Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World

Part 21E: Have a nice fall!

2012-02-09T08:10:00.004-08:00

"I think I killed him," Bridget said, after a momentary pause in which we all looked at the two separate halves of her dad, laying on either side of me.

"Good," I said, barely able to talk, and started trying to sit up and get off the bed. The room was dimly lit, still, but I could hear rushing around outside in the hall.

"I think he's really dead," Bridget said, dropping the Valkyrie's spear. Two other people rushed into my vision as I took a deep breath and tried to gather my thoughts: Harper, and Ivanka.

"Get that spear, Ivanka," Harper ordered, and leaned down by me. "Are you okay, Mom?"

"I think so. I've got to catch my breath." My ribs hurt and my lungs were still unused to having air in them.

"We've got to go. The door is barricaded but they'll be through that in a moment." I looked at where she was pointing: all the furniture that could be was stacked up against the doorway. The Me stood there, looking worried. I wondered if I looked that way when I was worried, and realized that I must.

"Okay," I said, standing up.

Bridget just stared at the bed.

"He's not dead," she mumbled.

"What?" I asked, looking back.

On the bed, each half of her dad lay, cauterized and charred black where it had been separated from the other half. But each half was moving. One of the arms was pulling that half forward, while the other kicked its leg to orient itself so that the half-a-face looked at us.

"You can run," it muttered through a half-a-mouth, "But I will get you. My resources are nearly infinite. There is no place in the 73 dimensions you will be safe."

I didn't know if he was talking to me, or Bridget, or both. I grabbed her hand, feeling the old electric thrill that I always got from touching her. I stopped and looked into her eyes.

"Bridget..." I whispered.

"Rachel..." she whispered back.

"MOMS!" Harper yelled. "COME ON!"

The Me grabbed my elbow and tugged. "Both of you. We've got to go," she said. I kept Bridget's hand, not thinking about what that said to anyone else in the room, and followed her over across the room.

Outside the main door behind the pile of furniture, I heard someone yell "We're going to shoot down the door!"

I saw Ivanka pause and touch her head. She frowned, then looked at The Me and Harper.

The Me turned and said "Really?"

Ivanka nodded.

"Hey, hello," I said. "What's going on?"

Ivanka looked at me. In my mind, I heard her:

I forgot that here you have telepathy

"I do?" I said. "Then here is..."

Ivanka nodded.

I told them that they have orders to kill you now that your left hand is no longer here. We have to go.

"Go where?" I asked, unused to telepathy.

Ivanka nodded towards the window.

I looked out the over the sill. The wall below me led down down down down into the darkness. I couldn't see the bottom. Out towards the horizon were the giant trees of Valhalla, trees that stretched taller than any building I'd ever seen before in my life (short as it had been so far.)

We were above them.

Way way above them.

"Do we have a rope? A jet pack? A flying horse?"

Ivanka shook her head.

"We have to climb?" I asked.

There was a huge explosion and the furniture behind us was vaporized with a crackling hiss. A crowd of Valkyries rushed into the room.

"Go!" The Me yelled. I hesitated at the window sill, looking down one more time.

Then Bridget shoved me off the edge.

Part 21D: Help from an unlikely source.

2012-02-07T06:39:00.000-08:00

At the words "Kill them," I decided I had nothing left to lose and I lunged up and pushed at Bridget's dad as hard as I could.

Which was not very hard. He was a big guy, even with the new parts that were mostly from women, and I am a relatively small woman without much in the way of strength. I didn't have any effect on him, other than to distract his attention from the people he was ordering around: He turned back to me with a sneer.

"Fighting makes it more fun for me," he said, and slapped my face, hard. Tears welled up in my eyes from the stinging blow and made things blurry. I wrestled and flung my legs as much as I could and whipped my hands around, trying to punch or hit or slap or kick or something but he just leaned down harder on me, pushing the air out of my chest and making me stop fighting because I was trying to breathe.

I heard scuffles around us and some kind of shooting but all I could see was his fat evil face leering over me.

"Not so much fighting when you've got no air, isn't that the case?" he asked.

"Let me breathe," I mumbled, the words barely audible. I had no air left to push out and was starting to have that feeling like when you hold your breath for a little too long and are just about to let it out so you can breath back in, but I couldn't let itout.

"No," he said, and pressed harder on my stomach. I concentrated on trying to suck in air but he was too heavy and my lungs had no place to expand to, it felt like.

There were more sounds around us but my hearing was growing fuzzy and my vision dimming. I felt like my head was shutting down.

"Air," I said.

"It doesn't matter to me," Bridget's dad said "Whether you live or die. I will find the hand, and I can fuck you while you're still warm."

"Air..." I said, and all I could see through tiny pinpricks of light that were my only vision as my eyes closed down was his face. I felt like my head was stuffed underwater and closed in plastic. My lungs burned and my stomach ached and my whole body suddenly was screaming for oxygen and my eyes closed or went black, I didn't know what and then I felt his weight fall off of me and air whooshed into my lungs and my eyes began to clear and through cloudy eyes I saw what I thought was Bridget's dad falling to either side of me, half to my left and half to my right, but I couldn't be sure because I was blinking tears away and sucking in air like it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, which it was.

As my vision cleared, I saw that I was right: On either side of me, on the bed, was exactly half of Bridget's dad. Standing in front of me was Bridget herself, holding a Valkyrie spear and looking a little shocked.

"I didn't know these could do that," she said, looking at the weapon in her hand.

Do you want to woo hoo? (Thursday Scramble)

2012-01-26T18:15:00.000-08:00

On Thursday Scramble, I take an old post from one of my blogs -- my blogs currently make up 24.8% of the entire Internet -- and repost it to all my OTHER blogs. This post appeared in 2008 on my blog "Thinking The Lions." Thinking The Lions focuses on funny stories about me, and the things I do with my family, and the things I do when I'm supposed to be working, and the things I do when I'm supposed to be doing the things I do. Also, I post poems there on Fridays.

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Always carry the pooping toddler behind you, not in front of you.

That way, when the pooping toddler poops, it will not fall directly into your path, causing you to step in it, which will cause you to think oh my god this is possibly the grossest but most hilarious emergency I've ever been a part of, and which will also cause you to stop, take that sock off, and then continue on your way to the potty chair, which you have left upstairs, and upstairs is an awful long ways away when you are carrying a naked, pooping, and now upset toddler at arm's length.

That's what I learned last night, as I was helping to clean up the kitchen after tacos and smoothies made in the new blender using the high-end "Whole Foods" fruit we had, both of which we had because Sweetie got them for St. Nick's Day.

I'm not sure why "St. Nick's Day" exists, or even if it does exist outside of my family. I always wondered if it existed outside of my family when I was a kid, too, when we would, in the beginning of December, get candy in our stockings. Never presents or anything, just candy, which always included one of those giant, straight-up-and-down candy canes, the kind that would splinter when you bit them, so that if you sat on the brown couch eating them and watching channel 18 -- channel 18 was the only channel worth watching most of the time back then, because it was the only non-network channel, so it showed reruns of shows and cartoons in the afternoon, as opposed to showing "Phil Donahue," a show that by my memories was on at least 17 hours a day on all three networks in the late 70s and early 80s-- if you sat on the brown couch eating your candy cane and watching Channel 18, you would have parts splinter off and fall on your chest and be covered with sweater-fuzz, making them inedible. You would also get little tiny peppermint shards sprinkled down your chest and stomach, giving you a minty smell and a crackly feel the rest of the day.

No other kids ever seemed to get stuff for St. Nick's Day, which was why I thought maybe it only existed in our family, but, then again, I was the kind of kid who never really knew what was going on, either, so maybe everyone was getting St. Nick's presents, and I just didn't know it because I spent most of my time in fourth grade reading the "Emil" books and playing one-on-one football on recesses with Kevin Donnerbauer, the kid with only one thumb, and what time I didn't spend doing that I spent drawing "vipers" from Battlestar Galactica and getting beat up by Dean Larsen. None of which really lead one to conversations about whether or not the other kid celebrates "St. Nick's Day."

When I married Sweetie, I learned that she, too, celebrated St. Nick's Day, and that she celebrated it through presents, which seems odd, since Sweetie is always telling me how poor she was growing up, stories about poverty that make me feel even more guilty than I do most of the time about my relatively-privileged background. I, as a kid, generally got presents like the Millenium Falcon with Actual Cargo Bays for hiding Han Solo, or my "official" Dallas Cowboys helmet, or the Lego set that let me build an actual Lunar Landing Module (which I still remember was called the "LEM," even though I don't remember why it was called the "LEM") or any of the the 1000 other toys and junk my parents got us for Christmas, and that still wasn't enough, as most years there were plenty of junky things we didn't get. Realizing that, that I was so spoiled and privileged and didn't appreciate it, serves the valuable purpose today of making me feel guilty, guilt that I channel into areas that society desperately needs, like "working hard" and "giving to charity" and "telling my own kids how lucky they are that they have so much stuff, compared to how little stuff I had," which is only true comparatively speaking, because I had a lot of stuff, but my kids have more stuff, and they, too, do not think they have enough. Yes, The Boy has a great big TV in his room and a DVD player and a Playstation 3, but he still pines away for an Internet connection that would let him play Playstation online against other players, even though the other player he would mostly play against is his friend, who lives next door, and who would probably come over to play anyway, bringing his own TV and Playstation 3, so that they could harness the awesome power of the Internet to play a game against each other sitting two feet apart.

So the guilt I carry around lets me lay some guilt on The Boy and his sisters for having so much stuff, something that I do to relieve my own guilt and also to make sure that they have guilt when they grow up, so that they will work hard and give to charity and be good people and guilt-trip their own kids, and the Circle of Guilt will continue.

I don't guilt-trip the Babies! yet, because they're too little to feel guilty about anything, and also because they don't really want anything. We have not yet bought them that many toys -- all of their toys except the slide and their car fit into a laundry basket -- but we have bought them toys, and they generally ignore those toys and play with anything else.

