only bothered John for sex. This was fine as far as John was concerned, he had lived with such arrangements on the street for years. Street people have to put up with a lot if they want to survive.

Year 1

It’s hard to say exactly when it started.

If you’ve ever had the experience where you’re eating with some friends and you notice that you have lifted your glass at the same time as your friends, then you have experienced a piece of it.

“The voice,” as it came to be called, ran deeper than that.

One fine day, one of Nate’s associates remarked on the fact that Nate had put a piece of bread on John’s plate during lunch. Nate looked down at his plate and frowned. His bread was missing.

“You better gimme that back now, or I’ll kick your ass.”

“I ain’t got it! You gave it to your punk.”

“The hell!”

“Check it out.”

Nate looked over at John, sitting a couple of tables away with some other gimps. John did indeed have extra bread. What happened next was even weirder.

“What the fuck…”

John got up, walked over, and put all his bread on Nate’s plate. And then walked back. Nate spent the rest of lunch confused.

When he got back to his cell, Nate was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Eating bread.

Things like that started to happen all around him. Not necessarily just for John, but for everyone in the cell. After what happened in the lunchroom, it became more subtle.

One of the more noticeable times was when Nate woke up one morning, swung his legs out over the floor and hopped down. From the third bunk. Nate always took the bottom bunk – it was just one of those things.

Nate frowned and looked over at Ed, who was sleeping in the bottom bunk. He was going to pound the shit out of him when he remembered that Ed was sick last night and had to use the toilet a lot. Nate was about to shrug it off when he realized that he had never given up the bottom bunk before, even in the same situation. If anything, he would make the sick guy try and hold it all night.

Year 4

Things were getting out of hand.

In some ways, prison was like the military in the sense that a certain amount of discipline is expected, even necessary in order for things to run, if not smoothly, then at least predictably. In the last few months, there had been very few beatings near Nate’s cell.

The thing is, you really did not need someone to step out of line for them to warrant a beating. Sometimes they could have something nice happen to them: maybe a visit from a relative that other people thought made you too “uppity.” Whammo, problem solved.

Finally, one of the guards even remarked on the fact and it struck Nate that something had to be done. That night, Nate got ready to beat up John.

As beatings go, it was fairly typical for Nate. Rage, his old friend, came to Nate’s aid as it always did, putting the man into an almost meditative state. He doled out his punches and kicks onto the unresisting man in a methodical way, careful to ensure that the bruises would be very visible, but also careful to ensure that John did not die.

The two other people who shared his cell watched Nate beat John with expressionless faces, having learned long ago that they could neither hide from Nate nor help John avoid his beating. All in all, fairly, typical.

Then Nate noticed some differences.

After he was done, Nate lay down in the bottom bunk. Administering a proper beating took some effort. When he looked over at John, he saw that Ed and S&W were attending to him, but in a way that would actually help. What’s more, Nate had a headache.

It started barely noticeable, in the back of his head. As time went on, it grew to encompass his world, until he felt like his head was being used as a drum. Then the body aches set in. When the guards dropped by and took John off to the infirmary, Nate tried to pretend he was asleep.

The next day, Nate still hurt, but not as badly as he had the day before. The worst part was that he was deathly afraid that Ed or SnW would mention his condition to everyone else. To his surprise, however, they kept quiet. Despite the discomfort, Nate managed as best he could and got through the day. There were a few raised eyebrows over his quietness, but he managed enough growls and dirty looks that people thought that he was just in a bad mood. Word had also gotten around about John.

It took a full week before Nate was really feeling better. Strangely enough, that coincided with John’s return from the infirmary.

When John got back, the four of them sat around and stared at each other. Nate noticed the bruises on John’s head and felt the corresponding places on his body. They seemed to ache a bit. Nate looked around at the others and they too were prodding themselves in the same areas.

This was going to make things difficult.

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Groupthink: the Lighter Side

2008-01-23T19:49:00.000-08:00

An emerging telepathic group consciousness called the Coalition is born...in a prison for murderers and psychos. Does humanity have a future in a world run by a psychotic super-mind?

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Disclaimer:

All truly great writers do lots of research before writing their stories. This is one of the many reasons why I'm not a great writer. I have no clue if this story even lives in the same neighborhood as reality, I have no clue whatsoever what life is like in jail, and the only thing I know about the FBI is the factual reporting that I've seen in the X-Files.

I chose the name of Attica because I'm lazy and did not feel like coming up with a real name – most people will not recognize the name of a prison aside from Alcatraz, but that has an extremely specific meaning. Attica sort of sounds familiar, but most people can't place it. Or at least I can't. I think it is (or was) in upstate NY. I think it was where some famous prison riots occurred.

As with most of my stories, this one is not ready to be published…even on a web site. Given the glacial pace that I was editing it (e.g., none), I decided that it would be better to post it, and thereby gain the motivation to edit it, then it would be to wait until I had finished editing it.

Please email me with comments like "what the hell were trying to say here?!!" or "this makes no sense at all!" If you read the story first, it would be even better.

Avoid gnomes,

Whatever

http://www.blogger.com/profile/06761685971297189784

Tentacle Luuuuv: Chapter 5

2008-01-15T05:04:00.000-08:00

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I long for your embrace, oh fair one,

that I might bask in the sun of your luuuuv.

Every moment without you is like an eternity.

Every smile is the kiss of bliss.

"That was really bad."

Edwarde glared at Lomilyth.

"You're supposed to be impressed that anyone likes you at all!"

"Some chick really said that?"

"Well, ummm, according to this note."

"Let me see that!"

Realizing that the elf would recognize his writing, Edwarde quickly used his amazing magical powaaars.

"What the?!"

The note had burst info flames before the elf could get a good look at it.

"Oh imagine that."

"That was weird…"

"Yeah well, notes burst into flames all the time."

"Really?"

Lomilyth was staring at him.

"Yeah, classic case of…note busting into flames"

Edwarde sort of trailed off.

"OK!"

Lomilyth made as if to run off.

"Hey! Don't you want to write a note or something for me to take back?"

"Hmmm…Tell her that I love her and that I want to do her!"

"What?!!"

The elf cocked his head to the side.

"Pretty good eh?"

"And you said my poem was bad…"

"That was your poem?"

"I mean the princess's poem!"

"She's a princess?!!"

"Ummm…yeah."

"Cool! Maybe I can get some money off of her too!"

Lomilyth ran off

"Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!"

"This is just not working…"

* * * * *

"So? What he say?"

"Someone set up us the bomb."

"No change subject!"

Edwarde had come back to the inn where Rugar was waiting. She was wringing her hands and fretting.

The lich realized that the truth wouldn't do at all.

"He, uh, liked it!"

Rugar beamed.

"So what he say?"

"What do you mean?"

"What he say in response to poem?"

"Oh…er…"

Edwarde couldn't sweat, but not for lack of a reason to.

"He said."

How I too long for your luuuuv

Would that we could meet in the moonlight and fly to the Casbaaa

And avoid gnomes

Rugar looked puzzled, but not unpleased.

"Why he say that bit about gnomes?"

"Maybe he's jealous."

"But me no like gnomes!"

"Well…maybe he's afraid that you'll start."

Rugar shrugged and made as if to go.

"Me go get nukkie now."

"What?!!"

"Well, he said he…"

"Doesn't anyone here have a romantic bone in their body?!!"

Flayer, who had been sitting in a corner staring at his spoon looked up.

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing…"

"Why me not get nookie?"

Edwarde elbowed her in the ribs. Flayer looked confused.

"Oh, it's silly mating rituals."

Flayer went back to staring at his spoon.

Edwarde dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

"He doesn't know it's you yet."

Rugar looked disappointed.

"That mean we have to do silly note business again?"

"Yes!"

Fortunately, Rugar didn't notice Edwarde's grin. Of course, Edwarde's grin didn't look especially different from his other expressions…

Rugar sat back down again.

