Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Five: The Caretaker’s Cottage Part Two

-Prologue-

Ineffable Is As Ineffable Does

With a peaked roof topped by a small brass eagle, the “Caretaker’s Cottage” in New Town Cemetery is a seven-by-nine rectangle that stands long side up. A few years back the City of Charleston had money left over in the Parks Department budget; two thousand dollars was allotted for the creation of ten incomprehensibly cheap signs to mark various “historical sites” throughout town. It was one of those mystifying expenditures that governments make to discourage the expectation of competence. One of the signs stands in front of the rectangle. It says: “Former Caretaker’s Cottage.”

Outside being the ancestral home to untold generations of Grey Squirrels, the building is a tool shed added decades after the cemetery was founded in 1902. New Town did have a live-in caretaker once, but he dwelled in a long since razed house that stood at the foot of the hill in which the cemetery is seated. But the extremely typical Charleston city employee tasked with the sign job had to put something on the one set aside for the cemetery–so she pulled a fiction from where the sun never rises and literally engaged a signmaker (her fiance–who reaped a thousand percent profit). In fact, nine of the ten signs placed throughout Charleston are similarly procured fictions–with the other being only true about Hartsville, Tennessee–the boyfriend signmaker’s hometown.

This alleged Caretaker’s Cottage is seventy yards downhill from graveyard’s main gate, where the path splits in twain (the ends meander left and right, eventually reverse direction and later meet at the foot of the hill). About one person in twenty who sees the sign reads it; nineteen of the twenty who read it don’t give a shit; the one reader left over usually complains to the city about the obvious falsehood; but the city knows that people who read signs are not to be taken seriously.

Unknown items, however, when at last discovered, should be taken seriously. As stated by many Narrators of “speculative tales” (aka, stories also found where the sun never rises), the dimension of space-time perceived by humankind is but a single thread in the infinite tapestry of reality. For example, non-Narrators do not know that Enchanted Trees are common in other dimensions, and that once in a great while an Enchanted Tree will take root in our dimension. Such is the case with a heavily burled and galled Enchanted Oak that stands near the Caretaker’s Cottage. Somehow an Enchanted Acorn passed through a rift between the dimensions long ago and took hold in the cemetery. (F.Y.I.: No matter the make, Enchanted Trees cast shadows toward light.)

Sadly, an Enchanted Tree is about as useful as a laptop in the Paleozoic unless there’s an Ineffable Being of some kind around to use it. Fortunately, for this tale to continue, there’s an elemental Earth Spirit around who knows how to boot up an Enchanted Tree. This Spirit, called by some, Keeper, is a subatomic-sized yet vast intelligence fixed at a point deep in the Earth and has a cone-like dominion that tops out as a circle of influence about a mile in circumference at the Earth’s surface, and whose continuous existence has forced me to mix the tenses of this document. New Town Cemetery currently just happens to be in the center of Keeper’s domain. (Although Keeper is not remotely gendered biological life, your Narrator from here on out will refer to Keeper as her. A flipped 2005 U.S. quarter decided that; it could have easily gone the other way. Since there’s a “him” left over, the Enchanted Oak gets it.)

Keeper can exist in simultaneous realities without confusion. In one of her reality threads, the Enchanted Oak got that way by the hand of a Witch who connected it to Hell. But since Keeper preferred a secular, less prone to evil Enchanted Tree, she opted for the reality in which the acorn dropped from a parallel dimension.

“Ineffable” is an adjective employed by Narrators who wish to endow a creation with an awesome air of mystery while uncertain as to how to go about it without explaining too much. That’s the same as breaking open a Magic Eight Ball to learn its secrets. So, let’s just say the ineffable Keeper is also able to move back and forth in time and examine the corpses that have been lying in her realm for the last century or so and experience their life histories as though virtual reality. Yes, Keeper, from the tiniest bit of genetic material, mind you, is able to resurrect in her perceptions the first hand experiences of the dead–as they had been in their immutable pasts. Even more! With power culled from nature and ineffably stored in the Oak, Keeper can bring back the active mind of a dead person and have (in this case) him interact with a living person. If that ain’t ineffable, then I don’t know what is.

The Narrator has realized that any further musings on the pseudoscience of where the sun never rises are unnecessary. She (whose gender was not decided by a flip of a coin) knows that this is where the reader will either continue or give up. For those who dare venture on, the Narrator will do her best to be a good host. For those who choose to bail, well, screw you, too, pal.

-1-

Nader Was Right: “Unsafe at Any Speed”

“Carly Simon walked into a bar and the bartender said, ‘Hey, why the long face?’”

Those were the final words John Mallory heard in life. He was preparing to cross a downtown Charleston street on Saturday, 1 July 1978 when one guy on the sidewalk said that to another guy. Mallory glanced back, caught his foot in a hole in the pavement, fell and hit his head on the bumper of a parked 1963 Chevrolet Corvair. Hard. He suffered a fractured skull and died in the ambulance en route to the hospital. Poor fellow was only thirty-two. He (as you might have guessed) is buried at New Town Cemetery–smack between the Oak and Caretaker’s House.

Irony was not John’s friend that summer day in 1978. Ten years earlier, he’d been drafted into the Army; but as his unit prepared to be shipped to Vietnam, somewhat clumsy Mallory suffered a badly broken right shoulder during a final training drill. It required two operations and never healed properly. The injury prevented Vietnam and earned him a medical discharge. For the rest of his life, John couldn’t raise his right arm any higher than chest level–but he considered that a fair trade because his unit suffered a fifty-percent casualty rate. Still, if John had the normal range of motion in his shoulder, he would have been able to protect his head from striking the Corvair’s bumper.

More than forty years after his sad demise, Mallory got drafted again. Recently, Keeper chose him to be her dead familiar. It’s a strange situation. It’s ineffable to the degree that the Narrator feels obliged to share the only joke that ineffable works in, even though it takes up precious words and has nothing to do with the story: “The woman in the chastity belt was ineffable.”

Maybe that should be un-effable.

-2-

Enter Number Two, A Movie Queen to Play the Scene

Gwendelyn Cooper is the rare person who knows about Keeper, the Oak, John Mallory, the Caretaker’s Cottage and even a thing or two about the Narrator–but not nearly as much about the last item as she thinks. If Gwen did fully understand the ineffable ways of the Narrator she’d wonder why certain items that should not be, are.

For instance, Gwen is an extremely attractive young woman in both personality and form. She’s a special beauty whose singular thereness proves a Supreme Being; for the light in her eyes, the sheen of her mane, that little hitch in her voice and what the seafaring folk of yore referred to as “the cut of her jib” suggest that such a pleasing arrangement of atoms must be an on purpose conception of God and not nature’s version of a winning lottery ticket.

Goddamn–Gwen’s good looking! Thus entitled to another descriptive paragraph although the subject has not changed. And she’s smart, too–and kind-hearted to the degree that she almost always applies the brake upon seeing children playing in the street. What else should we ask of Gwen Cooper? And yet for some reason she can’t get a date. Her non-existent love life usually happens only in Julia Roberts’ movies of the nineties–and yet it is. It’s as though a feckless godlike hand is playing Gwen’s lack of a love life for a plot device.

A couple of years ago Gwen and a Corgi named Lady MacBee cut through the cemetery during their daily run–as was/is their habit. Keeper (whose ability to see the future is accurate but limited due to constantly changing possibilities) had glimpsed an accident lying ahead in the pair’s immediate future (as in minutes) and “woke” John Mallory to prevent that from happening.

To cut to the chase, what we have now is a post Girl Meets Ghost, Girl Loses Ghost and Girl Gets Ghost back sort of thing. And we are now dealing with that non-place called the Happy Ever After, which makes this a speculative tale of the highest fishyness. Lady MacBee won’t appear today due to word count issues. But rest assured that she is fine–and happier to be at Gwen’s mother’s house chewing stuff to ribbons than she would just sitting around in the Caretaker’s Cottage.

To spend time with her Ghost, Gwen convinced the city that New Town Cemetery needed a volunteer weekend Caretaker. This appealed to the city because it neither had to pay her nor overtime to the employee who used to grouse about having to open and close the gates on his days off. Gwen was the only applicant for the position she’d created, which she got because even though she cannot get a date, she’s still pretty goddam charming. The gig gives Gwen the key to the Caretaker’s Cottage.

-3-

Never Wear a Dress to a Cemetery

“Excuse me, Miss,” a man of perhaps eighty said, upon reading the sign, as Gwen was about to enter the Caretaker’s Cottage last Saturday, “but this is a tool shed, never a home.”

As already established, Gwen is spectacular, even dressed in a flannel shirt and green work pants, so I won’t describe her further. But if you need her to have raven hair and green eyes, knock yourself out, it’s your mental theater.

Gwen smiled and motioned to the man to come closer. “We got it from where the sun never rises,” she whispered in a just between you, me and the tombstones sort of way.

The man walked away with a just for him bit of Gwen Cooper in his heart, like a flower in his lapel. A little something to stand up against the dismal gray sky and not having much better to do than visit a graveyard on a Saturday morning.

I don’t know about you but your Narrator finds it awfully freaking awesome that Enchanted items are not subjects of the tiresome laws of the Universe. This allows Keeper to feed a thread of energy culled from sun-, moon- and starshine from the Enchanted Oak through the brass eagle that tops the Caretaker’s Cottage and give substance to the form of John Mallory inside the erstwhile tool shed. Keeper, however, isn’t a luddite. She uses Gwen’s iphone to give Mallory his voice, which passes through a bluetooth speaker.

Gwen entered the little building and closed the door behind her. Anyone looking in would have seen an expected clutter of rakes and such, but the instant Gwen shut the door, the room expanded into an antique sitting room, complete with comfortable furniture and a fireplace. This, of course, was an illusion, just like most other good things in life. But as far as illusions go, it was a dandy, and although she was in actuality just standing there. Gwen moved about freely in her mind.

John Mallory, however, wasn’t an illusion. He needed to be summoned by “phoning” 1978. Upon doing so he appeared instantly. Still, the apparition of John Mallory, though three dimensional, was obviously that of a ghost. You could see through much of him save for his face. Keeper did manage to put him together as he had been prior to his death, as not to horrify Gwen with what forty years in a hole does to a body. Keeper also changed Mallory’s wardrobe, from items she found in John’s memory. Though ineffable, Keeper is not up on styles. She “dressed” John in a rugby shirt and bellbottomed jeans. Which would have been fine if last Saturday were in the late 1970’s–but for decades such an outfit is seen only on Halloween.

Perhaps thinking such, Gwen smiled and said, “Trick or treat.”

John, proving that a guy is still a guy no matter what side of the grave he’s on, smiled in return; perhaps thinking she had made a flirtatious advance; perhaps thinking he “had it together.”

“Hi, Gwen,” he said.

Every time Gwen saw John, she compared his eyes to city rain. Sometimes, when she wanted to indulge in sadness, Gwen thought about him being born forty-eight years before her and if he hadn’t died would be two years older than her one surviving grandfather. Time and death had placed barriers between them, but only death remained.

“Are we ready to make the world a little better?” she asked.

“Was there a man out there?”

“Eightyish and alone?”

“Hardly narrows it down, Gwendy.”

“Call me that again and I’ll have Lady MacBee pee on your grave.”

“I apologize.”

“Have I ever told you your eyes are like city rain?”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Depends on what’s coming out of your mouth at the time.”

The shape of John Mallory intensified and an aura shone about him; Keeper was feeding him the necessary charge for him to pass to Gwen so she could make the world a little better.

-4-

Eternally Sighing In a Leonard Cohen Afterworld

Gwen exited the Cottage and immediately headed downhill to where she knew the man she had seen earlier would be.

Ever since they began to meet in the Cottage, Keeper would feed John a strange energy which he’d pass to Gwen through the representation of a kiss.

She knew no more of the content of what she carried than a messenger bringing a sealed letter, but the feeling of just having it was narcotic.

Gwen didn’t find him weeping over a grave, but sitting on a bench at the foot of the hill, eyes glazed, exuding the cruel impression that it was hardly worth his time to drive back to town. Upon seeing him she knew his name was–

“Frank, Hi. I have something for you,” she said, sitting down beside him on the bench. Questions gathered in his face, but he hadn’t the time to ask, for Gwen kissed him on the cheek, and the energy, the message, was delivered to its intended recipient.

Frank fell into a dream and saw himself as he had been at least fifty years ago. He saw himself in the kitchen; he saw himself through Evelyn’s eyes, thinking her thoughts, those gleaned by Keeper from Evelyn’s grave. The thoughts had no specific shapes, for Keeper knows no words, but the emotions were there–the small power of love that, like Keeper, in its small realm, is all powerful; and trust and the desire for it always to be this way. Just another something for Frank; but a something much finer than a whisper from a pretty stranger; a something to keep and carry as protection from despair.