Mr Bunches, for example, carries around a small red practice golf ball that Middle gave him. It's made of foam rubber and he has it with him at all times. I've never known anyone to have a "Security Golf Ball" but he does, and he gets upset if he can't find it. He got so upset the last time it was lost (we found it behind the Only Surviving Plant in the house) that Sweetie took precautions and found a second one, a Spare Emergency Golf Ball that is kept carefully hidden in the Babies!'s room. We all also make sure, at all times, that we are aware of the Red Ball: "Where's his red ball?" we ask each other, when moving Mr Bunches from one room or level of the house to the next.

He can't be fooled, either -- give him a different color practice golf ball and he'll throw it aside. Give him a different kind of red ball and he'll squeeze it to test it out, and if it doesn't give a little like The Red Ball, he'll toss that aside, too.

Losing his Red Ball is one of the few things that upsets Mr Bunches. He's pretty easygoing. The only other things I've seen upset him are when someone leaves the room he's in, and being whisked away to poop on the potty chair rather than on the living room floor, where he thought it was okay to poop because, after all, he was naked.

Mr Bunches was only naked because I felt sorry for him and also because I needed both hands free to clean up the smoothie mess that I'd created making smoothies on the blender I'd given Sweetie for St. Nick's Day, a blender that was big and expensive and more big and expensive than a St. Nick's Day present should be, but I tend to give Sweetie big and expensive presents because, like I said, I feel guilty about my privileged background and Sweetie manages to dredge up more guilt by telling me stories about her own unprivileged background.

I might tell a story, for example, of how I had all these Star Wars action figures and I used to set them up in elaborate scenarios in my room in which the dresser with its four shelves was the Death Star, because the books on the bottom shelf could be the trash compactor, and then I might say that I wished I'd kept those Star Wars figures because maybe they'd be worth money, and then Sweetie will say something like this, a story she actually told us:

"I didn't have action figures or dolls when I was a little girl. We couldn't afford them. I had marbles, though, that my grandma gave me. I used to pretend the marbles were people and play with them and make them go shopping."

Imagine hearing that on the heels of your story about having an actual Boba Fett that shot missiles. Then imagine yourself standing in the department store thinking "Should I get her that blender she asked for even though it's very expensive?" and as you think that, you remember that Sweetie, as a kid, had to have her marbles have adventures, things she couldn't even dress up or fix the hair of or whatever it is that girls do with their dolls and toys.

And then imagine standing in that department store, pushing your Babies! in their stroller, and feeling terribly guilty about having been so privileged, and deciding that yes, you will buy her the blender, and you'll also get her some other stuff because she deserves it, but then you get distracted and think How would a marble be a person? And did they have names? Were they, like "Judy The Marble?" Did she make them walk, or just roll them to the Marble Shopping Mall? And then before you can get the blender or answer those questions, Mr F leans over and starts trying to knock over the pile of Christmas dinner plates you're stuck in front of.

Mr F got to try to knock over a lot of things last week, as we finished up the shopping for Sweetie's St. Nick's Day present. Her entire present was that blender that she asked for, and a bunch of high-quality fruit from Whole Foods, and a Whole Foods $10 gift card (which I threw in to top it off, but which is useless because $10 at Whole Foods will get you one grape) and a book of smoothie recipes that had lots of recipes for smoothies made without yogurt, because Sweetie likes smoothies but hates yogurt. Or I should say, Sweetie wants to like smoothies, something she tells us all the time:

"I want to like smoothies," she'll say, "But I just don't like that yogurt."

When I ask why it's so important that she like smoothies, she answers: "Because they're cool."

Finding the blender was the easy part -- the department store had blenders, lots of them, some of them as high-priced as $159. I did not get guilt-tripped into buying that. Marble People or not, I don't buy $159 kitchen appliances. I settled on a tough-looking red blender that had an "Ice Crusher" feature. That sounded good (if not very romantic or Christmas-y) to me. Getting the fruit was also easy. It was the book that was tough, because I had Mr Bunches and Mr F with me in their stroller, and I had to go to three different bookstores to find just the right book of smoothie recipes, which meant three different nights of pushing the Babies! through bookstores, bookstores with shelves that were very close together and packed with books that were ripe for the plucking, so that as we walked down the aisles Mr F and Mr Bunches would reach out and grab books and toss them on the floor, and I would quickly scoop the books up and put them back more or less in the region they came from, hopefully also getting all of the "Teddy Graham" crumbs and smudges off of them. So if you are shopping for a book at any of those stores, the odds are that the book you want is about five feet further down the aisle, and you'll want to wipe it off a little before buying it.

I also could not stop the stroller, because they'd get really antsy then, and start arching their backs or taking off their socks and shoes and throwing them, and if there's anything that gets you judged to be a bad parent, it's having barefoot kids out in a store in December in Wisconsin. Plus, people don't think it's so cute the third time a shoe gets flung at them.

Most of the shopping, then, was done with me handing them "Teddy Grahams" and trying to calm them down and distract them by talking to them and singing Mr F's favorite song ("All I Want Is You" from the "Juno" Soundtrack) quietly as we walked through the aisles, and when that didn't work, I'd try to quickly scan the books as we walked by. When I'd see a book I thought would be good, I'd scoop it up and keep pushing the stroller, checking out the book with one hand and pushing the stroller with the other hand, eventually looping back to drop the book off more or less where I'd gotten it (I could tell by the trail of "Teddy Grahams.")

I had to do that because in public, I'll do anything to keep the Babies! happy, and also because I'm a pushover. I think I'm a tough dad, but I'm not, and I just give in to the Babies! demands no matter what the cost to me personally is. I will let them, for example, out of the cart while we're at the drugstore picking up cold medicine, even though I know that it will be physically impossible for me to hold both of their hands and get out my wallet to pay. I let them out of the cart and hold their hands and then, when it comes time to pull out my wallet, I let go of Mr Bunches' hand for just one second I hope and pull out the $20 Sweetie gave me, but it's no use: Mr Bunches has taken off towards the back of the store, laughing, and I have to scoop up Mr F and tell the lady behind the counter "put the change in the bag" and then I carry Mr F with me while I chase Mr Bunches around the rack of cold medicines in the back of the store, twice, before grabbing him and going up front carrying both boys to grab the bag, which hopefully has my change in it, and head outside.

Even then, I'm such a pushover that I feel bad for Mr F, who didn't get to run around the pharmacy, and I wonder if I should give him a chance, too. But Mr F gets his own special treatment, like when I keep playing The Tackle Game with him even though I'm afraid that he's given me a concussion.

The Tackle Game is Mr F's favorite. He invented it, and as you'd expect of a game invented by a two-year-old, it's pretty simple and also violent. In The Tackle Game, I sit cross-legged on the floor, and Mr F goes into the other room and then comes running at me while I say "No no no no no" in a scared voice (note: I'm not acting) and he then plows into me and we fall over backwards and I tell him he's very strong and how'd he get so strong? Then we do it all again, for about an hour. And I keep playing The Tackle Game under the most adverse conditions, like when Mr F the other night caught me just behind the temple with his forehead, causing him to momentarily cry until I calmed him down by tossing him in the air a few times. He was fine. I, though, was seeing stars and had a splitting headache, one that instantly set in and spread down to my jaw and my neck, and one that I still kind of have, two days later. But I kept playing The Tackle Game, and didn't let on to Mr F that I thought maybe I had a concussion.

That pushoveriness is how Mr F and Mr Bunches ended up running around buck naked on St. Nick's Eve, or the night of St. Nick's Day, or whatever. We'd eaten dinner, which was tacos and chips and non-yogurt-containing smoothies that I'd made using Sweetie's new St. Nick's blender, and I was helping clean up before taking the Babies! upstairs for their bath, and Mr F started getting into the wedding cabinet, which is the only thing in our house anymore that both contains glass and is in arm's reach. It's a curio cabinet with glass doors that's filled with wedding mementos and champagne glasses and pictures from our wedding and things like that, and we'd move it, but it's really heavy and it wouldn't be right to put it in the garage, anyway, so we guard the wedding cabinet using the high-tech method of taking the piano bench and the round table and laying them down in front of it, a giant barricade that completely fails to slow down Mr F, who likes to open and close doors, hard, to hear the bang! they make. Mr F frequently gets into the wedding cabinet doors, which make a satisfying glassy sound. He hasn't yet noticed that every single thing inside that cabinet is breakable, but it's only a matter of time.

While I was cleaning up last night, Mr F got into the wedding cabinet, and I got him out and tried to distract him from that by dropping him on the couch. That's "The Treatment," a game he and Mr Bunches like. In "The Treatment," I hold them and swing them back and forth and say "1... 2... Treatment!" and then drop them on the couch.

And, yes, "The Treatment" is a lot like "Cloverfield," but there are subtle differences that experts will note. Differences like: In "Cloverfield," I'm a monster, who walks around roaring Cloverfield! and then picking them up and dropping them on the couch, while in The Treatment, I am just Daddy, or sometimes Dr Slider, and I do not roar, but I do count. Cloverfield The Monster would never count. He's a monster.

"The Treatment" did not work on Mr F, who headed back to the wedding cabinet, so I took the next most logical step, which was to strip him down to his diaper. You would have to live in our house for a while to understand why that was the next most logical step, but it was. And it worked: soon, Mr F was down to his diaper and we were hollering, as he ran by, "Woo-hoo!" which is what we do when nearly-naked two-year-olds run around our house. (We even call it "Woo-hooing." "Do you want to woo-hoo?" we'll ask the Babies!, who will answer with "guck.")

Then, Mr Bunches wanted in on the Woo-Hooing, so he came over to me and I stripped him down to his diaper, too, but that wasn't enough: he wanted the diaper off.

So I put my foot down. As he pulled at his diaper and looked up at me and made pleading noises that were kind of like words but not really, I said: "No. You've got to leave the diaper on."

He pulled at it more and pulled at my leg.

"No," I said, firmly. "The diaper stays on."