"Well…Rugar thinking about poems while Edwarde away…"

* * * * *

…

And then put your head on a stick!

Edwarde finished his stanza and glared at the elf.

Lomilyth considered the poem.

"She really said that?"

"Yes."

"My kind of girl!"

"This is like a bad dream…or story."

"Eh?"

"Oh nothing. Is there anything you want me to take back to her?"

"Yeah! Let's ditch this whole poem crap and get down!"

"Righto"

Later that day, Rugar found Edwarde crying into a mug of beer at the tavern.

"You drinking, Edwarde?"

The lich looked up. His eyes were red. Of course they were normally red…

"No, not really. It's just the only way that creep would leave me alone."

"What creep?"

"At the bar."

Rugar looked over, but he couldn't see anyone.

"Rugar no see anyone!"

"He's kind of short."

Rugar walked up to the bar and looked over it – straight into the malevolent eyes of the meanest gnome she'd ever seen.

"What do you want to drink – and it better not be water!"

"Ummm…Rugar have a root beer."

The half-orc walked back to Edwarde's table. While she had been away, the lich had started crying again.

"What wrong?"

"Oh, everything just seems so hopeless!"

"You sure you not drinking?"

"Yes – I can't actually drink anything."

Rugar considered this, and then took Edwarde's drink.

"Also, how you crying?"

"Well, I just sort of put my hands over my eyes and make crying noises."

"Hmm"

Rugar considered this as she downed Edwarde's drink in one swallow.

"Rugar, you can't hook up Lomilyth! He's a total jerk."

"Why you say that?"

"Because what do you want?!"

The gnome bartender was back with Rugar's drink.

"Here you go, ya slob."

"Great, now take a hike!"

"That's 2cp."

"You are really pushing it…"

Edwarde rummaged around in his robes.

"Can you make change?"

"No, but I can keep it."

Edwarde flipped the small humanoid a silver piece. The little man waddled off.

"You're welcome (little creep)."

"Up yours bony."

"You in bad mood."

Rugar had downed the root beer in one swallow.

"Maybe there's something to this whole evil business after all…"

"What you say?"

"Someone set up us…stop that!"

Rugar looked disappointed, but nonetheless stopped trying the tired gag.

"What was I saying?"

"You talking about Rugar and Lomi should be together."

"No I wasn't! I was talking about how you and Lomilyth should not get together! What are you trying to do, put words in my mouth?"

"It worth try."

"You deserve someone better Rugar!"

"Like who?"

"It's you!"

Just then, Lomilyth burst into the tavern and leapt about triumphantly.

"What you say?"

"Some one…aaaargh!"

"I knew someone else had to be writing those poems!"

Rugar stood up abruptly, knocking over the table. The noise of the ruckus had brought the attention of the barkeep/gnome.

"Hey! You broke my plates!"

"Shut up gnome!"

"Oh yeah?"

The gnome hefted a two-handed mace, one so large that it seemed impossible for him to wield without falling over, and rushed towards the half-orc and the lich.

"Who's short now?!!!"

"Fore!"

In a flash, Lomilyth had gotten out her (whack! make that his) axe and sent the gnome flying…in two pieces…

Edwarde was horrified.

"Another life taken! Still, if it had to be someone…"

"Let this act be a token of my luuuuv!"

"Oh Lomi! You no have to do that for Rugar!"

The half-orc rushed to take up the effeminate elf in one of his bear hug embraces; but he managed to duck under it.

"No you oaf! I meant Edwarde!"

"What?!! Get away from me you freak!"

"Oh sweety…you know I like it when you're so…feisty!"

"But Rugar love you! Edwarde stole Rugar's Mr. Right! Or at least Mr. Right-now…"

Edwarde's face, a mask of horror to begin with, looked even more horrified. An achievement to be sure…

"But I don't love you!"

The lich protested.

"No relationship is perfect…"

"And besides, I luuuuv Rugar!"

"That hussy!"

Lomilyth frowned.

"Is it my imagination, or did he spell that word differently when he talked about you?"

"Eeeeew! Rugar not interested in necro-feeling-whatever! Rugar stick with living critters…like Lomilyth!"

"Edwarde!"

"Rugar!"

The three of them started running in a vicious circle, each chasing their star-crossed luuuuv.

"Lomilyth!"

"Edwarde!"

"Rugar!"

Rugar was calling the elf's name and running after him. Lomilyth, in turn, was yelling Edwarde's name and running after the Lich. Edwarde, in turn, was breathlessly crying out for Rugar and chasing after her. Taken together, the three of them looked like a collection of Irish Setters.

"What the hell is going on?!!"

This statement had been made by Flayer, who was surveying the mess with his arms crossed.

"Huh?" Said the Lich.

"Wha?" Said the elf.

"Huh?" Said the half-orc.

"Hey, I called 'huh' first."

"Oh…how about Wha?"

"That's taken too!" Snapped the elf.

"Oh…you soooo cute when you annoyed. Rugar just wanna gives you beeeeeeg huuuuug!"

Rugar ran towards Lomilyth.

"Eeek! Edwarde! Save me!"

"Oh I'll save Rugar…for myself!"

The three of them continued chasing each other.

"What the hell is going on?"

Djaro had poked her head in and was staring curiously at the three scurrying party members.

"That's what I said."

"What did they say?"

"And I said it first?"

"They said 'I said it first?'"

"No, I said…oh never mind…"

"Lomiiiii!"

"Edwardeeeeee!"

"Ruuuuuugar!"

Djaro stared owlishly at the three of them.

"You know…people don't do that in real life…only in comics, bad harlequin romance novels, and lame short stories."

Djaro and Flayer considered this in silence.

"Do you remember what I was thinking when you read my mind that first time?"

Then Djaro smiled at Flayer. Savoring each word, she reminded him:

"Raw…uncensored…tentacle sex!"

"ACK!!! Get away from me!"

In his panic, Flayer had managed to run into a corner.

"Luuuuuuv is in the air baybeee! Give in to it!"

As Djaro closed in for the kill, the other party members being occupied in their various pursuits, Flayer lashed out with his mind – rending the very fabric of thoughtspace in his desire to stop the pint sized humanoid.

ZAAAAAP!

A blast of pure thought slammed into Djaro, Rugar, Edwarde and Lomilyth, stunning them into mute, empty-headed staring. Lomilyth didn't look much different.

"Wow…I've finally developed my Mind Blast ability! And not a moment too soon – talk about deus ex machina…"

* * * * *

Rugar was following Djaro…who was following Lomilyth…who was following Edwarde…who was following Flayer. Rugar didn't remember when they had started walking, in fact, she didn't remember much of anything at all. All in all, she felt like she had just woken up.

Rugar poked at Djaro.

"Hey, where we going? Hey!"

Djaro stopped and looked at Rugar. She had the look of a Halfling with a bad hangover.

"Leave me alone, I have a bad hangover."

"Djaro remember getting drunk?"

"No, that's what makes it bad."

Rugar considered this.

"Djaro know where we going?"

"Course I do!"

"Where?"

"C'mon, we're falling behind."

Djaro dashed off after Lomilyth, or rather she tried. With each step came a muffled "Ow!" After a few strides, she had to be content with walking quickly. Never the less, the two of them caught up to the others fairly quickly.

"Hey! Where we going?"

Lomilyth, whose eyes were especially bloodshot, turned towards them.

"Whaaaa?"

"Where we going?!!"

"Shhhh! I got a bad hangover."

Rugar couldn't help noticing that the elf's hair, normally full of shine and body, as if from one of those shampoo commercials, or perhaps from a "Pantene" billboards or sign that you see on the sides of buses or maybe bus-stops, which nonetheless if actually subjected to one of these fine, hair-care products would probably dissolve, looked frazzled.

Lomilyth turned back towards Edwarde.

