Author: ireneallison12

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Welcome to Saragun Springs: The Book of Daisy Part Four

Semi-acidic flashbacks

As I’d copped to earlier, the natural laws of the Universe do not always apply to Saragun Springs, save for matters of convenience. For instance, whenever I find myself in a stupor (which is often), I will recall past events and have them then occur in the Now–even though they may have never occurred at all. I do know that “real” history is pretty much fiction and always will be as long as there are nose knocker-offers and statues, and that the future will always belong to those who rewrite the past until they too are edited out of the picture, or harshly by their precious children. (By the way, for the record, there isn’t a human child in the springs, nor will there ever be one as long as I’m in charge–for the same reason there aren’t Bed Bugs, Leeches or Maggots in the realm.)

After the GOAT stuff began, and all the whining from the Boss followed it, I ingested half a fifth of Jameson and recalled my earliest thoughts of Daisy and Peety, even though they had little to do with the crash and thud of my current “reality.” This one is from the early days, when Daisy was just getting in and Renfield was both n Imaginary Friend and a Lead FC. Some might ask “Are they previously written productions?” Well, when you think about it, aren’t all stories previously written, in the technical sense?

Leila

Band of Barnyarders

-1-

22 August. According to my Writer’s Calendar it was Dorothy Parker’s birthday. Mrs. Parker was famous for her wit, light verse, stories, book and theatre reviews, A Star is Born, dogs, as well as alcoholism, suicide attempts, failed romances and a hodge-podge of emotional problems of varying severity. She was the sort of human who was aware that she was human and desperately wished to surrender and join the other side. Although she already knew that such a thing was tantamount to squaring the circle, it didn’t keep her from trying.

Have you ever admired a person from history whose low points are similar to your own and have the similarities stop right there? It struck me that Mrs. Parker might have felt the same way about herself when compared to Hemingway, which made me feel a little stronger; sometimes the sustenance of life is a thin gruel indeed.

I was just sitting there at my desk, vaping in the dark, pondering the narrowhearted ridiculousness of being and listening to the radio. It was 3:00 A.M. By Universal Law, music performed by the undefinable band Tool is played on the radio at three in the morning. There’s something deeply disturbing about Tool music. It tells your soul secrets that Katy Perry could never know:

“I’m just a worthless liar

I am just an imbecile

I will only complicate you

Trust in me and fail as well…”

Nope, ain’t no “kissed a girl” there.

I rose, went to the window and opened it. In the distance I saw the glow of enemy bonfires, and I thought I heard them singing. More Tool, which I’d quote but won’t in fear of attracting copyright lawyers. I squinted my eyes and tried to make out the shapes of the troops under my command. Barnyarders. Most who hadn’t already deserted appeared to be doing so, while the very few others were gathered in twos and threes around apathetic campfires, singing Katy Perry songs.

“Captain Renfield!” I called out. Recent acts of duplicity on her part have caused me to keep my chief Fictional Character, Miss Renfield, close at hand.

She entered the room singing “Hear me ro-ar, roar..”

“Don’t do that,” I said, “it scares Jesus. We might need Him. Bring my cloak?”

Renfield arched an eyebrow and laughed. She tossed me a fleece blanket smothered with cat hair. “I can’t believe you’re really going to try the old Henry the Fifth wandering through the troops the night before gag,” she said.

“Methinks it’s navery to insult the Queen,” I said, wrapping myself in the blanket, headed for the door. “‘Sides, Bill’s stuff is public domain. No copyright lawyers.”

“Well, if you must go out there, lose that dumb vape pen and beware the ides.”

“Wrong play,” said I.

-2-

My office in the realm of Pen Names, Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters has two doors. The door my desk faces lets in a variety of pests, whom I have little or no control over, whilst the other leads to whatever imaginary vista I have created in my chromebook. In the past the back door has opened to barrooms, graveyards, hospitals, jail cells, churches, to hundreds of years ago and millions from now, brothels, haunted houses, Mars, and so on and so on. On that night it was a “far as the eyes can see” field, with a peek-a-boo mix of clouds and moonlight–my interpretation of a place that might have been 15th-century Agincourt.

The Druidic chant of Tool and the cellophane lyrics of Katy Perry merged to form a cacophonous hellwind ‘neath the moonlight. I damn near lit the end of my vape pen, which I cast aside with disgust, then I lit a smelly, dirty and in all ways wholesome cigarette.

I hate vaping, alas the Cry Baby Police won’t let the person who employs me as a Pen Name smoke indoors anymore. Although we are in no way the same person in soul, we share the same addictions out of necessity of the body. The first time “we” vaped we disregarded the instructions and huffed the equivalent of a carton of cigarettes within four hours. We spent three gibbering, phantom-filled days in our beds–skins the color of old paper, eyes like the shiny black backs of death tick beetles. We listened to a lot of Tool and enjoyed a steady stream of delusions of grandeur during our convalescence. Then I disengaged from my employer’s mind and hit on the idea of starting a war with myself to achieve Mainstream Success; in other words I meant to fight it out with my barriers, sins and personality defects and produce a marketable novel series, then buy my own island and smoke indoors with impunity.

Yes, the enemy across the field was composed of every sin, broken Commandment, nasty remark, bellicose email sent in response to rejection, weird premise, obsequity made for the sake of addiction, self indulgence, and any other deed or thought (including infinite clones of the seven deadlies) that stood between me and a career similar to that of J.K. Rowling. Lo and grimey! There was quite the mighty force across the way. We were to engage at dawn. Renfield figured that they outnumbered us by at least twenty to one.

I thought I’d go around in disguise, like King Henry on Agincourt Eve, to get a feel for the mood of the Fictional Characters I had designed to help me overcome my shortcomings and make me rich. Almost immediately I was stopped by a female Mallard Duck dressed like a Valkyrie, who was an obvious member of my loyal Barnyard Brigade; an LED lamp was attached to her helmet.

“Halt,” she said. “Friend or fowl?”

“It’s ‘friend or foe’,” I said.

She then leaned toward me and took in a beakful. “Have things decayed to the point that the Queen has conscribed talking blankets that smoke cigarettes and reek of Cat urine?”

Then a Pygmy Goat wearing wayfarers and his beard dyed pink arrived on the scene. “What’s this, Derringer?” he asked the Duck.

“A mess.”

“Hold on, hold it, hold it,” I replied. “I’m a friend to you both.”

“You weren’t attached to the Queen’s ill-conceived Vampire-twaffe, were you?” the goat asked.

It was a good thing that I was covered by the blanket, or my blush would have given me away. One of my foibles is whenever I have a Big Idea I get so wrapped up in the overall grandeur of it that I fail to think it out fully. Vampires are big sexy money. So what better than to stock my army and profitable novel series with thousands of them? Unfortunately, Universal Law dictates that all battles of the soul commence at dawn, without exception. I guess you have already figured out the rest.

“I serve under Captain Renfield,” I said, resigned to the fact that Renfield’s name carried more weight with these guys than my own.

They brightened. Yet as it went with Dorothy Parker, a serving of fresh hell was dumped on my plate.

“If so let’s get the parlay started,” said the Duck.

“Yeah,” added the Goat, “we can ransom what’s her name right now and go back to bed.”

“Don’t tell me that Captain Renfield has rolled over to the other side, in the last five minutes,” I said. “Where’s loyalty to the Queen?”

“‘Queen’?” the Goat laughed. “Do you mean the person who promised us all roles in the Great American Novel Franchise if we duked it out with her personality? And who is the same person who’d forgotten that battles of the soul are fought only at dawn and that, at best, Vampires have no power during the day–even though she’d stocked the army with them?”

“I don’t recall anyone pointing that out to the Queen,” I said. “She has a lot on her mind, and not enough tobacco in her system–she can’t remember everything.”

“We thought she had a secret plan,” said the Duck.

“Only secret known to her is the recipe for sorrow,” said the Goat. And both laughed the low laughter of the Barnyarders.

I was about to launch into a moving speech that would’ve roused the bones of the dead to join me in my cause, but like it must’ve been for Mrs. Parker, I find it difficult to adapt to the ways of the motivational speaker. I fail to form words that can rouse anybody for the same reason I can’t write love songs: ‘tis an unnatural and political gift to convincingly deliver thoughts you do not believe in.

As I struggled to cobble together a feasible stream of grand lies, it suddenly got brighter. I slowly spun around on my heels and discovered that I was surrounded by my own troops–all but one a barnyarder, all wearing LED helmets. Thirteen in all, these guys were Fictional Characters (FC’s) created by my hand to do my bidding. Along with the duck and goat, there were three pigs, a cow, two weird looking little chickens, a donkey, a Jim Croce fan gander I’d created during my vape coma named “Rapid Roy” (with a tattoo on one wing that says “Mama” and on the other it just says “Hey”), a second Duck, this one sporting an ill-fitting Minnesota Vikings’ helmet, a nanny Pygmy Goat, and a non-barnyarder personage known as “The Photobomb Fairie.” This was all that was left of my army after all the Vampires, Spirits, people, Cats, Robo Dwarf fighting Hamsters and Dogs had deserted me.

