fantasy

The OZ Exception: Part Eight

(Please note that edited adverbs still marked with *)

“Um, where are we going?” John askly asked.

“We’re headed to Agoville,” Renfield * said.

“Why did Leila go to Other Earth and how did she change it?” Gwen said, with a lot of hintly hinting in her voice. Perhaps she wanted to stay on the * topic we opened at the finish yesterday, before asking about Agoville.

“Oh, that,” Renfield said. “Leila converted an old flip phone into a time machine and chose to go back seventy some odd years into Other Earth’s past via the vortex. Why she thought that up and did such things are mysteries. But it worked. Naturally, she was duped out of her modern technology by a mad scientist at Other Earth circa 1947. The scientist sent Leila back to the Springs without her phone. You aren’t supposed to bring stuff back from the deep past through the vortex–strange shit happens. Leila just happened to be holding a picture of Peety, who was a prototype cartoon mascot for PDQ Pilsner–on her way back through,” Renfield hooked a thumb at Peety who * always has a * bottomless bottle of PDQ in his winglike hand, changed into the creature you see now.”

“‘Put a sock in it boy, or you’ll be outta here like shit through a Goose’–Dean Wormer, the Book of Animal House,” Peety squawked.

“You’d think that the first known incident of time travel might yield slightly more scholarly results,” Renfield addingly added. “But we’re fond of Peety, he grows on you.”

“Other Earth got a whopper of a changely change,” I said. “The mad * scientist used the technology she stole and created a race of nuclear monsters who to this very day inhabit the southwestern US desert on other Earth.”

“But why?” John asked.

“To rule the world of course,” saidly said Renfield, surprised that anyone would ask such an obvious question.

“So, Other Earth is a world like an Edward D. Wood movie brought to life,” John said, philosophically. “Then again, if it’s brought to us by the same God, who claims to be everywhere, it matches the typical pathetic lack of consistency.”

“No need to get deep, lover,” Gwen said. “We are in a land where Lambs smoke doobie and moon passersby–Hah! Your best side is showing, Gyro-bait!”

We roundingly rounded the bend that leads to Agoville.

“We is here,” Renfield said and stopped the cart.

We saw Leila. She was * seated on a * bench in a small park that lyingly lies outside Agoville.

“How did you get here first?” Gwen asked. “I thought you said we were going to have adventures.”

“On the wings of a deus ex machina,” Leila replied. “Anyway, change of plans. Life is all about the editing–I suggest you recall how much happier you were when you stopped questioning things.”

“Mysterious ways,” John said, nodding wisely. He had been consuming Fairie Ale non-stop. His tankard magically refilled itself therefore he refilled himself.

Leila smiled at me and retook the narratively narrative after patting my head, giving me a feed bag full of cauliflower and saying “That’ll do, little Goat, that’ll do.”

End Part Eight–Tomorrow is Sunday, to be continued next week

The Oz Exception: Part Six

Gwen liked the Faerie Ale, but she remembered the foul spring. “Hey, this isn’t brewed from that is it?” She asked, pointing at the spring. Ponglight (the little blue sun she saw earlier is named Pong) was passing through its spray, creating little black and grey rainbows.

“No way,” I said. “PDQ Pilsner is, though.”

“What’s that?”

I smiled, and maybe a tiny light bulb appeared above my head. I was looking for something for us to do except stand around in the meadow chit chatting, something that would prevent me from again considering the possible foolishness in writing a story a page or so per day, with no real thought put into a plotline. But Gwen’s question saved the day.

“So glad you asked,” I said.

As though by magic, the realm’s only vehicle entered the meadow. It contained My Imaginary Friend and second in command, Renfield, who drove, Fenwick’s sister, Daisy Kloverleaf, and Pie Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon–who is a lot like John, connected to reality as though pasted in due to his arrival into the Springs from another realm. But unlike John, Peety is a two dimensional being, neither alive or dead, a cartoon Pigeon who was/is the mascot for PDQ Pilsner–the lowest possible budget beer.