"But where we going?"

"Down this road stupid."

"But where road go?"

"I dunno, I'm just following Edwarde."

The three of them stumbled after said Lich, who was following Flayer.

"Hey Edwarde, where we going?"

The skeletal figure slowly turned towards them. His glowing red eyes seemed redder than usual.

"Whaaaa?"

"Where we going?"

"I…I was just reading my novel."

The lich held up a tattered book, that he had been reading or at least looking at. Upside down.

The four of them turned and variously walked, stumbled and limped after the Mind Flayer.

"Hey Flayer! Where we going?"

Unlike the rest of them, Flayer seemed alert and aware.

"What?"

"Where are we going?"

"Down this road, fool!"

"Yeah, but where road go?"

"Well according to this sign, it goes to a small and yet rustic town, about 3 miles from here."

The others looked at the nearby sign. Flayer resumed walking down the road.

"I knew that." Said the Lich.

"Me too."

"Same here."

"Whatever."

Lomilyth started walking again, the others followed.

"Rugar have this feeling, like he forgot something important…"

"Couldn't have been that important if you forgot it."

Quipped Djaro.

"Hey Flayer, where'd you get that bucket of brains?"

"Oh, I just found it on the side of the road…mmmm…gnome brains!"

"What? Oh nothing…"

The Mind Flayer quickened his pace. Edwarde struggled to keep up. The other two shrugged almost simultaneously and followed.

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Tentacle Luuuuv: Chapter 4

2008-01-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

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"Well? How things go?"

Edwarde stared at Rugar. So impassioned. So Romantic. So…hopeless.

"Ummm…swell."

Rugar jumped up.

"Then he luuuuvs me too?"

"Not quite yet!"

Edwarde tried his best to keep Rugar from running off that very instant.

"No?"

"Ummm…you gotta take these things slow! You know, romance? Mystery?"

Under his breath

"(Buy me some time)"

"Oh…me guess you right."

"Yeah, mystery! That's it! You see, I didn't tell him that it was you – only that he had a secret admirer!"

Rugar cocked her head at the lich.

"Well…you see…this way he will only want you more."

Edwarde tried to wink, but realized that he didn't have any eyelids.

"Oh…oh! You smart Edwarde! Me lucky to have friend like you!"

"Ooof!"

Rugar had swept Edwarde up into a giant bear hug. His bones ground together ominously.

"Careful! You're gonna break something!"

But Rugar went on hugging him. When he finally set the lich down, and flounced off in search of flowers, Edwarde had to wire together a few bits. Oddly enough, he found himself whistling as he did so. Or rather, he would have whistled if he had lips…whatever.

He stopped for a moment and tried to figure out what was going on.

As a rule, liches are scary, evil, powerful and evil. While there were a few like Edwarde who actually tried doing things to help people, they were generally guardians of some terrible secret that man, elf, hal-orc, half-elf, dwarf, half-dwarf, Halfling, you get the picture was not meant to know.

Such guardians usually had a rather dreary outlook on life, owing to their current condition – they were never much fun at parties. In fact, in all his readings, Edwarde had never heard of a lich doing the things that he was doing: not trying to take over the world. Not trying to stop foolish mortals from accessing secrets from the dawne of time!

Instead here he was, sort of whistling as he wired his bits together after trying to help a half-orc who was mooning over a psychotic elf. What's more he was clearly enjoying himself.

Scrutinizing his feelings further, Edwarde arrived at the inevitable source of his feelings: Rugar. He did not so much enjoy acting as a go-between so much as he liked helping her…

But this was madness! She was alive, whereas he was dead. She was happy and care-free, whereas he was the brooding guardian of forbidden knowledge.

Actually, the only "forbidden knowledge" that Edwarde dealt with came from romance novels. They had very oblique references to anatomy like "her steaming honeypot" or "his pulsing sword of passion." In many cultures it wasn't so much "forbidden" as it was sort of shuffled off to the side. In other cultures this was not even considered forbidden: there were actual temples dedicated to the proper technique.

Never the less, this was clearly wrong! They could never be together – yes, this had all the makings of an epic tale of star-crossed luuuuv. At this realization, Edwarde brightened up: he was in an epic tale of star-crossed luuuuv!

The lich spent the next few hours in a daze, barely noticing anything around him. At one point he bumped into Djaro.

"Hey, I think Flayer ate someone else."

"Oh…I'm sure they'll be OK."

"And it looks like Lomilyth's axe has fresh blood on it."

"Maybe he cut himself shaving."

"I don't think he needs to shave."

"Well…he could have been shaving his legs."

Djaro frowned.

"I hadn't thought of that. Hey, are you OK? You seem kind of spacey…"

"Oh, I expect it will work out."

Edwarde stumbled off humming to himself. Djaro watched him thoughtfully.

"I guess now is the time to engage in any larceny I had planned…"

* * * * *

"OK, so here's the plan."

Edwarde was trying to explain his plan to Rugar. Now that he had given into his Luuuuv, however, it was hard to concentrate. Somewhat to his chagrin, however, Rugar did not seem to notice his attentions.

"You write a note, and I'll pass it on to Lomilyth, then he can write something and I'll pass it on to you. Get it?"

Rugar smiled.

"Yes!"

"OK, all you have to do is write the first note."

"Huh?"

"The note, the one to Rugar…I mean Lomilyth! The note you write to Lomilyth!"

Rugar's face fell.

"Me can't write."

"But, but I thought you were a princess!"

"Me is…but orcs no good at writing…"

"Alright, well, you can tell me, and I'll write it."

"You do this for Rugar?"

"Of course my luuuuv."

Edwarde was gazing dreamily into Rugar's green face.

"What you say?"

"Someone set up us the bomb."

"Main screen turn on?"

"It's you!"

"All your base are belong to us!"

Edwarde and Rugar both shook their respective heads as if they had smelt something nasty.

"What the hell was that?"

"Rugar think is bad plot device. May also increase hits from Google."

Edwarde cradled his head for a moment, then said

"Arrrgh…Where were we?"

"Rugar about to tell note, Edwarde write down."

"OK, gimme a sec."

Edwarde fished out a quill and one of his romance novels.

"But you write on book!"

"Meh, this one's pretty crappy."

Rugar shrugged.

"Works for Rugar…"

The orc thought for a bit. Then for a bit more. After another bit Edwarde began to fidget.

"Look, it doesn't have to be perfect…"

"Rugar waiting for…for what name of small rodent?"

"A mouse?"

"Yes…well no. Sounds sorta like that…"

Rugar's hands worked and she struggled.

"Muse!"

"Yes! Rugar waiting for moose to strike!"

The waited a bit longer, but the inspirational ungulate made no sign that it would arrive.

"Look just start by saying something."

Rugar looked panic stricken and then blurted out

"Rugar can't think! Too much pressure!"

Edwarde sighed.

"How about: I long for your embrace, oh fair one, that I might bask in the sun of your luuuuv. Every moment without you is like an eternity. Every smile is the kiss of bliss."

"That really bad."

Edwarde glared at her.

"I don't see you doing any better!"

Rugar sighed.

"Well, until Rugar think of something betterer…"

The lich angrily scribbled onto the back of his romance novel.

"Why you write like that?"

Edwarde glanced up at the orc and then looked back down at what he had written. It was in Gothic…14 point…bold.

"I dunno…it just seems to come naturally…"

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Previous Polls

2008-01-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

What Sort of Stories Would You Like to See?

Blogger cleverly does not allow you to save poll results; or at least I have figured out how to. This being the case, I'm going to take screen shots (yes, screen shots) and post them here in order to save the previous polls.

Too Much Dialog?

I think blogger needs to get their act together with these polls. You can barely read them after you've voted. At any rate, the question was "do you think the characters in my stories talk too much?" The options were: "I like the way it is now, These guys blather too much, They talk? Are you sure? And I *still* don't see any gnomes!"