I flung aside my cloak and with my chin up I displayed my royal magnificence. No one had been fooled, they had already known that it was I. And it was hard to look regal with a tuft of cat hair attached to my nose.

Now, I’m used to a certain amount of rebellion from my FC’s; I endowed them with Free Will to make things interesting. But I had never realized just how much trouble Free Will could cause until the former Union of Pen Names and Imaginary Friends expanded and took in all Fictional Characters about a year after I had given my FC’s autonomy. To illustrate just how powerful and vast the FC element is in the union I ask that you imagine a Butterfly in spats named Gary. Guess what? Now there’s a Free Willed, be-spatted butterfly named Gary in the Union of Pen Names, Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters. That’s what–but not so fast, union rules require that I, as a Pen Name, must offer the role of Gary to already extant FC’s of my creation before Gary may have his own identity or a role in a story. This means that my FC’s are extremely interested in what I create, as such affects their careers.

The overdose vaping incident left me a bit off my game and prevented me from handling the situation in the usual way. You see, everything we produce in our realm is shot like a movie from a script outline that is ever changing. This is where my problem with Free Will comes in. I write the script, direct the action and my FC’s play along until one or two of them get the notion that they can do a better job, or they go whining to the goddam union about me. The only real power I have over them is the script, and when someone displays a little too much Free Will for his or her own good, I pull out my phone and suggest that “we alter” the whiner’s role in the production. Past alterations have included electrocution and a threat of a meteor to the head. But just as I was about to extract my phone that little witch of a Photobomb Fairie flew into my pocket, snagged it then delivered it to a knight in black armor who’d just rode in on a Segway.

The knight was attended by the Bluebird of Happiness, who is the lyingist little son of a bitch ever to take wing. The knight dismounted the Segway and lifted her visor. Of course, it was Captain Renfield. Everyone present who had a knee took one in her honor, except Yours Truly.

“Funny, I don’t recall a scene where everybody kisses your traitorous ass,” I said. Then I smiled manically and added, “As far as the phone goes, BFD. Ain’t one of you guys a recognized Pen Name.”

“We know all that, darling,” Renfield said. “But we would like to have a little talk with you before we continue this, um, opus. As soon as we come to an understanding approved by our union, I’ll give back the phone.”

“So, am I to understand that theft is approved by our union?” I asked.

“Theft is such an ugly word,” said Renfiled. “We call it Democratic Socialism.”

“All right, barnyarder princess,” I sighed. “Let’s adjourn to the round table.”

-3-

The round table lay in the barnyard. It had nothing in common with Camelot or the Algonquin, in fact it was actually a rectangle whose corners had broken off over the years. The first thing I noticed when I sat down at the table was the nanny Goat’s reluctance to sit anywhere near the Billy with the shades and dyed beard. She climbed into my lap, her tiny, sharp hooves tattooing my thighs.

“Trouble in paradise, Daisy?” The Photobomb Fairie, who was seated in a tiny throne to my immediate left, asked the Nanny.

“Tom’s such a gross eater,” said the little Nanny with a wave of a hoof at the Billy, who was seated at the other end of the table. “It would be all right if not for the flatulence.”

“Nannies seldom take grasses with Billies who pass gases,” said I.

Daisy nodded politely, as though humoring a dotty old relation who’d just spouted nonsense. But the Fairie seemed offended by my remark; she glared at me and lifted her wand menacingly.

“What? Whatcha gonna do?” I said. “Dude, you’re four-inches long. If you were a trout I’d have to throw you back.”

As previously stated, I’m not big on thinking ahead. But Renfield prevented the minute “Magickcian” (that’s what she calls herself: “Muh-JICK-shun”–says it just like that) from showing me what she had up her wand.

“Now, now, Mab, no spells, please,” Renfield said from the other end of the table, “we all know you’re a bigger Magickcian than that.”

“As you wish,” the Photobomb Fairie said demurely. But under her breath she hissed “Anything more like that and you’ll spend the rest of this story as a bale of alfalfa.”

“Thought I told you a few stories back not to call her ‘Mab,’” I said to Renfield, hooking a thumb at the Photobomb Fairie. “Thought I told you that it would give her big ideas.”

“If you really felt that way you wouldn’t have given her Free Will,” quacked the duck in the Viking’s helmet.

“Yeah,” honked the Gander named Rapid Roy.

Here the Pigs and the Chickens, and the Donkey and the Cow, and everyone who had yet to speak were to recite lines, but they all went “Narco”–including the Bluebird of Happiness. Daisy the Nanny Goat was snoring in my lap, and the rest of the Bandyard Brigade had fallen fast asleep on their hooves and in their chairs. Only Renfield, the Photobomb Fairie and I remained awake. And I noticed a thin trail of smoke emanating from my phone where it lay on the table in front of Renfield.

“Shit and cut” I said with a huge sigh. “There goes my career as a rich novelist. Guess one of us ought to explain to the readers what has just happened before I call it a wrap,” I added, gently patting Daisy on the head.

“Let’s have Mab explain,” Renfield said.

“Sure, fine, whatever. And keep calling her Mab, why should I care? Seems fitting that a four-inch Fictional Character Photobomb Fairie should tell the world my great shame and failure.”

Although the Photobomb–Mab is about the size of the average thumb when viewed at arm’s length, she has a loud mouth and plenty to say. Since the mass Narco event left my phone in the same condition Vesusvious had left Pompeii, the only control I had over her was the word limit. This piece had a budget of three-thousand words, I informed Mab that she had two-hundred-forty words to spend, and prayed to Jesus that she’d bring it home under five-hundred.

“It’s like this, dear readers,” said Mab, “our esteemed Pen Name cannot for long sustain more than three, sometimes four characters in a conversation at the same time. There are sixteen of us seated at this table. As soon as the second duck and the gander joined a conversation which already contained our Pen, Daisy, Captain Renfield and my magnificence the scene shorted out the phone and caused all but three of us to go Narco–which means, out like a light, catching zees, beddy-bye or even ‘night-night.’”

“Furthermore, our Pen claims that her stories are produced like movies, which is mostly true, except she neglects to mention that like a pilot flying in fog she must keep a spatial image of what’s going on in her mind during composition or risk having the whole mess go down in flames, which, of course, is exactly what happened here.”

Mab seemed like she had more to say, but I mumbled “Cut and print.” Then we put the barnyarders to bed, raised the white flag and I slunk back to my office. There was no more Tool or Katy Perry heard that night. The only sound was that of the wind futilely shrieking in to fill the bottomless vacuum of my soul.

Renfiled popped in and removed the NO SMOKING sign. I lit up. I’ve fourteen words left in the budget. Behold the one word meaning of life:

Then I had a flash (or possibly a stroke) and “recalled” another early memory of Daisy….

Welcome to Saragun Springs: The Book of Daisy Part Three

Some G.O.A.T.

It was a day for hiding from my worries. Since I’m almost always in my office, it’s easy for trouble to find me. But I wasn’t at my desk when my Imaginary Friend, Renfield, came looking for me with the latest crapbomb for me to either disarm or disregard and let detonate. I was in a vista I had copied from an old movie; relaxing in a colorized meadow, under a shade tree, warmed by Pongshine and a bottle of Bokay fortified apple wine concealed in a paper bag, writing what you read now on my trusty Chromebook.

But Renfield found me anyway, she too had a similar paper bag. But she was also carrying what I assumed was the latest crapbomb. By name it turned out to be an altered edition of what is known in our world as that beloved children’s classic, Charlotte’s Web. But this copy was from a “PDQ Pilsner Music and Book Emporium” located at Other Earth. Their version of E.B. White’s tale is titled Charlotte’s Web: Some G.O.A.T.

“It’s so cute,” Renfield said, sitting down beside me. “Daisy and Peety are going through an extreme capitalism phase.”

Before I could ask Renfield what she meant by that, she opened the book to the page normally left blank inside the cover, the one I’ve always assumed is there for the author to sign, and handed it to me. Alas, the only way to ask for Mr. White’s autograph since 1985 is via a crystal ball–and this copy was a recent print. Yet the page was filled with words anyway, in long-hoof, which I recognized as that of one Miss Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess. For someone who has to velcro a pen to her hoof, Daisy produces a remarkably tidy script.

It said:

Dear, Miss Leila–

To prevent you from asking Miss Renfield “What in hell’s name (or sake) is this hot steamer?” and knowing that you will launch a futile campaign to con her into spilling the backstory, she asked that I, the Goatess from G.O.A.T., explain the current situation.