He whined a little, looked sad, and pulled at his diaper, forlornly. So I caved in and said "Fine," and stripped the diaper off, which Sweetie might have objected to but it was my day to be in charge, so she didn't say anything other than that I sure am a pushover, and I then stripped off Mr F's diaper, too, letting them run around naked while we continued cleaning. I figured, they'll get some naked woo-hooing in before their bath, and I can get this cleaned up so that we can just relax," and I went back to cleaning the blender, but within about two minutes, I heard Sweetie yelling that Mr Bunches was pooping, and I rushed out there to see Mr Bunches by the Only Surviving Plant, with Sweetie holding a magazine under his butt.

I picked up Mr Bunches, who looked surprised, and held him at arm's length as we went through the kitchen, where he dropped part of the load and I stepped in it, forcing me to stop and hold Mr Bunches in one arm while I took off the now-needed-to-be-burned sock, at which point Mr Bunches got terribly upset and started crying, so I got the sock off, and got him upstairs into his room and sitting on the potty chair.

By then, Mr Bunches was thoroughly upset and was bawling, and I didn't want him to form some kind of permanent negative pooping attitude -- what if he ended up always being constipated because he was worried that if he pooped he'd get scooped up and whisked around? What if he went crazy because he was so scared of pooping? How would that affect my plans to have him and Mr F star in their own show on Disney so that I can retire? -- so to fix that, I told him it was okay, and then when that didn't work, I cheered.

"Yay!" I said, and started clapping. He looked surprised, but stopped crying and looked at me. "Yay!" I said again, and cheered some more. "What a good boy! Yay! Hooray! Good job!" and I kept clapping while he sniffled and then cheered up and then he gave me a hug.

We cleaned him up and then, still naked, I took him back downstairs to clean up the mess. I forewarned Sweetie and Middle to cheer for him, too, so Mr Bunches walked, naked, into the kitchen, to a standing ovation of Mommy and his sister clapping and cheering, while Mr F looked a little jealous, like he was wondering if he should poop, too.

With a lot of bleach, we got the floor clean, and we got the Babies! up to their bath and got them dressed, and spent the rest of St. Nick's Night playing The Tackle Game and watching their new movies they'd gotten for St. Nick's Day, and I had learned a valuable lesson, which was this:

Next time, put more ice cream into the smoothie.

Part 21C: As usual, things go from bad to worse.

2012-01-18T04:34:00.000-08:00

"Let go of me," I said.

He pushed me back on the bed, his leering face only inches from mine. "No," he breathed. "Do you know what I've been through? I've literally been to Hell, died, had my body reconstructed into this monstrosity," and he pointed down at himself, "All to search for what is rightfully mine."

He paused.

"You."

Another pause, as he loomed over me.

"You, you are mine."

"I got that," I told him, trying to sound braver than I was feeling. He was lying on top of me and was heavier than I felt I could move.

"I created you, Rachel. Not literally. I did not myself carve up the women who would become your parts. I did not myself go and kidnap you from that concert. I did not drag your unconscious body down into the cellar where that mad idiot works doing things only he can do. I did not remove your chip and I did not pick out the limbs that would become the new you and then sew them together into this remarkably sexy package, binding them seamlessly by calling on energy from in between the dimensions."

He looked down at the stump of my left arm.

"Except for that one. I picked out that one, and that one in particular was the one that belonged to me." He stared back into my eyes and then put one of his hands, the one with the delicate nails, onto my breast, began kneading it and pulling it, roughly.

"Do you want to know why?" he asked.

"Don't touch me, please," I managed to whisper.

He took his hand and pushed harder against my breast, and I felt a cold sweat break out. Shifting his weight, he pressed his knee into my stomach, just below my ribcage.

"Don't tell me what to do, you lesbian zombie whore," he said, and my blood stopped in my veins at the threat in his voice.

With a tiny twitch of his weight, he pumped his knee into me. My breath whooofed out of me and tears sprang to my eyes and I gasped. He pinched my breast and then punched me in the face.

"Stop it!" Bridget yelled. I couldn't see her. I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath as my legs were roughly pushed apart.

"You don't know what resources went into creating you, all to have a body that could hold on to that hand and all because that hand was the final ingredient in controlling the thousands of slaves we created," Bridget's dad said.

"Don't do this, Daddy!" Bridget yelled again.

"SHUT HER UP!" Bridget's dad roared and punched me in the face again. Before I could even catch my breath he pushed his knee into my stomach again and I gasped again, feeling emptied of air entirely. His hands were pushing in between my thighs and I wanted to fight him, I did, but I couldn't even catch my breath and my lungs were so empty it caused me actual pain inside my chest.

I heard a crack of metal on a head and Bridget screamed and The Me's voice said "Don't do that!" and there was a scuffle sound as Bridget's dad's hand pushed into me and I tried to fight and he said:

"Don't fight me. You have lost the one thing you were created to keep and since this body belonged to others before it became your demon soulless shell, you shouldn't care what I do to it." He pushed his knee down again and my body felt like it was turned inside out as I struggled to breath. He punched the side of my head and I saw stars.

"I would kill you, but I need the body alive. I must make sure you understand never to oppose me again," he said, and viciously raked his nails over my inner thigh. I would have screamed but I couldn't even suck in air, as he was keeping his knee pushed into my stomach now.

I began to black out.

I felt his hands in me, inside my thighs and on my breasts and one pushing into my mouth and the room went all spinny and then a voice crackled through an intercom:

"It's not here!"

Bridget's dad stopped staring at my pussy and turned his terrible face back to look at mine. Through blurred tunnel vision, I saw him purse his lips.

"That is very bad for you," he said. "But worse for your lovers."

He punched me again in the face, and said: "Kill them."

what is 'the After'?

2012-01-12T07:04:00.001-08:00

the After on Prezi

the After is...

... everything you want it to be.

...a trap

...where all your friends and family wait for you

...frighteningly perfect

the After is my latest book: four years in the making, the After tells what happens to Saoirse following a plane crash that leaves her standing in her perfect kitchen with her perfect family in a perfect world that she cannot stand. Told by William Howard Taft -- yes, that William Howard Taft, who appears on her doorstep -- that she can leave, Saoirse sets off on her own travels through a world almost entirely of her making, trying to find out how to leave and to decide if she wants to.

If you ever wondered what comes next, the After is a must-read. Buy it on your Kindle for $0.99 or in paperback on Amazon.

Click here for a sneak preview of a portion of the book.

Part 21B: Bridget's Dad has ways of getting answers.

2012-01-11T06:44:00.000-08:00

Bridget's dad had not gotten better since the last time I saw him, which was when he was trying to saw my arm off in a basement somewhere.

In fact, he had gotten a lot worse. He was clearly Bridget's dad: I recognized his face and wouldn't forget it leering over me while he prepared to take my hand, but most of the rest of him appeared to be pieces of women poorly put together: he held his left hand, which was a dainty, dark-skinned hand with long nails, under his fat chin and rubbed at the third or fourth layer of lard as he stared at me, and then pointed his right hand, which was a stubby, mannish hand that didn't match his face or the other hand at me.

"Surprised to see me!" he demanded. It wasn't a question at all; over time, I eventually gathered that Bridget's dad was not used to asking questions, he was used to giving orders, and in this case it came through clearly that I was to be surprised to see him.

I didn't answer, and he didn't like that. He stormed over to me, and the Valkyrie guards, as though they could read his mind...

...which, I guess, they could...

... moved, one over to stand by him and loom over me with a spear, and the other off to her left to keep a better watch on all the people in the room.

The Valkyrie that stood by Bridget's dad held her spear right up against my chest, causing me to pull the blanket up a little tighter against it. I looked up at her.

"Why are you doing this? Aren't you supposed to worship me or something?"

"Don't talk," Bridget's dad ordered me. "Where is it?" he asked, then.

I stared at him.

"Answer me," he said.

"I don't want to," I said.

"Answer me," he said again, and flicked his eyes to the Valkyrie, who hesitated, and then poked her spear at the blanket.

"Ow!" I said, and the blanket dropped. I grabbed at it to pull it back up but Bridget's dad stuck out the neatly manicured hand and pulled it away from me. Up close, it became apparent to me that his lady-body didn't stop with his arms: he appeared to have breasts under his business coat.

"Answer me, or things will get worse," he said.

"Worse than what?" I asked. "Worse than being constantly kidnapped and shot at and sent to Hell and being chopped apart and disintegrated?"

There was a long silence, and then Bridget's dad said, in a very low whisper that somehow gave me the chills:

"Yes."

"Where is what?" I asked.

"Your left hand."

"I don't have it. It was stolen from me. By bubbles."

"The bubbles have it?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"I don't believe you."

I shrugged and reached for the blanket. He pulled it further away.

"Tell me the truth," he hissed. "Or I will make things bad for you."

"That is the truth," I said.

He looked to the Valkyrie again, and she poked me.

"Ow!" I said again, and looked at her. "Seriously! You have a statue of me on your planet. And you're poking me with that spear?"

She looked a little pained but didn't answer.

"Not all Valkyries worship you," Bridget's dad said. "You'll find the universes a far more complicated place than you can imagine."

"They already are," I mumbled, and rubbed my boob where the Valkyrie had poked it with the spear.

"Now, the hand." Bridget's dad went on. "Who did you give it to?"

"I told you, the bubbles took it from me."

"Liar!" he yelled, and the Valkyrie did something and the spear poked me and I felt this jolt of heat-ish red-ly energy and I slumped down for a second while the world spun around me.

"Don't!" yelled Bridget and The Me and Harper. When I looked up again, the other Valkyrie was standing in front of them, her back to me while her spear waved menacingly at the three of them. Ivanka was being held back by Harper.

"Where is it? Did you store it somewhere?" Bridget's dad asked again.

He put his hand on my leg.

"I said, the bubbles took it," I said through clenched teeth and he grabbed at my leg and pulled it, yelling "liar!" again and there was the jolt of energy again and suddenly I was lying on the bed, with Bridget's dad on top of me, holding down my wrists and staring into my face. That close, his eyes looked manic and his teeth were large and shiny and his face was sweaty and I could see bits of stubble growing from his chin.