And the gnomes have it! Mind you, one of those votes was from me, but still :-)

What sort of story would you like to see next?

As usual I can't see the text so here is what the options were:

Something new
Another Deathtalker story
More Tentacle Luuuuv baby!
Keep writing GroupThink
Screw your lousy writing, and your wussy site too!

I'm going to finish GroupThink before moving on to other stuff, so I probably should have phrased it differently or removed the option to continue it. I guess this reveals deep-seated control issues...or at least fear of gn0mez.

Tentacle Luuuuv: Chapter 3

2008-01-06T14:51:00.001-08:00

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"Well? Did you tell him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Edwarde was talking to Rugar in the tavern's common room the next morning about the "night on the town" that Lomilyth had taken her on the previous night. Flayer was also up, but he or whatever had gone off into a corner muttering something about "practicing." All the Mind Flayer seemed to be doing was staring a spoon on the table.

"Well, ummm….he been…distracted."

"Distracted how?"

Rugar glanced at the Lich in a worried fashion.

"Umm….never mind."

"Tell me!"

"You get upset."

"No I wont."

"You always get upset when Lomilyth kill someone!"

"He killed someone!"

"No! He just…how you say? Cut someone?"

"Oh. That's not so bad."

"On the hand."

"That's not bad at all."

"So much that hand fall off."

"Oh my."

"But person still alive!"

Edwarde sighed heavily. Once, a long time ago, he had spent a great deal of time practicing sighs, coughs, sneezes, and other activities having to do with breathing. Most people didn't have to do this, but then, most people had lungs.

"So he was distracted by the person whose hand he cut off?"

"Not exactly."

"Then how was he distracted?"

"Him kept waving hand."

"Lomilyth was distracted by waving his hand around."

"Yes."

"That's weird."

Just then Lomilyth barged into the room in his typical manic style.

"HELLO EVERYONE! GOOD MORNING!"

Edwarde glanced at the elf and did a double take. Even Flayer seemed surprised.

"Lomilyth, what's that?"

Flayer was pointing at one of the elf's hands. Lomilyth seemed to have an extra one. It was clearly not an elf hand.

"Oh this? After I bought some guy a drink last night, he offered to 'lend me a hand' so I took him up on the offer!"

The elf grinned insanely and waved the detached limb about.

"Isn't it cool?!"

"HA! HA! HA!"

Lomilyth looked over at Rugar, who was putting on a show of enjoying the elf's jest.

"YOU SO FUNNY LOMI!"

Flayer and Edwarde gazed at the orc in silent disbelief. Meanwhile Lomilyth tossed the adoring half-orc the hand.

"Why thank you! Here: you could use a hand yourself!"

Lomilyth bounded out of the room, in search of whatever passed for entertainment in his mad, crazed mind.

"Give me that!"

"No! Lomilyth gave it to me!"

Rugar had his eyes closed and was stroking his own cheek lovingly with the disembodied hand.

"I've got to try and get that back to…to whosever hand it is!"

"No! Is mine!"

Flayer regarded the two for a moment, shrugged, and went back to staring at his spoon.

* * * * *

"Me can't tell him"

Rugar was bemoaning her fate to Edwarde, who in a rather grumpy mood after dealing with a recently unhanded bar patron. Thankfully, the man was now two-handed, but he was still upset.

"You know, in this case that may be a good thing."

"But me luuuuv him! You say that luuuuv will find way!"

Edwarde shuffled about nervously.

"Well, most of the time, that's true – but that still doesn't always make it a good idea."

The two of them were in the town's market, keeping an eye on Lomilyth. Flayer had retired to his room with his spoon. He said something about the sun being hard on his skin. At the moment, Lomilyth was negotiating the price on some wine.

"Who do you think you are? A highwayman? The least you could do is wear a mask and ride a horse!"

"Do you think I could get better prices?"

"I think you better lower this one or I'll kill you!"

Rugar looked alarmed.

"Should we stop him?"

"Nah, it's a merchant."

"Hmmmm…good point."

The merchant didn't look phased at all.

"Hey buddy, if you kill me, no more wine."

Lomilyth spat out a small sample.

"I'd be doing this dump of a town a favor."

"I was talking about the rest of the townspeople."

"I'm not afraid of any of them."

"I wasn't talking about one of them."

Lomilyth may have been crazy, but he wasn't stupid. Or at least not often.

"I'll give you 2 copper."

"If you make that 5 silver we have a deal."

"I'll make it 3 and you can keep your life."

"At least you know how to haggle."

As the three of them wandered around the market, Rugar hit upon an idea.

"Me knows! You could tell Lomilyth you luuuuv him!"

"Eh? What?"

"You not shy like Rugar! You tell Lomi!"

"But I don't love him!"

"Silly Lich! You tell Lomi have secret admiring for Rugar!"

"What if he kills me?"

"Ah…Rugar already think of that. You already dead."

Edwarde scratched his skull. He had to admit that it had the whole dead aspect covered.

"Please help Rugar for luuuuv!"

Edwarde opened his jaw and shut it. Rugar's eyes were so sincere, her expression so hopeful. Perhaps if he arranged things correctly, he could see to it that Rugar was let down gently…

"All…Alright. I'll do it."

"Thank you Edwarde!!"

Rugar swept the Lich up into a hug that lifted him off the ground.

"Hey! Put me down!"

Against all reason, Edwarde found that he enjoyed being hugged. Maybe it was that most people had run screaming from him for the last hundred or so years. Maybe it was simple contact with another life form (or contact with a life form at all, since Edwarde was dead).

Rugar smiled down at him so broadly that her large, yellow fangs could be seen and her green skin dimpled.

"Edwarde is Rugar's best friend! Rugar never have such good friend!"

Edwarde gazed back up at her worriedly. This was going to be tricky…

* * * * *

"I…ah…have something to tell you."

"If it's about that hand, I'm already mad at you for stealing it."

"I didn't steal it I gave it back to its owner!"

"Well, he gave it to me."

"No he didn't!"

"Yes he did, he said 'unhand me!' so I obliged him!"

Edwarde glared at the elf. It took a bit of doing, but he had managed a bit of "alone time" with Lomilyth. By way of inducement, the Lich had offered some wine. The two of them sat in a corner of the inn.

"But, as a point of fact, this is not about the damn hand."

"Yeah, then what is it about?"

Lomilyth gazed warily at him over his cup as he took of sip of the wine.

Edwarde hesitated. Now that it came down to it, he was reluctant to try and broach the subject. While having one's arm ripped off did not hold the same consequences for a Lich that it did for most others, getting the bits back together was rather annoying.

"There…there seems to be someone who is…who has their eye on you."

"Wha? You mean the cops? That's easy enough, just tell me who it is, I'll take the eye, problem solved."

Lomilyth giggled as he took another sip.

"The 'eyes' will have it. This 'eye' will do!"

The elf went on for a bit with his puns as Edwarde stared at him and wondered how to proceed.

"I meant 'eye on you' as in fancied, liked, felt attraction for."

"You mean some other guy who thinks I'm a girl? I got the answer for that right here:"

Lomilyth patted his axe, which had unaccountably materialized.

"No, this one is female."

Lomilyth paused.

"A chick? You mean I can grab a slice?"

"No, you can't chop them up!"

"No, I get me some nookie, indulge, screw, fuck!"

Edwarde's jaw dropped. As he rummaged about on the ground to find the errant bone, Lomilyth went on blathering.

"Wow! That was cool! If nothing's holding your bits together, why don't they fall apart?"

Edwarde reattached his jaw bone and glared at Lomilyth.

"Look punk, there's a very nice girl who likes you – I can't for the life of me…"

"I thought you were dead."

"…death of me figure out why. But she's a nice girl and you will also be nice…or else."

"Or else what?"

"I take it that you are refusing?"