Epilogue

Gwen returned to the Cottage and called 1978.

John reloaded, this time in a sky blue leisure suit.

But his eyes were still like city rain.

“Any new messages yet, lover?”

Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Five: The Caretaker’s Cottage Part One

The Haunting of Miss Gwen Cooper

4 A.M. New Town Cemetery, Charleston, Washington

******

Eternal Keeper reached into the sky and plucked threads of starshine. The sheared strands merged as a multi-colored lightning bolt which struck the only oak tree inside New Town Cemetery. Thunder failed to tattle on the bolt; no one saw it strike; nor were the plentiful, watchful, sensitive, nocturnal creatures in the graveyard aware of it; nor did it in the least disturb the slumbering daybreak birds, nor squirrels, nor even the insects that inhabit the lone graveyard oak. But something did happen within a set-aside dimension where Keeper and the spirit of the tree coexist. Come sunrise, the shape of a ghost, whom Keeper had woven from the threads of plucked starshine, rose from his grave and proceeded to the power and safety of the enchanted tree.

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Welcome to Saragun Springs: Book Five The Caretaker’s Cottage

Introduction

We conclude Volume One of Welcome to Saragun Springs this month, with Book Five, The Caretaker’s Cottage, which is our “Featured presentation.”

Unfortunately (in my point of view), terms such as “vignettes” and “episodic” tend to describe my longer productions. Although I do not pretend to be in her league, Dorothy Parker discovered she was not a novelist the hard way and drank a bottle of shoe polish to get out of writing one after the advance had been spent. Fortunately, Mrs. Parker was much better at attempted suicide than at the successful version–so she survived and went on as a short track writer.

So, this piece isn’t a “real” novel, but it is a book, thus I have no plans involving the ingestion of cleaning products, nor is there an advance (or “minus-vance”) for me to squander. Regardless, the book brings back Miss Gwen Cooper, the Leading Lady FC who first appeared in Book One and sporadically since.

And for those of you who noticed the first mention of “Volume One” in this post, consider yourself forewarned of something that will arrive on this site sometime in 2025.

Leila

Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Four: HeXopatha and the billigits Finale

(Today we conclude this look at HeXy and the boys–but they will be back someday–again, fair warning-LA)

billigitmania

-1-

It’s hard to ignore five shadows cast on your desk by as many hovering beings outside the window. I do not know if there is an achievable degree of determination to successfully ignore such a situation; if so, it lies beyond my level of sticktoitiveness.

With a sigh I closed my computer and without looking I motioned to the hovering individuals outside to come in. I heard the window go up and I sat there at my desk, staring straight ahead at nothing until Penrose the Flying Weasel and the four billigits–by name, mothball, weasel (coincidental to Penrose), pinto and flounder appeared in my sight. (billigits do not believe in capitalization.)

“You guys still working for HeXopatha?” I asked because all five are minions of the Witch HeXopatha.

I heard “We serve our magnificent master.”

Each spoke one word of that– starting with “We” at Penrose and ending when flounder said “master.”

“Excellent,” I said. “You guys must be lost and need directions home. Just head toward the Enchanted Wood, thatta way,” I added, pointing out the window.

The crystal ball on my desk flashed red. That happens when the Magnificent Master herself has something to tell me. HeXopatha’s fair yet damned face appeared in the crystal.

“What now?” I said.

“‘Hello, HeXopatha, how are you on this fine day?’” she said with a mixture of sarcasm and some other smartass quality that no word can precisely describe; a sort of benign affection that can go malignant at any time.

“All right,” I said, “pretend you heard me say that, but remember it is the sort of thing a person asks but doesn’t mean. Anyway, funny you should call right now–since there are five of yours loitering in the office.”

“I sent my darlings to you for career advice,” she said. “They want to break into show business and since you are an endless source of inspiration for futile dreams, enjoy their company.”

The crystal went dark, but I could hear her standard bray of evil Wiccan laughter echoing. At that moment, my second in command in the make believe realm of Saragun Springs, Renfield, who bears an uncanny resemblance to HeXopatha, entered the office. There was an expression on her face that suggested she had just finished laughing maniacally at one of her own witticisms.

“Hi fellas!” Renfield said. “So you want to form a Boy Band!” All five of the winged fiends nodded enthusiastically.

I scrolled back through this story that we were acting, and, as I had thought, no one had yet to mention “Boy Band.”

“Didn’t know you read minds, Renfield–considering only these guys and HeXy knew the score on that.”

Renfield scowled–a sort of nose crinkle– in the “eww” manner that only pretty girls can do correctly–at the mention of our Witch. Despite their uncanny physical resemblance neither Renfield nor HeXopatha are willing to appear “on stage” at the same time as the other. And yet both always know what the other is thinking in a telepathic way that defies even the loose standards for such in Saragun Springs.

“Never mind, never mind,” I said.

“I’m going to be the manager, the Brains behind it all,” said Penrose.

“Yes, I can see a Weasel in charge of the money,” I said. “That’s the way it usually goes.”

“You other four have to adopt a type,” Renfield added.

“Type?” asked either mothball or weasel–billigits are identical and a bit hard to keep track of.

“Indeed,” Renfield said, “one has to be the bad billigit that the fans will want to reform.”

“Another has to be the sensitive billigit, the billigit you know who will listen and care about your miserable existence–preferably closeted Gay,” I said.

“What’s ‘Gay?’” All the billigits asked at once.

I had forgotten that billigits are a tad innocent. Since it was in nobody’s best interest to shine a light on their ignorance, I made like Penrose and Weaseled my way out of the topic.

“Um, happy in an old timey bicycle built for two sort of way,” I said, “but never mind that–whoever can feign a sympathetic ear to whining best should be that type.”

“And one has to be posh, the spoiled billigit,” said Renfield.

“And one gets to be the billigit who tells the backstory,” I said. “That’s going to be you, flounder. Lucky you. Congratulations.”

The expression on flounder’s face was contrary to that you’d expect to see on a face that had just received good news. But it brightened when Daisy Kloverleaf, the Pygmy Goatess and the lead FC in the realm, entered the office.

Penrose spoke up: “Meet our press agent, Miss Kloverleaf–please direct all enquiries toward her.”

“Hello Daisy,” I said. “So will it be up to you to put the spin on various sins committed by the boys?”

“The ‘boys’ resent your humancentric label. Please refer to them by name or as a billigit or gits in the pronoun sense,” Daisy said. Great, Daisy, not so innocent, had learned about labeling. Guess it was bound to happen.

“Fine,” I said. “But the next thing I’d better hear is the backstory or the lot of you will be gitting the hell out of here.”

Daisy is now tapping a hoof on the inside of the screen of the device you are reading this on. When it comes to supplying the backstory, Daisy is an Occam’s Razor type of Goatess. The simplest is the truest, and she has no problem removing the fourth wall.

“Hello readerly Readers. The billigitly billigits are wingly winged androgynous folksy folk about eighteen inches tall, orangey orange skinned and are cladly clad in identically identical blue polo shirts and khaki slacks. They also wearingly wear hemp slippers that usually fall off in flight.”

“Thank you, Daisy,” I said, and I cursed myself for giving the narrative to the adverbially inclined Miss Kloverleaf.

“So, you have a band, a manager and a press agent,” Renfield said. She had just mixed a pitcher of VooDoo juju at the bar (vodka, Bacardi 151, grenadine, crushed ice and Fresca).

“And the backing of a Witch,” I said, just to rattle Renfield’s cage.

“A what? Oh, that,” she said.

“You just missed Hexy a while back,” I added.

“‘Dear Diary, today I just missed meeting someone who’s got the combined charm of amoebic dysentery and sandpaper buttwipe. Now I cry myself to sleep.’” Renfield laughed bitterly and took a long pull from her drink.

“All right, gang,” I said. “Sounds like you got all you need–why come to me?”

“We need some songs,” said Penrose.

“Yes, I guess those would come in handy to prevent dead time on stage, but I am a bad songwriter.”

“But Daisy is very good,” Penrose said.

“Oh, I see–you want me to give Daisy permission to write her own material in the realm.” Being the CEO Penname of the Springs requires that I must okay side projects of the other citizens. I try to discourage that, but there are times when it comes in handy.

“Sure, knock yourself out. I was just telling Renfield the other day that there aren’t enough adverbial pop songs in the universe–right Renny?”

“Yeah, fucking-a-doodle,” she slurred (VooDoo Juju is powerful stuff, goes to work almost instantly.)

“Well, now that’s resolved, see you kids on the next Behind the Music. Don’t let the autotune hit you in the ass on your way out.”

The flyers exited via the window, and Daisy trotted happily out of the office on her way to her songwriting gig.

I checked the word count of this production: 1262 of the 3000 budget spent.

It was a critical moment. I had to make a decision then and there. No more putting it off. I either had to think of a snappy way of ending this production now, or go to the top add “-1-” and return and add…

-2-

A month later I was engulfed in one of those little handheld games which feature placing bb’s in tiny holes. It was the constellation Orion. I was going crazy because I could do everything except land the middle star in his belt. Thus occupied, I hadn’t noticed that Renfield had wheeled in the furniture dolly that holds an immense Philco television set, made circa 1950. It‘s a heavy-ass thing with a small circular screen in the middle, which bugs out like one of Marty Feldman’s eyes. We use it to watch programs telecast from Saragun Spring’s sister realm, Other Earth (which can be visited through an interdimensional portal near the foul spring the realm is named for).

“Shitandpissandbastardandbitchandhell! Why does this goddamn thing hate me! I’ve had it!” I screamed, not for the first time that day, but, as always, despite my at quits proclamation, I was going back for more abuse until I glanced up and saw Renfield adding tin foil to the set’s rabbit ears. It had been awhile since the last transmission from Other Earth, but not nearly long enough.

“Oh Jesus,” I said, “what Hell of the day club thing now?” The game was instantly forgotten.

Renfield shone her best punch me in the face smile. “You are always so negative, darling.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “But it’s been a long time since I’ve had a six-year-old on Christmas Eve buzz about the future. You see, mostly,” I added, holding up the game, “life is a minefield of futile shitbombs to be defused like this effed up thing.”

She didn’t take pity on me and turned on the set. After nothing but a prolonged static whine, Renfield gave it a good kick in the side (which is the accepted method of dealing with ancient electronics), a rolling picture formed on the screen. And there was also semi-sense making sound coming out of the tinny speaker.

The rolling black and white picture tube finally settled and I squinted, and saw Daisy Kloverleaf’s face on the screen. “Greetings, hip Cats and wild Kittens! Welcome to Goatenanny!”

This was followed by the enthusiastic cheering of an unseen studio audience, But the voices sounded like a gathering of “wild Kittens” ages ten to thirteen. I then heard the unmistakable voice of Penrose announce that week’s lineup of guests while stock rock music blared in the background–the generic stuff they used on shows in the sixties as to avoid licensing fees. There was only one guest that week, as it turned out, but the announcement was protracted to squeeze the last drop of teen spirit from the audience:

Penrose shouted “mothball!” And there mothball was–clad in a tiny leather jacket, his hair arranged in a Ducktail, a sulky look on his face–the bad boy billigit.

“weasel!” Apparently the gang had opted to include a “regular kid” billigit–for weasel had put on some weight and wore glasses…yet there was something about the weasel that made you root for him–the underdog, comic relief billigit–perfect for wild Kittens best described as having a “good personality” (billigits have no real gender–but they act like boys).

There was a loud “awww” mixed in with the reaction to pinto’s introduction. He was grinning shyly and was wearing a perfect little Beatles’ suit and tie, and had affected Paul McCartney Puppy eyes. The sensitive billigit, the one you can depend on never having a girlfriend to get between him and your fantasies.

A strange mix of friendly boos and wild hormonal shrieking greeted the posh billigit, flounder. He was wearing a cardigan and holding a polo mallet. He winked arrogantly at the audience and conveyed an “I know” cockiness that made him as slappable as Bieber.

Then Penrose and Daisy appeared together on the screen. In unison they bellowed “Meet the billigits!”

The speaker nearly blew in the set, because the shrieking had reached a tornadic level of sound. I figured that was a good thing because “Foreverly Yoursly Yours” appeared on one of those inserts that television used ages ago. I figured that it must be the name of the song; sounded like something Daisy would write.