“I’m now handing you guys over to my friends, Miss Renfield, Daisy and Peety. Consider this a guided tour of the realm. And you know what, I’ve a notion that you guys will experience an adventure or two before we meet again.”

“You’re not quittingly quitting for the day here, are you, Miss Leila?” Daisy, who is the lead Fictional Character and general yet congenial pain in the butt, asked (Daisy is also addicted to creating strange adverbs which will be trimmed for the most part).

“You better believe I am,” I said. “You, my little hooved friend, will take the narrative when it picks up tomorrow.”

End Part Six

The Oz Exception: Part Five

Gwen smiled uneasily at me, Penrose and the thirteen Rat conga line we had met outside the Woak grove. I sensed that she wasn’t quite done asking questions after all because she turned to Fenwick with a puzzled expression on her face, but she failed to ask him anything because she saw that he had somehow switched out of his Oktoberfest costume and had dressed as the King, circa 1956, in the five seconds or so since she had last looked at him.

“Today is Elvis’ Birthday,” he said, as though it explained everything.

“But I thought it was Oktoberfest?” Gwen glared at John, then smiled. “You do plan on being of some use soon, darling?”

John spoke. His voice had a slight echoing quality, like the sound effect used in the original Star Trek to make a voice sound mighty. “It seems that the Springs is somewhat mercurial.”

“What does that mean, precisely? As in hot and cold? As in Freddy?”

John ignored the sarcasm. “Depends when his birthday falls.”

Gwen laughed and pulled a “handful” of John’s shoulder out like silly putty and let go and watched it snap back into place. “Tell me lover, do all your parts react like that?”

I, the wearer of the straw hat, took control of the narrative (I happened to be carrying a box, if I forgot to mention it earlier). “Now you’ve done it,” I said. “You are going to be scolded by our censor.”

The holder of the censor job varies from day to day. That way nobody gets hated anymore than anyone else. It turned out that Penrose held the title that day (which was awfully convenient). S/he pulled a clipboard out of the ether and got scoldy with Gwen. “You cannot infer sex-stuff in the Springs. You must say it. We do not approve of coy. Naughty-naughty. Shame on you. This concludes the scolding.”

Gwen looked at me, ”Are you in charge? If so, what is the Flying Stoat talking about?”

“Yes, I am as much in charge as I can be, which ain’t much,” I said. “Anyhoo, in Saragun Springs, you must ask smutty stuff directly,” I said. “For example, you can say ‘Is your dick like this?’–please Mr. Mallory, do not reply. You get scolded by the censor if you get clever about it. We find that forcing the direct approach eliminates that sort of thing altogether.”

“This is a strange place,” said John.

“I’m certain it gets weirder,” Gwen added.

“Depends on your standard of weirder,” I said, opening the box, from which I extracted two Oktoberfest tankards. “I have brought you guys something to drink.”

“How come they didn’t spill?” Gwen or John (really doesn’t matter–one of them asked it).

“Because they contain Faerie Ale, a magic brew, that can be drunk by both the living and the, um, life challenged,” I said, handing a tankard to John.

“This stuff won’t change me into a Toad or anything, will it?” cautious Gwen asked, taking hers.

I just smiled because I had no idea what the stuff might do. Faerie Ale is never harmful, but it occasionally does interesting things.

John, who hadn’t had a drink since his demise in 1978, quaffed his immediately.

Gwen regarded him with a bemused expression underscored (or overscored) with an arched eyebrow (um, her left).

He smiled. “T–riffic,” he said. “Hey, it’s not like it can make me deader.”

Gwen saw that each of us had a tankard of Faerie Ale in our hands/paws/hooves, whatever. Even the the abundant Sheep and Elvis Rats had a tankard. She did not question this, which meant that she was indeed back into the Saragun Springs’ swing of things, and drank. I assumed by his attitude that John was on board instantly, and he had a second Ale–which was good because things do get weirder.