Lomilyth noticed that there was a black bit of not-so-nice energy forming in one of Edwarde's skeletal hands. Lomilyth could have sworn that he was grinning.

"You're not fooling anyone – you're too much of a goody-goody to kill me."

"Oh, I'm not going to kill you…"

"On second thought maybe I'll try the whole kind and caring bit!"

Edwarde looked crestfallen.

"Right. So you're going to be nice."

"Nice."

"And not try to, you know, do the wild thing…"

Lomilyth looked at him without comprehension.

"…give in to your primal urges, try to consummate your relationship…"

Edwarde's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.

"You know, have sex."

"YOU MEAN DON'T TRY TO FUCK HER RIGHT AWAY?"

Edwarde gritted his teeth.

"Yes."

"OK"

Lomilyth grinned insanely.

"So who is she?"

Edwarde took in the elf's twitching smile.

"She can introduce herself."

Lomilyth looked confused.

"So how am I supposed to know which girl is the one I'm not supposed to fuck?"

"Does that happen a lot?"

Lomilyth paused and looked depressed.

"No."

"So just be nice to any girl who talks to you for next day or so."

"OK!"

Just then Lomilyth said something else in a different sounding voice. The lich was watching him, so he knew that the words were coming from the same body. Otherwise, he wouldn't have believed it.

"But I'm just going to get down to it."

"What?"

"What? What?"

"What did you just say?"

"I didn't say anything."

"But I heard you…"

Edwarde was convinced that whoever he was talking to was being sincere. Then the lich had an "oh, he's squawking mad…" moment.

"Never mind."

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Tentacle Luuuuv: Chapter 1

2008-01-02T17:35:00.001-08:00

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"I love you!"

Lomilyth turned and beheld the speaker. It was a common peasant, complete with overalls, pitchfork, overbite and weird, bulgy eyes.

In his outthrust hands were some wild flowers that he had obviously picked himself. In his watery blue eyes, slightly teary, was sincerity. On his face, severely pockmarked, there was rapture. In summary, his head conveyed the impression of romance, longing, happiness.

It looked out of place on the ground.

On Lomilyth's face was a look of psychotic rage. His beautiful, green eyes were alternately crossing and uncrossing. In his hands he held a double-bitted, double-bladed axe, now bloody. Its massive size and weight seemed out of place in the hands of the beautiful, effeminate elf. The effeminate male elf. As the unfortunate townsperson had just discovered.

"I told you freaks, I'm not a girl!"

Lomilyth was standing over the recently decapitated body, axe gripped in both hands. There was a crowd of stunned onlookers from the small town that the party was visiting. Actually, planned on visiting, but it looked like they were going to have to make a slight detour.

"And you're lucky you died otherwise I would have…have…killed you!"

The crowd of onlookers ceased being stunned and started running in all directions from the postal elf. Soon the only onlookers were Lomilyth's own party.

"Oh dear."

Edwarde, the Evil Lich™ turned adventurer, had a skeletal hand up to where his mouth would be. As it was, it was sort of in front of his jaw bone. The two glowing red points that dwelled deep within his eye sockets took in the situation with alarm.

"Oh well."

Djaro, the halfling thief, actually she is a warrior…no, I think I had it right the first time, she's a thief but on the other hand her combat prowess… Djaro, the Halfling whatever looked at the cooling body with tepid disinterest. She (for Djaro is a she) shrugged and set off towards the town's only tavern.

"Oh wow!"

The deep, grating voice belonged to Rugar, the female half-orc that was fond of trees and small furry animals. The tragic, longing look and clasped hands betrayed her feelings for the murderous Elf as she gazed dreamily at his slender, violent form.

"Oh good!"

The last came from Flayer, the erstwhile leader of the group. Gender really didn't enter into it, since Mind Flayers do not reproduce in the same manner that other, more familiar species do.

While Mind Flayers may not feel the same romantic longings that others have, they are attracted to humanoid races, regardless of gender because of…

"Brains!"

Flayer's tentacles worked diligently to extract its latest meal from the head of the unfortunate human. It was much more convenient for the head to be separate from the body – that allowed Flayer to take it with him/her and nibble on it instead of bolting the whole thing in one huge gulp! With its latest meal casually gripped in one hand, Flayer made to join Djaro.

"Flayer! You can't go walking around with a blood-covered brain in your hands!"

"Sure I can – see?"

"No, I mean, well, people will talk."

"Let them! I'm not afraid!"

That last bit had been uttered by Rugar, who had taken on a defiant, heroic stance. With quiet…defiance she stared at Lomilyth, who was staring at them as if they were insane.

"You guys are nuts…I'm gonna go get a drink."

Oddly enough, his double-bladed, double bitted axe had vanished (where does that thing go when he's not using it?!!). He headed for the tavern.

"We've just been called insane…by Lomilyth."

"There! Is this better?"

Flayer had put the brain in a bucket and was holding the pail up triumphantly.

"Whaaa? Oh whatever, I guess it beats walking around with it gripped in your hand…"

If Flayer had had a mouth (alright, one with lips around it that you would see), it would have smiled. Tucking its tentacles under the collar of its robe, the Illithid followed the other two towards the local bar.

"What's with you?"

The last question was directed at Rugar, who was sighing in a fashion that would have made any Harlequin romance novel writer wistful.

"Hmmm? Oh…nothing."

"You can tell me."

Edwarde tried to grin at the seven foot tall half-orc, but, with a skull for a head, it's hard to do anything else.

"Me…me in love."

"In love?!! Who with?! C'mon, c'mon, c'mon. You can tell me."

Edwarde, who devoured romance novels like nobody's business, lived and breathed this stuff.

"Oh, but it's impossible! It would never work! Booohoooo!"

Rugar started blubbering uncontrollably. Some of the braver townsfolk were glancing out of their windows to see what the ruckus was. Edwarde tried to pat her on the back, but couldn't quite reach.

"What are you saying? Luuuv will always find a way!"

"But he the wrong species!"

"Bah! Humans are able to interbreed with all sorts of species – just look at yourself."

Rugar glared at the Lich, who, after a moment's thought, changed the subject.

"Besides, the physical act of Luuuuuv is not as important as the feelings behind it."

"(sniff) you really think so?"

"Oh I know so! Some of the greatest lovers in history were star crossed. And don't even get me started on the ones who died as a consequence of their Luuuuuv."

At this point Edwarde tripped over the stiffening corpse. The thing's hand still gripped the flowers the man had brought for Lomilyth. The Lich gazed thoughtfully at the body.

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Tentacle Luuuuv

2008-01-02T05:03:00.001-08:00

Synopsis

Rugar loves Lomilyth. Lomilyth loves Edwarde. And Edwarde, of course, loves Rugar. Just to make things more interesting, Rugar is a half-orc, Lomilyth is a psychotic girly-elf, and Edwarde is an undead wizard. A story set in the universe of the web comic "Mind Flayed".

Disclaimer

This is a short story based on the web comic "Mind Flayed" which was created by Ozark of i.am.ozark@gmail.com. You can find the comic at www.mindflayedcomic.com.

Since Mind Flayed is partially based on the game Dungeons and Dragons, this short story is also based on that game. DnD is copyright (c) Wizards of the Coast; as are, presumably, Mind Flayers the race.

Setting

This story assumes that you are familiar with the Mind Flayed comic. If you are not, it would be an excellent idear to take a look before reading this story, as you will be completely lost without it.

With this in mind (har-har-har), the story could conceivably take place just before the current adventure that the MF band is engaged in, or just after. It could pretty much take place any time after the group first gets together --- I envisioned just before the current one though.

Tentacle Luuuuv: Chapter 2

2008-01-01T19:01:00.000-08:00

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At the tavern, the motley crew that was Flayer's band sang through another set. Actually, they just sat at a table, but the phrase "Flayer's Band" really does sound like a heavy metal group or something.