The boys were flying about doing little aerial acrobatics, and the “Goatenanny Dancers” (composed ot Black Cats and Rats who are also minions of HeXopatha) jumped enthusiastically on stage.

Then another insert, much larger, informed the viewer that Goatenanny was presented by PDQ Pilsner. The image of Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon (another one of my FC’s) then filled the screen. Below him the “quotation” “Whether it be at work or when you’re screwed blue and tattooed, don’t forget to make it PDQ!”

After a half hour of this nonsense went by, the broadcast ended. I turned the set off. Renfield mixed a pitcher of VooDoo JuJu.

“What year is it on Other Earth now?” I asked, taking the drink she handed me. Other Earth had recently fallen out of time sequence with the Springs and was decades behind us.

“Near as I can tell they bounced off 2023 and went back at least sixty years and are moving forward again. No one there has noticed the disruption, except us. And no one can interfere with their timeline unless they become a part of it–they can’t shoot anyone or prevent it–they exist only in the moment, but the moment can be profitable.”

I was about to opine on the morality of a bunch of Saragun Springs FC’s going into the Other Earth’s past and making a fortune, but thought better of it. Actually the VooDoo Juju made it much easier to overlook.

“Ha!” Renfield said. She had plucked the Orion game off my desk and sank all ten bb’s in under

as many seconds–something I hadn’t been able to do once in two days.

All I could do was drain my glass and say “Fucking-a-doodle.”

Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Four: HeXopatha and the billigits Part Seven

The Riddle of the billigits

Meet the Hammy Dodgers

The crystal ball on my desk flashed red. This happens whenever the Witch HeXopatha (nee “Hezopatha”) wants to pee in my lager.

HeXopatha is an immortal Wiccan. She has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be around for however long it takes for her to get bored with the world and retire permanently to Hell–but I don’t count on that happening soon. Once upon a time the “peasants” might have been able to do something about HeXopatha, but her skill level has risen beyond river tossing and the pyre. In fact it is a bad idea to mention such previous activities in HeXopatha’s presence; nor is it advised to claim to be of “Puritan stock,” unless you enjoy long hours in pillory stocks.

Still, despite her negative attitude toward Witchunting, it may be of interest to know that HeXopatha claims that no actual Witch had been a victim of the various persecutions, and that the Salem debacle was actually a ruse concocted by one of her associates to rid herself of a budding “Sadie Goodwife” type named Rebecca Nurse. “Sadies” have preternatural Witch senses, tiresome morality streaks and tend to tattle. It was easy to frame Nurse, for the elders’ brains, again according to HeXopatha, “Were heavily rotted with paresis.”

I’ve noticed that the two extreme sides of being share a similar smile; the same perma-set grin that we saw on the faces of Warren Jeffs’ “wives” when the FBI came for them is on HeXopatha’s face–but the key difference is a light of powerful, gleefully evil intelligence in the Witch’s eyes where there were only gone fishin’ signs hanging in the soul windows of the Utah harem.

And there she was in the crystal ball, smiling, glowing with bad intent.

“Hey you,” I said, “how come you changed the spelling of your name and added that pain in the butt cap X in the middle without consulting me, the Ruling Power, first?”

“Because I have Free Will. I don’t have to ask–besides, you must admit that HeXopatha makes more sense for a Witch.”

She had me there. Although a Fictional Character (FC) of my own creation, the endowment of Free Will ended any real authority I had over her. Actually, other than selecting who appears in my stories, I have no real sway over any of my FC’s.

“Since when must Ruling Powers make sense?” I said. “Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The reason I called you–”

“It’s the other way around, darling,” HeXopatha said, her malevolent yet oddly cleancut image glowing even brighter in the crystal ball. Being a Witch, HeXopatha changes her appearance every time she returns to Earth from long sabbaticals in Hell. For this incarnation she opted for an olive complexion, honey colored eyes and jett hair. Two constants about her are extreme beauty and a necklace that contains charms of Cats, Rats, Owls, Ravens, Bats, Wolves, Spiders, Scorpions, Snakes and Stoats–her beloved critter familiars. She has a host of human sycophants, but they do not rate a charm on the necklace. (There’s also a “billigit” charm, which we will explore later.)

I glanced back to the start of this piece and discovered that it was indeed she who had placed the call.

“Don’t you think I know that?” I lied via a question (I call the act of rhetorical fibbing “quie-ing”). “What now, your serene lowness?”

“Do you remember the Riddle of the Sphinx?”

“Do I look like I don’t know my mythology?” I quied. “But for the sake of the readers who may not be as up on the tale as we are, do tell.”

“Let’s have a little play,” she said.

With that the Rat and Cat charms on her necklace glowed, and within three seconds a golden-eyed Black Cat with a Black Rat riding on her back leapt through my office window–which had been closed, yet opened on its own to let them in. (For the record, HeXopatha’s girl Cats have gold eyes, the guys’ are gray. Her female Rats wear black hair bows, this one did not.)

The Cat leapt onto my desk. The Rat dismounted as though the Cat were a Horse. He stood on his back legs, bowed and said, in a surprisingly deep voice, for a rodent “I am Shrewsbury and this is Lady Hisskit.”

“Charmed,” I said.

“We are members of the Hammy Dodger Players,” said Lady Hisskit, who, like Shrewsbury, spoke with a lovely, trained voice. “We salute our benefactor, our Magnificent Master, Her Highness HeXopatha.” Both ebon fiends turned and bowed before the evil visage in the crystal.

“Just a moment please,” I said. I removed the portable breathalyzer I keep on hand for reality checks and blew into it. The result was no higher than normal. “All right,” I continued, “I guess this must really be happening. Umm, ‘Jolly Rancher Players’ you say?”

“Hammy Dodger, we said,” Hisskit replied, all superior and Helen Mirren-like. She then assumed the pose of the Sphinx and said: “Behold The Sphinx and Oedipus.”

Shrewsbury was a method actor. He wasn’t ready and we watched him slowly channel the character of Oedipus, like an emoting little Brando. Lady Hisskit, being a Cat, had little patience with her co-star.

“Hurry the hell up, you little motherfu-”

“Now, now, Hissy, darling,” HeXopatha spoke from the crystal, “save your rage for reality.”

“My apologies, Magnificent Master.”

“Quite all right, sweetheart.”

When it became apparent that Shrewsbury was ready, the Sphinx spoke: “Hideous piebald meat bag, tell me what creature walks first on four legs, then two and ends on three?”

“Man,” Oedipus replied, with great confidence.

“Sexist prick!” The Sphinx said, taking a swipe at Oedipus, who leapt nimbly away.

“Curtain! Bravo babies, bravo!” HeXopatha called out. The Hammy Dodgers bowed.

I figured they’d go away faster if I applauded, so I did just that. Shrewsbury climbed back on board Lady Hisskit and they exited by the same route they’d entered.

HeXopatha was about to say something, but I delayed her with a raised finger. I opened my top desk drawer and removed two hotel bottles of Jack Daniels and downed both. I again blew into the breathalyzer and upon seeing that I was now at a blood/alcohol level high enough to make whatever she had to tell me easier to swallow, I shivered and said, “Proceed.”

“I believe it will be easier to explain if an idler FC will just happen to wander past your office door right about now and perhaps explain the backstory,” she said, not volunteering to do so herself.

“Swell idea,” I said, and lo and behold Tallywhacker the Berkshire Pig just happened to be wandering past my door, which is always open because most of my FC’s are animals who lack thumbs to turn knobs, and only about half can fit through the pet door–which Tallywhacker might have been able to pass through the day he was born but at no time after. He’s a big fella. Good hearted, but a bit of an ear talker offer. Such an individual comes in handy when a backstory needs addressing.

“Tallywhacker, old chum–gotta big job for you,” I called out.

“By waddle, Miss Leila,” he said, “I’m your Pig.”

HeXopatha and I glanced at each other, both with “By Waddle?” in our eyes, but neither of us said anything. Tallywhacker has his little verbal dingleberries, which are all a part of the varied richness that is the Tallywhacker experience. (For the record, he was named for the sheep counting rope device used by shepherds–not for the male device responsible for nearly all the wars in history–though such an allusion does make a humorous appearance in the classic film Porky’s.)

The Backstory, By Waddle

Tallywhacker is a big guy. He’s dark brown over white, shaped like a giant artillery shell and weighs at least four-hundred pounds. Fortunately he’s gentle, impossible to insult and talks non-stop. The last item isn’t always a blessing, but it is helpful when I need the backstory filled.

“Tally, old chum,” I said, “Miss HeXopatha and I were discussing–um, hold on a minute–” I then spoke at the crystal ball “Jesus Christ, HeXy, what are we talking about?”

“The Riddle of the billigits,” HeXopatha said as though speaking to a small, dumb child.

“I bet if I scroll backwards I’ll discover that this is the first mention of that,” I said.

“You could,” she said, “or you could just let Tally go whole hog and pretend we have already addressed it.”

“The Riddle of the billigits,” I said to Tallywhacker.

“Yes, yes, by waddle,” Tallywhacker said, gathering his words for a long and windy verbal gale.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that HeXopatha “hung up” the crystal ball, for it went dark. Interestingly, it happened just before my second in command and Imaginary Friend Renfield entered the room. Renfield was wearing her usual sinister grin, which went well with her olive complexion, honey colored eyes and Jett hair.

“You just missed HeXopatha,” I said.

“Guess that gives me cause to hang myself,” she said. The antipathy between Renfield and HeXopatha is known to all. You never see them at the same time.

“By waddle, Miss Renfield,” said Tallywhacker. “What happened to that lovely necklace I saw you wearing in the lobby? With the charms?”

“The billigits, Tally,” I said, a bit quickly. “We’re up against the word budget enough already.”

“Oh, yes, by waddle, those daffy billigits–only four of the little winged orange fellows you know. Small, standing about hock high, and they wear identical blue polo shirts, khaki slacks and hemp slippers that fall off in flight. They do not use capital letters, by name they are mothball, weasel, pinto and flounder. Little rascals, by waddle,” Tallywhacker finished with a little chuckle.

It soon became evident that Tally had forgotten his lines.

Renfield fake sneezed “Minions.”

“Bless you, by waddle, Miss Renfield…why yes, the billigits currently serve as minions to the lovely Witch HeXopatha–who looks an awful lot like you, Miss Ren–”

“Pork Cheops,” Renfield fake sneezed again.

“‘Cheops,’ by waddle, of course. Mistress HeXopatha has founded the Valley of the Queen in her section of our realm known as Saragun Springs. She plans on building pyramids and such to her honor her esteemed witchyness…”

“And-wha-wha-wha-what-the-fuck-duh-do-fuh-four-billi-billi-billigits-have to do with it,” I faked sneezed.

During my fake sneeze, Renfield had quietly left the room; soon the crystal ball flashed red. HeXopatha was back, adjusting her charm necklace.

“That’ll do, Pig, that’ll do,” she said.

“Yes, and thank you Tallywhacker,” I added. “There are some tulip bulbs out in the barnyard that need rooting, if you are so inclined.”

“By waddle, that does appeal to my fancy,” Tallywhacker said. And as he passed through the office door, I realized that he was maybe three hundred calories away from not being able to squeeze through it, and I made a note to widen the passage.

Now, please imagine an attractive woman who has an olive complexion, honey-colored eyes, jett hair and is wearing a charm necklace knocking on the inside of the screen of whatever you are viewing this on. Since you are willing to do that much, please further imagine that your device is a crystal ball. The attractive woman wants your attention because she has something to tell you.

“Hello, readers or reader or no one at all, I am the Great and Powerful Witch HeXopatha. Through trickery and magic I have converted the four billigits that Tally mentioned into an army of a quarter million. I recently joined them to form a single giant billigit that is two-hundred-forty feet long and about sixty high. The size of the Sphinx. Why? Because I can. And for my further entertainment, I have devised the Riddle of the billigit. Only the correct answer to the riddle will break the spell and return the big billigit to the four individual billigits.”

Well, by waddle, there you have it.

Channeling Arnold

The Bard says “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” That pretty much sums up Horatio, but it doesn’t apply in this realm called Saragun Springs, where I’m the ruling Penname. Here, if you fail to dream up weird enough stuff, even weirder stuff will come looking for you. Some say it is because the vile, extravagantly poisoned, perhaps even sentient spring (which is a bit more like a geyser) that the realm is named after spews tons of vaporized LSD into our air every day. Some say lots of things, but this item might be true.

The Great billigit of HeXopatha, like everything else in my symmetrical realm, is about a mile downwind of the spring. In fact everything is downwind from the spring. No such condition as being upwind of it. Thus the air contains a vague scent similar to that spray polite people use in a vain attempt to conceal a particularly nasty toilet event.

