The image area of this 6x9 would normally be cropped, but by including the mat, one gets a better impression of how it looks when displayed. The frame is slightly darker; too dark would make this idyll scene look imprisoned. From a photo of my aunt's property in the Carolinas. A huge amount of liberties was taken with the subject, but that's half the fun.
Tonight we visit a world fast becoming a suicide cult. Fact has given way to feeling; reason has fallen to hysterical parroting of the party line. Apathy is no longer an option, because they're coming to your town, your street, your house. Conformity is the rule in a society where the individual is a rebel who must not be tolerated. Future archaeologists will scratch their heads while sifting through the rubble, grateful they missed that hard left turn into The Twilight Zone.
Chester relaxed on his mist-shrouded back porch, his haven since retiring from farm work. Not that he'd had a choice--some trillionaire had bought all the farm land. His new hobby, writing stories, required more work than he'd bargained for. Currently it meant stepping back to practice creating a mood. He eased back and forth on the sofa slide, listening to sounds outside the protective screens. Damned mutant mosquitoes.
The screen door creaked open, then slammed shut as Earl came out. He operated a small heating oil business being squeezed to death by reams of new regulations. Plopping onto the sofa, he almost caused Chester's coffee to spill.
"What's shakin'?" Earl glanced at the notebook. "Still writin' fairy tales?"
Chester set his cup aside. "I'm working on mood right now. Hear that bird?" A lonely two-note call echoed, a defiant declaration of life. "Here's my take on it."
Earl read the passage. "Beyond the haven came the chickadee's TSVEET tsveet call." He handed the notes back. "Yep. That's a chickadee all right." Next he presented his own handwritten flyer. "I thought you could look this over, Mr English Major."
"Let's take a look here. . . .'Thirty dollar special. We'll spray a thin coat of oil on your lawn to destroy over-wintering insects'." Chester shook his head. "Who are you fooling? This is a way to dispose of used oil without paying a recycling fee--and making money to boot! City hall will shut this down quick."
"Well, shyte it all." Earl squinted at a humanoid shape loping past the tractor shed. "You heard anything on the news about weird stuff goin' on?"
"Not a thing. Not the earthquakes, the high altitude spraying to block the sun, nothing. But word is getting out from people leaving the big cities. It's a war zone. I'm starting to understand why Homeland Security bought a billion rounds of nine millimeter some years ago."
Earl made a tongue razzy. "Conspiracy nuts. Hey, you watchin' the game tonight?"
"Bread and circuses," Chester said. Earl didn't get it. Just then, four members of the friendly local national guard came out, masked to the gills and in full camo. What little flesh that was visible was covered with sores.
The leader consulted his pad, stared at Chester. "Your health passport has not yet been activated."
Chester shrugged. "I decline to follow the masses over a cliff, that's all. I can still buy food on the web, buy gas at the pump, and see internet doctors."
"Not anymore. Your assets are frozen until you comply."
Gunfire sounded along the north ridge.
"Maybe I better go," Earl said, obliged to squeeze around the unyielding soldiers. "Got a wife to protect somehow. Guess I'll throw rocks at anything that breaks in. Got no guns, honest."
Chester grinned. "Think about all the movies where aliens attack. Actually, all they'd have to do is wait for us to do it ourselves, then move right on in." He sniffed moist decay on the breeze. "Is this fog ever gonna lift? It's been three days."
The leader ignored it. "Your appointment is in three days. Don't miss it. And be careful what you write about--you could be classified as a domestic terrorist."
"Says you," Chester muttered when they'd gone. They didn't know about his food and weapons stockpile. He cautiously opened the screen door on his end and whistled. A misshapen monstrosity appeared out of the gloom, greedily snatched at the offered sausage biscuit. It seemed to have a distant memory of the rifle.
"Tell all your fellow passport holders," Chester said. "We've got work to do."
Giant drapes walled off the central mermaid bay at Five Forks Emporium. Shoppers at the sports complex weren't supposed to see rehearsals for tonight's extravaganza. Starting at eight, the mermaid trio would thrill the crowd with eye-popping stunts. Demanding the most attention, the Slide Hoop loomed large and forbidding, but someone had to calibrate it. Sirtis, the dark haired blue marmaid, volunteered.
Blonde Binia, having white and purple flukes, floated lazily next to red haired Ellie in green. They made sure to stay clear of the splash zone.
"Got reservations?" Ellie asked, hands linked behind her head.