At any rate, Lomilyth had cheered up quite a bit. This was common with elvish psychos who walked around with invisible, double-bladed, double-headed axes. Djaro was sitting on a couple of cushions and grinning broadly at the waitress (Djaro seemed to prefer the company of the ladies). Flayer was sitting more or less non-sullenly in the corner, its long fingers occasionally disappearing from sight and returning with a curiously gray morsel. Edwarde and Rugar sat huddled in another corner discussing the situation.

"You've got to tell him! Uhhh…it is a him right, or do you prefer…"

"It him."

"What? The barkeep? He's kind of fat don'tcha think?"

"Not barkeep, just humorous orcish manner of speech."

"Oh, right. Well, you've got to proclaim your luuuv!"

"Me scared."

"As are all lovers. The fear of rejection is what can stop your luuuuv, but tis better to have luuuuved and lost then to have never…"

"Me not scared that way, me scared of dying."

At this point Edwarde stopped and looked confused. It's difficult to appear confused when you don't have any facial features (ones that change at any rate), but Edwarde managed.

"Oh…well…just who is this we're talking about again?"

Rugar paused and then turned slowly and gazed at Lomilyth with such care, such luuuuuv, that there could be no doubt as to the object of her affection.

"Oh…"

Just then Lomilyth turned and grinned in their direction. One of his pupils was alternately dilating and constricting.

"Do you think any more of these yokels are going to try coming on to me?"

Flayer perked up.

"It would be regrettable, but I do have to say that they are quite…tender."

"NO! And don't kill anyone else!"

Edwarde tried to sound authoritative, but his mind was really elsewhere.

Lomilyth looked sullen and went off in search of a drink.

In the mean time, Djaro was hitting on passing women.

"Hey baby, I may be a Halfling, but I go all the way!"

"Once you go hobbit, you won't want to go back."

"At least with me you don't have to worry about getting knocked up."

But the local clientele were not receptive.

"Stay away from me, freak!"

Djaro, who managed to stay upbeat under most circumstances, was not put off.

"They're just playing hard to get."

In the mean time, Edwarde and Rugar continued their conference.

"You know, I'm a big fan of luuuuv, but maybe you should reconsider in this case."

"How can me?! Those eyes…"

"That cross and uncross…"

"That voice…"

"Which is often screaming obscenities and 'Die!!!!'"

"Those kind, gentle hands…"

"That are usually gripping a large axe!"

"So you see it too?"

"I see something…"

At that moment, Lomilyth came back with a large mug of ale. He sat down, took a swig and burped.

"This ale sucks."

He took another large swig.

"So…Lomilyth: what you feel like doing after this?"

"Passing out."

(Swig)

"And after that?"

"Being sick."

(Swig, burp)

"And after that?"

"Killing everyone in this godforsaken village."

(Swig, scratch, scratch, scratch)

"You think you need any help with any of this?"

"Nah, the villagers in this dump barely even fight back."

Rugar looked dejected.

"Perhaps Rugar could keep you company, you know, just for…company's sake?"

"Yeah whatever."

(Swig, burp)

Rugar brightened up noticeably.

Like two bottles of nitroglycerin next to each other in a burning house, Rugar's happiness triggered a mood swing in Lomilyth. As he saw her bright smile, it spread to his face as well. And seeing his smile made Rugar's smile even…smilier.

This display of happiness was rather unsettling to those nearby, some of whom had heard of their fellow citizen's recent demise. Looking at the slim, red haired picture of androgynous beauty, it was hard to believe that he was such a psycho. But when you saw the smile things all fell into place.

Lomilyth jumped to his feet.

"Yes! Me and my bud Rugar are going for a night on the town!"

He threw up his arms wildly, knocking over nearby bowls and mugs. If it were possible, the nearby tavern patrons cowered even more.

Rugar, on the other hand, was ecstatic. Lomilyth ran babbling out the door with Rugar lumbering after him.

"Oi…do you think he will kill anyone?"

"Meh, I already have something to eat."

That last interjection had come from Flayer who, at least, had the good manners to chew his food. He reached down to his hidden bucket-o-brains and gathered up another morsel. Checking to see that no one was watching, he held it up to the collar of his robe. A tentacle snaked out and grabbed. There was the sound of more chewing.

"Maybe now that he's gone I can scare me up some action."

Djaro waggled her eyebrows and sauntered up to the bar.

It was times like this that Edwarde wished he could sleep. Since he was undead, however, he did not require such rest. Sighing, he took out another of his romance novels (where do they come from when he's not reading them? I mean, Lomilyth's axe is one thing, but you want books to be ones that you haven't read too much. Well, actually there are some books that I like to read over and over, but for the most part…)

Edwarde began reading his book.

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DeathTalker 2: Chapter 5

2008-01-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

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Obi-Wan felt it first. A change in the force, a strange compulsion to leave like the one he felt on Corscant.

At that point, he was rather hotly engaged with Dark Maul (the second) and unable to respond.

Pushing away from the Sith, the two combatants faced each other again. Obi-Wan could see from the other's expression and bearing that he too felt some sort of change. But then they clashed again.

Reaching out for The Force, Obi thought to toss the other away from him or at least set him off balance; but rather than that, the force seemed to be acting rather reluctant. Maul took advantage of the Obi's imbalance and pressed the attack. After a few attacks and parries, he actually managed to cut through the other's light saber.

"Oh damn."

The triumphant Sith raised his weapon for a killing blow, but before he could strike, Obi-Wan heard a hollow "bong" sound. Maul's eyes crossed and he dropped to the ground. Behind him stood Padme, wielding her crowbar and a smug expression.

"Oh thanks!"

"That's two you owe me."

"Yes, well, you know…beginner's luck."

"Uh-huh."

Obi-Wan got up and brushed himself off.

(Pop)

"That's not the same gum that…"

Just at that moment, Obi-Wan froze. With all his concentration, he barely managed to stand. Looking at the temple, it seemed as if all the color was being sucked out the world into one spot. His heart labored and sweat broke out on his brow.

"Obi-Wan? Are you OK?"

The world seemed to darken, first at the edges and then gathering into a single point. It was like a black sun had risen behind the temple. Forming a point, he couldn't take his eyes from, it writhed and changed shape until…

"Good work, Padme."

"Thanks."

(Pop)

Obi-Wan was looking at the temple. The world was slowly regaining light and color…except for one point. It seemed as if there were a hole in the sky, and that stray motes of light were passing into it.

"What's wrong with him?"

"I think he saw Elvis."

Padme frowned.

"Who's that?"

"Never mind. We need to distract him though. Did you take out Darth Maul before or after Obi-Wan lost his light saber?"

Obi-Wan started as if he had been waken from a dream.

"Look, it can happen to the most experienced Jedi. I just got a little unlucky."

"Uh-huh."

The Jedi looked cross. Darth Maul (the second) groaned and stirred. Padme whacked him again with the crow bar.

"Remind me to stay on her good side."

"Where's Palpatine?"

"He's gone."

"That's what you said the last time."

Anakin looked uneasy.

"What…what happened on Corscant…it's happening here now, isn't it?"

Anakin looked at him and nodded curtly.

"What happened on Coruscant?"

Obi-Wan turned to Padme.

"I don't know."

"Then why do you…oh never mind. Can we go now?"

"Well, we should do something about Darth Maul (the second)…"

Padme rolled her eyes.

"Couldn't we just kill him?"

"That's not the Jedi way."

"But you're not a Jedi!"

"OK…you have a good point. But Obi-Wan is."

Obi-Wan looked at his ruined lightsaber doubtfully. Moving over to Darth Maul (the second)'s body, he retrieved the weapon of the Sith Lord.

"Hmmm…this seems to use a somewhat different design…"

"He doesn't even care!"

"About what?"

"About Darth Maul (the second)!"

"What about him?"

Obi-Wan was looking the lightsaber in a rather distracted fashion.