Since the path to the Great billigit passed the spring, it was decided that the two persons with the least evolved senses of smell in the realm would try to solve the Riddle of the billigit. I went because I’ve been a smoker since childhood; I notice stenches, but only in a distant sort of way. I brought along Pie-Eyed Peetie, the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon– a perpetually pickled cartoon beer mascot who is offended by nothing due to his continuous consumption of PDQ Pilsner (which is brewed from the foul water of the spring). We rode on an old Vespa that could only be turned off by the removal of the wire leading to its lone spark plug.

We saw the Great billigit before he* saw us.(* Although technically neither male nor female, I call billies guys. For anyone offended by that, the answer to the Riddle is for you.) Several of the individual billigits were playing soccer, which proved to my satisfaction that they didn’t hold the Sphinx pose when no one was looking.

But a lookout finally saw us and the collective billigits took the shape of a winged orange Sphinx that wore a blue polo shirt and khaki pants. A pair of giant hemp slippers lay close by.

I pulled up to the Great billigit, yanked the plug wire and said “We have come to solve the Riddle. I’m certain that you guys want to end this nonsense even more quickly than I do. So I recommend a Riddle from the bottom of the Riddle jar, if you catch my drift.”

I could hear the Great billigit’s thoughts. Actually it was the four original billigits, each playing himself and 62,249 other billigits,

by name mothball, weasel, pinto and flounder, excitedly chatting about putting some distance between themselves and the nearby putrid spring.

The four addressed us in one combined voice.

“Behold the riddle: ‘Hey, buddy, did a cat die in there or what?'”

Fate had smiled on us all. The billigits knew that Peetie’s an authority on the slob coms and popcorn films of the 1980’s. It was obvious they wanted no further part of HeXopatha’s Valley of the Queen.

“Fuck you, asshole,” Peetie said, quoting the Terminator, who answered the same “riddle” with those words decades ago.

With that 249,996 doppelganger billigits zapped out of existence, leaving but the original foursome. They bowed and immediately flew off as fast as possible.

Epilogue, By Waddle

Later, I was back in the office supervising the widening of the doorway for Tallywhacker’s benefit.

The crystal ball flashed red.

“What now?”

“Hello, darling,” HeXopatha said. “I want to introduce you to the newest member of the Hammy Dodgers.”

Tallywhacker’s honest face appeared in the crystal. “By waddle, this is certainly a big career move for me.”

“Good job, on the audition,” I said. “Glad you got out before you got too big for the door to hit you in the ass–Tell me, HeXy, why did you waste the time to create a Sphinx that was so easy to disperse?”

HeXopatha smiled that Mormon harem smile of hers. “Because I can.”

The crystal went dark. A moment later Renfield entered with a tablet in her hand. She smiled that Warren-wifey smile of hers and handed me the tablet.

The screen was connected to a security camera near Saragun Springs and the Valley of the Queen. The air was filled with the 249,996 billigits I thought we had dismissed. Each one was carrying a small stone carved from a quarry near the spring. A billigit sized stone. There was a conga line of the guys, which ended where the Sphinx billigit had been.

“So, HeXy is getting her pyramid after all,” I said, handing the tablet back to Renfield.

“I bet it’s a scam,” Renfield said.

I glanced at her, then took the crystal ball in my hand, spoke “Tallywhacker” thrice into it.

“Okay gang, all together before we run out of words,” I said.

“By Waddle,” we said.

Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Four: HeXopatha and the billigits Part Six

(Note: We have yet to reach the era in which the witch and her little minions have standardized the spellings of their names–LA)

Where Have All the billigits Gone?

-1-

If you can imagine a realm that is both infinite and a place where nothing is farther than a mile from anything else, then you can imagine my land of make believe. You see, I failed High School Geometry and have no sense of scientific proportion. I went every day, but it was the first period, and I fell asleep with my eyes open. I wound up with four A’s and one F on that report card. I got my high marks in History, Drama, Music and Sociology. But the world is run by Slide Rule Supremacists who’d rather have kids bomb out in those and score big successes in the ometries.

I had to take an extremely remedial math class (which was as intellectually demanding as “Celebrity Jeopardy”) to gain my diploma. My crowning glory there was the creation of a coordinate graph. When connected, the numbered points revealed the face of Fred Flinstone with dollar signs in his eyes and the caption “Bedrock Lotto.” Although giving up on a freshly minted adult and releasing her into a high tech society armed with no fancier arithmetic in her head than how to arrange a Fred Flintsone graph is probably immoral, that’s just the way the old hypotenuse bounces. Besides, it continues to give me the freedom to create scientifically impossible vistas. Hooray for the armor of ignorance.

According to the 70’s band America, “Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn’t, didn’t already have.” Well, the Wiz was hardly Great and Powerful then, now was he? For I, the ruling Penname in my little metaverse, have endowed all my Fictional Characters (FC’s) with unretractable Free Will, which they most definitely did not already, already have going in. The person who employs me (whose experiences, skills, shames and lacks are identical to mine) did the same for me; alas, you don’t need a head full of logarithms to conceptualize the vicious circle.

Free Will runs amuck; that’s its main characteristic. So, it follows that my FC’s run amuck in keeping with their Free Will. All my FC’s have “Free Willed” actual lives for themselves, which they lead when not involved in my stories. And they often do interesting things when not in print. Some are known to get a bit freer and interesting than what is good for my sanity. And although it is futile, every now and then I try to at very least inform the freer and more interesting element that they are doing to my sanity what a Cat does to a litter box.

Hezopatha the Witch, who has appeared in four or five productions, is a particularly keen Free Will enthusiast. I guess I could be held to blame there; when I developed “Hezzie” I made her smarter than I, thus a sociopath. (I discovered early that all persons more intelligent than I are sociopaths.)

Like any self loving, intellectual, sociopathic, footloose and Free Willed Witch, Hezopatha lives deep in the Enchanted Forest. But as I have already mentioned she is no farther than a mile from anyplace else in the realm. The entire realm is infested with her Minions and “pets.” Just the other evening I glanced up from my computer and saw a great black Owl sitting on the window sill, studying me. And it is not at all unusual to be walking in the garden and have my left ankle assassinated at any moment by one of her Black Cats. It’s always a quick bap bap bap to the left ankle and then back under cover. I’ve yet to learn why only the left ankle is targeted. You see her Rats and Ravens and Wolves everywhere and get used to them in no time at all.

But it was what Minions were missing that got me thinking about Hezopatha the other day, and filled me with anxiety. Moreover, there were stranger than normal lights and sounds coming from her area. She was up to something and when Hezzie is up to something it is usually over the top. For example, through a robust exertion of Free Will, Hezzie had tricked me into giving her a quarter million billigits for Minions…

(The ellipsis concluding the previous paragraph is there to note a pause in my thoughts–for I’m stuck on deciding how to explain what the hell a “billigit” is to readers new to me; should I just tell or hold off and allow the information to come forward in dialogue and action? A bleat or not to bleat verbal transaction. Though just telling you is easier, it is also indicative of lazy writing. But for it to come out in expository dialogue, I need someone to share my thoughts with. Damn it–all right, fine, whatever…)

(The ellipsis at the end of the previous parenthetical paragraph–which is removed from this parenthetical paragraph by one day, a hard return and several pints of Stout–indicates more pondering on my part. I had to decide which two FC’s to take with me on my visit to Hezopatha…Then I will cleverly have one of them do the backstory work!…)

I’ve learned that ellipses lead to, like Stout, more Stout. But upon getting a handle on myself I chose Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess and her brother Fenwick to accompany me to the Enchanted Wood. Normally I’d bring along my Imaginary Friend and second in command, Renfield, but she and Hezopatha do not like each other. Fortunately even sociopaths approve of Pygmy Goats.

I located Daisy and Fenwick in the Barnyard. They were playing “Kick the Can.” Despite the pernicious cliche, Goats do not eat cans. But they do put them in their mouths and hide them for robust games of Kick the Can. For Goats it is “The beautiful game.”

“Hi, guys, who’s winning?”

Daisy, who has appeared in my productions as everything from a Unicorn to Superhero, shook her head sadly, evidently embarrassed by my ignorance.

“Kick the Can isn’t about the score, Miss Leila,” she said. “It’s a metaphor for the purpose and dignity of life.”

“Yeah, Mama-O,” Fenwick, who is a beatnik, added, “only squares keep a record.”

Only species able to count can keep a record, Daddy-O, was almost out of my mouth, but instead I said: “How interesting–I’ve never equated the struggle with smacking an empty beer can around in the dirt…guess that makes as much sense as anything.”

This witty repartee was interrupted by the appearance of a blue and orange upside-down tornado in the sky above the Enchanted Wood. It was, of course, a mile away, but we could hear the roar and suck of a great wind as though it was much closer.

The vortex was spinning wildly but at the same time holding its place. Being upside down, the pointy end appeared to be boring into the sky like a drill bit. The weather was perfect save for the abnormality above Hezzie’s place. Due to the tree tops we couldn’t see the inverted “top” of the funnel, but I guessed that it was about a hundred yards across at its widest point.

As I’ve said countless times, strange sites are common in our realm. Still, I felt duty bound to check this one out. For blue and orange are the main colors of the billigits–the missing Minions.

I smiled at the little Goats. “You guys up for adventure?”

-2-

Daisy and Fenwick were up for adventure, but they didn’t want to walk a mile. Funny how creatures who will frolic for hours batting about a crumpled Coors Light can will all of a sudden get lazy on you. Still, I didn’t feel much like walking, either. Fortunately, I recalled a golf cart I had used in a story about five years ago–Back then I’d called it the “Little Deus Coupe Ex-Machina ”–or similar nonsense. But “golf cart” was good enough for our purposes. Amazingly, it had been on a battery charger for the last five years and nothing had blown up.

Not so amazingly, however, of the three of us, only I knew how to drive. FC Pygmy Goats can do exceptional things, but operating a vehicle ain’t one of them. Daisy and Fenwick are twins, but Daisy is by far the most mature of the two. “I want to drive,” Fenwick said. He got pouty when I informed him that he could, if he’d sprout thumbs, grow two feet taller and tell his left from his right with a hitherto unseen consistency. As I’ve said before, Fenwick is a beatnik. He wears a beret and his little beard is arranged as a “Van Dyke.” He taps his hooves on hard surfaces when he hears jazz and often smokes clove cigarettes. But he’s also as bratty as a two-year-old child.

“Tell you what, Fenwick,” I said, when it appeared that a tantrum was brewing, “you can sit on my lap and steer while I apply the pedals.”

Now, Daisy is the more mature of the two, but only when compared to Fenwick. I could see trouble brewing in her eyes. But there was a way out.

“Since Fenwick and I will be navigating the cart, would you please, dear, dear, Miss Daisy Cloverleaf take over the narrative?”

As luck would have it, there just happened to be a fully charged Chromebook in the cart. And although it remains one of preternature’s great mysteries, FC Pygmy Goats are brilliant typists. I often place Daisy at the keyboard when I am otherwise occupied. She’s good for a hundred words per minute and no errors–save for those in judgment.

I leave part three to Daisy.

-3-

The roses smelled rosily and the bees buzzed buzzingy as Miss Leila and Feckwit “drove” us to Mistress Hezopatha’s estate in the enchantingly Enchanted Wood.

“Daisy?” Miss Leila said–with that annoyingly annoying tone she sometimes affects.

“What?”

She pointed at her phone, which was mounted on the small dashboard of the golf cart. “I can see everything you write.”

“So?”

“Well, other than again caution you about adverbs, I can’t help but notice a rare typo. You misspelled Fenwick.”

“That’s not a typo,” I said.

“I, Feckwit,” said my brother.

When he first appeared in a story called “I, Feckwit,” I’d convinced his ignorant behind that it was a complimentary term, and that calling himself it would enhance his masculinity and attract girls. Since he refuses to learn how to read, I believe that Feckwit applies.

Leila read what you have just read, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Whatever.”

Although it would overburdenly overburden Miss Leila’s mathematically challenged brain to figure this out, at a top speed of four miles an hour it took roughly fifteen minutely minutes to cover the mile to Mistress Hezopatha’s front door.

“Holy shit, it’s full of billigits,” Miss Leila said when we got close enough to the upside down tornado in the sky to see it was composed of individual components.

“And?” Miss Leila said…

The ellipsis at the end of the previously previous sentence is there to convey the hope Miss Leila had for finally at last getting across to readers new to her (aka “any”) what a billigit is, without having to do so herself.

