There ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

[Doktor Howl]

You're not right.   

Still, awesome.

I get that a lot.

So do I.  I talk to people the way I talk on PD, and everyone shoves over to the other side of the bus.

I don't talk a lot in public unless I have someone to keep me on track. Something reminds me of something else and the next thing I know I'm telling a story from whenever and all I can hear is people sobbing or telling me to SHUT THE FUCK UP, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

MARRY ME

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

It's a combination of the attention span of a squirrel, sense of humor that makes the Crypt Keeper cry, and a perpetually broken filter that does not trip the 'over-share' warning siren in my brain.

HAWT, AIN'T IT?

[Doktor Howl]

It's a combination of the attention span of a squirrel, sense of humor that makes the Crypt Keeper cry, and a perpetually broken filter that does not trip the 'over-share' warning siren in my brain.

HAWT, AIN'T IT?

Shit yes.  I've been doin' it for decades.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Good goddamn. 

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

CPD, COME VISIT TEXAS. LET'S DO THE TOWN IN SEGUIN.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

It's a combination of the attention span of a squirrel, sense of humor that makes the Crypt Keeper cry, and a perpetually broken filter that does not trip the 'over-share' warning siren in my brain.

HAWT, AIN'T IT?

Shit yes.  I've been doin' it for decades.

This makes me happy for some reason.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

CPD, COME VISIT TEXAS. LET'S DO THE TOWN IN SEGUIN.

Okay. You pick a place and I'll tell stories and once everyone is screaming and crying, we'll start picking pockets. They'll never notice.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Before the screaming woman was the screaming woman, did she drown the drowning boy? It's hard to discern the answer in his bulging, panicked eyes. There are bruises on his throat but they could have gotten there any old way.

And really, he could have drowned himself. Everyone has been warned about the sudden drop offs in the swimming hole. He just didn't listen and went where he couldn't touch bottom. Where there are things in the hole that will reach up and tug down.

That doesn't explain why his face stares up, just inches below the water, but his hands are clawing at his neck instead of reaching for open air. But kids are strange and who knows what sort of silly make-believe game he's playing.

Down there it's another world and he's forever a part of it. Something alien to us now. Things slide through the water, leaving no trace of themselves. Soon there won't be any trace of the drowning boy. Not even his bulging, panicked eyes.

All the air bubbles are gone, all the splashing is over. It's all a waiting game, now. It has been for ever.

It's odd, isn't it? How time slows down during these moments? Isn't it odd, the crystal clarity, the deafening silence? So quiet one's blood flow echoes within the cavern of the body.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

These are really haunting vignettes.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

These are some of the happier ones. I think the drowning boy is almost upbeat.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

There are no toys where the dead girl sits. Her back is constantly to the wall and her skirt never rises above her knees. If it does the bad man will come. She has a corn cob for comfort. The husk has been stitched with floss to resemble a skirt, one piece curled in to a hat. Dead girls are bad girls and bad girls don't get toys, but a girl isn't a proper girl unless she has a doll. She must tend the doll.

Sometimes her wall is a corner. Sometimes her wall has a window in it. But she can never see out, the glass is always blurry and the window only ever opens a crack too tiny to see through. She can hear, though. The wind in the trees. Children laughing. Boys playing with a ball they kick back and forth.

She wants to go out. She wishes the other little girl would come. But the other little girl does not come for long, long periods of time. And when the other little girl arrives, it is only until the dead girl falls asleep or closes her eyes too long. The other little girl is always gone as soon as the dead girl stops thinking about her.

It takes so much to find a friend and so little to lose her.

But the bad man and the kids outside, who never answer her when she calls out, they are always there. Waiting for her to try and escape. Waiting for her to cry or scream or stomp her feet.

Then the game changes.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So sad. But so good.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

The other girl hates visiting the dead girl. Everything is so sad and the air is so thick with fear. Voices raised in anger or pain are always just out of earshot where the dead girl is. The sky is always bright but it's a brightness that hurts. And when the man appears, things go from scary and sad to downright terrifying. The other girl, who has no other name, doesn't even think a name to herself because who wants to be noticed in a place like this? She thinks it's too much for one little girl to handle.

But there's no one else. In all the time trapped in this limbo there are only the angry, angry voices, the screams of pain, shadowy figures outside a window, and the man. So she visits the dead girl as often as her heart can handle and comes up with silly game after silly game to play.

Maybe if the dead girl laughs, the man won't come because he'll think it's some other girl and not the one he comes for. Maybe if the dead girl would leave that room he wouldn't be able to find her. But she won't leave.

Only the other girl ever leaves. When she isn't with the dead girl she roams through gardens and forests and splashes in a creek. She makes mud pies and climbs trees and screams until her voice goes away. She runs full-out and rolls down grassy hills. It should all be great fun but it isn't.

It's all like the house where the dead girl waits. There are things like rocks and dirt and water. There unmoving living things like plants. But living things like birds and people and deer? There are only the sounds of those.

The other girl can HEAR birds singing but can't ever see one. She can find deer tracks and hear their noises in far-off bushes but she's never seen so much as a flash of a tail as one runs away. There are no fishes in the stream. And bugs.

There are no bugs. No mosquitos. No ants. No flies. No worms in the dirt.

Once she left a bit of cake sit on the ground in the sun for a whole day. Not so much as a gnat appeared.

Her clothes never get dirty. Mud and grass don't stick. Her hands can FEEL the dirt when she digs her fingers in but the soil just sort of slides away when she pulls her hand out. She doesn't ever sweat and her hair never gets mussed. When her voice comes back it's all there, without rasping or hoarseness.

All of which makes her very afraid because this place doesn't really exist, so where is she?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Eeeek.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

I was making a back-up of this thread and was surprised to find it so small. The hole it makes in my head is so much larger than is what is actually here. Kinda a weird sensation.