"Tell me where it is," he said quietly, "Or I will rape you as the Valkyries torture and then kill your these four."

I stared into his eyes.

He leaned in closer and with his teeth, grabbed my upper lip.

"Shoot one," he mumbled, and bit my lip as hard as he could. I gasped and heard a shriek and a zaaaap! and something hit the floor and Bridget's dad pulled back on my lip. I struggled and tried to throw him off but he was stronger than I was, and he pressed one of his legs in between mine, forcing my legs apart.

Part of me wondered who had been shot and part of me wondered how I was going to get out of this and a different, smarter part of me said, through my bleeding lip: "It's in Harper's lab."

He sat up and looked at me.

"Say it again," he said.

The Valkyrie nearest us pressed her spear to my throat.

"It's in Harper's lab," I said. "She said that she would use the bubble-kidnapping as cover for removing it. Please don't hurt her."

"Go," Bridget's dad told the Valkyrie nearest us. "Go to the lab. Kill anyone you see on the way. Get that hand. If it's not there, tell me immediately."

He sat up and I was able to crane my head and see Harper, Bridget, and Ivanka standing there. I didn't see The Me.

"Where is she? Where is me?" I asked.

"You be quiet. We're not done yet, slut," Bridget's dad told me.

He put a hand down in between my legs and said: "Not done by a long shot."

Part 21A: This is the universes' most comfortable bed... not that it matters.

2011-12-11T09:19:00.001-08:00

I opened my eyes and tried to look around me.

I'm blind, I thought. I was certain my eyes were open, but I couldn't see anything. I panicked for just a second, and then noticed that I could see some things. There were shadowy shapes, mounds and edges and frizzes and things.

I realized I was in near-pitch-dark, and laid there quietly, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I'm not always real quick on the uptake, but I figure I'm getting better, and even if I wasn't, there's only so many times you can be kidnapped, tied up, shot, disintegrated, teleported, and whatnot before you start to become a little wary when you open your eyes in an unfamiliar place.

I wondered if I'd been asleep. Before, whenever I'd slept, I'd woken up in Hell, a bewildering predicament that meant, essentially, I never slept, because when my body was awake, I was in it, but when my body slept my ... soul, I guess, or me... went to Hell and was wide awake there.

As my eyes slowly got better at picking out detail, I tried to go back over how many days it'd been since I first woke up, there in that diner in New York. Keeping track of time is hard for me, not just because of all the blowing-me-up, etc., but also because of the fact that time moves differently in all these dimensions and so I might sleep one night in the "real" world where I woke up -- Earth Dimensioni -- but be alive for six weeks or longer in Hell.

By my quick count, it had been about 25 Earth Dimension days since I began walking south. In that time, I'd met and fallen in and out of love with Brigitte...

... was I really out of love with her? I shelved that and decided to think about that whole bag of monkeys later...

..and been to Valhalla, where I'd fallen in love with myself, and met my daughter, who somehow Brigitte had given birth to in that time and

And now I was dizzy. But I could see a little better and tried to figure out where I was.

There was a blanket over most of me. I could feel it on me: it was nice, nicer than any blanket I could remember, all soft and silky and just heavy enough to feel comforting without being smothering. I could go on and on about that blanket and how comfortable it was. I could write a poem about that blanket. I might, someday. But not now.

And not then, when I was waking up. I was naked under the blanket. I've been naked so much in my life that I hardly ever notice it anymore.

The bed I was laying on was huge. My arms were splayed out all over it, and I couldn't reach the edge. As I thought that, I realized that something was wrong with my left arm, and I tried to figure out what it was without moving or letting anyone know that I was awake.

I felt that last part was important because I knew there were people in the room. It was almost absolutely silent and almost completely dark, but there's no mistaking a room with more than one person in it from a room that's empty but for yourself. I was lying naked in a giant (but supercomfortable!) bed in the middle of a large, dark room with more than one other person in there with me.

My left arm: I focused on it first, and realized that what was weird about it was that about 1/3 of it was missing.

It was taken.

The Bubbles took it. I remembered that and the disintegration and those weird flashes of other lives and people.

Something in the room moved.

My eyes were open, of course, and I flicked them over to where I heard the movement. It was sort of a swishing sound, very light and soft and instantly over.

I wondered if the people in the room could see that my eyes were open. Was I a prisoner? Maybe Harper had reconstituted me and I was simply sleeping it off, and these were guards or doctors or something.

You'll understand if I was skeptical of that. If most of the time when you woke up you were in some sort of peril or other, people shooting at you or trying to cut you apart or grab you with giant tentacles, then, even when you wake up in what by all accounts was probably the universes' most comfortable bed you don't automatically assume that things are okay.

Off to the other side I heard something, too. Another slight movement.

Then a shhh!

Then a whispered: Sorry!

Then this: Why did you talk? Use telepathy!

Then: Why did you talk?

Then silence again.

I wished I had some powers of some sort. But the only thing I've ever been able to do beyond simply living is not dying -- I'm really hard to kill, it seems -- and commanding my lesbian zombie army. The former seemed like it would be more helpful, and likelier, than the latter.

But, I reasoned, if they were going to kill me, why wouldn't they have done so?

And, I added to myself, if they were going to kill you, why put you in this supercomfortable bed?

Really, I can't say enough about that bed.

So I sat up and said "Why don't you turn on the lights?"

And they did and I was sorry instantly because I couldn't see all over again, and I said "Not so bright! You'll blind me!" and blinked a few times to adjust to the light but then they were off again and all I could see were spots.

I sighed.

"Maybe we could just have a little light," I suggested.

A small globe of light went on off to my left, and I was able to see around me.

I was in a bedroom, an opulently-laid out room with a giant bed with me in the middle of it. The bed, which was circular, lay in the center of the circular room, which had a domed-shape to it, so that off in the corners were couches and tubs and things that you would want to lie down on or in under the lower ceilings and here in the center were tables and chairs and the beds and a View-Or screen, a large one, and some mirrors and such.

And there were four people standing in front of me. I recognized all of them: Ivanka was one. Brigitte was the other. Harper was the third, and The Me was the fourth.

None of them were the ones who had turned on the lights, or spoken. They were all bound and gagged and staring at me, wide-eyed.

Behind them stood Brigitte's father, with two Valkyrie guards pointing their spears at the prisoners.

And at me.

Part 21: Falling Into Bridget's Dad's Clutches.

2011-12-11T09:17:00.001-08:00

Part 21:

21A: This is the universes' most comfortable bed... not that it matters.

21B: Bridget's Dad has ways of making you talk.

21C: As usual, things go from bad to worse.

21D: Help From An Unlikely Source.

21E: Have a nice fall!

Science is not my strong suit. Luckily, someone else is handling it for me.

2011-12-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

If you read "Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World!" regularly (and why would you NOT? It's an awesome story), then you know that the science is...

... how can I say this?

...not accurate.

Not really. I mean, I'm sure that if you were to have a universe made up of 73 overlapping dimensions populated by Valkyries and reassembled sexy zombie lesbian slaves and little blue men and all, that the science would work then, but in our world, that kind of thing isn't possible.

Yet.

But it might be someday, and when it is, I'll be among the first to know, because I regularly read the science and technology news from SciTech Daily.

This is one of the few sites I have bookmarked on my daily-to-read list, and I love it. It's got all the latest science news. Today, for example, there's an article about the missing moon rocks, a virus that kills cancer, and self-cleaning glass, among the few articles I was able to read in the time I had.

That's enough to keep me coming back, but there's a few newer features that the site just added which I thought you ought to know about: they're now offering some discount coupons and promo codes so that when you get your science fix daily, you can also check out and see if there's anything you need or want and can save some money.

So they've got Expedia coupons and Travelocity coupons up now-- helpful in case you're planning on traveling for the holidays, or maybe surprising your family with a gift of a vacation. And if you give them that gift, they'll pretty much HAVE TO listen to you when you talk about that new Earth-like world they discovered. Quid pro quo.

Meanwhile, remember how all those bombs were dropped on "That Place That Used To Be Called Tampa?"

2011-11-20T08:27:00.000-08:00

Samson felt the wave underneath him begin to rise and rise and rise, until it rivaled what in the common minds would have been called a tidal wave -- most such waves, he knew, being not all that tall, but this wave-- this wave! It was a hundred feet tall if it was an inch and he was sucked up it as it rose underneath him, watching as the water dropped away below him as the fast-forwarding wore off.

He felt ragged and tired, more than tired, exhausted as the energy seeped out of him and he returned to regular time, the concussive force of the twenty-three (or more, he reminded himself, or more, I stopped counting) pounded most of the peninsula of what used to be Florida into powder that would be sucked away by this wave, which would likely end up swamping most of Central America.

The results would be devastating: a huge shift in landmass, flooding of some of the most-fertile regions of Earth, deaths in the millions just from the bombs and that didn't count the floods and famines, let alone the shift in tides and currents that might drastically disrupt weather patterns for years, causing too-cold winters and too-hot summers and too-dry climates... people would be dying left and right.

Samson shrugged to himself. That's war, he thought, and wished he had a sandwich. Fast-forwarding was so draining. He'd need food and fast, but first, he had to get off of this wave, and that didn't seem likely until he slammed into...

... he pictured his geography...

...Probably Nicaragua. He smiled to himself. Nobody had called in Nicaragua in a century or more, not since it had been bought out by that amusement park consortium and turned into the world's largest theme park. Going to be some wet vacationers in a couple hours he thought, but he didn't have a couple of hours.

Paddling up the wave was no good -- getting up and over it would simply leave him stranded in the ocean and he didn't dare set off a beacon because the Blues would find it and he wasn't sure whose side they were on, let alone who else might be out there looking for him or moving in now that they thought God was dead.

He wondered if God was dead. It'd be awfully hard to kill God, he reminded himself. Lord knows people have tried. Although that wasn't true: The Lord didn't know people had tried, not the way He was now.

Swimming over the wave is no good, swimming down it no good, my body'll never make it two hours to shorefall without calories soon and hitting the land will probably kill me, too.