"Well, do you mind if we kill him?"

"We can't do that, it's not the Jedi way."

"Well, what do you propose then?"

"That we follow the Jedi way."

Padme's grip on her crowbar tightened to the point that her knuckles were white.

Obi-Wan accidentally triggered the lightsaber. Being double-bladed, it extended in both directions; one of which neatly shot into Maul's head, killing him instantly.

"Oops."

Anakin and Padme looked thoughtfully at the now dead Sith.

"Well, I guess that settles that…"

"Looks like it to me. Let's go."

Obi-Wan looked at Maul's corpse and then shrugged.

"Well…maybe it was the will of the force."

After a second or two, a disembodied Dark Maul (the second) appeared over his body. With a rather annoyed expression he ran after the rest of them, shaking his fist.

"Oi! What the frag do you think you're doing?!! That wasn't the Jedi way!"

Anakin strode into the galley where Padme was reading an issue of Intergalactic Vogue. Though the magazine did mention her (specifically, it had an article on juggling a career and a social life) it did not have a picture of her on the cover. She popped her gum.

Obi-Wan was playing 3-D chess with R2 and eating some freeze dried mush.

A disembodied Darth Maul was sitting in a corner and muttering to himself.

"And he took my lightsabre!"

"Rarrr!"

A 3-D critter stomped around on the board and beat up one of Obi-Wan's pieces.

"If he were not a droid, I would accuse him of cheating."

(POP)

Anakin glared at Padme, who ignored him. Crossing his arms, Anakin waited a moment. He tried leaving and reentering the room. Nobody noticed.

"More powerful than any Jedi eh?"

"Ahem."

The spirit of Darth Mal (the second) looked up and glared. After a moment or two, so did Obi-Wan.

"Oh hi Anakin."

He looked back at the chess board.

"So, are, umm, you guys going to continue tagging along or can I drop you off somewhere?"

"Where are you heading for now?"

(Pop)

"Can you drop me off at Corescant? This sucks."

"Aren't you supposed to stay with me?"

(Pop)

Glaring at her, Anakin made a quick throwing gesture. Padme was ready this time and caught the gum in her hand. It made a squelching noise.

"Ha!"

"And you call yourself a Jedi?!"

Anakin turned to glare at Darth Maul.

"Actually, I don't."

"Who are you talking to?"

"Could have been in a real marching band – but nooo! Be a Sith Lord they said! See the Galaxy they said!"

"Never mind, what about you Obi?"

"Oh, well I'm supposed to stay with you."

Obi-Wan got up and rummaged through the cabinets.

R2 moved a chess piece board while Obi-Wan was distracted.

"Alright, well, I'll just run off to the cockpit and change the ship's course for Corescant."

"OK."

Obi-Wan sat down, looked at the board, and frowned.

Padme twirled her gum around her index finger.

(POP)

"I said 'I'll just go change the ship's course!'"

"Whatever."

"Hmmm."

Anakin gave a sigh of disgust and left the room. A few moments later the ship lurched and everyone was thrown across the room.

"Arrrgh!"

"My gum!"

"Beep!"

"Oi!"

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DeathTalker 2: Chapter 4

2008-01-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

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Leaving the building, Palpatine sighed with the first feeling of freedom he had had in many years.

"That was heart warming."

"Thanks."

Palpatine had gotten to the point where he could sense the Sith Lord's presence. Without looking he knew that the ghost was lurking near one of the statues.

"I could have just killed him you know."

"The discipline needed to restrain yourself will come in useful later."

This time Palpatine did turn and gaze at the specter. The old man did manage to return his stare without snickering.

"Don't you have some inhibition or something about being outside while the sun is up?

The figure smiled a nasty smile.

"No."

Palpatine sighed and followed him.

For the umpteenth time, the training droid managed to slip past his guard and score a hit. Naga had "kept things interesting" by blindfolding Palpatine and tying his feet together.

"I'm sick of this."

Palpatine ripped off the blindfold and untied his feet.

"Sick of what?"

"I'm sick of sitting around in a damn cave, spending all my time training, and for what? Nothing that's what!"

Palpatine stalked off down the corridor. Coming out on the surface, he headed off in the direction of the nearby town. Evening was drawing near.

In a foul mood, Palpatine walk restlessly through the buildings as night wore on. He avoided the more lively areas, preferring the dark and silent buildings and courtyards.

Some time in the night he found himself leaning against a pillar, gazing at a silent courtyard. No fountain, no birds, no plants, just the rock and the silence.

"This will not be an easy time for you."

Like one of the shadows surrounding them, Naga had drawn up behind him.

"Aren't you going to threaten me?"

"No"

Palpatine gave him a long measuring stare.

"You're being awfully understanding."

The figure was silent for a change. After looking at him for a while, Palpatine went back to staring at the courtyard. After a time, he went into the night, heading for home.

On the way, he encountered a bar, the people spilling out into the street and signing as they went their own ways. Palpatine stood in the shadows, gazing silently at them.

"You want to join them?"

"No"

"Why not?"

"It's boring." he said after thinking a bit.

"Follow me."

For no reason that he could explain, Palpatine followed Naga Sadow. The ghost flitted about the shadows, heading into a large building. Going into the basement, Palaptine found himself in one of the main power generators for the city. He gazed thoughtfully at the pulsing energy.

"You want answers? I can't help you. I do not know why I followed the path that I did, or why I continue to do so."

The dark figure was framed in the light of the generators.

"Some people see a mountain and think only of its beauty. Others see something to climb. Something to conquer. Other people see something in the way."

"I look at a planet and I see something to control. There is no reason behind it – it makes no sense. It is the same way with The Force. I feel it, know it, and I must control it. There is no other way."

"You and I are the same in that regard. You have tasted The Force and you will never be free. If you leave this path now, it will haunt you forever. When you sense other people, you will feel the force about them, and you will be tempted to control it. When the wind blows though your hair you will know that the force is behind it and you will seek to change it. When you witness the cheap manipulations that some try to weave on each other, you will know them for what they are."

"It is a difficult path. It requires sacrifice and discipline. You must remain secret and hold back your hand when you want to strike. You must be quiet when you would talk."

Now he looked him in the face.

"But there is power. With each day that passes, you will feel it grow. You will become more powerful than anyone, even a Jedi could hope to be…"

"Until it ends."

Sadow glared at him.

"I'll bet you never expected to be a bed sheet with holes in it, did you?"

"My power was always limited. The only way to increase it is to have someone else to work with you."

"Until they decide one day that they're stronger than you are."

"That was always the problem. We Sith are always looking to new challenges, always be the strongest. Train someone else, your power increases, but eventually, they will betray."

"During my time as a lord, I tried to find a way to change that."

"And you failed."

"I failed, but I think that we may be able to succeed."

"And why is that?"

"To use this idea of mine, you have to be a Deathtalker."

Palpatine's eyes narrowed.

* * *

Anakin, Padme and Obi-Wan strode down the gang plank of the Ebon Hawk to the lush, green jungle that seemed to dominate Yavin 4.

"Oh I have a bad feeling about this."

"Shut up."

Obi-Wan glared at Anakin, who sighed and fished out a packet of freeze-dried strawberries and handed them to Obi.

"That's better."

"What's the plan?"

Padme, sporting a blaster in one hand, a crowbar in the other, and who was chewing a full pack of bubble gum, looked around with something approaching mild interest. Obi-Wan talked with a mouth full of freeze dried strawberries.

"Well, (munch, munch, munch), according to Jedi legend (chew, chew, chew), the Sith tomb on this planet has a lock that you need three keys to open…"

Padme popped her gum.

"…one of the keys, which is incidentally made out of (munch, munch, munch) a glassy black volcanic rock..."

(pop)

called jet, is guarded by a beast that no Jedi…" here Obi-Wan up-ended the packet of strawberries, spilling several on his robe, "…has ever fought with and lived! (burp)" The second key is said to reside on an island..."

