Quincunx

Zombies don't come with naturally pointy needly bits, so Minta had to borrow a fingerbone an' sharpen that inna a pencil sharpener before startin' to sew the nice zombie's arm back on, with a couple of veins already stuck onto the other end for sinews, but then zombie shambled off in the middle of the sharpening! Minta, with her grip on the zombie fingerbone, got jerked off of her feet and scooted around the meadow sliding on her back. "Cut it out!" she squealed, "am not done yet!" Stick clonked into the other end of the zombie, changing its trajectory, but not Minta's. "Thankslots!" she chirped, and pointed the mostly pointy end at the zombie as the sinew slipped sideways. The fingerbone poked through the ragged end of the loose arm for the first half-stitch, but Minta was still bumping and sliding among the meadow plants. "Neato necro in the sky!" she yelled, "make your zombie slow down! I still gotta fix it!"

Have you ever made explosive jam? Have you ever eaten explosive jam? Have you ever gotten to the punchline after one of those "someday, we'll look back at this and laugh" moments?

Two cat-shadows peered out of a side duct, spectral ears clamped down against their skulls, tails a-fluff and clogged with air duct fuzzies, shortly after Wyvern had cannoned past. As minutes slid by, the trail of Almost Dragonic trinkets grew in the kitty consciousness, until one could stand it no longer and stretched out a nose to sniff the nearest object, then a paw to--the other cat's paw! ***** Rydia was walking in the same corridor with footprints, but had reached the "omg I give up, they're impossible to follow!" phase some time ago. All at once her ears pricked up, as they had in the private quarters, and she jabbed upwards at the noise with a broom handle! CLANG! "The air duct?. . . " ***** Kitties forgot their war over the toy and fled into another side passage.

While I adore the imagery in this poem, and each block of thought, I can't seem to bring them together into a poem with a beginning and an end. . .typing this out, I realize, it's the end I'm missing. The last stanza doesn't cap the poem even when I stick the punctuation back onto it, at the least not as strongly as the other stanzas end themselves. Shuffling the verses around doesn't fix the problem, and ruins the structure, but it does lessen the feeling of trailing off into nothing. Was there another line or two at the end once, scrubbed afterwards?

Tzimfemme insinuated herself into the crook of Orlan's unoccupied arm while the two faces of Kikuyu quarreled, somewhat further down the room. The Pen dampened down the violence of Degorram's reaction and, with some surprise, the naked mage realized she was reading the sigils without a flicker. Orlan noticed her divided attention. "Yes, they're interrupting the lesson. . ." ". . .and you _could_ go over there and snap her out of it with a feel," Tzimfemme capped the statement. Her nose twitched, seeking out Orlan pheromones, ". . .A _touch_, yes finefinefine, shock the girl with your raw unbridled Sexyness. However," fingertips flipped into sternum, head elevated, "it _might_ be impolite to interrupt. . .and I'd be slightly irritated at another interruption. By the way, you're still hanging onto Wyvern's scruff." *****

Minta swooped past the kaleidoscope, squealing with glee. She was reaching out to touch it even as the metaphor dissolved under her fingers, which was kinda sad, but then she found a superduperneato grassy field to stop in. But why just stop, with so much momentum? The gnomie curled up and rolled end-over-end eight times, plowing up a small trail in the turf before rolling to an upright stop. Behind her, Kieko overleaped the shallow ditch and landed gracefully. "Skellie?" she asked, lookin' round for her camping stuff, but it had gotten slurped away by the kaleidoscope. Minta was about to get upset when the zombie arm plunked into the dust. [more I could write, but holding back to let people into the moment]

Two points. First, I think it's more difficult to keep the bird OUT of the shower, or the dog's water dish, or your mug of water (when he turns around on the rim, it's already too late, feathery butt will be in the drink before you can grab him); Second, it's not so much they/we assume you're/they're not nuts, but that we're/you're worth associating with and nuts. . .

"Cloying" does mean clinging in a revolting manner. It's what people here are claiming their clothes are doing today; if it crested 80 degrees Fahrenheit, I will eat this keyboard, and since I'm at a 'net cafe again that is no idle boast. I only worry that the sentence ending ". . .and those cloying jeans" has no verb. Maybe what's bothering reverie is trying to shoehorn 'cloying' into a verb, which it never seems to be.

