Mon - July 18, 2005

(17) Tarzan


It took Wood Johnson almost ten seconds to wilt under Mona's unflinching gaze. His face slowly dissolved, like a vampire in the sunshine. "I think Jesus Christ wasn't just a passenger," Mona said. She took a small cotton cloth bag from her purse, and from the bag she took a little smoking pipe. Wood's lips parted and his eyes got moist. His smile was crooked. "What are you?" Mona asked.

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Thu - July 14, 2005

(16) Chutney Bowles


The Vice President was consulting with the Secretary of War and the Attorney General. "He's obviously deranged," he said in his dry, expressionless tone. He sat still as a bag of rice, his eyes pale blue and cool with bloodless logic. "Besides, I'm already sworn in. I was going to tell him this morning but he canceled our prayer breakfast."

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Wed - July 13, 2005

(15) Duet


Snatchel materialized from a snatch of abstraction. El the masculine pronoun trails along after youthful vulgarity like an aging Lothario in a college town. The name lost a letter and became Satchel, as in a small case with a flat bottom. Now he is in the Purple Room with Mona, his security adviser, and he's just plain old Wood Johnson, waiting by the piano to visit a place he goes only with her. "Sing to mama," Mona repeated. Her voice was hard and sharp and her smile had vanished.

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Sun - July 10, 2005

(14) iAm


"Re-materializing more than three times in twenty-four hours," Prax wrote, "Does something to you. When the Masters of Prax had waited expectantly for him to continue, he just sent a surge of energy through the field that felt like a big, vulnerable window open to the night. They felt how when there's just one of you, you have no power of reflection.

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Tue - June 21, 2005

(13) Luck


"It's May Day," the President said, so this is a big prank."
"That's April Fool's Day, Mr. President," Jukebox said. There was a long pause. "We're used to him," he added. "Too much fluctuation in the serotonin levels." There was a release of tension in the spacecraft, which had been experiencing turbulence in the form of raised anxiety levels. "Ah," Legggs said. "So that's it."

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Mon - June 20, 2005

(12) Power


Snatchel was not interested in sex for pleasure. He was in it for the power, which had surrounded pleasure and now controlled it. "You want pleasure, you got to go through me." His soul had been captured by a ruthless pimp who lived like a leech off his desire to win her back again.

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Thu - June 9, 2005

(11) Cage Fight


President Satchel P. Pussy, known affectionately as Snatchel to his many supporters, was having a rare moment of privacy with Commando Cannon, who trolled the internet as a military man willing to provide training and humiliation to those wishing to serve a Cannon instead of a Canon. Snatchel was on his knees, his face transfixed with a grimace of lust, when he saw the light. "Not now, Lord," he whispered.

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Fri - June 3, 2005

(10) Prax


Paradoxically, the Masters of Prax were so called to protect them from disintegration. Prax has no connection to written language and thus cannot be described by it except in the most abstract terms, on the level of "my love is like a red red rose." Prax knew that his children would have to be under the illusion that they were the masters and he the servant if they were to overcome their toadying fealty to power. He accepted that there has to be a wounding, even in a god, if he is to survive death and rebirth. Archer was the wound in Prax's infallibility, and thus the roadblock to Prax's transformation into a red dwarf star.

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Thu - May 26, 2005

(09) Poppy Fields


"Opium poppies represent between forty and fifty percent of the gross national product of Afghanistan," Legggs said. She was sitting beside Jukebox in a Ford passenger van, turned back toward Archer Prax and his four personified aspects. "Under the Taliban opium production was outlawed and declined, but with the American invasion it flourished again, and Afghanistan now supplies up to ninety percent of the world demand. The United States decided to spend three hundred million on eradication, but only a hundred and twenty million to help farmers switch to legal crops."

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Fri - May 20, 2005

(08) Delia's Gone


The five Masters of Prax was an illusion created by Archer, who had split himself into multiple forms to avoid loneliness while he was appearing and disappearing in different places and times. He was an energy field which had no actual physical form, and he was crazy as a shithouse rat. He had forgotten that he was all five of the personalities, so that he talked to his split off parts, and they talked to him, as if they were separate beings.

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Tue - May 17, 2005

(07) High Rollers


The fueling rod fit the passageway precisely. It moved with habitual precision through it and into the chamber, where Legggs and Jukebox had concealed themselves behind the reactor in the center. The rod extended itself across the chamber and into the reactor's green door, where energy began to flow through it and back to the Mother Ship hovering over Masterson County Park.

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Sun - May 15, 2005

(06) Bye Bye Bethaus


As soon as Bethaus switched off the AV he knew he'd made a mistake not checking the logging road again on his way out, and Bethaus was not a man who forgave himself mistakes. Because of this, he didn't forgive other people for his mistakes, either, and their complicity in his humiliation was likely to cost them a brutal beating.

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Sat - May 14, 2005

(05) The Chamber


"I can't help it," Legggs said, when the fit of laughter finally subsided. Jukebox had turned around and looked at her with the left side of his mouth turned up and the right side unaffected, which had triggered the laughing fit. "If I don't get rid of the anxiety by laughing then I have a panic attack, like I did in the cafe when you came in. When I start laughing like that I can't stop until my stomach calms down."
"Is it calmed down some now?" Jukebox asked.
"Um hum," she said, and another spasm escaped her. "Excuse me. I really am okay now."
"Then let's see where this leads," Jukebox said. Ahead of them the tunnel opened into a cavern of unknown size and composition.

Posted at 02:12 PM     Read More  

Thu - May 12, 2005

(04) Analysts


"What the hell is this secret passageway?" Agent Orange asked. His voice was pleasant but his reputation was not. The two analysts who had been given the communication between Jukebox and Legggs had decided that the secret passageway most likely referred to a human smuggling operation. This analysis was bolstered by former agent Watts', aka Jukebox, having been fired from Kyle for not supporting the policies regarding classification of illegals as potential terrorists.

Posted at 04:37 PM     Read More  

Wed - May 11, 2005

(03) The Entry


"That old jukebox keeps playing, a honky tonk wedding, with a road house preacher and a four piece country band." Legggs was laughing again. The song didn't really mean anything to her except that it had the word "Jukebox" in it, and now every association with Jukebox was getting increasingly hilarious.

Posted at 12:40 PM     Read More  

Tue - May 10, 2005

(02) Core Sample


"It looks like something took a core sample," Jukebox said. Legggs noticed that from behind he did look like a jukebox, or like a bulldog. She began laughing and he turned around to look at her, but he didn't seem to anxious to know, just curious. "You laughing at me?" he asked, but now she was laughing so much she couldn't speak. All she could do was nod her head up and down.

Posted at 11:56 AM     Read More  

Mon - May 9, 2005

(01) County Park


A man comes into a cafe in a small mountain town. The waitress looks at him and the moment pauses. He slowly removes his black driving gloves as the moment resumes. He goes toward the end of the counter. The waitress scatters schoolgirl charm over a couple of truck drivers and pours them more coffee so they won’t bother her again before they leave. In the background she is thinking only of the man behind her, the one she has been in contact with over the internet.

Posted at 02:38 PM     Read More