We exchanged glances. Then I began to type:

“A billigit is an eighteen inch orange person who’s equal parts Daddy and Mommy-O and wears a square blue polo shirt, khaki pants and groovy hemp slippers that split the scene in flight. Mommy-O Hezzie-O-path has a zillion billigits as Minions, like wild baby, wild,” Feckwit said.

Miss Leila seized on the opportunity I had givenly given her. She snapped her fingers in the beatnik manner and said, “Don’t stop there Daddy-o, tell me more…lay down the word.”

“Back in Squaresville the Man tagged them billygits–but now they hook their own groove, billigits, baby-billigits. Dig?”

For the record Feckwit pronouncingly pronounced it “bill-luh-gitz.”

By taking her hands off the wheel to snap her fingers, Leila had made the mistake of leaving the steering of the cart to Feckwit–who knows no more about how to drive than Leila does calculus. That and the fact that both she and Feckwit were gazingly gazing at the swirly swirl of billigits, now almost directly above us–and while I was writing, might have led to an accident at four miles an hour, if it hadn’t been for Mistress Hezopatha. We were unaware that we had entered her vast courtyard. She stopped us just short of crashing into one of several small mountains of billigits slippers with a wave of her hand. Suddenly wordlessly arrivals are commonplace with Witches.

Leila glanced at what I had written on her phone. I waited for her to say something derogatively derogative about my shiny prose. Instead, she smiled, patted me on the head and said, “That’ll do, Goatess, that’ll do.”

-4-

I’d have closer to a thousand words left in the budget than the eight-hundred and change I find myself looking at if it weren’t for Daisy’s adverb addiction. That’s another thirty-plus down the swirly, including this sentence. Still, I don’t think I’ll need much more than five hundred to put this production to bed.

Smiling, Hezopatha produced an empty tuna can and tossed it in the courtyard. Daisy and Fenwick/Feckwit leapt from the golf cart and went after it; thus another stanza of the majestic physical poetry that is Kick the Can was composed. It also gave the kids a graceful pre-exit from this story.

I got out of the cart and approached Hezzie. I pointed up.

“Oh, you noticed darling.”

“Uh huh.”

“Let’s go inside, I will explain.”

Hezzie is a beautiful Witch–her ego would never allow for green skin, warts and such. In this incarnation of her physical self she has olive skin, honey colored eyes and high cheekbones. A Nefratiti look if there has ever been one.

We went inside to her comfortable living room.

“I must thank you for the billigits,” she said–”they are quite useful–not as much as Rats–but more so than human Minions.”

“Uh huh,”

“As you saw, they are employed in a great work.”

“Uh huh.”

“Very soon the billigit vortex will create a geometric dimensional breach.”

“A geometric breach?”

“Euclidean,” Hezzie said with an evil smile.

“You a clidean, me a clidean, we’s all a clidean,” I said. “I take it that your wiseass thinks you can get over on me via fancy math.”

“I sure do.”

I sighed. “Perhaps it would be easier if you told me the goal.”

Our conversation was interrupted by a great crack of thunder. The booted tuna can, closely followed by Daisy and Fenwick came indoors, but they were still so focused on the aesthetic, that coming inside was the only concession they made to the blast.

“Hark!” Hezopatha said. “My will hath been done.”

She motioned me to follow her outside.

The billigit tornado was gone. And a giant shadow increasing in size had fallen over the courtyard. A moving shadow that had clearly outlined wings. All quarter million billigits had merged into one gigantic billigit. This immense creature landed in a nearby clearing and took a repose similar to the Sphinx. I’ll admit that it was a unique sight, but perhaps I’m a bit more jaded to such than most.

A few seconds later an immense pair of billigit slippers crashed beside the giant billigit.

“How come the slippers landed after the billigit?” I asked.

“Geometric principles involving air resistance, darling.”

“I see,” I said. “So, whenever I ask you a perfectly reasonable question your reply will be smothered by a pile of science. So, let’s forget about that. Perhaps you might explain why you compressed all the billigits into one giant billigit?”

Hezzie smiled that smile that I was getting awfully tired of. “That involves trigonometry, daring.”

From inside came a crash. Maybe I couldn’t understand what she was up to, but I could arrange for the Can Kickers to break a vase or three in the house.

“What was that?” she said. It was nice to see the smug expression leave her face.

“I believe it’s called gravity, darling.”

September’s Spa Sunday

Pong

(Although the stars in this story are working on Sunday, the Union allows for reruns. It is somewhat of a paradox working on Sunday when you are actually off. Paradox and irony are fancy dive words that writers use to inflate the more accurate “contradiction” and “coincidence.” So be it. Regardless, HeXy and the ‘gits will be back tomorrow–LA)

Pong

I was strolling through the Enchanted Wood in my realm of Saragun Springs seeking inspiration. It was Honor a Dead Writer Day in the realm; this year it landed on 28 April, the birthday of the honoree of this year’s event, Sir Terry Pratchett. In the past Dorothy Parker, Kurt Vonnegut, Shakespeare, Shirley Jackson had been so honored, and I had no problem doing something for each–but this year I was flummoxed.

As the ruling Penname, I’d created all that I surveyed, and the two-hundred-twenty-nine (soon two-hundred-thirty) Fictional Characters (FC’s) who live in Saragun Springs. Yet at the same time I didn’t know how any of it worked; for I’d endowed every last atom and FC in Saragun Springs with intractable Free Will. Sometimes various displays of Free Will affect my concentration.

For instance, we have a sun in our sky named Pong. I recall once thinking about whipping up a little thinking sun for Saragun Springs named Pong (which I thought might be a better name for a star than Atari), but blew the notion off, figuring that no one would care about what was in our sky. But I guess thinking about it was good enough to cause Pong to fire into being–a tiniest wisp of a notion who seized a heaping helping of Free Will.

So, unannounced, Pong showed up the day after I’d glancingly thought about creating him, and has been on the job ever since. Nobody and no thing in Saragun Springs is obliged to follow the natural laws of the Universe any better than I understand them. And as more years creep between me and my high school education, it should be no surprise that, mechanically speaking, Pong is a celestial scofflaw.

As an object, Pong is a fiercely radiant little orb, the color and relative size of an unripened blueberry held at arm’s length. Pong is either very small and close or huge and far away. Sadly, Saragun Springs lacks an Archimedes-type to study Pong in the scientific way. Nor has anyone dared to launch an Icarus inspired project. This is because a Creator of a Universe cannot make someone who is smarter than she is. She can only make individuals who are certain they are smarter than she is on the basis of their own opinions alone; a circumstance, which, of course, leads to atheism and unhappy surprises in the end.

Pong’s first day began reasonably enough; he rose in the east at 6 A.M. on the nose and set in the west exactly twelve hours later. Adequate, when measured by the flexible standards of Saragun Springs normalcy. But the tone of the process changed when he rose again precisely at six the next morning, but this time from the exact same spot in the west he’d gone down the evening before. Pong headed north that day and Pongset there, then rose from that same spot at six the next morning. The only constants with Pong are that he works from six to six, twelve hours, without as much as a millisecond of variance, dawns from where he goes down the night before, and never appears to change his relative distance. Everything else is up to Pong’s whims. I’ve seen him double back and set where he had risen; I’ve watched him do loops, feign heading one direction then go another, and zigzag across the sky. And that only touches the truly bizarre stuff he does. Pong can also stop without first slowing down and travel at various speeds. Sometimes, he will sit way high and wait until 5:59:59 P.M. then zoom toward his setting point at a rate of speed that should be impossible to achieve, yet make it on time. Pongspotting, as in wagering the exact place the next Pongset will happen, is a big sport in Saragun Springs.

Speaking of a person who is convinced that she is the brainiest in the realm, the Enchanted Wood I was in is on the Witch HeXopatha’s estate. There was no point in attempting to conceal my presence, for HeXy has spies everywhere. Overhead, I heard the caws of Crows sending word down the line, which would eventually reach the castle. I was also being shadowed by a sleek black Weasel. A bullet-shaped head, adorned with a spycam fixed to a tiny fedora, often peeped over peasantberry and hand o’ glory bushes (flora that grows only Wiccanlands); Ponglight reflected off the little fiend’s shiny ebony noggin and spycam arrangement, but I pretended not to notice. I figured if a Weasel had Secret Stoat Fantasies, far be it from me to salt the whimsy. I assumed that the cam fed intel to HeXopatha’s crystal ball.

I was carrying a lightweight pack which contained various medicinal fluids, items for bribes, my phone and a small folding chair. Enchanted Woods feature a variety of mini-meadows. At the first such opening, I set up my chair so Pong wouldn’t be in my eyes, sipped from a pint of restorative amber fluid, activated the sound recorder app on my phone and dictated the following:

“Just my luck, I packed all this tasty Stoat Chow and have no friend to share it with.”

Weasels, Minks, Ermines and so forth are calorically venal. Any critter who can eat half his/her body weight in a day is the sort of individual that a Free Lunch appeals to. The Weasel’s head popped over the cover of a Sadiefinger shrub at the edge of the clearing. I had Stoat Chow in the pack because I knew about the lurking Weasel population in the Enchanted Wood beforehand. Chalk it up to Mysterious Ways, which Universe Creators often (but cannot always) use in lieu of plausible explanations.

“Well, hello there, little friend,” I said, feigning surprise, “would you like to join me for a delicious lunch?”

Just like everyone and -thing else in Sargun Springs, I am racking up a sizable debt with the Bank of Universal Reality. Like when, say, Pong emits a long string-like tail then goes up and down it as though he were a yo yo, before dropping behind the horizon at 6 P.M., a Universal beancounter marks the impossible event and charges it to Pong’s account. My Creator informed me of this long ago. To which I replied “So?” To which she had no reply other than to mumble something inarticulate about checks and balances. Still, all the debt traces back to her, so it’s her problem. I suggested that she forward the charges back to whoever made her.

I mention this because the ingredients in Stoat Chow (mostly smoked Trout entrails and Duck eggs) though for real, are not culled from genuine sources. No Trout or Duck or any living thing was abused in any way (although all may be offended). “Magic” might be too strong a word for how the Stoat Chow I bribed the Weasel with came to be, but that’s up to you and whoever is totaling your own ledger to decide.

Weasels are proactive little gluttons. He/she bounded over and took the pouch of Stoat Chow I handed him/her without hesitation. I saw that he/she was also wearing a trench coat. The preceding sentences presented an issue that I needed to clear up before I went bonkers wondering if I was dealing with a male or a female.

“Hi, I’m Leila.”

“Penrose,” said the Weasel, speaking in a tone of voice, that, like the name, could go either way gender-wise.

Even in Saragun Springs, it is bad manners to inquire into someone’s sex. And when you consider that I actually created this Penrose, you’d think I’d know whether I was in the company of a Heasel or a Sheasel–but that pesky Free Will has a way of interfering with Mysterious Ways.

The residents of the Springs have one thing in common. Every last one of us is a well-mannered eater. No one gulps or gobbles (unless a Turkey) or slurps or behaves grossly with food, and we understand the concept of the napkin. ‘Tis rare on Earth to see a Stoat chew with his/her mouth closed, but it is the case here. Free Will allows for good things, too.

“So, gotta family? Any Weaselets? Do they chatter about Mom and/or Pop popping about?” This was my second to last go (albeit clumsy) at clearing up the he/she mystery. Figured that Penrose might say something about a husband or wife. I figured wrong.

Penrose swallowed and said “Nope. I serve Mistress HeXopatha.”

I sighed. Here I was fruitlessly playing twenty questions with a Weasel.

“So, Penrose,” I said. “Why the Sam or Samantha Spade (my last go at it) routine?”

He or she smiled, an expression which always looks sneaky on the face of a Stoat. “Mistress HeXopatha has sent me to guide you to the site of her latest triumph.”

I stood, handed Penrose a napkin, placed my stuff back in the pack, considered having another go at the Weasel’s gender, let it go and said, “Lead on, little fiend.”

FC animals in the realm are nearly as lazy as they are venal and prone to gambling. Unless directed to do so by someone like HeXopatha, they avoid needless physical exertion. Sponging rides are as coveted as Free Lunches and Pongspotting.

So Penrose wound up sitting on top of the pack, pulling the straps as though they were reins.

“Dude, or dudette (a half-hearted after the fire had gone out attempt at gender ID), I ain’t a Horse. Just say a simple ’go left’ or ‘take a right.’”

“What’s left and right?”

“Never mind. Just keep working the reins,” I sighed. “But if I feel spurs, consider your ass bucked.”

