Welcome to Lively Acres!

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

I have a pathetically horrible habit of throwing so many extra words in my writing to capture the EXACT ESSENCE of what I'm seeing in my head. This does not work as 1.) No one wants to read a three chapter description of floor tiles and 2.) No one will actually see it the exact same way as I do, anyway. Part of the thing with books is that they use shit in YOUR head to sort of make building the story a joint effort between the dead tree and your brain. 3.) Stories with really really really long descriptions of EVERY SINGLE THING put me to sleep. Can't read Tolkien. So I don't want to do that.

Nutshell? Less is more. It seems to be working except my stories are going in wildly different directions and actual scenes take longer because . . . I haven't figured that out yet. But hey, good practice, right?

Maybe my next NaNoWriMo will not suck?

[EK WAFFLR]

Fucking awesome!

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I want to have CPD's fucked up little babies.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

I want to have CPD's fucked up little babies.

I think I just wrote you into the story, in my brain.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Welcome to Lively Acres! - Part Three

" . . . should she survives this, I for one, will be utterly amazed. I don't mind telling you I haven't seen injuries of this variety and severity on a single person in a very long time. It stands to reason that something quite heinous must have happened. I wonder that nothing in the news resembles her situation."

"You watch the news? No wonder you use too many words."

"Hush child, what do you know? Your idea of literature is the words on a cereal box you've scrounged from the dump."

"I like the colors on cereal boxes. So happy, even if they're just pretty trash."

"Yes. Thank you for so excellently proving my point."

"She not sleep. Breath change."

"Thank you Wallace. Your assistance has been, remarkably, of use."

A warm hand touched her shoulder. She twitched and her back seized in pain that left her gasping.

"Yes, yes none of that. Do desist. If you do not know, I am called Mr. Brown. I feel that after our somewhat unintentionally intimate acquaintance, I should introduce myself. And I must say; isn't it obvious that if you were to come to harm in our hands it would have come to fruition long before this juncture? Clearly, we have been a benefic. Before you commence flailing your limbs and gnashing your teeth, permit me to illustrate your situation.

I have stitched three lacerations on your back roughly the length of your spine. They were quite deep and required multiple layers of sutures. Luckily I have, shall we say, access to the highest quality in surgical supplies. Two more, merely handspans long instead of arm-lengths, only required a single layer of sutures. Antibiotic cream and bandages have been applied. Your other wounds have been tended to, the bruises iced and the sprains wrapped, but your hands and, ah . . .

. . . Yes, well. You must stay prone for as long as you are able, given that there's very little you can do without causing further damage, I suggest you take this time to reflect upon whatever series of events led you to this outcome and seriously consider an alternate path in future travels. Mazey has agreed to assist you and provide some entertainment. I apologize in advance if you find your intelligence evaporating and your will to live disappearing like a glacier in the Sahara but we make do with what we have.

You will be fed and tended to the best of our limited abilities. After that, well we'll see. I'm sure something interesting is bound to manifest given your apparent talent for calamity.

Oh, and Wallace wishes to extend his sincerest apologies for the incident earlier in the shed. He had no idea you were not, in fact, an exotic specimen of lepidoptera rhopalocera."

"So sorry. So so sorry. Saw pretty. Got confused."

"Yes, see? What utterance could possibly be more heartfelt than that? Do you have any questions, my dear?"

She opened her eyes. How much of the last several days had they been closed? It felt vaguely unnatural to see. Colors were alien. Shapes were ghostly.

Mazey's white-topped, pixie face peeked around the form of a painfully thin man in an ancient but immaculate set of tails and a top hat, brown instead of black. His face was youthful and unlined but his neck and hands were a mass of wrinkles piled on top of one another. And he wore a powdered wig.

Wallace, almost a foot taller and twice as wide as the well-dressed man, was hulking in the doorway. It seemed to be his thing, she thought, noting the too-small Superman t-shirt and the stained cargo pants he wore. His shoes were white but yellowing sneakers, battered high-tops in a style decades old. Superman's S logo had been painstakingly drawn on each shoe, over and over again with some sort of marker or paint. His hair was flat and matted against his skull, a shaggy black mess.

And her? She lay on a bench made of cinderblocks and boards, flat on her belly. A pile of pee-smelling foam and a fuzzy purple blanket under a pristine but faded sheet made up her bedding and protected her from the splintery wood. She was still naked, unless the other sheet she wore counted as a dress of sorts. The skin on her arms was mottled. Pink and white splotches, red blemishes, vivid blue veins, brown and tan patches . . . she was a tortoiseshell colored human.

Beyond Wallace, through the doorway, she could see tufts of green grass and a slice of sky an even more vivid blue than the veins standing out against her odd skin. It hurt to look at it. And it hurt to have them all staring at her. Waiting for an answer. She really only had one question but she didn't want to ask it. They wouldn't know. She asked anyway.

"What is my name?"

They stared at her for a moment. Then Mazey tugged on Mr. Brown's tuxedo tails. "I was right. You owe me ten dollars and a trip into town."

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Ah-ha. I really like that chapter.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I'm loving this. Hurts to read, but in a good way. Like breaking your leg whilst doing something epic!

[LMNO]

I love how a sort of development begins to emerge.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is just so so good.

I like how it seems like LOBB broke a dam.

[Doktor Howl]

This is just so so good.

I like how it seems like LOBB broke a dam.

But it is now jammed up again, itself.   

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is just so so good.

I like how it seems like LOBB broke a dam.