Samson did not relish dying and going to Hell. It had been bad enough the last time. Now, with Reverend Tommy it might be a more hospitable place. Or not. He tried to remember if Reverend Tommy was still on their side, and he wondered whose side he was on anymore, at all.

Think, he reminded himself. Think think think think

"What?!" he said, suddenly, as he felt a rope circling about his neck. He quickly grabbed hold before the rope could become a noose and wedged his hand into the loop, keeping some breathing room as the rope pulled up and over and wrenched him through the wave. Gasping and struggling, he looked up and saw that he was dangling about a hundred feet below a Valkyrie flying towards the horizon. She'd lassoed him. Two others flew slightly behind her and he saw their spears leveled at him.

"Okay," he muttered. "That's one problem solved. Now about this one." He waved at the Valkyries, and one scowled and waggled her spear in what he immediately saw as a menacing manner. Nothing could wreck the view of a busty six-and-a-half-foot tall blond woman with spectacular thighs more than seeing her glare at him and threaten him with disintegration.

Which they can't do to me, he suddenly thought. They tried that on the ground. And I survived.

He wondered if he'd survive again, if he dared her to shoot him.

They're telepaths, he remembered, but he didn't know how far out their power reached. It must have some limits.

He looked up to see if they were reading his thoughts and stared in stunned silence as first one Valkyrie, then another, then the third, was shot through with a beam of pure blue light. Their horses continued, bewildered, for a few seconds before they, too, were shot, and as quickly as he'd been pulled from the waves, Samson was dropping out of the sky for the umpteenth time in just a few weeks, now surrounded by smoldering corpses of sexy naked women and their horses.

Part 20H: Back In Valhalla, Attacked By Bubbles

2011-10-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

Valkyrie spears, I know now, disintegrate things.

When Valkyries kill people, they don't just kill them and let their spirits, the energy-part of them that animates the flesh part of them, move to other dimensions. Maybe you knew that already, but I didn't.

Or maybe when I was alive-alive, when I was Rachel that pop star or whatever I was before I was all this, I knew that, too. I don't know how much of what's real anyone really knows. I mean, I know now that there are 73 dimensions and that God is alive and he's living in Tampa or at least he was until they blew up most of what used to be the southeastern United States even though it hadn't been called that for a long time, what with south and east only existing as historical concepts and "the United States" having been banned as a name.

(I knew those things because Doc told me them during one of our walks. Doc took seriously the need to educate me, and I know why that was, now, it was because when you're reborn as... well, as me you don't know anything and the whole plan was that I was supposed to know lots of things because, as Samson put it later on, "how the Hell else are you going to lead an army of lesbian zombies out of Hell and up to the Gates of Heaven?!")

That being part of the plan, of course.

I probably won't ever know whether that was all the plans, just like I won't ever know what I really knew before I became me -- which The Me says is the real me only I'm not so sure, because wasn't the real me what I was before that guy killed me and cut out my chip and cut up my body and sewed on that stolen left hand and then wasn't able to imprint me before Doc woke me up remotely and I walked back home?

The Me says not.

She would know. She's me, after all, too, in a way.

There's a lot of Me.

Sorry to ramble. Remembering being disintegrated does that to a person. Which is what I was talking about: disintegration. The Valkyries, according to what we know about them, are there to guide brave warriors to Valhalla where they spend the rest of their life fighting and partying. And, as usual, we here on Earth Dimension had it about 17 kinds of wrong. That's not what the Valkyries do at all. They see themselves more as dimensional policewoman, making sure that things go the way they're supposed to go, with spirits -- that energy part of us -- going where it ought to and not where some people send them or try to end up.

It's hard to explain, but that's why those chips work, after all: because we're all just energy, deep down inside, is what The Me says, and Brigitte said she was right, that that was the secret behind the lesbian zombies in the first place, why they worked: the Army, the one that Samson and Brigitte's dad worked for for a while, found out that they could, if they were really careful about it, let that energy go and then recapture it, treating our bodies as though they were batteries, but they needed a place to trap the spirits and keep them safe when the bodies weren't being used, so here's the really screwed up part: Ivanka told me this, that they invented Hell.

Invented it.

It wasn't one of the original 73 dimensions at all. It's still not. People talk about the 73 dimensions all the time and they don't even know that there's not 73. There's 74, and one of them is Hell and that was what messed it all up.

I'm rambling again. The Valkyries knew about Hell and knew what it was for and they began trying to do something about it and trying to rescue people who ended up there because Hell was messing everything up, sucking in spirits from all over the place, and the guys who made it lost control of it because it's pretty hard to control a whole dimension, and meanwhile, creating Hell was what let a lot of people suddenly realize that they could go from dimension to dimension and then one day a guy said something like "If Hell is just another dimension doesn't that mean Heaven is, too?"

And next thing you know, God's living in Tampa creating new creatures, like Fuzzy Bird, just for the heck of it because God likes being retired and isn't really interested in this war that now takes up pretty much every dimension.

So, back to the Valkyries. I get like this whenever I remember this part. That's probably an after effect of the disintegration. That's what Harper says. Harper's pretty smart. She also says that she didn't mean to disintegrate me but that she thought it was the only way, which makes what happened really weird, she said, because Harper had disintegrated a lot of people and was a little worried that this time it would be different.

What Harper expected was that she would disintegrate me. That would turn me into dust, she said, but we were on the Bubble Dimension, which is that Lattice-Planet that's currently locked next to Valhalla and Blue which is part of why the Bubbles were mad, because their dimension isn't supposed to be anywhere near there but it's their own fault because they'd come looking for me, after all. Anyway, Harper thought I'd get turned into quark-sized dust, quarks being the smallest elemental piece of matter, as everyone knows, and that ordinarily is the end because in any dimension but the Lattice Planet, those quarks get scattered pretty fast and you're gone and the thing about quarks is that for some reason when you break matter down that far, it doesn't let go of its energy, it keeps it and so if you disintegrate someone down to quarks, which is what Valkyrie spears do, then the energy that is them doesn't go anywhere else: it stays with all those little pieces and by scattering them you keep that person from going to any other dimension, which is what the Valkyries do to people they find screwing up the dimensions...

... things are going to go badly for Samson, if they ever get him...

... so Harper knows that, but Harper also knows a lot of other things, like how to reconstitute quarks, so she expected to blast me apart and then use her tuba-gun thing to suck me in, taking advantage of the fact that the Lattice Planet is a closed system and all my quarks would have been in there so she could get them all, then she'd take me back to reconstitute me on Valhalla and she'd be able to get Bubble out of me that way, because he'd be disintegrated, too, and I was so proud of Harper for thinking up that plan on the fly and recognizing what would happen when those Bubbles kidnapped me from the teleporter she'd invented (the Bubbles, I found out, weren't part of that at all: they'd set a trap because Bubbles can teleport all on their own), I was so proud of Harper that I didn't even get upset that most of her plan involved disintegrating me.

It just didn't work quite that way.

She blasted me with the spear, and I felt my body parts begin to separate -- not just my remaining arm and my legs and head but each individual bit of me, which was really weird -- the cells themselves all pushing away from each other and parts of the cells pushing away from each other, too, all in slow motion, it felt like, to me, the bits of me that were quarks all pushing away from the other bits of me that were quarks, trying to separate under the incredible force of a Valkyrie spear (one spear blast once blew up the other moon Earth had and accidentally killed the dinosaurs) but it didn't happen instantaneously, the way it should have. I don't think I was supposed to know it was happening.

Probably because Bubble was fighting so hard to keep me together because if I got blasted apart, he was going to, also, so he was using all the energy he had, too, and he had a lot of energy. Bubbles can create little tiny universes if they want, universes the size of, say, New York City, just by blowing themselves up, in what they call "A Mini Big Bang." Sometimes a Bubble will decide that he wants to make something out of the end of his life and will compress himself into a supernova bubble and explode and do just that. People sometimes stumble into those mini-universes where the leftover energy is evolving like crazy and new lifeforms are starting to come about. The Bubbles, of course, claim that a Master Bubble created this universe and all its dimensions, but the Godsters get really upset about that, and then Brigitte's dad goes around claiming he created it all, but nobody really believes that. Or almost nobody.

I kind of do, a little. He's scary, Brigitte's dad.

So Bubble fought against me being disintegrated and I was feeling all this energy jolting through me and then what happened next was the weirdest thing of all: I saw people.

I saw me as people, more rightly.

I saw me, as this lady, bending down to pick up a quarter on the street while I waited for a hoverbus. It was dark out and pretty hot and humid and I reached out my right hand, the one I have now, on this body, and I picked up the quarter, and I thought to myself "Well, that's something good from this day, maybe things will pick up now" and then I looked to my right and I saw that man who runs the diner and he was crying but then he held up a stunner and zapped me...

...and I saw me sleeping on a thin dorm room bed: I was just waking up and I was looking down at my naked chest, the breasts that I felt were a little too small always and it was the same chest I have now, but now it had a thin man's arm across it and at the end of the bed a holoposter was shifting into the film we'd seen last night on our date and I was wondering if the man next to me thought my body was too skinny, too, he hadn't seemed to last night, he'd really liked my breasts, judging by how much attention he'd paid to them, and I was thinking that later on we'd go to that diner, the one we'd walked by on the way home last night...

... and I saw my leg, my right leg, planting a foot onto a rock ledge and getting locked in there, I was making sure it was strong enough to hold me, and I braced it really good because free climbing is always tough but I felt the weight of a backpack on my shoulders and knew that it was loaded with guns and food and provisions for the next few weeks. I got my right foot braced in and looked up to find my next handhold. When I did, I saw Samson, wearing military gear, at the top of the wall, 10 feet above me. "I've got a special mission for you," he said, and drew a gun...

...and I saw my left leg, the foot bare and hurting and sore and pounding on the pavement. I was looking at it because I'd just stepped on something that hurt but there was no time for that, I was naked and running and screaming but nobody was around, it was the middle of the night and I was bleeding, I realized that I'd already been hurt and then I felt a stunner bolt hit me and I stumbled and fell and that diner man was standing over me. "I'm sorry," he said, and he was crying again and I tried to say "If you're sorry, why do you do this to me?" but I blacked out...