As team G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) [here, Daisy had underlined the first letter of each word of the acronym] me and my sidekick Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon are a superhero duo who rescue fictional characters inside books, plays, television programs, and films shown at Other Earth–a place recklessly created by the person who employs you as a Pen.

G.O.A.T.’s latest triumph rests with you. Miss Renfield will fill in the details, but in a conversational way that will not come off like an information dump.

Yours,

Miss Daisy Cloverleaf, The G.O.A.T.

Before I could speak, Renfield grabbed the book, thumbed to the final chapter “The Last Day,” and handed it back to me.

“It’s all the same as it was until the very end,” she said.

“Why did Daisy write this instead of telling me in person?”

“Daisy and Peety are huge celebrities on Other Earth. Here, out in the Barnyard, they’re just two of your Fictional Characters.”

“So, they’re a bit ashamed of their creator,” I said, taking a nip of wine. “Could be that they think they’re juuuussst a little bit better than their old author.”

“I got a big idea,” Renfield said, “let me take over the narrative as you read the additional material.”

“All right–Hey! this could be the stylistic invention that finally lands me the Nobel,” I said. “Me, you and Daisy–we can pass around the narrative as though it were the Gorgon sisters’ eye. I smell the luta-fish on the barbie already–you take the helm.”

Which is exactly what I, Renfield, did. As I opened my phone and took over control of this file, I considered informing Leila that lutefisk was a Norwegian delicacy impossible to prepare in the Australian way, and that the Nobel for Literature is awarded in Sweden, but if I spent my life casting light on all her little ignorances, I’d have no time for anything else. Besides, she’s convinced that every land north of France should be called United Iceland; such can be expected from someone who’s also convinced that the Dutch would be better off called the “Hollies.”

“You do know that every word you write comes up on this screen?” Leila said, nodding at her open Chromebook.

This was when a mysterious god-like force caused Leila to close the Chromebook and give all her limited attention to the novel I’d brought her.

As she read the changed passage that I had written, strange expressions crossed her face, apparently on their way to the other side, like chickens crossing the road, as she got to the good parts.

Since I was at “the helm” I chose to have Leila to read aloud the “improvements” team G.O.A.T. made to White’s story.

“And as Charlotte prepared to die with dignity a dwarf Goatess wearing a white cape accompanied by something best described as the bizarre given life–a small two dimensional drawing of some sort of bird, even more incredibly, animate, and drinking from what appeared to be a can of beer–came to where Charlotte lay.

“‘Greetings, Spider,’ said the little Goat. ‘I am the Goatess from G.O.A.T. and this is my sidekick Pie-Eyed Peety. We have come to make it possible for you to reunite with Wilbur.’

“‘ “That boy is a P-I-G Pig’’ Babs–Animal House,’ said Pie-Eyed Peety,” Leila said, quoting a character who had just quoted an external character from a film inside the story she was reading out loud. (So that’s why you get “‘“ marks, if anyone the Nobel committee is reading.)

Leila stopped reading it aloud. The mysterious god-like force allowed her a little more wine. The mysterious god-like force then stated that Leila was seated on the ground, her back leaning against the base of a tree, legs straight out, the Chromebook balanced on her lap, the novel in one hand and the wine in the other–for the benefit of readers who could not infer a clear picture from the half-ass clues Leila had provided prior to the mysterious god-like force’s taking over the narrative.

Then Leila shook her head as if such an act could clear it instead of having the effect of scattering her thoughts like the fake flakes in a snow globe. She then mentally wrestled with the mysterious god-like force like Captain Kirk hamming it up against an invisible entity; her face contorted like Prince Andrew contemplating the invitation list to a slumber party…

“Three consecutive similes and you are out!” I yelled at Renfield, as I, Leila, regained control of the narrative.

“Rats.”

“You know the rules fiend! The fifth adverb and third simile are one way tickets to Palookaville.”

“I still say Rats–those were Daisy’s suggestions.”

“Serves you right for taking direction from a herbivore.”

“That’s fine. Whatever. Didn’t want to do it any more anyway.”

“That’s very thirteen-years old of you, Rennie–now, would you please explain the end of this crapbomb to me?”

“Why? It should be plain to even a P-I-G, pig, what happened.”

“Well, it says here,” as I held up the book, “that Peety restored Charlotte to health and gave her immortality by dumping a drop of PDQ Pilsner on her. And it now ends not as it has for decades, but with Charlotte writing things like, ‘TELL MOM AND DAD TO BUY PDQ’ and ‘WHEN YOU WANT THAT FIRST SPECIAL DRINK EVER, MAKE IT PDQ’ in her web.”

Renfield showed me her brightest smile. “That’s where the extreme capitalism phase comes in. Team G.O.A.T. and PDQ Pilsner have merged brands on Other Earth. Fortunately the guidelines in that world about what is and isn’t appropriate advertising for children are slightly blurred.”

It made sense, in a weird and twisted way. I opened my Chromebook and saw that there were nine-thousand-seventy-five unread emails in my box, all from the Boss–who gets an earful of complaints from Other Earth, and is under the delusion that I care about her problems.

I nodded at Renfield’s paper bag. “Is that PDQ?” PDQ Pilsner does not exist on Earth, but it is the cheap swill of choice in the Springs and over there. Although we seldom discuss it, Renfield is a huge PDQ shareholder at Other Earth.

“Christ no–I’d drink Roundup before that piss,” she said. “It’s another bottle of Bokay for you. Courtesy of Team G.O.A.T.”

Renfield rose and again flashed her megawatt smile. “Next up for the PDQ/G.O.A.T. team brand is music. They are aiming to enter Billy, Don’t Be a Hero and transform Billy into The Coward of the County.”

“Wow, can hardly wait,” I said as I cracked the fresh bottle of Bokay, deleted, unread, a new swarm of emails from the Boss and silently cast about my mind for a better hiding place.

Welcome to Saragun Springs: The Book of Daisy Part Two

PDQ Pilsner Playhouse Proudly Presents

Without knocking, Renfield entered my office pushing an antique television on a furniture dolly. The thing looked old enough to have aired the Lincoln assassination.

“What now?” I asked.

She smiled. “Every time you ask me that; every time I avoid answering you, and every time I wonder why you have yet to catch on.”

I leaned back in my chair, put my feet on the desk and attempted to look wise yet amused, all knowing but still a good sport. For I’d read somewhere that such poses are commonly associated with a tall in the saddle style of leadership that people find inspiring. Unfortunately, I am very short.

“All right, wiseguy, allow me a wild guess. That relic,” I said, motioning at the TV, “has something to do with Daisy and Peety running amok at Other Earth.”

“Ah, the Boss has already called.”

“She’s always on the hotline. So much that she must think ‘What now?’ is her name.”

“Did she tell you about the PDQ Pilsner Playhouse?”

“You know I don’t listen to her after I hear the names Daisy and Peety.”

“Then you are in for a treat.”

Renfield locked the dolly’s wheels, plugged the set in and turned it on. It made a disconcerting buzz as the tubes heated up. The contraption resembled a thirties era living room radio, something out of a Rockwell painting. The screen, however, was small, more like a lens. A single white dot formed at the screen’s center; it increased into a jumpy, snowy, rolling jumble of amorphous images, and the buzz grew tenfold. Renfield adjusted the volume, vertical and horizontal. There was a “rabbit ears” antenna on top of the thing, and she moved each ear with great care. She did it all reverently and delicately, yet failed to get much of a result.

“If I remember my history right,” I said, “this is one of those objects that responds best to violence.”

Renfield slapped her forehead in a What Was I Thinking sort of way and gave the thing a heavy kick in the side. It almost fell off the dolly but righted itself with a thump. The picture resolved instantly.

I’ve had more than my fair share of weird sights as the Chief Executive Pen of Saragun Springs, but I do believe that what appeared on the set became the newest Weird Champion. Nearly all the champions have been trained and shaped by Renfield, and eight or so of my roster of two-hundred-twenty plus FC’s, so maybe it was fitting that two of my Free-Willingest FC’s, by name, Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon and Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatness had a wing and hoof in the ascension of the latest Weird Champion.

With a flourish of trumpets, a measured male baritone voice came over the speaker. On screen, and in glorious black and white, two industrial smoke stacks were pouring something up into the atmosphere. Both stacks had PDQ painted on them in giant letters.

The voice intoned:

“Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Tonight. the PDQ Pilsner Playhouse proudly presents: Oedipus Rex.”

This was followed by a swell of classical music and a bunch of blather about the virtues of the sponsor.

“Um, let me guess, the Other Earth version is altered, like that Twilight Zone we watched the other day?” I asked.

“Yes,” Renfield said. “This aired was aired by the Dumont Network on the sixth of January 1951. But the version we are about to watch was seen only on Other Earth.”

I sighed. “Rock, paper scissors you for the backstory.”

Renfield agreed. I played “rock”; she played “paper.” As any kid in the schoolyard can tell you, paper covers rock.