Penrose drove me onward. We passed a pyramid that HeXopatha recently had built in her honor by minions known as the billigits, and we ventured near the actual Saragun Spring, which is an enthusiastically polluted body of oozing liquid, which reeks like a bathroom does after one’s problem-drinking grandfather has read an entire newspaper in it.

We entered a full-sized meadow. I saw several FC’s had gathered, and they were examining a document lying on a picnic table. HeXopatha was at the head of the table, like Rommel planning an offensive.

“Guess, we’re–Hey! Don’t do that!” I said (somehow withholding a richly deserved “you little fuckstick!” because Penrose had grabbed two healthy pawfuls of my hair, yanked back hard and said “Whoa, Nellie”).

The tiny blackguard jumped down and rushed to then knelt before HeXopatha. “Mission accomplished, Magnificent Master.”

“Excellent work, darling,” HeXopatha said.

HeXopatha was surrounded by her usual assortment of minions and a couple of Hammy Dodger Players (an acting troupe she sponsors). There were several black Rats and Cats scuttling about, an Owl on her shoulder, and two immense Berkshire Pigs, who were actors. By name the Pigs were Tallywhacker and his wife Taffypuller, who was about to make her debut. Everyone had been looking at a star chart on the table.

I was prepared to ask a whole bunch of questions, but HeXy placed her shushing finger to her lips. She nodded at the actor Pigs.

Tallywhacker, talks non-stop. Instead of merely speaking, he goes on long winded oratories: “By waddle, you have arrived at an auspicious moment, Miss Leila–today will be the first ever Pong eclipse, arranged by our Magnificent Master Mistress HeXopatha.” (Tallywhacker kept talking after this, but due to word limit issues, I didn’t record it.)

“Wait, wait wait a minute,” I said. “Pong’s the only thing up there–we ain’t got a moon yet–and only I can create one–haven’t even glancingly thought of one yet–though I guess it would have to be called Ping, if we do get one. And although my science may be lacking, I do know that something like a moon must cross in front of a sun to make an eclipse.”

But I knew that my logic was doomed. Logic in the springs is as rare as free quality beer. HeXopatha simply smiled, with a Are You Quite Finished Yet expression on her pretty face.

“All right,” I said, “what have you done?”

HeXy snapped her fingers and her four prime billigits minions flew toward us from the direction of the pyramid they had built for their Master. Each one was carrying a length of what appeared to be pipe.

Seeing the billigits, I smiled at Taffypuller. The instant she spoke a line she’d officially become my two-hundred-thirtieth FC. Our union forbids me from creating new speaking role FC’s without offering the “part” to already extant FC’s. But none of them wanted to marry Tallywhacker, for he really never stops talking (in fact he was still blowing on from before).

New FC’s usually get the thankless job of filling in the backstory. Explaining the billigits is as about as backstory as things get.

“I’ve never seen the billigits before,” Taffypuller said, although it was a damn lie. “Will you look at the these fellows–winged orange-skinned androgynous little people in blue polo shirts, khaki trousers and illfitting hemp slippers, who, though gender neutral, still convey a ‘guyness’ that is best described by masculine pronouns–and who insist that capital letters never touch their names, collectively or singly.”

“Bravo, my pet,” Tallywhacker said (plus a bunch of other stuff that would blow the word limit if put down.)

Indeed it was the billigits and as they drew nearer I saw that they were carrying lengths of a telescope, which they linked together upon landing. Instead of a stand, the billgits held the assembled scope and pointed the business end of at at where Pong was at the time.

“Good luck tracking that guy,” I said.

“Oh, he will behave today,” HeXopatha said. “We’ve come to an agreement.” She then unrolled a blank scroll and held it at the lens end of the scope; for gazing at Pong is just as tough on the eyes as sun gazing is in any dimension.

Pong’s fierce little orb shone on the scroll. Yet within seconds a perceptible shadow began to eat into the tiny blueberry and in a few moments there was darkness.

“It’s now safe to look through the lens, Creator,” HeXopatha said.

I did and saw a thumbnail-sized Turtle with four seed-sized Elephants on his/her (sigh) back, holding a flat object that looked like a pizza glowing a strange greenish purple, pausing in front of the face of Pong.

I stood back and let the others take turns gazing at Discworld as it slowly passed through our skies.

“Gotta hand it to you HeXy, I was stumped for an idea on how to honor Sir Terry,” I said. “Good job.”

“Perhaps it is possible that a person can be a bit brighter than her creator?” HeXopatha more said than asked.

I sighed and caught a glimpse of a moon rising in the south. Born in the same glancing manner that had created Pong.

“Hello, Ping,” I said to the small octarine moon. “Welcome to Saragun Springs.”

Welcome to Saragun Springs: Book Four HeXopatha and the billigits Part Five

The Fifth billygit of the Apocalypse

****

I was just sitting there, taking up space, contributing nothing to the Universe other than not plotting its destruction. I was studying the concept of wrath as dispensed by cyber-mobs, and I arrived at the conclusion that those who frame witches do so to forestall winding up bound and tossed into the river themselves. Hardly a revelation, but the truth seldom wows. When you get down to it the words of the prophets are found on the subway walls, tenement halls and in stupid tweets, old chum.

My Imaginary Friend and second in command, Renfield, popped into my office and told me that the billygits wanted to see me.

I snapped out of my philosophical cogitation. “No, they don’t,” I said. “I passed them off on Hezopatha. She’s now Herod to the little jeebuses, not I.”

Renfield smiled a smile that informed me what she had said wasn’t a request. Like it or not I was going to see the billygits. Renfield whistled and the four billygits flew into the room. Then she departed, closing the door behind her.

The billygits eschew capital letters. So, there’s no disrespect when I list them by name: mothball, weasel, pinto and flounder. Your basic billigit is eighteen inches long, winged, androgynous (but I like to call them “guys” or “boys”–sue me), orange skinned and they all wear blue polo shirts, khaki pants and tiny hemp hard-sole slippers that are always falling off. Except for slight variations in their faces, billygits are identical physically, but they do have differing temperaments. Unlike only Renfield and myself, the billygits are among the Fictional Characters (FC’s) in our realm of make believe. They were created two productions ago; and in the publication which precedes this (if this current one makes the grade) I had given them to a powerful FC named Hezopatha the Witch as minions because I discovered having four winged little orange dudes around the office is highly irritating. I played the role of “Satan” in that story, thus sealing the deal in hellfire, scorched scrolls and smoldering wax seals.

“What do you guys want? You’re Hezopatha’s problem now,” I said, wishing for a trap door like that in Mr, Burns’ office on The Simpsons. In this realm, you never know when wishes will come true. And sure enough a trap door appeared under the billygits. But since they fly, it wasn’t a useful wish; wasted wishes are the only kind that come true around here.

“Magnificent Master sent us,” said mothball, who was to my far left. I then noticed that Hezopatha had given the boys name tags.

“The Magnificent Master desires another billygit,” weasel, next in line, added.

“How come?”

“For the Magnificent Master’s OCEAN project,” pinto chimed in, all haughty like, as if I knew what he was talking about.

“And what is OCEAN?” I asked when it became evident that no one was going to expand on the subject.

I knew that Hezopatha was up to no good, being a Witch and all. Although I had created her, I had also given her Free Will, as I do all FC’s–even the billygits. “Hezzie’s” Free Will usually manifests itself in mayhem and missing persons. But since those who turn up gone are not actual human beings, just actors playing chunks of peasant stew, I stay out of her way. Hezzie is also a sociopath, thus highly creative. Ambitious too. And her latest scheme for upward mobility was underscored by what the billygits then told me.

“The Magnificent Master…“ flounder started, but I interrupted him.

“Now that all you guys have called Hezzie ‘Magnificent Master’ feel free to stop kissing her butt. I won’t tell.”

“Magnificent Master told us you’d say something of that flavor,” flounder said.

“She said to ignore it and any attempt you make at wishing for a trapdoor,” said weasel–no, mothball.

Renfield had been eavesdropping over any one of fifteen ways to listen in, and she sent me a Googled definition of OCEAN, which appeared on the screen of my open laptop. As I’d somehow sensed, it was New Age claptrap devised by smart people overeducated to the point of uselessness.

“My bullshit detector tells me that OCEAN is a patchouli reeking, personality labeling acronym that stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism, sometimes called CANOE–What the hell is Neuroticism? Is that what Woody Allen experiences as he creeps to the girls’ room?”

Silence. Sour expressions were on the winged pests’ faces.

“Hannah and Her Sisters fans, eh?–well never mind–how about telling me what OCEAN has to do with placing people upside down on meat hooks?”

“Magnificent Master requires a fifth billygit to complete her greatest spell,” I forget which one of the little dudes said it, but I know one did.

“Each one of us represents a letter,” flounder–I think, said.

“Ah,” I said (fairly sure about that). “And you need a fifth for the N, being there’s only four of you. Still, what precisely is the aim?”

The four just fluttered, exchanging confused glances.

“Just pulling your chains, boys–Everyone knows that Hezopatha never tells anyone but her Rats what she is up to. Could be, in the greater scheme of things, that she only devised this OCEAN plan just to get me to make the awful Woody Allen joke. Hezopatha moves in mysterious ways. Who are we to question her? Yet I’m willing to bet my eye of newt futures that she’s planning to raise some sort of passive-aggressive New Age Demon. You see, guys, the Magnificent Master is the type of individual who is only happy when Coyotes are digging up the bones of those who crossed her from unmarked graves in the desert.”

More silence.

I sent Renfield a message: SUMMON TEAM G.O.A.T.

She replied: WHAT’S THE MAGIC WORD?

My retort: RIGHTFUCKINGNOW.

I smiled. “If I greenlight a fifth billygit, you guys promise to go and stay away?”

For the first time since our little conference began, the billygits behaved as though they approved of my existence. They assured me that I would not see any more of them if I granted their request.

Renfield sent me a message. (And yes, she was in the next room.): IT’S DAISY’S SPA DAY. SHE’S GETTING HER HOOVES PAINTED.

Me: THAT’S OK. PEETY WILL DO. GET HIM.

Renfield sent me a middle-finger emoji.

Me: PLEASE.

Renfield: HE’S IN THE GUTTER.

Me: I’LL SEND THE BILLIES TO HIM.

“Boys,” I said, “you know Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon?”

They all shook their heads yes.

“I need one of you not to know who he is for the sake of the backstory.”

pinto took the bullet. “My, who is this Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon?”

“Glad you asked,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “He’s a two dimensional cartoon beer mascot from Other Earth, a place created by our Creator–the reckless fool I’m Penname to, that talking bratwurst who gave us Free Will. Peety, via the out and out breaking of all the physical laws of the Universe and then some, now also exists in this realm and carries a bottomless can of PDQ Pilsner, a piss-like brew which used to exist only at Other Earth. Peety is also the sidekick to the G.O.A.T.–whose true identity as meek and mild Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess cannot leave this room or they’ll be finding pieces of you guys in dumpsters from here to Mars. Anyway, the only way a new billygit can be created is by Peety baptizing an extant billygit with PDQ Pilsner–You fellas know where the Gutter Bar and Grill is?”

“Should we?” mothball asked.

“It would be helpful.”

Fortunately, weasle knew where the Gutter was.

“Cool–go there and ask Peety to do his magic.”

******

I was dozing at my desk a few hours later, dreaming of hail falling on the roof.

I awoke and saw a smiling Renfield standing in front of my desk. Yet the sound of hail followed me into unwanted consciousness. I again wished for a trap door–which happened, but this time it appeared under my chair.

“What’s that noise?” I asked, half wondering how long she’d been standing there. The sound of the hail increased by the second.

“It’ll be easier if you look out the window.”

I slowly swiveled my office chair and looked out the window. Thousands upon thousands of tiny hemp slippers were falling from the sky. And I saw several flocks of bright orange, blue and khaki birds flying overhead. But they weren’t birds.

“That’s a whole mess of billygits,” I said. “I probably should have seen this coming.”

“Right?” Then Renfield took my laptop and downloaded footage taken by the

camera at the Gutter. Security cameras in this realm are very good. They record sound and even pan from one speaker to another. Could say they’re the same as magic.

Pie-eyed Peety is a gregarious little fellow and always a pal. He used to speak his own words, but for a long time now he has only communicated by quoting the popcorn flicks and slob-coms of the late seventies through the eighties. Stuff like Slap Shot, The Terminator, Caddyshack, Porky’s and so on. And he has a big thing for Animal House. He knows it better than Satan knows the fiddle.

And it was a good thing that Renfield and I knew our Animal House. For what played out on the magic security camera would have made little sense without the knowledge.