... and then I saw me, myself, my face: I was looking into a mirror and leaning on my elbow and staring at my eyes; I always think I have such beautiful eyes, and it was a shock because the me I saw in the mirror looked like me only in the head and my body was taller and fuller, really, a little more muscular and not as wiry. I was saying that I was bored, a little and maybe needed a break. "This gets old, you know?" I said, to someone over my shoulder, and I saw a glimpse of a man looking over at me and saying "Maybe something exciting will happen tonight" and I didn't want to not see that but then I saw...

... my left hand. I saw a tall, regal-looking woman. She was easily 7 feet tall, and built like three women, almost: muscular and busty, her breasts were as big as my head but seemed firmer than they ought to be. She had curvy hips, and a small waist, and was dressed in skimpy underwear, laying on a bed the size of a room, cushions and comforters and pillows everywhere. There was a woman lying next to her but I couldn't focus on that woman -- I could only see, really, this one, because I'd seen her before, in Hell, and I was seeing her and seeing what she saw at the same time, which was the weirdest thing. I saw her slowly sit up, listening, and I listened, too, and I heard a commotion in the hallway outside, and I sat up straighter just as she did and I watched as she/I listened more closely and recognized the sounds of fighting.

"So it's come," she said, and I said it with her, and I, she, we, reached out our left hand -- my now-stolen left hand which was hers, too, and tried to wake up our, my, her, lover next to us. "Trinka," we, she, I said, trying to have Trinka get up so we could escape, but Trinka grabbed our left hand, my left hand, her left hand and we turned, I turned, she turned and saw Trinka looking sad but determined, holding a slicer.

"I'm sorry, She," Trinka murmured, and cut off my left hand -- our left hand -- and then got up and ran just as the doors to our, my, her bedroom were exploded open.

My Generically-Titled Autism Post: Today, sleep disturbances, and why maybe melatonin isn't right for your kids.

2011-10-11T04:15:00.000-07:00

I used to call this "Autism Works," but then I found out there's a group called that already. (Find them here; I'll talk more about them in the future.) So while I think up a new title, I'll just go with the generic title. Click here for more posts like this with information about businesses, apps, people, and other aspects of raising a child with autism.)

It's 5:53 a.m., and I'm awake and working on my blogs instead of sleeping until... well, I'd usually only sleep until 6 a.m., so it's not that bad that I'm up, but still, I don't like losing that last 15 minutes of sleep on days like today, which began with Mr F and Mr Bunches both waking up at about 5:45 a.m.

Or, at least, that's when they woke me up. Mr Bunches woke me up by yelling "Dad!" and getting me in there to restart the movie he's currently watching ad infinitum ("Lilo & Stitch"), while Mr F had likely been awake for a lot longer, given that he was wide awake and tapping a stick against a wall to kill the time.

Mr F doesn't sleep. Or at least, not like we sleep. Sweetie and I joke that Mr F only sleeps every fourth day, and that's about right: Most nights, we can hear him in his room (which we keep locked to avoid him wandering around or getting out of the house at night) until well after we fall asleep, and many nights we can hear him around 2 or 3 a.m. wake up and begin his day. Then, about every fourth day, that catches up with him and he can't be woken up, as happened this past Sunday when he fell asleep on the couch from 4 to 5, then, after I gave him a bath to wake him up, he fell asleep again and then fell asleep in the car while we were driving around until finally we let him go to bed at 7 p.m.

So sleep is on my mind this week: Sleep and autism.

This study, "Sleep Problems In Autism: Prevalence, Cause, and Intervention", looked at just that problem. It noted that as many as 89% of autistic children exhibit some form of sleep disorder at one point, and summarized the types of problems:

Studies of sleep in children with autism have generally reported severe problems associated with sleep onset and maintenance. Irregular sleep–wake patterns, problems with sleep onset, poor sleep, early waking, and poor sleep routines have been found at all developmental levels, with increasing severity at lower developmental levels.

Additionally, shortened night sleep, alterations in sleep onset and wake times, night waking and irregular sleep patterns (with the presence of a free-running rhythm in one case) have been reported.

That's Mr F right there: all of them. The study concluded that autistic kids are more likely than any other group of children to have sleep problems and also concluded that it's likely due to something specific in the kids.

And it doesn't just cause dads to be awake before 6 a.m.; it also leads to problematic behavior during the daytime, including communications delays. Or, perhaps, the study notes, communications delays lead to sleep disturbances:

A relation between social and communication difﬁculties and sleep problems is possible. The sleep–wake cycle is a circadian rhythm and there is evidence to suggest that, as well as the light–dark cycle, humans use social cues to
entrain circadian rhythms.

Routine and social cues are thought to help young infants develop stable sleep–wake patterns with the longest sleep occurring during the night hours. Children with a primary social-communication deﬁcit may therefore ﬁnd it difﬁcult to use such cues to entrain their rhythms, resulting in problems with their sleep–wake schedule.

See? You didn't know that you know when to go to sleep because society tells you, did you? And autistic kids may not pick up on that.

The study also noted that melatonin deficits may be a problem, about which more in a minute. Another possible cause of sleep disturbance was increased anxiety, which makes me sad -- I don't like to think of Mr F and Mr Bunches being too nervous to sleep, but it seems to fit at least Mr F's personality. And, finally, there was some stuff about EEG's in sleep and REM sleep patterns.

Bottom line: We don't know why autistic people don't sleep well, which makes it kind of silly to recommend cures or interventions, but, then, we do lots of silly things, and the paper goes on to recommend some cures and interventions for something that we don't know the cause of.

To editorialize for a moment: Suggesting a solution for a problem without knowing the root cause of the problem is stabbing in the dark, or treating only a symptom, and either one may or may not be better than doing nothing. Consider an old joke:

Man: Doctor, my arm hurts when I go like this.

Doctor: Don't go like that.

That solves the problem, right? But it's not medical care. Or suppose a person shows up at the ER with a gunshot wound, and the doctor removes the bullet fragments and sews up the wound and sends the person on his way. Would you consider that an effective treatment? Or should the doctor have inquired how the bullet got there?

Just some thought experiments. Now, on to the solutions for the unknowable problem!

The study begins by noting that medications were the most common form of help for autistic kids with sleep problems -- but that about half of the parents questioned thought behavioral interventions worked just as well as medications. In our house, we've talked about medications at times for Mr F, and I downloaded the Autism Speaks Medication Decision Kit, a helpful packet that helps provide information and questions to guide you in a decision on whether or not to medicate your child-- for whatever problem. (Get it here.)

Using it, I decided (with Sweetie's help) that we wouldn't medicate Mr F, at least not yet -- because most of the medications listed don't have any clearcut effects on Mr F's conditions and some of them can have severe side effects. It seemed wrong to me to put a 5-year-old on strong antipsychotic medicines when he's not that much trouble.

If your child is on medication, or you've considered it, you should definitely get the kit and read it through. It raises a bunch of issues that I hadn't considered at all, and has helpful questions to ask your doctor, and yourself, about the medications.

Another attempted treatment was faded bedtimes, or moving bedtimes gradually to get the kids to sleep at the appropriate times. This was found to have little effect on the autistic children in the study, something I could've told them. (Currently, our routine is to begin bedtime at about 7:15, with the boys getting medicine, then a story read to them, then a bath, then bedtime with a movie on their TV. The movie on their TV is imperative: they will not sleep without a movie on, and we've learned to put movies in that have a continuous play feature, because the movie ending will frequently wake Mr Bunches up, and you haven't lived until you've been woken up every 87 minutes to restart a movie.)

Then there was parent training: Teach parents how to properly encourage good behavior (sleep) and discourage bad (not sleep.) Although only one family completed the 6-week program, that family reported reduced stress and slightly better sleep routines; I suspect the reduced stress came from parents being more able to cope with the stress through the training, but that's the cynic in me.

Then there's the one I might try: Light intervention:

Two additional treatments for sleep disorders which involve adjustment of the circadian sleep–wake cycle, are light therapy and chronotherapy. Light therapy may be used to treat a variety of rhythm problems, including sleep problems. Bright light suppresses the secretion of melatonin.

Additionally, it has been shown that periods of bright light treatment in the morning will advance the melatonin and sleep–wake rhythms, while bright light treatment in the evening has a delaying effect.

That is, show kids a light box in the morning to get them to sleep better at night, which might work for kids (like ours) who routinely wake up at 3 or 4 a.m., when it's dark out and then have trouble getting to sleep at night.

Finally, melatonin, which almost everyone we talk to treats as a panacea for this problem. At the boys' 5-year-checkup, Sweetie asked the doctor whether it was okay to take melatonin for their sleep, and he approved it: 1 mg each night, he said.

The first melatonin we were able to find was tablets, which is a problem, because the boys won't take pills -- they won't even take medicine from a spoon or those little plastic cups; we have to put it in a syringe and squirt it into their mouths.

We addressed that by pounding the pills into a powder -- literally, I hammer them into a powder, because I'm not a 15th century chemist and don't have a mortar-and-pestle -- and then mix them in with some other liquid, ordinarily some ibuprofen or water; it works better with ibuprofen because they (oddly?) like the flavor of that. (Lately, they've had a cold, so they get the melatonin mixed in with their nighttime cold medicine.)

That worked okay until Mr Bunches saw me scraping the pills into the medicine and then didn't want to take the medicine, at all -- because he now knew it had pills in it and it grossed him out. So for a week we had to wrestle him into the medicine and risk him spitting it back out, until he cut his foot one day and I began telling him the medicine was to make his foot feel better, after which he took it.

(So at night, Mr Bunches will say "Medicine!" and when I say "Yes," he still sometimes says "My foot!" even though his foot is long since healed.)