“Shit. How ‘bout best of three,” I said.

“Not a chance in hell.”

I pulled the pint of Wild Turkey I keep on hand for medical emergencies from the bottom drawer of my desk. There are also pints of Jim Beam, Four Freedoms vodka and several hotel bottles of peppermint schnapps in the same drawer. In fact there is little in my desk that isn’t there for medical emergencies. The bottle was half full. I took it down to the quarter mark, passed it to Renfield who transformed it into an empty vessel. I opened my Chromebook, activated the voice to text, rose from my chair and began to pace and orate, all the while ignoring the kinescope version of the Greek tragedy on TV.

“Dear Diary, how many years must pass before everyone recalls the debacles of youth fondly, before all involved laugh about those silly times when everything was oh so serious? Twenty, thirty? Perhaps it happens when we finally know how many seas a white dove must sail before she sleeps in the sand.” I paused and lit a cigarette, mainly in an effort to insinuate the end of this paragraph.

“Regardless of the future,” I continued, “I feel the need to unburden my soul–now. Since I created you with a purpose similar to that of a septic tank in mind, consider yourself the lucky recipient, Diary.”

As I spoke, I kept my eye on the program, which crammed about ten hours’ of material into forty-six minutes. That was its sole virtue. I didn’t recognize any of the actors. Yet. The title role was essayed by scenery chewing ham cured at the school of Hormel. There wasn’t an R this guy couldn’t trill or an emotion beyond his ability to overplay.

“It seems just yesterday when Renfield, Gwen and Daisy visited Other Earth and brought a cartoon beer mascot pigeon named Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon home–just to see him morph into a sentient being able to travel back to Other Earth at any time in its history from his creation in 1946 on–for the laws of Other Earth physics do not allow for time traveling to any time before you existed.”

I then rose, went to my office window and opened it. I don’t mind telling you that this action is/was a literary act of foreshadowing an upcoming fate.

Renfield shook her head and fished a pint Cutty Sark out of my desk. She mumbled something that sounded like “So much for seamlessly laying the backstory.”

Undeterred, I left the window and I kept at it: “And it seems like only twenty minutes ago when Peety and one of my Barnyarder FC’s, Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess, decided to form a superhero team called G.O.A.T.–as in the Greatest Of All Time–um please bold face the first letters of that if you will, Diary.…Anyway, G.O.A.T. specializes in entering old television shows and films at Other Earth to affect the outcome. They do it to rescue fellow FC’s–though not my own–who are in peril. And G.O.A.T. can do it because of Peety’s singular ability to go just about anywhere between Other Earth’s 1946 onward–including into programmes; Daisy is able to come along because she is an FC, thus insertable anywhere that is considered a public domain fictional story. The only prohibition being that they cannot enter films or shows in which the actor who played the character they interact with is still alive. Needless to say, TV viewers at Other Earth are somewhat surprised when watching an old rerun and suddenly see a hand-sized two-dimensional cartoon Pigeon and a Pygmy Goat wearing a cape enter a scene at a critical moment…When this happens I usually get an irate call from my employer, because the citizens of Other Earth consider her God, have her contact information and beseech her with all their troubles. She’s the sort of God those guys deserve. Anyway, talk at you later, Dearest Diary.”

Renfield had mixed herself a Cutty and ginger ale. Since she had the only clean glass, I took a pull of each straight from their bottles and swished them around in my mouth.

Then something occurred to me. “One thing, Rennie, I thought PDQ never made it. Went bankrupt about twenty minutes after they got the license.”

PDQ Pilsner has never existed in our world, and only briefly by name at Other Earth, for my employer thought it would be a cool idea. She never followed up on it, but she’s to blame anyway.

“That was true until recently. Daisy and Peety are becoming famous on Other Earth. So much so, and with me as a partner, that they licensed the name of PDQ Pilsner to another brewer, to a nifty profit, I might add.”

“But it was my idea.”

“So–according to the treaty the Boss signed with Other Earth you aren’t allowed to set foot in the place, let alone sue for damages. Besides, you retain all rights on this Earth.”

I was about to shred her logic to little pieces when the final act of the Oedipus saga reached denouement. Oedipus had learned the sad fact that the Oracle had told him the truth. In the most convoluted way possible, our hero learns that he indeed murdered his father and married his mother as foretold, despite all the precautions he took to avoid it. (Anyone who wants the full backstory can look up Sophocles in Hades.)

This, of course, was where Oedipus claws out his own eyes so he will see no more awful truths. But instead of that happening in a highly inferred artsy 1951 fashion, Pie Eyed-Peety and Daisy showed up in the scene, both, as stated before, dressed as superheroes: The G.O.A.T. and PDQ Pete.

“What new humiliation, Zeus? What fresh folly awaits, Olympus?” the Hormellian actor orated, upon the duo’s arrival.

“I am The G.O.A.T. and this is my sidekick PDQ Pete. We have brought you an alternative to blinding yourself that will work to the same effect.”

Daisy nodded at Peety who dashed off screen and returned with a pair of empty shopping bags.

Daisy took the bags in her mouth, gave them to “Oedipus” and said, “Here’s a bag to put over your head and one for Mom if yours falls off.”

“‘I find Milton as boring as you find Milton’-Professor Jennings, Animal House,” Peety Squawked.

“Sophocles wrote this Peety,” Daisy said primly. “But thank you for sharing.”

Two beats of a big drum sounded and a placard that said “FINIS” appeared on the screen, thus ending the transmission.

Naturally, the hotline rang.

“Be sure to tell the Boss, it’s Hamlet next week.”

I threw the fated hotline out the open window.

FINIS

OUR CAST

The GOAT….Daisy Cloverleaf

PDQ Pete…..Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon

Renfield….Herself

Oedipus…Boots the Impaler

The Boss…Poppyseed the Type A Hummingbird (yes, he was on the hotline–literally, just perched there)

Written, produced, directed and co-starring Leila

Welcome to Sargun Springs: The Book of Daisy Part One

G.O.A.T.

I was attempting to hibernate through a stormy November of the soul when Renfield barged into my office, blinded the room with light and cheerfully yelled “Great news!”

“Can’t you see I’m hibernating?”

“Oh, you’ll want to know about this,” she said with a smile (always smiling). “Daisy and Peety are the greatest superhero team.”

I sighed and lit a cigarette. “So? Both have the emotional intelligence of a six-year-old. It makes sense that they’d play Batman in the Barnyard–On your way out, please kill the light.”

I knew that my hibernation was on pause when Renfield said: “The ‘Barnyard’ you alluded to is on Other Earth.”

“Holy skid marks, Caped Crusader,” I said. “Do me a favor, pretend that I have amnesia and fill me in on the backstory. Speak as though I’m a reader ignorant of Daisy, Peety and Saragun Springs in general.”

“Ha! Forget you and your incomprehensible laziness as a storyteller,” Renfield said. “You’re not passing that buck my way this time.”

It wasn’t my day for picking longshots. So I opened my laptop and wrote the following:

Renfield whistled and Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon and Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess entered my office. Both are Fictional Characters (FC’s) in my employ, who (along with over a couple hundred other FC’s) “essay” various roles in my productions–which are “shot” like movies. Renfield is a former FC who is now the only Imaginary Friend, and she’s second in charge of this virtual realm of Saragun Springs in which I am the Penname (sigh, yes, just one word)–or “Director.” Everyone over here but me belongs to the Union of Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters (UIFFC)–formerly the Union of Pennames, Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters.

“See, was that so hard?” Renfield asked.

I ignored her, which is easy to do if you get a lot of practice. But Daisy and Peety were more unusual than… well, usual. For the past month or so, Daisy had been sporting a paper mache horn on her head because she wanted to be a Unicorn. Which I supported because I figured that would keep her from bitching about not being born a Unicorn. The horn was gone and she was wearing a glittering gold robe like that of a pro wrestler–except it was designed for a small individual of the four-legged variety. She also had matching spats above her hooves, a ribbon of the same color tied to her tail, and wraparound sunglasses, like the Terminator–except these were fashioned to fit the head of a Pygmy Goat. A gaudy gold rope chain, whose medallion contained four large black letters, also made from glitter, hung from her neck. It said: G.O.A.T.

Peety’s always weird looking. He’s a two dimensional cartoon Pigeon who was the late 1940’s mascot for PDQ Pilsner on Other Earth. He looked the way he always looks, but somehow he had rearranged his lines to form a mask like the one the Lone Ranger wore.

It quickly became clear that the situation was a steaming pile of freshly squeezed Dog crap just begging to be stepped in.

I cracked under the strain: “All right, what’s the gag?”

Peety spoke first. “The G.O.A.T., brought to you by PDQ!” Peety still touts PDQ in between slob-com scripture quotations.

“As in the Greatest Of All Time,” Daisy added, with a smidgen of attitude, enough to shade the caps bold, I might add.