End Part Five

(Happy Birthdays and a toast of Faerie Ale to the memories  of Elvis, Steven Hawking, David Bowie and, of course, the legendary Larry Storch)

The Oz Exception: Part Four

Meanwhile…back at the Vortex

Gwen and John passed through the vortex and were greeted by an odor that residents of the Springs often compare to “boiled diarrhea.” But Fenwick quickly closed the portal and the stench ceased.

“Sorry I forgot to mention that,” he said.

“Jesus, what was that?” Gwen was so overcome by the stink that she had yet to notice that John was no longer a ghost in her device, but was in the guise of a living person.

“The Spring,” said Fenwick, pointing at a bubbling black pool beside the vortex opening (the vortex, or portal is your standard SyFy Channel budget CGI looking shimmering, two dimensional swirl sort of thing). “It is said to originate from a crack in hell, but it serves to produce the magic in the realm. Whenever the vortex opens, the Spring’s smell gets out. That’s why we use it as little as possible.”

Gwen looked around. They were in a meadow surrounded by trees– bucolic, with lots of Sheep grazing far and near; but there was strangeness aplenty.  She saw a little blue sun in the sky, which clearly appeared to be moving. It was hard to look away from a sun zigzagging back and forth in the sky, but when she did, Gwen saw a series of identical hills on the horizon. They were exactly the same and appeared on the horizon in every direction. And there were wildly oversized common objects lying all around. Gwen saw a can opener that had to be three feet long lying near a twenty foot tall “pint” of Jack Daniels; Gwen figured the bottle was mostly empty due to a very long siphoning hose extending from the giant pint to a series of barrels on the ground. Behind the great pint stood at least ten uncracked others, a ladder lay against the first.  “How strange,” Gwen thought, “and this dude beside me looks just like John!”

“What? You’re real here?” Gwen said, realizing it was John. She poked his shoulder, but instead of touching flesh, he was elastic like a sheet of rubber.

“Hey,” John said. He poked Gwen on her shoulder,  but upon touch, his finger bent painlessly sideways.

“He’s real everywhere,” Fenwick said. “But things tend to change a bit when they pass through the vortex unless they are alive. Inanimate objects, as you see, greatly enlarge, which is great for our supplies. Ghosts take shapes that are, um, stretchy.”

Indeed, stretchy was a good word. John appeared to be forced into the fabric of reality. He was three-dimensional, but his existence in the fourth dimension of spacetime was also visual. When he moved, a series of ripples in spacetime formed around his being, as though he were suspended in water.

This was when Gwen figured that the natural laws of the universe were pretty much up for grabs in Saragun Springs and decided to stop questioning things. Therefore, she was not at all surprised to see me and Penrose the Flying Weasel enter the meadow.

End of Part Four

The Oz Exception Prologue

Prologue

According to my second in command, Renfield, everyday is Bring Your Pet to Work Day in Saragun Springs. At least it is in our office, that braintrust of the Springs from which the best bad ideas possible are concocted.

Renny has three pets that she allows to charmingly run amuck. Two are “The Braw Brothers Baw, Beezer and Barkevious” (who insist they are brothers even though Beezer is a British Bulldog and Barkevious is clearly a Scottie). Just yesterday, the third member of “Team Renfield” leapt onto my desk with that insolent indifference perfected by Cats, who know the precise moment when to leap from an unseen spot and land in front of you, thus giving your heart a test far more conclusive than that of the treadmill.

“Oh, you little fuckstick! What have I told you about that?” I damn near fell out of my chair when Renfield’s Black Cat, Professor Moriarty (or “Pro-Mo”), pulled that old trick on me for at least the fiftieth time in a week.

All Cats in Saragun Springs have cultured, mid-Atlantic speaking voices. The Professor ignored my complaint and started in with the insults, as is his habit. “You humans don’t have a sense of smell, outside the stenches you create–If you did possess my olfactory keenness, you would have been aware of the godly fragrance caused by my magnificence.”