We also got some of the Natrol liquid melatonin, which we thought would be easier to use than the crushed-powder pills, but the boys hated the flavor of it -- spitting it back out each time, so we've foregone that and every night I get out my hammer, medicine, tablets, and syringe and go to it.

But here's the thing:

I don't think it's working.

Mr F has been on melatonin for a month now, and so has Mr Bunches, and I've seen no real changes in their sleep patterns, at all. I'm not ready to call it quits yet, but I suspect that the melatonin is like the gluten-free diet and other fad remedies: Not exactly the catalyst for change, but it gets the credit for change when it happens, like an ineffective quarterback who wins the Super Bowl in spite of himself.

And here's the other thing: I'm not sure melatonin is a good thing, because I took it for a week or two; I've also suffered from insomnia most of my life and have had sleep problems off and on for the last few months, and so I took the same dose that the boys took for a few weeks, and I didn't like it: My sleep felt less restful, and I had more realistic dreams that left me feeling tired -- it was like I never slept, at all, even though Sweetie would swear I did.

So after two weeks, I stopped taking it entirely, and I won't go back.

Which makes me wonder about why I'm giving it to the boys, if it doesn't seem to work and I didn't like it. But I'm not ready to declare it a failure yet, because a month seems too short to really test it out... for the boys? I don't know what effect it's having on them; Mr F can't tell me "It gives me vivid waking dreams that make it feel like I never sleep," so I have to guess whether it's doing good, or bad, or nothing. 2 out of 3 of those say don't give it to them...

...These are the kinds of decisions you never even suspect you'll have to make. I'll let you know what I decide.

An alien invasion, you say? Well, THAT has never been done before! (RE: What You Said)

2011-10-07T07:56:00.000-07:00

Time again for comment roundup-- now featuring a Dane Cook joke, some great music, and, at the very end, my WHO TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER -- picking out the best comments on all my blogs and responding to them.

Before I go on, though, have you checked out:

IO17: humans have been overtaken by them, a race of aliens who came to what used to be Earth with two demands. Now, a century later, a second race of invaders has arrived to battle over what humanity has been, and what it will be. A horror/sci-fi classic in the making!

Click here to read it.

Now, on to your comments:

On my post "... (The I Should Have A Catchy Title For Posts Like This Post)" where I compared the Chargers' new brand of wine to the ultra-classy gnome bank San Diego offers on their website, Rogue Mutt pointed out that the Chargers don't just steal hope from their fans, they also take other teams' ideas:

Every year the Red Wings have a charity wine tasting party and one of their former players even has his own brand of wine. So the Chargers stole that idea from us! Not sure who stole the gnome from whom though.

I figure they stole the gnome from Travelocity, or from King Of The Hill:

My Off The Top Of My Head List of sci-fi stories that aren't Star Wars or Star Trek also caused Rogue to point out that I missed V and something called Silent Running

The top of my list would have been "V" (the original not the reboot I never watched) followed by Robotech (or Macross in Japan) and "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. And Transformers if that counts--there was a TV series, several actually.

What was "The Black Hole"? There was a "Robot Chicken" skit about a new Special Edition of The Black Hole and they just keep showing one of the stupid little robots like in the poster going down this corridor. "Action!!!" the announcer says, trying to make it sound exciting, which I take it it's not. Though when I think of that I think of that "Silent Running" movie where some guy was on board a spaceship with some plants and a couple of robots. Why hasn't anyone rebooted that yet? Oh right because we only care about rebooting stupid '80s movies, not stupid '70s movies. Then after I think of "Silent Running" the movie I think of the song "Silent Running" by Mike and the Mechanics that has nothing to do with the movie and actually sounds more like it should have been the theme song for "Red Dawn," the remake of which was made in Michigan and is due out at some point, or maybe it already came out and flopped. I have no idea.

When I get really bored at work I launch into these stream of consciousness comments.

I'm not sure how you get from V to Mike + The Mechanics, but I did think, when V was originally on TV, that the alien girl who turned out to be a lizard was hot, which then caused me to be rather confused because I was attracted to an alien lizard. Being a teen is hard!

Also, I researched it, because that's what I do, and she wasn't actually an alien at all; she was a teenager who sympathized with the aliens and got pregnant by one, which really makes her kind of a 1983 version of Bristol Palin, if you think about it. Her name was Blair Tefkin:

What's weird is that when I began writing this post, I didn't actually think it would be primarily about aliens invading the Earth, but let's role with that idea and move on to why Stephen Hayes thinks monkeys are better than people:

I never put much stock in the notion of monkeys randomly typing and eventually ending up penning Hamlet. It's like speculating on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Quite silly, but there's another issue to be addressed. Its quite possible that we humans need to create works of art because we're inferior to animals, who exist contentedly without the need for such things. In a perfect world there probably wouldn't be a need for art--it pains me to say. Monkeys, and all other animals, live in a perfect world provided we leave them alone. An argument can be made that this makes them superior to humans. If a monkey ever did peck out Shakespeare, I hope it would have the good sense to hit the delete button.

That was left on my post ranting about how a blogger claimed to have finally proven a thought experiment involving an infinite number of monkeys, and I never thought that my blogging, which is art, after all, proves that I'm inferior to monkeys, who don't feel the need to create art but will, at times, throw their poop at people.

Which is no reason to not own one, if you'll spare the double negative:

Anyway, hope you weren't thrown off by the fact that I didn't label that as NSFW, and also that it didn't really talk about owning a monkey at all. If there's one problem that plagues society, it's people mislabeling their pirated Dane Cook Youtube videos and making it hard for me to copy them here in a way that makes sense. That and Republicans.

Rogue Mutt commented on that same post by noting that Dark Matter is more than an ice cream flavor I'm inventing, it's also an Andrew Bird song:

So now you've got that going for you.

Author Michael Offutt made clear, in response to my post about going to Apple Fantasy Camp (SPOILER ALERT! It has nothing to do with Steve Jobs and instead has a lot to do with Macintoshes) that while Mr Rose was in the knife business, he was in the Understanding Allusions To John Irving Business:

I love aquariums. I had no idea you needed advanced tickets. It sounds like you learned a lot about apples...kinda like Homer Wells learned about Apples in the Cider House Rules. And yes...that's where Rogue's quote comes from in case you are wondering :)

See? Read my blogs and you will be fully-equipped to take part in society, provided that all you want to do in society is go to aquariums and read John Irving. Not at the same time. Well, you could, if you wanted to. I don't see why you couldn't, in fact.

That should be a thing: People Reading John Irving In Aquariums. That will be some more art I'll invent, since nobody has yet offered me a jillion dollars for the last art I invented.

Where were we? Oh, yeah: Alien invasions, and how Stephen Hayes managed to take my clever references to the Ship of Theseus philosophical question and make it all about seeing Dale Arden in skimpy clothing:

Aren't both of them derivative of Flash Gordon? If I had to pick between Star Trek and Star Wars, I'd pick Star Trek. I like the political ramifications of Star Trek while Star Wars is more of a comic book. But Star Wars has always had the better special effects.

That was in response to the way I managed to take Star Wars and Star Trek and deconstruct them down to "Jennifer Aniston as Slave Leia."

But I posted Slave Leia there, so here's Dale Arden:

In what really looks a lot like Slave Leia getup, doesn't it? You may be on to something, Stephen, but I have to point out that monkeys, for all their perfection, never thought to dress hot women up in metal bikinis, which proves that evolution works.

While I've been writing this, I went on to listen to Andrew Bird's Cataracts, because that's what I do, and I thought it worth sharing:

I like the whistle part. I once wrote a song, called If I Was Paul McCartney, that had a "Whistle Part Reprise" in it.

I'm not even kidding about that. You can hear the song here. And two other songs I wrote and played, because once I was going to be a rock star along with a famous writer. You could also get Big Mouth Frog t-shirts. I recommend listening to my song "The Big Mouth Frog Blues," too. It's awesome. Seriously. It is.

I'd also completely forgotten I put those online.

I should note that the line "What if I was Tom Brady/And I'd just won the Super Bowl" was written before VideoGate, and also that the point of the song was that it would change and always be the last person to win the Super Bowl. When it was first written, the line was "What if I was Brett Favre/and I'd just won the Super Bowl."

I should also note that I am correct, in that song, that the Pope is not allowed to date. I went to Catholic school for three years, after all.

On to more alien invasions, only not so much, as this is more of a "Kids Playing With Lockers" type of thing; my photo essay of Mr Bunches and Mr F messing around in the locker room at the health club turned out to be a glass-half-full moment for Anna:

your boys give me hope that having kids of my own someday won't be totally terrible ( :

Anna, having kids is supereasy. Provided that you also have a Sweetie to take care of them for you, leaving you free to do stuff like "take them to the park where they'll accidentally fall into a lake but it totally wasn't your fault".

Keep the comments coming! In closing, let's look at Rogue Mutt's unique insight into Colts football:

I bet that cheerleader could throw for more yards than Curtis Painter.

I'm guessing Rogue wasn't looking at her quarterback rating, if you know what I mean.*

*I actually don't know what I mean, there. But it sounded good.

Why don't you try reading, and commenting on...

The Best Of Everything: Our opinions are righter than yours: Everything you never thought you wanted to know about pop culture!

Nonsportsmanlike Conduct! The sports blog for people who hate sports and hate blogs.

AfterDark: Your home for great horror stories, now featuring "IO17," a sci-fi/horror story about what humanity might be.

Thinking The Lions: Make Life More Interesting! By reading how I live MY life!

Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World! In the future, everyone will eat squid jerky, and the fate of the 73 dimensions will rest on the slim sexy shoulders of Rachel, who once was a pop singer but now just might be the queen of the lesbian zombies.

You might also want to read:

SLCKismet: Author Michael Offut's blog features amazing gifs, excellent reviews of books, movies, and TV shows, and also lots of thoughts on writing and culture.

Every Other Writer Has A Blog, Why Can't I? Rogue Mutt blogs about writing and how you're doing it wrong, reviewing and how you're doing it wrong, movies and how they're wrong. He's grumpy, but he's also right.