I should have known that Daisy would have eventually come across the sportstalk/show biz acronym of hyperbole and get peculiar about it.

“I’m all for delusions of grandeur,” I said, “but Renny here tells me you guys have been to Other Earth in violation of the agreement.”

“Actually, Leila,” Renfield chimed in, “the agreement states that only you can no longer set foot on Other Earth.”

“Doesn’t that imply that FC’s of my creation are a part of me?”

“But surely her highness recalls endowing this Imaginary Friend and all of her FC’s with Free Will,” Renfield said. “We do as we please.”

The phone rang. It was the hot line. The Boss.

I answered the phone with my usual polite demeanor: “What?”

The Boss was in her usual state of disarray caused by her subhuman lifestyle. She told me and told me and told me stuff until I had heard enough.

“I’ve got just two words for you, Boss,” I said before hanging up on her. “And they ain’t ‘thank you.’”

I lit another cigarette off the still smoldering butt of the one I’d just finished.

“The Boss says that Other Earth called to complain about a certain beloved on Other Earth cartoon Pigeon and an unknown Pygmy Goat getting inside an old Twilight Zone rerun at Other Earth. They traced the individuals in question back to her. I don’t think I’m guilty of profiling when I assume the culprits are in this very room–along with their enabler,” I said, looking directly at Renfield.

“Ah, Other Earth, that twin world devised by our Esteemed Employer then entrusted to you, our humble Pen,” Renfield said, filling the remainder of the backstory because she had realized that by refusing to do so meant that I had to cut her lines. “That Eden you visited in its past and altered its future so it includes ungovernable nuclear monsters that exist only in our fifties science fiction films. Where a Team commanded by me and the GOAT found Peety and brought him to our world despite the rift that caused in the fabric of spacetime.”

She came around my side of the desk and began to fiddle with my laptop.

“I’ve managed to download a copy of G.O.A.T.’s first mission.”

I recognized the scene instantly. It was the final seconds of a Twilight Zone episode that was originally aired both here and at Other Earth on 20 November 1959, titled Time Enough At Last. The episode involves an extremely myopic, milquetoast bookworm named Henry Bemis, who only wants to read but is prevented by everyone around him, especially his shrewish wife. A famous episode which ends with Henry being the sole survivor of a nuke attack because he was in the vault of the bank he worked at. Henry at first despairs, then rejoices because there’s “All the time at last” to read. Then, in a cruel ironic twist, Henry accidentally breaks his glasses, begins to weep and is then consoled and aided by a cartoon Pigeon and a Pygmy Goatess in the guises of superheroes–at least that’s what now runs on Other Earth.

“Hello, Mr. Bemis,” Daisy said, “we found your spare pair of spectacles unharmed at your house. Alas, the same cannot be said for your wife.”

“Squ-wack–boiled like a sweet potato.” Peety, ad libbed, as he sometimes does, always preceded with a Squ-wack.

Daisy then used her mouth to carefully remove Mr. Bemis’s glasses from her robe and placed them on Mr. Bemis.

He was both overjoyed and somewhat confused at the same time.

“What, what–um, how is this?”

“We are from G.O.A.T., which means the Greatest Of All Time,” Daisy said, as if that explained everything. “I am The GOAT and this is my sidekick PDQ Pete. We must go now, but I recommend that you locate a book on glasses making and repair.”

Then PDQ Pete dug out an unharmed fifth of Jack Daniel’s from the rubble, pushed it toward Bemis and said “‘My advice to you is to start drinking heavily’”–Bluto, Animal House.”

The screen faded to black.

“So,” I said, “you guys are FC superheroes who rescue other FC’s in distress, but can only do it at Other Earth because of Peety’s singular effect on the flow of reality over there.”

“Precisely,” Daisy said.

“Wait a minute–that man was actually an actor named Burgess Meredith, not a Fictional Character.”

“Not anymore, Leila,” Renfield said. “Mr. Meredith lived to almost ninety and has been dead for a very long time.”

“Let me get this straight–or as straight as I’m willing–since Meredith’s death that character on the show has been Mr. Bemis.”

“Precisely,” either Renfield or Daisy or maybe even Peety said. I forgot because I had stopped paying attention.

“Well, thanks for the update,” I said with a yawn. “Don’t let the Boss catch you guys playing over there. And I’m sure that none of you will let the door hit you in the ass on the way out–and turn off that goddam light.”

They just laughed and went on their merry way. And no one turned off the light. Fortunately, the hotline rang again. I fired the phone at the light with stunning success and resumed my hibernation.

Our Cast:

Renfield…Herself

The GOAT…Daisy Cloverleaf

PDQ Pete…Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon

“Mr. Bemis”…Either The Ghost of Burgess Meredith or Henry Bemis (we aren’t sure)

The Boss…Dead Air

Kane…Leila Allison

Well, every franchise has to begin somewhere. The big problem here is the backstory, for we deemed it unlikely that there might be repeat readers. Thus it and following productions had (and have) the backstory woven into them in increasingly strange ways. The following day we “shot” a sequel that will air in this space tomorrow.

Welcome to Saragun Springs: The Book of Daisy

Introduction

Beginning tomorrow, Miss Daisy Kloverleaf (nee Cloverleaf) the Pygmy Goatess, Saragun Springs’ Lead Fictional Character, the Goatess of the superhero duo, G.O.A.T. and adverb junkie, will dominate the month of July.

Mainly there will be materials that first appeared on Literally Stories UK in the short stand alone form, with new stuff added here and there.

Daisy was initially a supporting character who decided, due to her dose of Free Will, Saragun Springs style, to become a star in the realm–as those of you who read book one plainly saw. A sort of clawing her way to the top via hooves followed. And despite her addictionly addiction to adverbly adverbs, Daisy has persevered and continues to pursue new areas of interest.

Of course, being a person, Daisy has challengingly challenging elements in her personality aside from her little habitly habit. Mainly, she has a long memory, is never wrong, and harbors a special little passive aggressive hell for those who’d dare correct her. But all in all, she is indispensable and lovable despite being described as a “mouthy little feta dispenser.”

Welcome to her world.

Leila

Welcome to Saragun Springs: The Star Studded Finale

Meet Peety Pie Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon

I stood and approached the stench bubble. I held the picture up to the edge close to the bubble, the same way you would hold a piece of paper above a flame, not touching, but just close enough for the paper to catch fire. That’s what happened, and I lit a cigarette off the picture then dropped the image on the ground. It went up in a little poof of black smoke. But when the smoke cleared, instead of ashes we had Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon. In Saragun Springs he is a sentient two dimensional cartoon character…

Who Looks Like This

I smiled at the Team seated at the picnic table. “Renfield,” I said, “you being a leading Supernaturalist, as stated earlier, how about you take the lead and explain just what happened. But please do so in a naturalistic sort of way that won’t come off as a shamelessly lazy information dump.” I then knelt and held out a hand, which Peety drunkenly climbed aboard and I gently placed him on the table.

Renfield is rather egotistical about her specialty. And she puffed up like a Blow Fish and hooked her thumbs in the lapels of her jacket and assumed an authoritative demeanor. “What we got here is an interdimensional being who exists in two realities at once–ours and Other Earth’s.”

It was Daisy’s turn to speak, but she had nodded off and was snoring. Fortunately, Gwen knew the script.

“An interdimensional being? Oh but how?” She said flatly, as though she were ordering a coffee.

“Glad you asked–Day-Gwen–today, Gwen, I mean,” Renfield, not necessarily the best ad libber, said.

Daisy woke. “An interdimensional being? Oh but how?”

“Just keep rolling,” I said.

“Glad you asked, um, Daisy,” Renfield continued.

“Is there an echo?” Gwen said softly.

“Cut,” I said. “So much for the naturalistic approach. Since Peety will be with us from here on, we’ll tell his story, by and by.”

The Hot Line and Self Conscious Summary

I was supposed to call the Boss on the hotline about a week after I had established the realm. The hotline is an ancient red trimline princess style phone that had arrived on my desk during our first trip into the realm, with a post it note stating “call me once a week,” pasted to it. Free Will makes it so I’m reluctant to take orders, so the phone lay buried beneath various debris that accumulate on your average desk top. When the first week had reached ten days, and I’d yet to file a report, something began to ring under an empty pizza box.

“What?” I said upon finally answering the damn thing.

I’d been drinking since noon and I had Peety in the office watching a 1980’s film marathon on a replica of the Boss’s old VCR. Peety is sentient, though constantly wrecked on PDQ, yet his other world view was limited to extolling PDQ Pilsner. I had hit on the idea of expanding his knowledge through movies that had been made after 1946. But all I had were items like Alien, Porkies, The Terminator, Animal House and such on hand in a video cassette. But Peety ate them up; after all Peety is a good-timing Pigeon unlikely to enjoy Sophie’s Choice.