I lit a smoke and hooked my thumb at the litter pan in the far corner of my office. “Tell me, Oh Magnificent One, what god creates something straight up from beer-shit hell? And if the Germans had sprayed the Allies with Cat pee in the Great War we’d all be singing David Hasselhoff songs today. And what’s that goddam thing doing in here anyway? You’re Renfield’s Cat.”

“Tut, tut,” Pro-Mo said, shaking his head. “I am my own master; ‘tis amazing that your head stays inflated with so little in it.”

I have a deft hand with Cats. Before he could swat me I landed “scratchies” on top of his pointy little head. He immediately fell into an opium daze. All Cats become hopeless stooges when involved with scratchies; we all have our weaknesses. “I’m putting you in a story,” I said. An epic day to day thing and you, little sir, will like it.

“Yes, yes, yes, in a story” he purred. It’s disgraceful how little of their bad temperament Cats retain while under the influence of scratchies. Whilst I had him under my power (my hand was starting to cramp), I whistled for the Bros Baw.

Renfield’s fiends will appear (by and by) in a daily  opus that begins tomorrow and will last all month.

See you in the morning…

Leila

Welcome Back to Saragun Springs: 2025

Happy New Year! Here’s hoping that you are not starting 2025 off in a jail cell or any other less than desirable location, and that you did not heed any “creative” ideas suggested to you by Tippleganger Ghosts, who live for New Years Eve.

Big doings in the realm this year. To open things we are writing an on the fly book that will appear a little at a time everyday (except Sundays, my Fictional Characters are unionized and do not work on Sundays) until it either satisfies brilliantly or keels over dead. We proudly call it The Oz Exception. It begins tomorrow with the prologue, which is followed by the first section on the 3rd. Those are the only pre-written parts of the opus. After that each entry will be written the day before it appears. Call it a bold move, biting off more than we can chew or a cheap gimmick to attract readers who are not obviously spam AI’s. Call it whatever as long as it is not late for happy hour.

Speaking of such, we are confident that your bail will be posted soon.

Your servant,

Leila

Amy and the Fabulous Felinespy: A Feckless Fable of the Fantasmagorical

We close another year in the Springs with a bit of a wild Feline party–Leila

Amy is a long haired, owl-eyed Calico who distrusts everything that doesn’t align with her worldview. Her son, Maxo, is a yearling Orange Tabby whose personality is closer to that of a Golden Retriever than that of a Cat.

You cannot fully appreciate Amy’s coat of many colors until you see her in the sun. Every known pattern and hue in Catdom is present and never repeated in Amy’s quilt-like fur; yet away from the window she comes off reddish brown. Maxo is a standard Orange Tabby, his color is comparable to that of a creamsicle. Amy is small, mostly fur; whereas Maxo (despite a diet large enough to sustain three cats) has yet to grow into his long, gangly frame. Imagine one of those once adorable child actors who hit puberty while the show was on hiatus and you will understand Maxo’s appearance. But since he has recently been “fixed,” the vet opined that healthy young Master Maxo should soon expand like a self inflating raft.

Mother and child share the same house with two humans, a pair of Roborovski Dwarf Hamsters named Lucrezia and Zippy, a tamed three-legged rescue Squirrel known as Trey, a smart aleck Parakeet whom the people call “Dotty” but “self identifies” as “Diamond Dixie,” as well as a recent addition “gifted” to the people by a friend: a Gecko who is under the false impression that she is a “Karma Chameleon”–call her Christine.

All animals can perceive and interact with human “Spirits” (Spirit being yet another case of persnickety “self identification” in defiance of common courtesy). Most humans lack the belief in their own senses to do the same. Although everything that lives eventually leaves a ghost (and that means everything, plants, microbes etc.), only human ghosts wander back into this reality. Not all or even most do that; mainly, it’s the annoying ones. Those who insist on being called a Spirit.