"Hm? Oh, not about the stunt--just the necessity for them. The act is going Hollywood these days. What happened to the magic?"
"I know what you mean." Ellie went vertical, floating neck deep, watching Sirtis pull herself up the ladder. "It's more fun when the schools are here. The kids think we're the real thing."
Sirtis ventured forth, beginning a steep belly slide. Ideally, she'd sail through a large hoop--fire having been firmly declined--to dive into the lagoon. Though carefully calculated, her trajectory came up short.
"Waaaaa!" Sirtis caught the hoop low, swinging back and forth, tail and arms dangling.
Ellie laughed. "Now that's a weird catch. What the heck is it? The fishermen should throw it back."
"Ha, ha." Sirtis hung by her hands, did a flip to splash down head first. She popped up close by. "So the hoop needs to be lowered. Who's next?"
"You're doing fine," Binia insisted. "We'll be a lot more confident when you fly through in one piece."
"This bites," Sirtis groused. "Are we a circus now?"
Actually, part of the presentation was just that, adapted by a producer for a popular TV stunt show.
The suit watched from the center island. "We're on a schedule, ladies. You want to pass the audition, don't you?"
The trio eyed each other. "Audition?" they said in unison.
Some of the emporium brass loitered at the glass barrier on the service end, no doubt dreaming of TV fame and getting the complex on the map.
Sirtis swam over to the slide and hauled herself out of the water. "Mr Jeffers," she said to the producer. "There's a rough spot on the top platform. I almost lost a few scales."
Jeffers hurried up the ladder. "How can that be? It's polished aluminum."
Binia had a pained look. "She wouldn't."
"I think she would," Ellie affirmed.
Just as Jeffers crouched at the top, Sirtis' blue tail lashed out to propel him on his way.
"Woahhhhhh!" Jeffers raced down the slide, arms flailing, and sailed neatly through the hoop. He made a mighty splash, foundering like the Titanic.
Binia and Ellie got to him before he drowned.
"What the hell?" he spluttered, his mood not helped by chuckles from the service end.
"You should be honored," Binia said. "The Sirits Slap is the highlight of the show when she uses it."
The pair helped a sodden producer perch on the island edge, legs still in the water. He coughed and wiped water from his eyes.
"You can't be serious. I'm supposed to do that for the audience?" He turned to the brass in appeal.
The company president made a smiling thumbs up.
This is a 10x10 sequence created as a 'drop in' segment for a comic. Hasn't been used yet, but it features the sorceress Valkris on a ship with Ed and Pete of Team Dan. Their stealth admiration for her has gotten them in numerous comic scrapes. Other uses for such panels are 'retreads' of pages you decide aren't going anywhere, but some of the art is reusable.
Happy Friday fellow writers and artists. I hope you had a great week and the month has been a good one. Tomorrow is the first day of spring. It's been a strange but good winter. So far in book 3 I got to chapter six, then hit a glitch. Although I have an outline, and going full steam ahead in the story the winter blues can set me into a funk thus creating a creativity block. Very much like a writer's block, or a case where I would have multiple ideas for scenes come up without a direction for the story. In this case, I purge. Change my routine
around. I read more and take a break.
Priorities also came up that were necessary. Sent our five year old son back to school two days a week as the covid numbers are better. I dropped him off Monday morning and he walked into school with his backpack,
with a head nod of "I've got this." He's going to be ok.
Meanwhile our daughter is at virtual homeschool, and she is good to finishing out the last two months of school that way. She even went to gifted testing this week so it's been very busy. She is surprisingly doing well and knows this is temporary. Its been a rough year for everyone. In the fall we send both kids back to full school as we are on the downward trend of this pandemic.
The story is changing things around as scenes that are coming through my mind, so need to freewrite them out. I've got my main character on his quest, and he's going to pick up four more characters along the way so it's a navigating when/how they appear. Four man army compared to his track record of leading thousands. I like a challenge, surely.
I know how it's going to end. His villain will be defeated, but there's some damage he's going to do before all is said and done. Just like a bridge that has supports, the novel needs its supports to the plot and subplots along the way. Some things are easier said than done. Or written.
What are you doing tonight? I am looking over the printed chapter six and some freewriting is in store tonight to clear up the static. So much creativity, looking forward to a good night tonight. Are you painting or creating something totally different? Share it with us.
Previous Cambris and Queenie accompany a nervous Bigmon into the Munsters sim.
A bare chamber was suddenly the Munsters living room. It rocked to the Standells performing their song "Do The Ringo", with hipsters dancing or camped out everywhere.