Although Peety is loaded around the clock, he tends to get drunker when he’s in the Gutter. Who knows why. Just another one of those mysterious things that makes poets shrug their scrawny shoulders.

Renfield had to turn up the volume so it could be heard over the steady drumming of billygit slippers hitting the roof. We watched the four billies fly into the Gutter and interrupt Peety’s foosball game.

“Shit,” I said, “should have told them not to bother Peety when he’s got his foosball on.”

“Right?”

Peety reacted to the pests in his normal-for-Peety way. He approached flounder and saw the nametag Hezopatha had given him and bellowed: “Redo those buttons! Dress that belt buckle! And damn it, tuck in those pajamas!”

“Double shit,” I said, “Peety only quotes Neidermeyer when there’s gonna be trouble.”

“Right.”

“What’s that on your chest, Mister?” Peety said, his face inches away from flounder’s.

“Um, it’s the name tag the Magnificent Master gave me–see it says…”

“A Pledge Pin!!!”

Peety then shook his bottomless can of PDQ (which sometimes appears as a bottle or a mug–but is always present and bottomless) and sprayed the four billygits, who reproduced exponentially, a line formed behind all of them. And Peety just kept spraying and spraying, begetting more and more billygits.

I closed the laptop.

I heard a loud bell chime in my desk and the sound of slippers falling on the roof immediately ceased. I opened the drawer and pulled out the crystal ball that is my direct line to Hezopatha. Her lovely, yet evil visage filled the orb.

“What’s up Hezzie?”

“Just calling to thank you for the minions, darling.”

I saw movement in the curves of the ball–orange and blue swirls.

“Are they all with you?”

“Yes, the last flock passed over your little shack on their way to me just seconds ago.”

A quick glance out the window confirmed that. Not a billygit in the sky, but there were plenty of hemp slippers lying around.

I smiled. “I’m guessing that the ‘OCEAN’ project involved Peety spraying an ocean of PDQ, as to provide you with an endless supply of minions. I’m guessing you knew Peety would fuck things up somehow and give you what you really wanted.”

Hezopatha laughed. Always laughing.

“Well, that was then,” I said, “and this is now. I need you to send out a battalion of billies to come and get these goddam slippers–must be a yard deep in some places.”

She didn’t reply, but I heard her echoing laughter as her face faded in the darkening ball.

“Hey! I’m serious! This is my job!” I yelled at the crystal ball. But Hezopatha was offline.

“Professor Jennings, Animal House,” Renfield said.

“Peety ain’t the only one who can quote scripture,” I said. “Goddam Hezzie went rat bastard on me. Maybe the slippers will dissolve in the rain. “

Renfield was mixing a pitcher of martinis at the bar. “According to the computer model, Hezzie has something close to a quarter million billygits at her disposal–there would have been more but someone challenged Peety to another game of foosball.”

“Wow,” I said, whistling. “That’s a lot of pledge pins.”

I noticed that the trapdoor was still under me and pushed the button. But goddam reality had either followed me down the hole or was running simultaneously at an even lower level of expectation.

Renfield poured the martinis and I wished for rain.

Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Four: HeXopatha and the billigits Part Four

(This one features a rare performance by your author in an acting role-LA)

Name Game

(Vital Information)

Before we begin, it is important to know that Satan never cheats at games. In fact she may be the only thinking being in the universe who is honest to a fault when it comes to games of chance. But her truthful nature does not mean that she is a good loser. Oh, she’ll shake your hand and heartily extol your virtues as a gamer; but she’ll never forget the sting of losing. In that regard it might be better if she did cheat, or at least flipped the board to conclude a Monopoly match with a mistrial. But, as we will soon see, that is not her way….

Now On With the Show

The Witch needed a name for her newest season on Earth. The need had nothing to do with business. Her vast wealth and properties were under the enchanted aliases of her human familiars–a trustworthy lot because they knew that something much worse than death (a something most likely to be as creative as protracted) awaited any servant caught dipping in the Witch’s till. Such certainty reinforces loyalty. No, the want of a name stemmed from the idiotic peasant need for labeling things.

For the record, the Witch was born in Gomorrah and was called Myrrh, as in the third best birthday gift for boys named Jesus. But upon becoming a Witch, among the many things she left behind was her name (which she never much cared for anyway). And she wouldn’t have bothered with one at all if it weren’t for the pettifogging peasants incessant need for labels.

Ever since ascending to Witchood, she alternated one-hundred thirty year seasons between Hell and Earth. In the old days, the nameless Witch would wreak havoc on the peasantry until it was time to return to Hell for another hundred-thirty-year sabbatical. There wasn’t anything the peasants could do about her after she had cast spells of obedience on the local authorities–usually the royal and monied clans in any region. Yes, there was a time when a woman who looked thirty could stay that way for generations, and the peasants who populated those rapidly changing generations knew how to look the other way, and taught their issue that it would be wise to do the same.

But even peasants get wiser, thus more dangerous. And prior to her previous term on Earth, which began in the second half of the 18th Century (and was her first season spent in the “New World”), the Witch took special note of the ugly doings at Salem, from her vantage point in Hell. Fortunately, not a single victim of that persecution had actually been a witch–but it stood to reason that maybe the peasantry had evolved to the point of feeling emboldened enough to interfere with the projects of an unmarried young woman of means who did not age a day over the course of many decades in a community that featured an inordinate amount of missing persons and a copious population of viscous Black Cats, Condor-sized Owls and somewhat arrogant Rats. This potential complication caused the Witch to devise a scheme in which she was a rich widow who aged (via a simple general eye of the beholder spell) for the first sixty years then “died” and gave over to a young “heiress” namesake who bore an uncanny resemblance to the young Witch–not that any peasant with enough sense to still be taken seriously would be around to notice, not with an average lifespan of around forty-five, not with the inexplicable way that villagers who looked in the Witch’s direction a bit long suffered unfortunate accidents. She also toned down the size of her Owls but did nothing about the attitudes of the Black Cats and Rats.

Her previous earthly season ended in 1891–according to the tiresome peasant way of numbering even the years. Hell keeps up on current events much better than its opposite number. Whilst “below,” the Witch rued missing out on the tumultuous 20th Century, but looked forward to entering the Twenty-first and practicing her special brand of mayhem well into the Twenty-second. She got restless–for all Hell’s splendors, one can only beat Satan at cribbage so many times and still get a buzz from it.

Although the peasants had multiplied, advanced wildly ahead technologically and were overall better educated–they were still peasants who continued to grossly overestimate the moral quality of their souls; thus the majority was just as tribal, labeling, superstitious, venal and spiritually bankrupt as ever–perhaps more so. Good times lay ahead.

So upon returning to Earth and relocating to a new home in the American Midwest in 2021 (for it it’s required of Witches to travel to new regions every Earth season), the Witch awaited a scroll to appear in the bough of an evilmost elm tree that she had enchanted, which served as her connection to Hell. Satan herself chose the names Witches went by.

In keeping with tradition, the scroll appeared in the enchanted evilmost elm at three A.M. on the day of the first new moon after her return to Earth. The Witch stationed a Rat Squad at the tree to await the scroll’s arrival. Of all her beloved animal familiars, Rats were the most efficient. And also in keeping with tradition, though she had hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of Rats within reach of her magic, they were all divided into squads of thirteen. Rat Squads had the keenest attention span of all her familiars (humans included). Though she never punished any of her animals, the Witch knew that when she sent an unsupervised Black Cat out on a quick mission, the deed would get done but she wasn’t likely to see the fiend again for a week or so. No one does A to B better than a Rat Squad.

When Rat Squads perform a ceremonial march, twelve form a circle around a single Rat who serves as the “Star” in a Rattish pentagram. They take turns being the Star because only the Witch is considered the leader. Such a formation entered the open front door of the Witch’s house at precisely one minute past three on the morning of the first new moon. The Star toted the scroll freshly sent from Hell, it lay perfectly balanced on her sleek back.

The Witch noticed that the wound scroll was thicker than usual. In all other ways it was the same–made from parchment peeled off the hide of a damned soul, slightly scorched at the edges, rolled and tied with a black ribbon, the Master’s wax seal in place. But it looked too large to contain a brief salutation and one name. Something about it caused the Witch to recall the cribbage tournament attended by Demons, Sorcerers and the Queen. She had defeated the Master fifteen times in a row and was crowned champion. Despite her gracious acceptance of defeat, the Witch knew that the fink would pull some kind of payback, by and by. Indeed, something about the scroll reeked of petty revenge. But tradition required she open it. She did so thinking that maybe it was time to let go of some traditions.

“My babies,” she said, smiling, kneeling to take the scroll. “You shall be the first to hear our new name.”

She unrolled the parchment. It said:

Darling!

I already miss you! Yet since your departure my cribbage results have greatly improved.

I’ve given the matter of your name a great deal of thought.

I humbly present three choices. You must select one, for there won’t be a fourth…

The Witch laughed.

“I have a choice between three, babies,” she said. “The first I shall reject is ‘Cher Hitler’; next out will be the charming ‘Vicki Bin Laden’–with all the i’s dotted with little hearts–See?” she showed the scroll to the Rats–”how quaint.“

The Rat Squad laughed at a degree in keeping with their Mistress’s mood, yet not to a point which dared to insult the Master.

“Hi ho!” The Witch said, reading more, “the Master has locked the last choice with a spell which commands me to give it to my loyal Rat Squad to read aloud,” she said, handing the scroll to the Star.

All thirteen Rats studied the scroll and after several exchanged, nervous glances, the Star spoke up in English. “It’s a song, your royal darkness…”

“A song?”

“Yes, milady, a reworking of a popular song from sixty years ago.”

“Well, I’m all ears.”

The Rats began to perform the tune. Six maintained a beat by smacking their tails on the floor, and six others vocally backed up the Star who sang:

“Bambi!

Bambi mo-mam-bee

Bo-na-na fanna fo-fam-bee

Fee-fi mo mam-bee

Bambi!”

“Bambi?” The Witch said. “Bambi? Oh that unholy hussy. What a little baby! I knew she couldn’t handle losing–”

“There’s more,” the Star said, lifting the scroll toward the Witch. “It instantly appeared at the end of the song, but isn’t written in Rattish.”

“This ought to be rich,” she muttered. The Witch named Bambi read the addition, and for the first time ever her Rats saw a perplexed expression on her face. She read it several times and even flipped it over to see if there was more on the back.

“Babies?” she said, at last, “Did you pass anyone–or thing in the courtyard? Says here I’ll soon be hearing the beat of little wings.”

Although highly efficient, Rats are mission oriented. They only tend to the tasks the Witch sends them on and do not make mention of any oddities they might see. There could have been an elephant herd out in the courtyard, but if it wasn’t a part of or interfered with the mission, the Rats would ignore it. They would assume it was Witch business that did not concern them.

“Yes, Mistress Bambi,” the Star said, fully aware of the dark gleam that the name put in the Witch’s eyes, but also confident that the name was endorsed by the Master herself.

“O-un?” She spoke the Rattish word which meant “more than one”–for all their reliability and cleverness, Rats cannot count higher than one, but know when there isn’t just one.

Being a high tech matter, the Rats consulted one another and arrived at a consensus:“Yes, o-un.”

This is when I, the writer of this tale, and four new Fictional Characters (FC’s) of my creation appeared at the open door.

“Knock, knock,” I said. “We bring good news for Bambi!”

The Witch and I go way back. But that’s so many moved pegs on the cribbage board ago.

“You,” she said. “What’s the meaning of this?” She held the scroll aloft, the Rat Squad stood at attention. The witch glanced down at them, not without affection. “Why didn’t you guys say she was out there?”

“At ease, little friends,” I said. “Because I wasn’t until after they passed.”

“And who are they?” The Witch asked, motioning to the four FC’s who were hovering in the air, just behind me. “And why should I soon be hearing the beat of little wings?”

“These are the billigits,” I said, nodding to a row of four identical, winged, orange skinned, androgynous individuals of about two feet in length. Each one wore a blue polo shirt, a pair of khaki pants and hemp slippers that were always falling off. In fact, three of the eight slippers were already piled under them on the ground.

“Let me guess,” The Witch said, “these guys are looking for minion work.”

“Bingo, Bambi,” I replied. “Say hello to Mothball, Weasel, Pinto and Flounder.”

“What if I tell you I have enough minions?”

“What if I tell you that Bambi could be rearranged to read Hezopatha?”

“I’d say welcome to the team, Mothball, Weasel, Pinto and Flounder.”

“Done, Hezopatha,” I said.

And with that, I left Hezopatha, the Rat Squad and the newly employed billigits to their adventures and returned to a Hell of mostly my own creation.

Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Four: HeXopatha and the billigits Part Three

(the billigits go through many changes– spellings, population, vocations; sometimes they are orange, others they are blue–call it mindless evolution–LA)

Meet the billigits

Word has it that the first billygit was the result of a passionate affair between a runaway Disney Princess and a Flying Monkey on leave from the Wizard of Oz. The Princess was tired of being a thirty-two-year old woman forced to play a “tween” and the Flying Monkey was bored due to the liquidation of his Witch. It was a “what happens in the Emerald City stays in the Emerald City” sort of fling. Or so I heard. I really can’t say much more due to copyright issues, but I won’t refute it, either. Whatever their origin, the now plentiful billygits (who did not stay in Oz, and insist on a lowercase b to start their name) are. Yet unlike most things that are, billygits multiply when some PDQ Pilsner is poured over their heads; this action instantly produces a twin billygit.

Your basic billygit is a winged, androgynous, ankle-high, bright orange individual who wears a blue polo shirt, khaki slacks and hemp slippers that invariably fall off during flight–and in no way should be confused with a Pixie or a Fairie. Although they are identical physically, each billygit has a sense of individuality, and they all believe they are the original billygit that all other billygits are based on. Like most illogical beliefs supported by historical records, it is the driving force behind the billygit culture.

You can tell when a flock of billygits has passed because the landscape below will be littered with their little hemp slippers. Sooner or later, a slipperless billygit will retrieve a pair from the ground because, being identical, they all wear the same size. The billygits are similar to a Greek chorus in my little fantasy realm. They wander from story to story and pass unasked for observations.

After proofing the previous two paragraphs, my Imaginary Friend, and second in command of our realm, Renfield, opined that what I wrote causes more confusion than clarity. To be transparent, she actually said:

“What the fuck is this? Didn’t you used to have the ‘billygates’? Little winged people that your paranoid behind was convinced were the Microsoft Secret Police, and they were watching you?”

“Copyright issues ended that, Rennie. Lawyer stuff.”

“Sure, whatever you say–but don’t try to con me into helping with the backstory–you gotta dig that hole in the desert yourself.”

Anyway, as the ruling Penname and CEO of this realm in make believe, I govern two-hundred-twenty-eight Fictional Characters (FC’s). As my creator gave me Free Will, I’ve done the same for them. And due to a contract I signed, without first reading, with the Union of Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters, before I can create a new FC, I have to offer the role to an already extant FC. This leads to stuff like Daisy the Pygmy Goatess (an original, elemental FC, developed before the contract) playing various human and animal and “whathaveyou” roles in my stories. Daisy has great range and can play anything from an ameba to the Diana Ross of Supreme Beings. If my little opuses were visual, there would be trouble. Fortunately, readers see what their own minds clap together from the provided information. It would be awfully tough to convince someone who watches a Siamese Cat, Pygmy Goat and Cartoon Pigeon walk into a bar and get them to believe that they are actually seeing a Witch, a Black Lab who identifies as a Wolf and a sulfurous Demonic Minion enter a bar. It strains credulity and raises penetrating questions that I’d rather not answer. So, blessed be the words.

Still, according to the Union, I need to make sure that all my established FC’s are cast in a role at least once per year. Thus the real reason behind the billygits. I guess I would rather have you believe they are the spawn of aging Disney princesses and Baum’s Flying Monkeys, but for those annoying seekers of truth, there you have it.

Unfortunately, some of my FC’s are one note performers who refuse to play anyone or -thing other than a generic pain in the ass, in keeping with their own personalities. Since billygits are essentially one note, generic pains in the ass, it is a match made in make believe. And since it was quickly approaching the close of our year, I still had four FC’s who’d been lounging around the dock pilings, taverns, gambling and opium dens that contain the hallmark activities of unchecked Free Will. I had the three biggest “stars” in my realm, Renfield, Daisy, and Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon, round up the idlers and bring them to my office.

As it goes with all things that are Union business, I am required to pass the narrative of the meeting to an FC who is both a Shop Steward and capable of using a Chromebook. Though a hooved creature, it has been long known that Fictional Pygmy Goats are known as–as I’ve stated in previous works–”Preter-Nature’s Stenographer.” And although she does it daintily, Daisy has yet to meet an adverbly adverb that she doesn’t approvingly approve of, and is a master of coining new adverbs that are dismayingly dismaying, bizarrely bizarre and redundantly redundant. Daisy is the reason why I invented the Adverb Mass Indicator (A.M.I.); which used to be located on the wall behind her little desk in my office. The A.M.I. used to beep when Daisy got all prosily and purpley. The handy device cut down on the adverbs, but to make up for it, Daisy discovered the simile like a middle-school boy convinced that generously applied amounts of Axe will make him a big hit with the ladies*. She lays them on pretty heavy–and always in couplets; and she knows that I have yet to invent the S.M.I.–but plans for it are on my desk, waiting for there to be enough gin in me to go at them like a reality show Frankestein cobbling together yet another pop culture freak.

Anyway, here’s Miss Daisy Cloverleaf (aka, “The GOAT”):

(*Renfield has peeked over my shoulder and informed me that this is at least the fifth time I’ve compared a heavy application of a noxiously noxious sort of thing to a kid smothered in Axe. True, I’ve used it before. But speaking for all who have had to take the bus to work or school or anywhere, I promise to stop making the comparison as soon as spray “colognes” are kept in locked cabinets and require the same level of scrutiny for purchase as liquor, cigarettes and guns.)

Again, Miss Daisy.

There were eight of us in the office. Packed like sardines, already on each other’s nerves like a group of eight nervly nerves getting on-ers. Aside from Miss Leila, Miss Renfield, Pie-Eyed Peety, and I, Daisy, by day a humbly humble stenographer, but on evenings and weekends The GOAT–who with her trustily trusty sidekick PDQ Peety, rescue public domain FC’s from fates like Groundhog Day, with our wits, more like Batgoat than Supergoat—Drat! There goes the cursedly cursed A.M.I.

“Um, Daisy,” Leila said, from behind her desk. “I can see everything you write on this screen…please stay on topic–remember the budget.”

Drat. That confoundedly confounding three-thousand word limit. Drat drat and triple drat. Three thousand drats…drats like a pox; drats like locusts…

“Day-zee…”

Drat.

Anyway, also on hoof were sleekly sleek Gordon Cormorant; Lordly Lord Fishstyx the Motivational Coela-CAN; an incomprehensibly lazily lazy Trade Rat named Andy (who had missed two productions due to a month long peyote bender), and an obnoxiously obnoxious Literary Turkey named Krook.

I said a pox upon you A.M.I.!!!

“Day-zee…”

Drat.

“Good news, gang,” Leila said, chewing gum and smoking a cigarette at the same time. “I’ve got roles for the four of you to play. In fact, Miss Daisy over there is sealing the deal as we speak. I’m certain that forcing me to send a search party out to find you guys is just a little misunderstanding.”

Lord Fishstyx took exception to the idea. “I don’t think it is right that you push us into roles that we have yet to examine.”

The others “here here’d.” It was obvious that Fishstyx had an agenda.

“What would it take to make you guys participate with enthusiasm,” Leila said, rooting around her desk drawer for the Scotch that I happen to know Miss Renfield had confiscated earlier.

“Our names above the byline,” Lord Fishstyx said, “or we might not remember our cues.”

“Charming. You don’t even know what the roles are,” Leila said. She had located a pint of Four Freedoms vodka and took a drink, which caused her face to pickly pickle like a baby sucking a lime, like, um, like whatever Jesus, Mary and Joseph said was blowing in the wind…

“Day-zee.”

Drat.

“Tell you what, there’s always Plan B,” Leila said. Then she typed the following in her Chromebook, which was synchronized with mine. I NEED TEAM GOAT TO EXECUTE PLAN B!

My reply: ONLY IF I CAN DISENGAGINLY DISENGAGE THE A.M.I, LIKE PULLING THE PLUG ON A RICH UNCLE BEFORE HE CAN CHANGE THE WILL. LIKE…UM…

Leila: ALL RIGHT. FINE. WHATEVER.

Me: I RELEASINGLY RELEASE THE NARRATIVE TO YOU.

I took over because Daisy is a Goatess of action. Although she is what is called a “TeaCup” Pygmy Goat–about the size of a beefy housecat, Daisy is able to tap an enormous quantity of rage energy. The A.M.I. was encased in a small red plastic square, attached to the wall just behind Daisy’s desk in the corner, and, as always it had beeped adverb over mass warnings during Daisy’s contribution to this effort.

Upon gaining permission, Daisy closed her Chromebook, placed her front hooves on her desk and reared up, well, her rear hooves and obliterated the A.M.I. with one solid double-hoof kick. Just as she did that Peety squawked “Hasta La Vista, Baby” and credited the Arnold, for although Peety mainly speaks through the slobcom medium he’s also a fan of the Arnold. The A.M.I. made a final bleat as the bits of plastic rained down on the room. After Daisy muttered something that sounded like “Enjoy the weather in “A.M.I. Hell,” she voice activated a bluetooth speaker which played Team GOAT’s “theme”–which sounds like a cross between the Superman and Star Wars themes.

GOAT, of course, stands for the Greatest Of All Time. Daisy made mention of her superhero alter ego and Peety as her sidekick, earlier. Although everybody knows who the GOAT and PDQ Peety really are, we are supposed to close our eyes upon hearing the theme and cannot open them until we hear a loud hoof stomp on the floor.

Upon opening my eyes there was The GOAT, wearing a flowing yellow cape and wrap around sunglasses. Daisy–I mean The GOAT–always appears in a different outfit; sometimes she wears “onesie” tights, like those supported by the 70’s glam bands until they got too fat for them, sometimes it’s just a cape. This was one of the cape sometimes.

“Hooray! Team GOAT has come to save the day!” Renfield called from the back of the room, her voice heavy with the Scotch she’d filched from my desk.

Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon’s “transformation” to PDQ Peety takes less work. Since Peety is a two-dimensional Cartoon Pigeon, he rearranges some of the lines in his “drawing” into a Lone Ranger/Kato type of mask.

The GOAT and PDQ Peety turned to face the four idler FC’s seated in front of my desk.

“Greeting, billygits,” said The GOAT.

“What the hell is a billygit?” Lord Fishstyx, still the mouthpiece for the outfit, asked.

“It’s the role I have for your lazy asses,” I said. “I need eight billygits for an upcoming story and you guys have been elected.”

“Eight?” Lord Fishstyx, the only one of the four who could count beyond three, said. “It looks like you are shy four billygits!”

“Not anymore, sedentary landfish–” said the GOAT.

And with that PDQ Peety shook up the bottomless can of PDQ Pisner he carries no matter who he is, and sprayed the four FC’s. All four instantly found themselves seated beside an orange, winged billygit wearing a blue polo shirt, khaki pants and hemp slippers. The left slipper on the one seated beside Krook had already fallen off.

Peety then went from each of the original four and passed out “pledge pins.”

“‘Your Delta Tau Chi name is Weasel…Your Delta Tau Chi name is Mothball…Pinto…Dorfman,” Peety said, pausing in front of Lord Fishstyx, “I’ve given this a great deal of thought. From now on your Delta Tau Chi name is Flounder.’–Bluto, Animal House.”

I raised my hand to silence the four freshly renamed FC’s, who had begun to complain loudly. “I’ve got a deal for you guys. You either play a billygit and mentor your clone–or maybe I could get by with the four new orange guys only and let you all head on back to your massage parlors and public houses. To select the latter I will need each of you to make your mark on a release that prohibits you from bitching to the Union about me.”

“That’s blackmail!” said Fishstyx.

“”Mention extortion again and I’ll have your legs broken’–Mayor Carmine,” Said PDQ Peety.

Krook the Literary Turkey and Gordon Cormorant both quickly made their marks and left without looking back. Andy the Trade Rat had passed out earlier, so Renfield had his wife Flo come get him–and since he was indeed incomprehensibly Lazy Trade Rat we allowed Flo to make his mark for him. That left Fishstyx, who was still in a snit.

“You know, I could make it five billygits,” I said. He finally saw that his position was hopeless, made his mark and went away.

I didn’t see Team GOAT leave, for they are invisible, like the wind–or so they claim. I did see Renfield sneak out, but she would have told me that I gotta dig another hole in the desert by myself if I asked her to stay.

The four freshly born billygits, new FC’s created by devious means, guys we now call Weasel, Mothball, Pinto and Flounder, all gazed at me with hopeful, optimistic eyes.

“Boys,” I said. “I’m endowing you with Free Will.”

That, of course, took the hope and optimism out of their eyes.

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