(pop)

"...that cannot be found by any save those who already know (pop, pop) where it is!"

"And the third key?"

"Ummm…I don't have any idea where that one is."

Obi-Wan looked apologetic, Padme blew a huge bubble.

"Hey! Where'd Anakin go?"

(Pop)

Anakin strode purposefully through the jungle along a barely discernable path. Puffing, Obi-Wan and Padme caught up to him.

"(puff, puff, puff) Anakin! We have to find the first key!"

"Which is incidentally made out of a glossy black rock…"

"Shut up."

"Right"

(Pop)

"And stop doing that."

Padme looked at him disinterestedly and blew another, extra-large bubble. Irritably, Anakin waited until she had deflated it and was taking a breath for another when he gestured with his hand and the gum flew from her mouth.

"Hey!"

"That is not the gum you're looking for…"

Padme raised her crow bar.

"There's the temple!"

Sure enough, poking out of the foliage was a crumbling, ancient, evil-looking temple.

"Not that is will do us any good without the first and second keys. Did I mention that the second key is located on an island…"

"Shut up."

Rounding a bend, the three of them beheld Palpatine. With him were The Three and a fellow who bore a striking resemblance to Darth Maul.

"Well I can't say that I'm too surprised that you managed to escape from Jango, it's a wonder he can see out of that stupid suit of his."

"He ran into our ship and knocked himself out."

Palpatine rolled his eyes.

"Good help is so hard to find these days."

The Darth Maul look-alike grunted.

"Which reminds me, have you met my new apprentice? Darth Maul."

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"The Second."

The Sith smiled and waved.

"Hallo! Hi there!"

"As you can see, he's still a little rough around the edges."

With a flourish, Darth Maul (the second) took out a two-bladed light saber and twirled it about.

"Were you ever a cheerleader?"

Darth Maul (the second) smiled shyly.

"Well actually…"

"Shut up!"

"Right, sorry."

"But he's got it where it counts."

Maul grunted and tried to look menacing.

"And just in case…"

A bunch of Jango Fetts, complete with body armor, came running out of the temple and raised their weapons. Some of them were pointing at trees; others were aiming at Palpatine.

"Are these clones?"

"How did you know?"

"Just a guess."

Palpatine pointed the muzzle of a blaster away from his head.

"Deal with them!"

Obi-Wan took out his light saber and glanced at Anakin.

"Can you use a light saber?"

"No."

"I have a bad…"

"Shut up!"

Darth Maul (the second) did an amazing leap through the air and landed in front of Obi-Wan. He almost did a gymnast dismount but caught himself before it was too late. Obi-Wan struck and the two were hotly engaged.

Gesturing, Anakin summoned a wad of bubble gum from the jungle which landed with a loud "splat" on the visor of one of the clones. Unable to see, the unfortunate panicked and shot one of his fellows. Immediately, pandemonium reigned and the other clones started shooting each other.

With a war cry of "My gum!" Padme rushed the armored figures and started whacking them with her crow bar. Anakin strode through the clones after Palpatine.

Raising a cloud of dust, Anakin emerged from a corridor into a large chamber. Anakin seemed to be listening to something. Abruptly, he turned and beheld Palpatine, the Three behind him. Palpatine's face was hidden in shadows.

One of the Three flicked a finger at Anakin and a bolt of power flew from his had to be deflected by Anakin.

"You'll have to do better than that."

The figure smiled nastily and raised his hands. Another blast of power, a stronger one, struck out at Anakin.

Raising one hand, Anakin blocked his attack. Then another of the shades joined him. Anakin raised his other hand and blocked him too. The final apparition joined them and Anakin managed to block all three, but he was starting to perspire. Their attacks were unremitting.

"I have to admit that I'll a little curious as to why you came here. I would imagine that you of all people would know what you faced."

Anakin was panting now and his shield was weakening.

"And where are your friends? All the Jedi ghosts gone? Used up? Sucked into the void? Where's your sense boy?"

With a sweeping gesture, Palpatine threw Anakin against a wall.

"You'll have to excuse me, but I just don't get to indulge myself in this sort of play as much as I'd like."

Making another gesture, Palpatine threw the boy against the opposite wall.

"To be honest, the thing that surprises me is that you haven't drafted any allies from here. I would imagine that you have a certain rapport with the dead that even I lack."

"Well that's one difference between you and me. I ask for their help, whereas you command it."

"That I do."

Glancing over to the side, Palpatine raised his hand in a "come hither gesture." A spirit could be seen taking form in front of him. It would come close to forming, but then vanish. Form again, vanish again.

"Having trouble?"

Glancing over at Anakin, who had raised himself to one knee, he smiled.

"Gentlemen."

The Three strode over to him and added their power to his. Immediately, there was a change. It took on a definite form and slowly moved towards them. Finally it fell in place behind them.

"All you need is a leash."

"Actually I think he would understand. It is our way that the strong should rule the weak. To be used as tools."

Anakin was leaning against a wall and breathing heavily.

"Yes, I would imagine that they would understand. That they, of all…people would know the nature of the Sith and what they are capable of."

"What are you spouting? Some Jedi nonsense? That the strong should guard the weak? That we should make our lives one of sacrifice so that the sheep might rule?"

Anakin glanced around.

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call them sheep. In fact, I wonder if some of these aren't a match for even you."

"What, are you trying to recruit some of them?"

Palpatine chuckled.

"Save your breath. Even if you could rouse them, they wouldn't help you, pawn of the Jedi."

"That's one thing I don't think you understand."

No longer breathing heavily, Anakin pushed himself away from the wall. He stood facing Palpatine, though he swayed a bit.

"I'm not Jedi."

"Then who do you serve?"

"You could say I'm an advocate of dead causes."

Now Palpatine did laugh.

"You expect me to believe that? You obliterated everyone on Corescant!"

Palpatine's newly acquired spirit seemed to be staring at Anakin. Abruptly, Palpatine stopped laughing.

"You cease to amuse me. I think it's time you joined my new friend as one of my 'hired help.'"

Raising his hands, Palpatine unleashed a blast of energy at Anakin.

Anakin blocked once again, but it was immediately apparent that he was weaker this time.

"Something wrong, boy? Even for you, your powers are weak."

"You could say I'm a bit…distracted."

Glancing around the chamber, Palpatine noticed the room no longer appeared empty.

"None of them are a match for me, let alone all of three of us."

"True. No one of them could defeat you."

"Now don't be fools! This one is a pawn of the Jedi, he is the true enemy."

"And after I am defeated, what then?"

Anakin addressed the assembled host.

"You know what he can do. You know what any of you would do. The only question is, what do you choose?"

Abruptly a vortex formed. The dead began advancing on it. The closest of them were sucked into oblivion.

Palpatine's face betrayed his utter lack of belief. He looked about wildly at the departing dead.

"This is madness! You would choose annihilation to conquering the galaxy?"

Palpatine glared at Anakin.

"It's you, you damn fool! You're forcing them to do this!"

A blast of energy lashed out at Anakin. In an instant, his body was blasted into nothing. Looking back, the vortex was still there. Gesturing at the nearest apparition, Palpatine strove to keep it from leaving.

Incredibly, he was unable to stop its advance. With a look at the Three, their efforts were added to Palpatine's. The spirit's progress was slowed, but at the cost of forcing the Three to themselves move closer to the vortex.

With each passing moment, more of the dead were eradicated and the vortex grew. It seemed as if a wind were now tearing at the Three. Abruptly they stopped.

"We cannot win here."

"It has become independent of him."

"We must leave."

The Three faded away, despite Palpatine's furious cries.

"Damn you Anakin! DAMN YOU! If you weren't already dead I'd…I'd KILL YOU!"

Shaking with rage, Palpatine left the chamber.

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