*plunk* The jawbreaker, swept up in Loki's near-translocation, fell again to the floor. Minta looked around at the noise, pounced on her candy, and only then looked up to find the long-limbed girl. "How'd you do that, that's neato!" said the gnomie, as she got back to her feet. Skellie lifted the trampoline off of its head with both hands, flicked off some patches of bird poop, unlaced the zombie gut holding it onto its frame, then fed gut and skin back onto its bones. The reassembled minizombie bends down to collect the rest of the prolonged picnic supplies, and its skin slides back off of its bones.

This idea intrigues me and I wish to learn more. Saving in .doc has been my bane. . .Thank you for the notice!

"Whoa, neato!" Minta admires the mystically suspended message, and crawls under it to see what it looks like from the other side. Kinda two-dimensional. She pops up on the other side, out of the shade of the lean-to. "I had crayons like that but I dunno where I put them." Her hand poke into various pockets and find a super-duper-GIANT-baseball-size jawbreaker, pixystix, bone chips, some more pixystix, and a few draggled pieces of what had once been a fluffy red quill--but not crayons. Most of the junk landed around her feet, but the jawbreaker rolled away until it bumped against Loki's foot.

Have you ever heard the raindrops echo as they tap against your skull? Have you ever followed your nose? Have you ever watched a seedling lift itself to the light, carrying a coat of lichen on the outside of its seed casing? Have you ever stitched your own wound shut? Have you ever disassembled currency?

Minta goes a bit cross-eyed herself, trying to glare down at Wyvern over the pixystix. The idling pizza paver shudders and sends up another puff of steam as Minta stands up and rests one foot on the throttle; she pulls the wadded-up black robe out of one pocket and shakes it out by the tail, unfolding her pet while telling it, "Spectre, go bonk Wyvern on the head!" Hounded by emphatic honks, spectre hurries down the side of the machine towards Wyvern. "I dunno if a dwarf ever stayed very long, but they're fun when they're here. Patrick an' Whisky just seem to be ummmm themselves really. Mynx is sorta Vah Shir with a scythe of sunderin' (I got one of those too! Pharrengnomie had one already) an' Yui's got an inkie mind an' a high elf body, sorta. Merelas is a Solusek Ro elf, not like wood elves at all! An' Wyvern's just silly." By this point, spectre is now the pursued, fleeing Wyvern. A "25 geld! Cheap!" price tag flips up and down as spectre swishes its tail. "Um, but that's if you still think in Norrath ways. . ."

I'm a little fruit loop short and stout this is my handle, this is my spout-- wait, wrong setting. As you were.

*whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr* The machine pulling up alongside Verileah might have started life as a steamroller, with a huge cylinder for a back axle, making the air shimmer with heat. It did not, however, start life with the front axle kneading and dispensing gobs of dough onto the pavement, nor with nozzles behind the cylinder laying down a shower of tomato sauce, nor some whirling lawnmower-blade-like attachment shredding and flinging cheese in a 180 degree rear arc, and definitely not with the gnomie bobble-head stuck onto the dashboard shaking out spices in all directions. Minta honks the horn nonstop. "Hihihihihihihihihihihihi WOW I just went to your links YESTERDAY but they were gone didya like my pizza paver I GOT WAKE THE DEAD! hop on the back an' you can have the dials for the toppings trailer oo oo oo I got a TALKING CLOCKWORK CYBORG SHIELD but not a roboboar an' a walkin' talkin' shroompet Greenbeard woulda loved it--" She goes on. Believe me, she goes on. . .

. . .what was that? It wasn't even A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum!

Tzimfemme looks at the sausage-on-a-stick with a ragged sample bite missing from one end, the bowl of smoking chili, the unsatisfactory sausage. . . .She pokes the sausage into the air over the cauldron; the bamboo skewer loses all stiffness and the sausage droops out of the smoke. A steel skewer softens and threatens to drip molten metal into the chili. The tongs once used to pour out Ol' Peculiar, however, withstand the vapors. A few minutes later, Tzimfemme munches on a well-smoked, extra-spicy, flavorful sausage.

In commemoration of surviving this past Friday (the 13th), eat some pineapple. We did! (row of gleaming pineapple-juice-polished grins)

Ye whimsical war-gods, how many of us of U.S. extraction are or have been military?! The percentage keeps increasing! Cftm! slumbers like the high king under the mountain, still playing in the Reincarnation, clone of AM.

"Awwww," Minta sulks, but hopskips a few seconds later with a Really Great Idea an' zooms off. Not long afterwards, she returns dragging one end of a zombie-skin trampoline, with a small skellie hauling on the other end. When Ryu opens the door again out of curiosity, skellie has set one edge of the trampoline on top of its skull and taken up a position of parade rest, transforming the skin into a very primitive lean-to. In its shade Minta has spread out a crazy quilt an' a supply of jelly an' marshmallow fluff sammiches. "Can I camp out here 'til then can I can I can I please!" she announces.