But it is now jammed up again, itself.   

That really is bitterly ironic, especially because it's poised at such an exciting moment in the storyline. I mean, shit is GOING DOWN!

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

This is just so so good.

I like how it seems like LOBB broke a dam.

But it is now jammed up again, itself.   

That really is bitterly ironic, especially because it's poised at such an exciting moment in the storyline. I mean, shit is GOING DOWN!

I threw in a small piece to LOBB last night. I had a brain wiggle about another arc to write but I didn't write it down and thus forgot it. We'll see if it comes back.

[Doktor Howl]

This is just so so good.

I like how it seems like LOBB broke a dam.

But it is now jammed up again, itself.   

That really is bitterly ironic, especially because it's poised at such an exciting moment in the storyline. I mean, shit is GOING DOWN!

Problem is, my head isn't in the right spot, on account of RAGE RAGE RAGE.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is just so so good.

I like how it seems like LOBB broke a dam.

But it is now jammed up again, itself.   

That really is bitterly ironic, especially because it's poised at such an exciting moment in the storyline. I mean, shit is GOING DOWN!

Problem is, my head isn't in the right spot, on account of RAGE RAGE RAGE.

Gotta wait for it to be ripe.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Welcome to Lively Acres! - Part Four

"Nightingale," Mazey suggested, drumming her heels against the wall. From her partially upside down perch on the splintery porch, back on the slats, legs up against the wall, she could see into the wood shack, the wry twist of their guest's mouth.

"She sing?" Wallace asked hopefully. He sat inside the door, out of the sun. Too much light made his head woozy.

"No. She does not sing," their still nameless guest said from the uncomfortable perch, belly flat on a thinly covered wood bench built into one wall. She flicked her eyes up at Mazey and Wallace before returning her attention to the myriad of newspapers spread on the floor within easy reach and reading distance.

Mr. Brown had procured them when he'd taken Mazey into the town. His theory being that she could search for clues to her identity, keep up with current events, and occupy her mind at the same time.

"After all," he'd remarked with an understanding grimace. "The company we keep can be a trying lot. The mind fair screams for diversion after a long afternoon of such nonsensical discourse as what can be found among our comrades."

Though he'd been unable to explain why he claimed them as comrades at all, when she'd asked.

"She doesn't sing or dance or anything at all particularly requiring of talent," she said. "And she would much rather prefer not to be named after a bird or any animal or plant at all, thank you."

"Opinionated, easily annoyed, and arrogant," Mazey observed, thunking her heels some more. "Those are clues."

Despite herself, the amnesiac laughed. "All that, then, is what I will look for in the description for missing persons. It will narrow things down considerably, I think."

"Good plan." Wallace said with a sage nod. "You leave when you find name?"

She looked up, noting Mazey had quit her noisemaking. A subtle warning to tread softly here. "I don't know, Wallace. I don't think so. There has to be a reason why I ended up where you could find me. So I need to find that first. A name is just a place to start looking for a reason."

He nodded again, though she knew he didn't understand. "You stay longer. Pretty. Nice. Make here better."

"Well then I will stay a little bit longer," she said, giving him a smile.

Wallace smiled big and jumped to his feet, shaking the shack. His huge shape filled most of the interior space with his body and with its shadow. It was amazing how much physical space he took up when his personality took up so little. Sitting down he blended into the wall. Just another piece of wood until he spoke.

"I tell Elsie. She make more supper," he announced, bolting clumsily from the shack and taking off up the track at a fast plod.

Mazey came into the shack once he was out of sight and took up a spot on the floor, her slight body taking up less than a third of the space he'd required.

"You handled that well," Mazey said. "He gets fierce protective like, about his friends here. Even Elsie, who's a harpy and only yells at him. He'd have hurt you or himself if you'd said the wrong thing. Probably both because it would break his heart if he hurt you."

"I guessed."

"So how about Robin? It's only partly a bird's name. It's a bandit's name, too. And I think part of a fast food chain's name. That's pretty fancy for these parts."

"No way."

"Lark?"

"Still can't sing. Still a bird's name."

"Jay?"

"Bird. Also a male name, isn't it?"

"Who cares? Get your avant-garde on, girl!"

"Did Mr. Brown teach you that bit of French?"

"No. I used to teach French, Spanish, and Japanese. We all had lives before here, you know. I was a college student majoring in linguistics, who tutored on the side. Made good money, too." Mazey said, matter-of-factly. "I'm not always crazy. None of us are always anything."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. Mr. Brown said the other day about your knowledge of language and cereal boxes . . ."

Mazey waved a hand. "It's an in joke. No offense taken. You didn't know."

"How did you end up here, then?"

"How did you?"

"Oh."

Mazey stood and stretched. Then she came around the side of the bench and flicked back the light sheet covering the much chagrined, nameless woman's bandaged-and-salved back. The long slices and deep tears were healing cleanly but slowly.

"Does it hurt today?" She asked same as she did every time she made the check.

"Like a thousand fire ants digging into my flesh and taking bites out."

"Well that's better than yesterday. It was a million fire ants then. No seepage today, not even where your back jerked when Wallace jumped up like that. Everything is holding." Mazey put the sheet back and tucked it in so a stray breeze couldn't knock it aside, since the shack had no door. "I'll be back later with your supper and to take you to the bathroom."

"Mazey," the helpless woman said.

"What?"

"Nightingale isn't a bad name, is it?"

Mazey laughed, slightly wild and cackle-y. "No it isn't. But I think you're right. You're not a bird at all."