“I knew the curse would come for him one day,” cries Barrymore over the old man’s body. “It didn’t even mark his body–the sight alone must have been fright enough to stop his heart. Damn that Deinonychus of the Baskervilles!”
Mortimer scoffs. “You can’t possibly believe a dinosaur did this to him!”
“It’s not like a normal dinosaur,” says Barrymore. “It’s a ghostly creature, scarred and hideous, eyes alight with vengeful flame!”
“Burning bog gas and an old man’s heart!”
Far off in the mist, something krees like an enormous eagle, and the carriage pachys snuffle and stomp their feet.
Friday, November 21, 2008
has a captain named Captain Exigon. His first mate is Zombie Lieutenant Graaahh.
“We should really do something with our missiles,” says Captain Exigon, in zombie Russian.
“Well,” says Graaahh at length, “there aren’t any countries I want to obliterate.”
“I was thinking more of treating them like treasure,” says Exigon. “We could bury them somewhere, and mark it with an X!”
“Then hunt for more!” Graaahh is getting into it. “Terrors of the seas! With a disarmament agenda!”
“Exactly!” says Exigon.
“Graaahh!”
So that’s where all the missing Russian nukes are and you don’t have to worry about them anymore.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
“Knock knock.”
“Knock who?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“No, come on. Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
Silence.
A pointed look.
Silence.
“You’re supposed to say ‘interrupting cow who’ so I can–”
“MOO”
“Fine, dammit, you tell one.”
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s–”
“MOO”
“NO!”
“Did you think the cow was just going to leave?”
“This isn’t a hypothetical door-opening scenario with persistent characters! It’s a purely linguistic construct!”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“The Doctor.”
“Doctor Who?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“Get it?”
“Yyyes?”
“I thought it was funny.”
“I worked that out.”
“And anyway you already took the interrupting–”
“MOO”
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Rob walks Albie Street, his shoes clattering softly together.
“They call those crack tennies,” says Maya.
“Who calls anything ‘tennies?'” says Rob.
“You know what I mean,” says Maya. “I used to try and pull them down.”
“They’re boundary markers. Wards. Protection.”
“Do you think I need protection?” He doesn’t say anything; she tilts her head.
They turn down Twenty-Ninth. Rob leans back and sends the next pair whirling upward, where it catches by the laces on the catenary line.
“So,” she says, “do you carve magic runes on the soles or something?”
“I just use a Sharpie,” he says.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
“Detectives McMeel and Showalter, Precinct Nine and Three-Quarters,” says Showalter. “We’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
“मैं मà¥à¤¸à¥€à¤¬à¤¤ में हूà¤?” ask the suspicious yellow eyes in the crack of the door.
“We just need to know if you saw anything on the night of September… forty-eighth,” says Showalter, checking his notescroll. “There was an incident.”
“मैं सà¥à¤…रों से बात नहीं है!”
“We’re going to have to continue this downtown,” sighs McMeel.
They drop through a manhole and into a mine cart, whose blue-and-reds flicker on stalagmites as they hurtle toward the sub-sub-substation.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Betwixt the two of them, they lick the platter clean, snapping and whining for more even after Kora pulls it away. “That’s enough!” she says. Monday looks sullen; Friday pants with undimmed hope. (Wednesday looks aloof, of course. He long ago figured out that she could let the other two heads eat for him.)
“It’s time for walksies anyway,” Kora says, and before she’s finished undoing the leash they’re dragging her off through the stalagmite maze; little ghosts mewl and scatter out of their way. At least they haven’t eaten me yet, she thinks grimly. At least there is still that.
Friday, November 14, 2008
“They were just here when I arrived for practice,” says Radiane with some chagrin.
Proserpina surveys them: a smaller gathering than at the big match, but still far too conspicuous a crowd of teenage girls to be clattering around in a closed wing.
“What do we do?”
“Start teaching them in shifts, I suppose,” Proserpina says.
“But you haven’t finished teaching me yet!”
“Exactly how much do you think I know?”
“Proserpina!” shouts Ernestine, traipsing over. “Where have you been?”
“Yes, out alone?” asks Radiane.
“No,” says Proserpina, too quickly.
Radiane cocks her head. “Not alone?”
“Not that either!” Proserpina says.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
“Oh, there you are, Bongo,” says Thaddeus, wobbling in through the swinging door. “Did you get lost?”
“Heh, yeah,” Bongo says. “I’m not used to working in a place anything like this size!”
“You’ll learn your way around the Educational Funtime HQ soon enough.”
“I mean, you guys have like an entire snack bar in here!” exclaims Bongo, waving one floppy arm around the vaulted chamber. “Not to mention the leather couches and the plasma TV… this is the nicest studio I’ve ever seen!”
“This is the bathroom,” says Thaddeus.
“You have a bathroom?” gasps Bongo, eyes full of puppet tears.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
“I’m taking Reaching the West Reaches and my friends,” says the emissary, cool and cocksure, silk-robed in black. “You can either profit by this or be destroyed.”
Papa Bosom laughs and laughs.
“You’re standing on–” Dog Shouting tries to hiss in warning from her lounging spot on the floor, but a yank on her leash chokes her off.
“There will be no bargain, Hopeless Warrior,” purrs Papa Bosom in his wet and backward language. “I shall enjoy watching you die.”
The guard’s bolter flies to the Princess’s hand: a flash and a crackle, a scream, and then the floor disappears.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The self-loathing Nazi brain in a jar goes back in time to kill itself, and hesitates.
“I can’t do it!” sobs the speakerbox of the headless corpsebot in whose chest it currently resides. “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem!”
“I don’t know what Gerry existentialist crisis he’s yappin’ about,” whispers American Haymaker, “but I say we strike now!”
“Hold on,” says Damsel Disaster (actually her granddaughter, here in disguise from an alternate future to make sure things don’t go too well).
“Ach!” shrieks the self-loathing Nazi brain in a jar, who just got its own pun.
Monday, November 10, 2008