Without a link to 'official' BESM rules or a rulebook of my own, I'm going to wing it and try statting out a known character with the information given here. Minta, neato necro gnomie girl! (See Piazza entry here. Body: Weakest (she's a gnomie, they have no leverage) Mind: Average (not stupid, but thinks like a child) Soul: Strongest (very willful, winning personality) (from the geocities link) As many levels of Gadgeteer as can be fitted in. . . but let's not be one-dimensional and just say she has one. . .for now. Flunkies: Skellies! Ageism: A child/gnomie/necromancer has some discrimination to overcome. Not everyone appreciates a troupe of foot-high formerly human skeletons made into a "real monkeys inna barrel". (I considered Hyperactive, but Minta can apply herself for hours if she really wants to.)

(holds up the lack of cards) Miss Peacock. . .in the study. . .with the butcher knife!

Cindy's first printing was a mistake; she picked the paper out of its bath with her fingertips and left a hollow in its corner as it dried. The next one, fished out with metal salad tongs and suspended by a wooden clothespin, dribbled its ink back into the bath. The third batch she forgot overnight, and they dried flat and unsmudged once the toner evaporated. These slips had unusual texture on the back side from lying against the screen, but the front was visually as accurate as it needed to be. She grinned and ran her fingertips over the surface--yes, the front side even felt like a new playing card--and sat down with a fresh stack of bus schedules. Two aching hours later, each slip had been flexed ten times and torn vertically on the fold. Cindy dealt them onto the screen frames and lowered them into the water bath. After soaking the slips for five minutes, she pushed each half together and tamped the fuzzy edges with a tiny wire-bristled brush. Then she lifted each frame out of the water and dipped it into the mixture of toner and acetate before laying it on newspaper-shielded shelving. Cindy coughed as she left, and wondered if papier-mache would substitute well for a real gas mask. By the next morning, the fumes had mostly dissipated, and the rows of bus schedules were dry: bus route number one with the route map of number twelve, route number three with the timetable of number nine, route number six with the special fares for the A line. Cindy distributed them into different pockets on the outside of her carrier bag and shouldered it with another grin. If enough people complained, and the main terminal's phone number was one area she'd taken care not to desecrate, there would be articles in the local free newspaper, and maybe even a day of free bus fares. Wouldn't that be a kick for her visual portfolio?

Part of being a geek is seeing your obsessions reflected everywhere. So nod and smile when I tell you, swear to you, that street sweepers look JUST like a pair of Daleks gliding along the gutters. All they're missing are the domed tops and shrill cries of "Exterminate! Exterminate!" as they clear the street of all foreign material. Thorough. Ruthless. Implacable. Can't cope with a non-flat surface. Daleks, see? Especially when they munch through something more important than fast-food wrappers. When the street sweepers stutter and slow to half-speed, atop the storm grate at the corner of Highway 41 and Oldman, that's a great example. For a few seconds, the Daleks meet resistance, human chains built up from bent bus schedules and bus receipts and the occasional beat-up left shoe (why isn't it ever the right shoe?), but then they motor through the heap and carry on like it was never there.

He clawed his fingertips into the sleeve of his hoodie, wadded it up, and swiped the wad across the side of the bus shelter. Plenty of grit and road grease smeared onto the fabric, but that patch of plastic only improved from opaque to filthy. Nonetheless, he maneuvered the sunshine onto the area and smiled at where his reflection ought to be, while the girl perched on the balance-beam seat inside the shelter looked up from her book. "You've got something stuck between your front teeth," she offered. He rubbed his thumb against his teeth; she pretended to re-read the current page. "Is it gone?" "Look at me and I'll tell you," she replied. He twisted his head around. "Nope." She drummed her index and middle fingertips against the page briefly, then removed the bus-schedule bookmark and handed it over to him. "This is the closest thing I have to a toothpick." "Mmkay." He picked out the dark bit with one corner of the cardboard, then held it over his shoulder. She took it back, wrinkling up her nose, but slipped it back into the book. After a few moments, she also took a nearly empty tube of mints from her pocket and poked him in the small of the back. "Wait, what's this for?" he remarked after looking at the new gift. "If you didn't have time to brush," she said while again pretending to re-read the current page, "cover it up. And. . .uh. . .good luck." "Thanks!" He popped a mint into his mouth, put up his fists and threw a mock jab at the half-cleaned patch of plastic, and grinned.