Although all animals see Spirits (whom rodents refer to as “Ghosties”–much to the chagrin of the lofty Spirit ego), some Spirits are attracted to certain species more so than others. Some even to the degree that they go to great lengths to be seen by one kind of animal only. Such is the case of the Fabulous Felinespy, a powerful yet essentially useless phantom who approaches Cats late at night in order to create mayhem in a sleeping household.

As you may have already guessed, Amy is not overly popular in a home that contains three rodents, one bird and a bite-sized lizard. Maxo is beloved by the others in the menagerie because of his eager to please personality. Amy grew up rough; abandoned at a young age she became a street cat until she was three. Amy is Unforgiven–in the sense that she has “killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another”–but to be fair, she did it out of necessity. Now well fed, spayed, mostly humanized and somewhat spoiled, Amy, despite her unrepentant attitude, has given over the thug life. But it doesn’t mean she gives a yarked hairball about what others may think of her. Thus, Zippy, Lucrezia, Christine and Diamond Dixie refuse to have anything to do with her; and Amy is so embarrassed by Maxo’s supplicating eagerness to please that she avoids him at all cost, save for the occasional lecture. And yet Amy has an unlikely friend, Trey the three-legged squirrel.

“Will your ghostie come out tonight?” Trey asked Amy recently, a bit after midnight. Everyone else was abed, including that fanny-smooch boy of hers, all cozy with the piebald slave humans.

Amy sighed. She admired her fellow “hard case”—a creature who’d spent most of his life free–but there were times when Trey had all the mental acuity of a walnut. I guess you are what you eat, she thought.

Mammals, reptiles and amphibians do not “talk” in the common sense, but they do have a universal language of pantomime and facial expressions that get them across to each other. Their senses are so keenly honed that their form of communication (even between species) is superior to speech. Birds, however, have more spoken languages than do humans, one per species; but they also have something called “Commonbeak,” which allows wildly divergent Birds, such as Sparrows and Kingfishers, to have conversations. Squirrels and other tree dwelling varmints usually learn Commonbeak via osmosis, and serve to interpret what birds have to say to creatures who do not know it, like a Cat. Trey usually edits Diamond Dixie’s observations on Amy for the sake of tranquility.

Amy is a Cat of few words. She seldom miaows, purrs, hisses or chatters. But she gets herself across quite clearly with subtle gestures and her owlish eyes, which, like her coat, contain several colors but not one more than any other. She usually converses only with Trey; and although she says more to Maxo, those instances are more along the lines of a one-sided lecture than an exchange of ideas.

Although much has passed since Trey posed his question, Amy eventually nodded, “Yes, the Fabulous Felinespy will come tonight.”

Trey, who had lost his front right leg to a cruel human trap, and was rescued by the male slave, slapped his “knee” with his left, twitched his bushy tail, winked one eye twice and the other once. “Will I see the ghostie?”

“Umm, no, Trey,” Amy replied, with uncharacteristic patience, by briefly swishing her own bushy tail and issuing a series of blinks and slight tilts of her head. “She’s the Fabulous Felinespy, not a Sensational Squirrelspy.”

Trey shrugged, said goodnight and tri-podded off to his bed in the bookcase. Amy admired the way the guy could run and climb in such an altered physical state, and was glad they hadn’t met during hard times.

Amy felt no similar warmth for the goddamn bird. Fucking thing screeched from sun up until the female slave placed the cover over its cage at night. It would have been a pleasure in the old days. Amy had no feelings whatsoever about the little Hamsters–or Rats or whatever the hell they were supposed to be. And though she didn’t much care for the Lizard’s immature attitude, reptiles were chewy and hardly worth the bother.

Someone pushed open the bedroom door. Amy hoped that it was one of the piebald slaves coming out for a snack. But, no, it was Maxo. She had vainly wished that he’d sleep through the upcoming Fabulous Felinespy revelation, but, since Maxo was a Cat, that was an awfully tall wish.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Don’t embarrass me in front of the Fabulous Felinespy.”