“You were supposed to report three days ago,”said the Boss.

“I’ve been busy.”

“At least tell me you got Peety.”

“Yep, I do. Gonna need more cash if we go back to Other Earth.”

The Boss is quick to change the subject when it involves money. “Just read the dailies.”

“Then you already know about Peety,” I said.

“Let’s say I skimmed them,” she replied. “Can’t help but notice that you are a bit candid about your thoughts on me.”

“Duplicity is the best policy, Boss,” I said. “But honesty will do in a pinch.”

“I see. When do you think you will get around to reading some of our productions? Damn near forty pages in.”

Our, I thought. Big talk for an anonymous person. Then again I figured she approved of the situation for if she hadn’t it would have been all mine.

“Just turn the page,” I said. I hung up the hotline and yanked the cord out of the wall.

“How’s it going Peety–getting the hang of three-d reality yet?”

“They took the bar,” Peety squawked. “They took the fucking bar.”

“Alcohol is doing wonders for your brain, old chum,” I said. He was watching Animal House for the tenth time. My aim was to have him communicate his thoughts via quoting slob-com scripture.

Why? You ask? “Why not?” Belched Peety, again quoting Animal House as though it were scripture.

On cue, Daisy trotted into the office, dressed like a superhero. ”I’m here for my starringly starring vehicle,” she said.

“Great,” I said. “You, my little darling, will be opening book two.”

The End of Book One

Welcome to Saragun Springs: The Book of Daisy (aka, “The Book of Adverbs”) will appear in installments on this site with an introduction on 1 July. We hope to see you then.

Leila

Welcome to Saragun Springs: Part Eight “The Book of Peety”

Saving Pie Eyed Peety

I was seated at the picnic table at the spring, keeping a weather eye on the stench bubble, watching the mission unfold at Other Earth on my trusty tablet. The team didn’t need to pass through the portal that was swamped with the foul water, and would never have done it anyway. All it took for them to travel to Other Earth was text in the same coordinates I had used when I lost the first phone there and hit send–but they would arrive five minutes later than I.

Renfield had the phone, Gwen the money and Daisy took it all in on the camera and microphone assembly that was on her head, along with her glitter and paper mache horn. Each team member wore a necklace that contained a fob that connected them to the phone. They brought a fourth fob (also in Gwen’s possession) for the object I wanted them to retrieve. Yes, a magic fob like the tricorder Star Trek leaned heavily on to jump plausibility holes. Only fobbed persons and objects could time travel via the second flip phone. The phone previously used and lost by me was tuned to another fob altogether.

According to legend, President Obama once said “Never underestimate Joe’s [Biden] ability to f*$# things up.” If you replace “Joe’s” with “Our,” you then have what might be considered the Saragun Springs’ motto and/or Mission Statement–yet another item I attribute to Unchecked Free Will.

Immediately after Renfield pushed send the tablet screen filled with a distorted view of Daisy’s paper mache horn. It was smack in the center and obscured about two thirds of the picture. From what little I could see, it appeared that they had arrived in the same parking lot that I had landed near at the start of my trip.

I sighed and sent a text to the team:

GODDAM HORN BLOCKING MY VIEW

In return I received the following: MESSAGE PENDING.SCHEDULED TO ARRIVE AT OTHER EARTH IN O.E. YEAR 1996…

“Rat bastard–give a flip phone time machine any chance to pee in your lager and it will,” I muttered.

Fortunately the microphone worked and after forgiving myself for forgetting to install two way communication. I closed my eyes, listened and imagined.

“Hi,” Renfield said. To whom, I didn’t know right off. “Nice doggy, cute babies…Here you go plenty for all,” she added and I knew that it was the mother Coyote and her pups. I recall Renfield stuffing her pockets with something before going. Most likely Dog biscuits that the Boss keeps on hand, even though she doesn’t have a Dog.

Then I caught if not a lucky break, at least a mixed result. I heard Gwen laugh.”Daisy, you’re invisible but your horn and helmet show.” I opened my eyes and saw fuzzy movement on my tablet, then Gwen’s face as she adjusted the horn so it wouldn’t block the camera.

“Thank God disembodied cam helmets and glitter horns were so common in 1946,” Gwen, forever the wiseass, said.

“Right?” Renfield, also a consistent wiseass, added. And they did nothing about the situation. I watched Daisy follow them into the lounge. Daisy is eighteen inches tall at her highest point; mainly, I saw shoes and the gravel parking lot.

But it improved once they got inside the building. I heard Gwen say, “That’s them over there.”

The they in question were Dr. Dagmar and Durwood. Daisy pointed the camera in their direction. I saw them seated at the same table. Durwood was working on his art and Dagmar was examining the phone with a magnifying glass. The team got closer and closer, heralded by the beat of little, invisible hooves.

“Hi, mind if we join you?” Gwen said, but it really wasn’t a question.

I watched Renfield pick Daisy up and place her in a chair at the table.

“What the hell is that?” Dagmar asked, looking in Daisy’s direction. I’m guessing that the floating horn and helmet was a bit of a conversation piece.

“Not a that, but a Goat, darling. Her name is Daisy Cloverleaf,” Renfield said. “She’s mostly invisible,” she added with a whisper.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Daisy said, obviously understanding that there was no longer a need for stealth.

Durwood looked up and was gobsmacked by Gwen’s beauty. Although he would be a dweeb in any dimension, Durwood was still a guy and Gwen has the gobsmack effect on guys, well the straight ones anyway.

“Was there a woman here a few minutes ago–about three feet tall and a bit of a mouth?”

Dr. Dagmar pointed her flip phone at Renfield and pushed send. That’s a tell of an evil genuis if there ever was one. They just have to push buttons.

“Wrong frequency,” Renfield said. “But you can keep the phone. What we want is the drawing our friend was looking at.”

Gwen sat in the chair next to Durwood. She placed one hand on his and took the drawing I had dropped in the other–for I’d told her what it looked like–and purred “I’ll give you ten bucks for this.”

I think Durwood was expecting a different kind of proposition, yet he sort of nodded yes, and Gwen laid five two dollar bills on the table.

Dr. Dagmar noticed the fob on Gwen’s necklace and reached out and touched it and said, “What’s this?” the instant Renfield hit send to return the crew to Sargun Springs. That action, naturally, brought Dr. Dagmar along, but Daisy had the presence of mind to tap the send button on Dagmar’s phone which sent her back to Other Earth before the link closed. If Daisy hadn’t acted as soon as she had, we’d have been stuck with her–who’d later be responsible for the rise of the Atomic Monsters on Other Earth, aided by something she’d discovered in the flip phone at her laboratory. It takes a special Evil Genius to accomplish that, one that real Earth has never produced. And if it were to happen it would have had to happen very early.

Gwen handed me the picture. “What does it all mean?” she asked.

“Well, it’s like this.”

Welcome to Saragun Springs: Part Seven “The Book of Peety”

“It went like this…”

“I went over there once and made a record,” I muttered. Then I handed the tablet to Daisy to read because it made sense in a weird and twisted way that a Pygmy Goat wearing a blackout suit, with a spycam and glitter unicorn horn on her head should read aloud. “Eye spy this,” I sighed.

She held the tablet in her hooves and read.

“Aloud, please.”

Daisy’s voice isn’t what you might expect from a talking Goat. I endowed her with Meryl Streep’s voice, circa 1985, for I had an idea that she’d talk a lot and thought that a nasal Goatish bray might get irksome pretty damn quick.

“If I must,” Daisy said. She began to read.

“‘Whilst detoxing from one of the many many many substances that the Boss and I are addicted to, we (from here, I) charged an old flip phone and converted it into a time machine. You see, since Other Earth was my invention, I figured that I’d go there and have a look around. Since I am a Pen whose limitations are only those set by my imagination, I am free to travel to any place of our invention, and at any time of its existence without having to lamely ‘imagine’ doing such. Yet for the sake of a plausible narrative, I changed the old cell in the Boss’s junk drawer into a time machine for the hell of it–disregarding the possibility of time travel paradox, and my belief that you should not be able to travel back in time to a point where you did not exist. Regardless, I knew about the monsters from being in the Boss’s mind and wanted to see what Other Earth was like before they came about. After so much abracadabra and tapping my heels together, I departed from the body I used to share with the Boss and wound up just outside a parking lot of a cocktail lounge at Globe, Arizona 13 November 1946.“

“Smartly, I took fifteen bucks of pre-1946 currency with me. I’d raided the Boss’s old money collection, justified that it had to be at least half mine; I figured it was better to be authentic than in jail for counterfeiting in the distant past of another dimension. Of course I could have sprung myself from such a predicament with a quick edit, but where’s the art in that?’”

“Fifteen smackers for just you and only fourteen for the three of us?” Gwen kvetched, for it had been at least five minutes since her last complaint.