Cambris spoke above the din. "This is your sleep-friendly environ? What feverish musing has the machine picked from your mind?"
"I think I got it!" Bigmon sought the figure he figured responsible, a bearded man in Aristotle garb and sandals. "The poet! I must have been thinking about how you're a slick poet yourself."
Queenie's goldtone face regarded the show's principals, who were just as bewildered by the hubbub. "The Munsters. Will you engage with them?"
A girl wearing a ton of necklaces spotted them. "Hey, everybody, some new cats just blew in! What a wild bunch!" She frowned at Bigmon's button-down look. "Except for you, Mister Man. You look all Establishment, you know?"
"Cambris!" Bigmon cast about for rescue. "Where did she wander off to?"
"To the alcove," Queenie said, "enraptured by the full-length mirror."
Bigmon eased through the crowd. "So what? The Munsters didn't have any trick mirrors she won't reflect in." The way Cambris stared at the glass began to worry him. "She's so gorgeous, she even wows herself!"
"You will explain this," Cambris demanded. "The Stygian engine cannot see me. How has it created my image in the glass?"
"Analyzing." Which took Queenie a microsecond. "The flooring detects your weight, and pairs with it a corresponding image drawn from the agent man's memory."
Another bearded groover, this one in a peacoat, grinned at Queenie. "Too much! What's your gig, sister?"
Queenie scanned him with laser vision, causing his image to briefly distort. "Your stack register is sub-optimized, causing a deleterious lag in refresh rate."
"Ha ha! Hey, you know I'm into your act, and I can't even follow it! Can't wait to hear you recite!"
By now, the Munsters had spotted the sideshow. Lily came to offer an elegant hand to Bigmon. "J B! It's so good to see you again! I'm sorry about all this going on."
"It's my fault," Herman allowed, stomping over to join them. "I couldn't resist fifteen hundred for renting the place for the evening."
Grandpa scowled. "Herman, ya big dope! Aren't you gonna introduce me?" He ogled Cambris. "I am Count Dracula, my dear."
"You are Count Dracula?" Cambris let slip a view of fang tips. "That is the most spurious--"
Bigmon leaned close. "Don't queer this for us. We're here to find a quiet place to crash, maybe start a lucid dream."
"Such lovely fangs!" Lily enthused. "Who's your dentist?"
As the band finished up, one wag called out: "Quiet, everybody! The Hermit is gonna groove us!"
Twin bongo drums laid down the mood when the Hermit leveled his intense gaze at them. "In that vortex of the future--" Several stanzas later, the crowd applauded with gusto.
Bigmon knew what was coming next. Necklace Girl was going to shout Let's hear from the Jolly Green Giant! But an impish impulse led him to waylay her. "My lady friend here is quite the poet."
"Let's hear from Lady Dracula!" the girl shouted.
Both Lily and Cambris started reluctantly forth.
"No, no," the girl said. "That one!" Meaning Cambris. She looked at Queenie for possible material. "You're awfully quiet, honey. What's your hangup?"
"Hangup," Queenie repeated. "The noun form of the barnyard adjective 'hung up'. I am queen of the Bot Star Empire. As you do not exist, you cannot be bottified."
"I get it! You're into Flash Gordon!"
Cambris responded to Bigmon putting her on the spot. "Be not smug, Agent Man. I shall make them see the emptiness of their pretend lives." Bongos heralded her taking center stage.
"Know you not," she began, "how this manse illudes us?" A flourish of drum taps picked up on the sinister tone, briefly throwing her. "Licit lenity withheld by infernal machines." A raised arm denoted the outside world. "Even the theme is betrayed. In yon bone yard where glassine wayfarers mist unbidden, nor bromide bugbears hollow menace, sibilline shade lure beckons impotently within."
Wild applause greeted this, and even the Hermit made a respectful bow.
Peacoat guy whistled and cheered. "Man, that's the best indictment of capitalism I ever heard!"
In the ongoing applause, Bigmon steered Cambris toward the Munsters. "I hate to be pushy, Lily, but I was hoping you had a place for us to crash."
"Oh, certainly! Grandpa will show you to the attic. Some of our deceased relatives might be rattling around." The trio followed the old gent upstairs.
Cambris turned slitted eyes on Bigmon. "Curb your urges, Agent Man. If you dream of Lily or Marilyn, they will not be mere computer blips."
"Oh well." Bigmon shrugged. "What a way to go!"