“I won’t–”

“I mean it,” she said. “You do any of that disgusting friendly dog stuff I’ll prove that you aren’t too big to be buried up to your neck in the litter box.”

“Aw, Mom.”

“God damn it, you’re a Cat. We don’t take shit from anyone, especially other Cats–and yet there you go with that hangdog ‘Aw, Mom’ nonsense. Next you’ll be fetching or lifting your leg to pee…”

Amy ceased the lecture when an eerie green light suddenly shone in the room. It’s source was the female piebald slave’s Kindle, which lay on the coffee table. No, Kindles are neither known for producing eerie green lights nor forces strong enough to spontaneously flip open their covers; but unknown to the slaves, this particular device had been formatted as a doorway for the Fabulous Felinespy.

Now we run into a bit of trouble. Only Cats perceive the Fabulous Felinespy, so only Cats can describe one. Unfortunately, your author isn’t a Cat, and the Cats ain’t telling. Even a friendly and eager to please sort like Maxo is elusive on the subject. The best you get from him are laudatory 80’s YA adjectives inferred as nouns: “awesome,” “radical.”

But your author does know Catfooney when she sees it. And upon gaining “instruction” from the Fabulous Felinespy, Amy and Maxo proceeded to “craterize” the living room. Everything that had stood now lay, and all that had lain now stood. Maxo managed to take down the drapes and Amy raced about the room toppling everything she touched.

Fabulous Feline inspired acts of Catfoonery take somewhere between thirty and forty-five seconds to complete. That is usually how long it takes for the slaves to awaken and rush into the living room.

The crashing and thudding had also awakened the Lizard and the Mice-like whatever-they-ares in their glass enclosures, but none seemed to be all that concerned. Trey sat munching a walnut atop the too heavy to move (but mostly denuded) bookcase, as though he were at a ballgame. When the light came on, Maxo sat next to him, up there, doing his best to feign innocence.

Amy had somehow shinnied up the pole to the goddam Parakeet’s cage, knocked off the cover and was attempting to worry the door open. Whether you call her Dotty or Diamond Lil’ you knew that the Bird was awake due to the angry squawking she began as soon as she sensed Amy’s approach. The angry squawking was a robust string of Commonbeak expletives. Trey understood them, and he related such to Maxo, who tilted his head in amazement.

Although books and bric-a-brac all lay everywhere, the slaves weren’t overly excited by what had happened. For in this apartment the Fabulous Felinespy came around on average twice a week.

The male calmly detached Amy from the Bird’s cage. Any other creature would immediately feel her wrath upon such insolence, but Amy maybe had a thing for the guy, so she simply bit him for the sake of appearances (a nip, hardly enough to draw blood) and leapt from his arms.

After settling everyone down and recovering the cage, the female said something about going back to bed and that the mess would keep till morning. She called Maxo down (who incensed his mother by responding to his name) and carried him into the bedroom.

The male attempted to coax Amy into the bedroom as well, but she wouldn’t have any of it. “Have it your way, fiendette” he said, “just leave Dotty be, or you’ll have to sleep in the laundry room. Goodnight.”

The amazingly nocturnal Trey tripodded down from his spot on the bookcase and sat down beside Amy. “That’s sure some ghostie.”

Amy nodded. “Say, what was that shit the bird said about me?”

THE AMORAL: A CALICO CANNOT CHANGE HER SPOTS, STRIPES, POLKA DOTS, PLAIDS, OR PINSTRIPES.

Merry Christmas, Charleston CLAWS

You can touch Shax, but only by “appointment.” First you have to establish eye contact with the old tom and at the same time make a “scratchies” gesture with your index finger. If you correctly spy permission in his imperious gold eyes, then, and only then, may you apply a “scratchie” to the surprisingly short distance between his ears. Any failure to comply with this procedure will result in a personal math system based on the number nine.

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