“Never mind that, Daisy, please continue,” I said.

“Seems like a valid point to me,” Daisy said.

Renfield was about to add something, and the entire distraction would have blossomed as a full debacle until I promised (and yet have done) to retroactively edit the sum stated a few pages ago to an even fifty (leaving out the fact that the serial numbers on all the two dollar bills were repeated as many times needed to reach the sum).

After that had been fixed, I asked Daisy read on:

Silence.

“Um, aloud again, please.”

“If you say so”:

“‘I’d researched the idiom of the day by ingesting a Humphery Bogart marathon on Turner Classic Movies. The only item I had difficulty with was what to wear. I never sport a dress, and the way I see it never includes 1946 Other Earth. Still, I could hardly expect to blend in if I arrived in sweats; it posed a problem until I leafed through a couple of film magazines of the era and discovered stars like Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn often wore mens suits. Then I found a photo from the late thirties in which Carole Lombard was at a Halloween party dressed as a gangster. She wore a cream colored fedora tipped at a jaunty angle, a pinstriped loose-fitting “zoot suit,” black shirt and white tie. Now, nature has seen to it that nobody will ever confuse me with Carole Lombard. But since I’m 4’-11” and the movie hoods of the day were three-footers like Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, the ensemble appealed to me and I put together one just like it.’”

“Hey,” Renfield complained. “You do remember how I’m dressed?”

“Duh,” I said.

“Yet you feigned surprise for the readers when you saw me, although you knew this get up was in Wardrobe and had worn it before.”

“I beg to differ,” I said. “I did not deceive the readers. Different times have different standards for taste, morality and the truth. It’s all pretty much minute to minute–especially in Saragun Springs.”

Renfield did that little thing with her eyes; I figured she was mentally filing what I’d just told her “For Later.” She then smiled sweetly at Daisy and said, “Please continue, darling.”

This time I had to give Daisy a little nudge because she was again reading silently, and because I am the sort of Pen who often works a gag to death. Fortunately, it was getting close to the end of my narrative.

“‘You have to be highly specific when dealing with a time machine. Leave it any chance to eff with you and it will. I can either text on or speak into my flip phone time machine. “OK time machine,” I said, “send me back to the day on Other Earth when the monster thing began. But nowhere inhospitable to human beings, nor into a post, nor have me materialize right out in the open for everyone to see, nor have me seated atop a hatching monster egg…”

“‘My list of prohibitions went on for a while. But upon temporarily exhausting my collection of little paranoias, I finally pushed “Send.” I materialized just outside of the parking lot of a cocktail lounge in Other Earth’s Globe, Arizona on a Friday night. No one saw me pop into being except a Coyote mama and her two puppies. My time machine had found it amusing to place me between a mother Coyote and her issue. I do not know what the Other Earth world record is for sprinting from a mother Coyote into a cocktail lounge, but I’m certain I gave it a good challenge that night.

“‘Guess what? Saying “Hey sis, gimme a highball, and make it snappy” didn’t fly back in 1946 the way it does in old movies, that’s what. A rather surly dame (who had no customer skills whatsoever) gave me the finger via a pretend scratch of her nose and blew cigarette smoke in my face. Although I was delighted to be in a civilized place in which smoking was allowed indoors, I lit up and blew smoke right back at her. We might have gone fist city if I didn’t lay a “fin” on the bar and told her to pour me a rye and one for herself. It improved her manners.

“‘I had never ordered a “rye” before. I’m guessing it’s the stuff left over at the bottom of the barrel after all the good whisky has gone to heaven. Imagine what lighter fluid combined with molten sandpaper that some bastard had first taken a piss on might taste and feel like and you’ll be pretty close. The rye got belligerent with my esophagus, lungs and attitude. Fortunately, what was rapidly degrading into a potentially ugly situation between me and the barmaid was averted when a rather pleasant and mutually squiffy man and woman approached me at the bar and asked me to join their party for a martini.

“‘Now, I must pause for a second to reaffirm my stance against plagiarism. I will write the most absurd, self destructive thing that comes to mind before I’ll knowingly poach ideas or Fictional Characters from other authors, living or dead. I also hold disdain for “sampling” or “fan fickshun.” But there, with the gamma effect of the poisonous oozings scraped from the bottom of the bottom rye barrel boiling the usefulness out of my innards, I needed to meet Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles, the sophisticated husband and wife sleuths from Hammett’s Thin Man; for only Fictional Characters of their stature had the power to prevent me from feeding the bar wench’es face to the Mama Coyote.

Nick and Nora, however, didn’t stay long. After one martini they and their little dog departed. But in that time they had introduced me to an advertising exec named Durwood Stevens, who was hard at work on the “PDQ Pilsner account” and a deranged looking yet oddly attractive woman named Professor Dagmar, who was wearing a white lab coat, which had PROPERTY of LOS ALAMOS clearly stenciled on the back of her collar.

Poor Durwood. I happen to be a leading authority on 40s and 50s American beer companies. I also collect original advertising from that era. Name it, I’ve got it: Hudepohl, Piels, Ballantine, Rhinelander, Blatz, Hamms–I’ve got posters and various bits of swag from them all–even a life-sized “Brewster the Goebel Rooster.” My scholarship in the field is vast, thus I knew that the PDQ Pilsner Brewing Company had keeled over dead in 1946, its only year of existence. The problem stemmed from the fact that the PDQ slogan, “Hey bartender, make mine PDQ” didn’t get past the censors. Although their initials “PDQ” stood for “Piedmont, Daly and Quince,” the grouping is and was popularly known as a shortcut for “Pretty damn quick.” Couldn’t even infer damn or hell and such on the radio back then.

Yet nobody had a problem with the beer’s mascot “Pie Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon.” In the very few illustrations of Peety extant he is extremely intoxicated–in one he is not only shown drunk, but he’s speeding away in a stolen PDQ truck, blazing past an elementary school, tossing samples to the kids.

All thoughts of monsters left my head. Although the idea of going back in time and adding to my collection has crossed my mind, I never do it because even a Pen Name can’t bring items home from the past and not cause templar displacement. Yet I admired the doodle Durwood was doing on a placemat to such an extent that I carelessly laid my flip phone on the table and asked him to let me have a closer look at the drawing.

“What on Earth is this?” Dr. Dagmar asked, picking up my phone.

“No, no, no, don’t press that,” I said, quickly reaching out, dropping the artwork.

“You mean like this?” she said, with a sinister smile on her face.

I instantly materialized in the present, at my office, minus my phone….”

I smiled at the team. “Your mission is to go back to Other Earth and retrieve the picture I dropped. Use your collective charm to get it from Durwood, when that fails, bribe him with the money.”

“You mean you don’t want us to get the other flip phone time machine from Dr. Dagmar? That might prevent the monster infestation,” said Gwen.

“Right?” Both Renfield and Daisy chimed in with that.

“Under normal circumstances, I’d pull the Mysterious Ways card from the bottom of the deck. But since I need your cooperation, let’s just say that the monsters have a union of their own and let the subject of peremptory monster eradication go–I mean, who amongst us wants to deny a monster his/her/its right to be? Provided that they be at a suitable distance.”

FC’s have a strong common bond, no matter who has created them. I had pulled a different card from the bottom of the deck. Anyway they would have arrived at a Pro Monster stance if given time to choose such; I merely ushered the idea forward.

The FC’s exchanged soulful looks that did not include me, but I knew that a silent unanimous consent had been arrived at when Gwen put the cart in gear and continued the drive to the Spring.

A Day of Rest

Today was going to be part Seven of Welcome to Saragun Springs: “The Book of Peety.” Was until the Union decided that since God knocked off on Sunday that the Union members were entitled the same consideration.

I suppose that the drug dens, speakeasies and gambling houses are entitled to their share of the cut, so it is a day off in the Springs. But in keeping with the spirit of Mondays, pointless activities will resume in this space tomorrow.

In closing, I advise that you Do What Thou Wilt in proportion to the money you have saved for bail.

Leila

Welcome to Saragun Springs: Part Six “The Book of Peety”

An Overly Radioactive Imagination

“Other Earth” entered the Boss’s head when she was thirteen and doing her best to sleep with her eyes open in History class–”like a Horse”–for every impossible physical task is equine in her mind. And within that slipstream between sleep and wakefulness, she imagined that Other Earth’s history was exactly the same as ours until 1947.

Ah, daydreaming…just about any little thing can affect the course of our chimeras. And such influenced my Employer’s Other Earth fancy when “Brewster the Goebel Rooster” blew into her deepening dream. She had seen a documentary in Social Studies earlier that day which told of the effect that cheaply drawn cartoon advertising mascots had on the public in the early days of TV. Along with dancing cigarette packs and Speedy Alka Seltzer, came Brewster the Goebel Rooster, who touted a brewery that probably was assimilated by Anheuser Busch a long long time ago.

Just seconds before the teacher tapped her on the shoulder, thus returning the Boss to a vigorously unwanted state of consciousness, a cartoon beer mascot was somehow involved with altering Other Earth in a most peculiar way. All the atom bomb caused monsters in 1950’s science Fiction films became real at Other Earth. The Ants from Them the Colossal Man and various super-lizards and such all raged on Other Earth. “And I will be the reason for it!” my Employer thought, and it was almost all clear to her, but that was when her reverie was ended by that tap on the shoulder.

And although many a moon has crossed the sky over the highly radioactive Nevada desert of her mind, my Employer has never completely forgotten the concept of Other Earth, but it has always remained incomplete because she has never been able to replicate the exact imaginative conditions, though she still nods off plenty in “pay attention” situations. So it made sense that upon creating Saragun Springs and handing the keys to the Literary Queendom to me that she would make a big play at solving the Other Earth mystery.

Since I didn’t pop into her mind until shortly after the dream event (and believe me, reviewing a fifteenth generation dream copy is a tad confusing); but I eventually understood enough of it that I knew the wild divergence from history on Other Earth happened in late 1947. I also know that the Boss was the cause of the divergence in a bumbling, well meaning Gilligan sort of way. I also was able to “urge” my Employer to believe that the prime event happened in a bar somewhere on the outskirts of the New Mexican desert. I did so because I had to send my “landing party” to a specific place as well as a specific time.

Mission Prep

The Other Earth team returned to the office after finishing up in Wardrobe and Makeup. Daisy was fitted with a black-out Pygmy Goat-sized bodysuit, helmet cam and, of course, a lavishly glittered paper mache horn was glued to her head.

Gwen looked smart in a modest, yet attractive, Audrey Hepburn-esque blue dress, matching hat, gloves, heels and a pair of No Autographs Please sunglasses–a bit much for the type of roadhouse I was sending her to, but she’s a big girl now.

But goddam Renfield, in keeping with the her constantly peeing in my Cheerios element of our relationship, was dressed like a sitcom gangster from the early days of television–later lampooned in skit comedies of the 60’s. She was wearing a So Loud That You Can See It From the Moon men’s pinstripe suit, a black shirt, white necktie and a yellow fedora and matching handkerchief in her pocket. It’s like she’d fallen out of a Dick Tracy comic. Her shoes were black and white–but made from imitation leather, because we like Cows in Saragun Springs.

Renfield often displays an expression that is for me only. It’s an expectant sort of smile that plainly dares me to say something. I usually cave in and blurt an unintelligible observation, but on this occasion, though I’m certain my eyes gave me away, I held my tongue, remembering that she was the one who had to go to Other Earth looking like that.

“I’ve got fourteen dollars and nine cents from the Boss’s coin collection–it’s enough to buy a house at when you are going,” I said. The Boss knows that I cannot raid her accounts, but I can make temporary one for one “realm copies” of any cold hard cash she has in her possession (which ain’t much, ever). But since they were going to 1947, I needed old loot, just in case (in case of what, I didn’t know), which consisted of change and three two dollar silver certificates.

“You could buy a Dog penthouse for the hundred-ninety bucks that converts to,” said Gwen, all snotty-like, for she has an internal abacus and is an expert on the history of the dollar.

“Maybe Alice Capone here can open a Shylock operation, if you run short” I said, finally biting on Renfield’s bait, much to her satisfaction. “Then again, I wouldn’t commit too many felonies over there. Habitual offenders are fed to the monsters.”

“How did that happen, anyway?” Renfield asked. She knows how much I detest putting in the backstory, but claiming that a duplicate of our planet contains ungovernable Atomic Monsters who have their own nation in southwest American desert, as per a treaty signed in 1948 at Other Earth, might rate an explanation.

I saw this latest ugsome vexation coming. But played dumb because the crew would understand what it all meant when they completed their mission.

The portal at the Spring is a mixture of the past, present and future as one time hole (she saw that on Star Trek, and like her understanding of Free Will, mangled the concept). In her mind you can pull a coin out of your packet then throw it into the vortex and instantly discover that the same coin is back in your pocket yet dated in a future year. Like most quantum tricks that one impresses and yet is essentially useless.

“Mysterious ways,” I said.

Renfield knows it is a fifty-fifty ball whether my use of “mysterious ways” means Orders From the Boss or an old fashioned “I don’t know.” Either way she sees my ignorance as a constant. It’s a bit tough having to bank on the scorn others have for your intelligence to keep things moving, but you can list such under Any Port in a Storm.

Before anyone could look too deeply into the situation, I had them in the cart, headed toward the spring. Gwen drove because I needed to fill in the details of the mission:

“Other Earth’s history is exactly the same as Real Earth’s until the post WWII nuclear testing conducted by the US military out in the American southwest desert did result in the creation of the gigantic ants, mammoth scorpions, huge tarantulas, scores of Godzilla-sized lizards and a smattering of profoundly effed-up human beings that we see only in 1950’s science fiction films. Among the traits these creatures have in common (besides experiencing the enlarging effects of extreme radiation) are an immunity to conventional weapons and insatiable appetites for murder and destruction.

“Naturally, Other Earth’s American government tried to cover up the fiasco, but that proved impossible after a bunch of the critters went to Vegas and did to the inhabitants what tourists do to free buffets. It didn’t take long for the monsters to spread the pain, thus the population of the Other Earth’s United States was decreased by twenty-seven percent during The Mutant-American War, which raged throughout the summer of 1947. And one may correctly suspect that the population would have been decreased to zero by Christmas if a truce hadn’t been signed by the warring factions near the hole in the ground that used to be San Clemente, California.

“A Psychotic Colossal Man (who successfully ignored a missile jammed into his right eye socket), an eternally PMSing Fifty-foot Woman and a comparatively sane Shrinking Man (who, until he disappeared, was an exception to the insanity rule) represented the monsters, who’d have never parlayed at all if not for the fact that their numbers weakened the farther they got away from the radioactive desert. At last these essentially immortal yet sterile (save for the flying ants, whom the Los Angeles smog wiped out) agreed to live on a reservation the size of southern California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico combined. This was convenient because those places had been depopulated and turned into radioactive hells on Other Earth during the war. The monsters all live there to this day, behind mountain high walls of radioactively enlarged granite. Live ‘Food’ and old automobiles, prefab homes and such (the non-foodstuffs are for recreational destruction purposes) are airlifted in around the clock.

“Now, you’d think that one Josef Stalin would be one too many for the Universe, but, no, Other Earth just had to have one too, and he just had to have monsters of his own, lest the Other USSR face a mutant gap. So, Other Earth’s Cold War featured the two Superpowers threatening to unleash ungovernable monsters on each other, until a treaty that banned the creation of new nuclear monsters and use of the current ones was signed near the hole in the ground which used to be Stalingrad. To this day the whole of glowing Other Siberia is shrouded in enlarged granite, whilst live Food and items for recreational destruction are airlifted in around the clock to gigantic Bears, immense Tigers and barn-sized “Sabertooth Rats.” And yes, other nations followed suit, and every one of them had to develop a ‘reservation’ of its own.

“Due to personal standards of good taste, I shan’t elaborate much on the subject of monster chow. Let’s just say that in this present year Other Earth’s population was about a third of Real Earth’s, and that their mean IQ is twenty-points higher than it has ever been on the original item. Although disabled persons and the elderly are protected at Other Earth, there seems to be a noticeable lack of out of shape, slow-footed and unemployable people over there; nor are there any violent offenders incarcerated in their prison systems–well, not for long, any way–but that’s just a personal observation unsupported by scientific data.”

“Why do I think that you and the Boss had something to do with the monsters,” Gwen said. The slight stench of shame and boiled diarrhea and enhanced puke leaking from the stink bubble was getting stronger.

“Because you are sharp,” Renfield said.

“Well, I’ll allow that there might have been a complication long ago,” I sighed. Daisy and BTI were playing “I Spy” as we drove along at a steady two miles an hour.

“I spy with my little eye an incoming plot twist,” BTI said.

“I spy with my little eye ‘tell’ shamelessly disguised as ‘show’ via the use of quotation marks,” Daisy, who’s often a little too quick on the uptake for my tastes, added.

Gwen stopped the vehicle shy of the spring. As slow as we were going, it took a second to realize that we were no longer moving. “Not another inch till you spill,” Gwen said.

“Ditto,” Renfield added. She’s an awfully pretty thing when captured in the Ponglight. And she can do all those little pretty girl nose twitches, lip bites, “that thing with her eyes” and such that charm and make mere mortal Pens like me a bit envious. The sort of looks that I often fancy my fist altering, now and again.

“All right, already–but you guys better not back out after I tell you. It happened before any of us met [I never say “created” in any shape to an FC–for Free Will has written all their pasts].”

I pulled a file from my tablet and said…