[i like that]: Anna's blog recently featured brownies that may or may not have pop rocks, and also every day has an amazing sense of wonder and optimism. You can't read her blog without smiling the rest of the day.

The Chubby Chatterbox: Stephen Hayes is an award-winning illustrator who has written a paranormal romance, among other things, and whose blog makes you think about the details of things.

PERSON I RECOMMEND FOLLOWING ON TWITTER!

@forwardwithkurt:

The name of the #SarahPalin documentary was "The Undefeated". Well, I guess you can't be defeated if you don't run. Clever strategy.

Kurt Baron's a local (Madison) talk show host at WTDY. His couple of hours on the air each day bring a fresh spin to business, politics, and local life. Sure, he's wrong on the gun issue, but don't hold that against him.

Part 20G: Back In Valhalla, Attacked By Bubbles:

2011-10-06T04:39:00.000-07:00

With that, Bubble got me. Everything went black again, and then I felt like someone was holding on to me.

I felt my arms lift up, and I could see, but it was like looking through a telescope the wrong way: everything was small and distant and hard to make out. Harper was still there, and that horse, Stanley, but they looked so far away. I could see the electricity, still pulling me in.

In my head, I felt a sharp pinprick! of power and then my arms swung forward. They grabbed the barrel of the Tuba Engine Gun Harper was holding and pulled me towards her. I felt my legs swing up and kick at Harper and thought:

No!

And was surprised to hear my own thoughts echo around in my head: Nonononono until they faded away.

I was possessed.

By a Bubble.

Watching this little filmstrip scared me: My legs pushed Harper into Stanley, my right arm pulled the Tuba Gun away from her and then my legs pushed me back away from them as my arm, including the handless left arm, fumbled with the gun and tried to figure out how to aim it.

Harper is tough, though. She didn't waste a second, but pulled a spear out of a sling on her back and braced herself against Stanley.

"I'll use this, Mom. I will!"

It's not me, I tried to tell her. The thought bounced around my skull. The little pricks of electricity were coming faster and faster, and I realized that must be Bubble, ensconced in my brain and telling me what to do.

"Fight it, Mom!"

Don't bother

Came Bubble's thought. But I tried, anyway, without knowing how to fight: I watched as Bubble oriented the Tuba Gun and Harper leveled the spear at me, and I tried to concentrate: Get control of at least one thing, I thought, hearing one thing one thing one thing echo around, and I saw my hand reaching for the lever that fired the Tuba Gun.

One thing one thing one thing and I watched that hand. A whole hand was a lot to start with, so I focused on the thumb.

I concentrated on that thumb like nobody's business, willing it to be me again, and in the back of my mind realizing how ridiculous that was: I had no idea, really, if that thumb had ever been mine, or whose it was before I'd been taken apart and sewn back together like this, a ridiculous experiment in life, not really this or that or anything, not sure who I was at all, but suddenly I wanted that thumb to be me and be mine

And it was!

I got it, got control of my thumb, and knew it, and did the only thing I could think of: I stuck it up in the air, and it got hooked on a loop of coiled wire, and the hand got snagged, and couldn't pull the lever-trigger on the Tuba Gun.

Stop that

Bubble said.

No way way way way I thought back.

This is ridiculous. I am in charge here.

The pinpricks got faster and a little harder. I started feeling jolts of pain around my face and hands and arms.

That's me. I'm doing that. And I will make it worse.

In response, I hooked the thumb, now, and tried to hold onto the coiled wires.

This all took place in a second or two: The jolting pains got worse, and Bubble began yelling at me.

You are wrong to do this. They are getting away with the hand and we must get you to those who hired me.

You're not shooting my daughter daughter daughter I thought back.

Bubble gave me a last big zap but I saw Harper point the spear and say

"Careful, Mom! I'm sorry!" and it flashed light and I got shot by a Valkyrie spear.

Go on to the next part here.

Part 20F: Back in Valhalla, Attacked By Bubbles:

2011-09-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

"Mom?"

I tried to open my eyes, but couldn't.

"Mom?" I heard again. I wondered who would be calling me Mom and then realized it would have to be my daughter. What was her name again? Harper. That was it. Harper. Harper was my daughter and I'd only just met her when she'd rescued me from Hell and...

"Why can't I open my eyes?" I asked. My head hurt and my tongue felt heavy.

"You... what?" Harper asked.

"My eyes. I can't open my eyes," I said again. I tried to pinpoint where she was but couldn't figure it out. It seemed like she was moving from side to side.

"Mom, can you still hear me?" Harper's voice came, from behind me.

"Yes," I said, and then felt pain in my jaw, clamping it shut.

"I'm right here, Mom. Me and Stanley."

I couldn't figure out where here was. I still couldn't open my eyes.

"Where are you..." I tried to say, but as I said it, I heard what I was saying and I didn't say where are you at all. Instead, it came out:

那里您

And I was baffled.

"What?" Harper said again. Then I heard "Hang on, I'm going to try something."

I heard some clanking and muffled clicks-and-clacks. Then my ears felt stuffed with cotton.

"What'd you do?" I yelled out. It came out:

什么您做了

And I started to get scared. Then I realized that I couldn't feel my fingers or toes. Or my legs. Then I couldn't feel anything.

"Hang in there, Mom! I'm not going to let him do this to you!" Harper's voice sounded like it was coming from far far down in a well. A well filled with heavy blankets. And covered with a thick lid.

Do what? I wondered but I couldn't even talk -- I was just floating there, helplessly in the dark. What was going on?

Then there was a flash of blue, that lit up all the space behind my eyes and I could see and feel and hear again, and what I could see was the same hallway I'd been in before I blacked out -- hallway, tubeway, whatever, in the Bubble Lattice Planet. Harper was standing there holding some kind of complicated machine that looked like a cross between a tuba and a small engine, and there was a horse behind her. Both of them were, improbably, wearing space helmets and jet packs. The Tuba Gun or whatever it was was glowing blue and the light surrounded me. I looked down at my body and saw that I was enveloped in the blue haze and could feel every inch of me. I also saw that my left arm was still gone.

"MOM! Can you hear me? Are you in control?!" Harper yelled.

"Yes, I think I am," I said, and was relieved that my voice came out normal.

"Make your way towards me!" Harper yelled. "Here!" She tossed a link of what looked like an chain made of electricity my way, and it drifted into the blue haze. I grabbed it with my right hand and the horse -- that must be Stanley, I realized -- pulled back. I began to drift towards Harper, who kept the Tuba Gun pointed at me.

I was about five feet away when a series of spasms shook me. "What the..." I said, and looked down. My legs were kicking like frog legs, but I wasn't doing it.

"Fight it, Mom!" Harper yelled at me.

Then things went black again.

Don't fight me

I heard a tiny voice say.

I wanted to fight, but I didn't even know what I was fighting. I focused on trying to stop my legs from moving, then focused on trying to open my eyes.

"Keep holding on, Mom!" Harper said. "You're almost here."

Stop fighting me. It will only get worse.

"You said not to trust you," I said, realizing it was Bubble who was talking to me. "What are you doing?"

Taking control of you,

Bubble said.

Go on to the next part by clicking here.

Sweetie does not know these are my retirement plans. She thinks we have something called a "401(k)", whatever THAT is.

2011-09-24T07:00:00.001-07:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Straight Talk for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have often talked about my various retirement plans, which boil down to:

(A) Win the lottery.

(B) Hope that my comic book collection increases 1,000,000% in value.

Which really amounts to the same thing, and also, a $0.75 face-value issue of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #1 which increases 1,000,000% in value will be worth only $750,000, if my math is right (it almost certainly is not), which is hardly enough to buy that private island next to the one Keith Richards owns so that I can spend my golden years yelling “Hey! Zombie Keith Richards! Keep it down over there!”

That being my retirement dream.

I recently realized that one reason I will be 137 years old before I retire is because I spend a lot of money on my cell phone plan – at least double what I should be spending, and I realized that because I looked again at Straight Talk, the cell phone plan I mention from time to time that costs only $45 a month.

And it’s not some cheapo cell phone plan, either. Granted, it’s got funny commercials like this one:

But it’s a serious, real thing: No contracts, no credit checks, no activation or termination fees: just get a phone and go. And save money.

So their phones start at $10, and under $60 gets you a name-brand (Kyocera, Motorola, etc.) smart phone with touch screen and qwerty keyboards and even Android on Straight Talk… and that’s already way less than I paid for my phone because I’m a sucker and hadn’t heard from people like this:

I mean, if you KNOW about a plan like this,Call a friend, why don’t you, and say “Hey, get Everything you need in a phone for only $45 a month.”

And they mean EVERYTHING: unlimited text, talk, data, the works, all for $45 a month. Sure, they have plans as low as $15, and rollover minutes, and the like, but for $45 a month, which is like 1/3 of what I pay, you get to use everything as much as you want. I'd fall for that, Hook, line and sinker.

Here's some more info that convinced me:

All of which means, if I finally make that switch to Straight Talk, I might have a hope of realizing my retirement dream… and keeping that issue of Captain Carrot.

Part 20E: Back In Valhalla, Attacked By Bubbles.

2011-09-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

The inside of the Bubbles' Lattice-Planet was amazing.

I almost stopped fighting when I saw it, it was so beautiful and wondrous. The hallway that I'd pushed my way into was clear from the inside; outside it had been opaque but inside I could see through it and could see the world below me, a green world with bluish-green clouds surrounding it and looming larger.

Shot through the clear-pane tubes that I was now inside, though, were billions of tiny filament-like things, slender lines that glowed every color I'd ever learned and some I wouldn't learn for a hundred years, yet, colors like yellow and red and blue and unctur and zun, colors I didn't even realize were colors.

And the hallway was filled with the Electric Bubbles, not just green anymore but also coming in every possible colors, swirling around kaleidoscopically and flashing and pulsating and occasionally joining up together into shapes but other times drifting apart.

It was like being in the best hallucination ever, and the feelings! Oh, the feelings!

Electric Green Bubbles zapped people, but every color had a different feel to it: Blue bubbles were like little vibrations and red bubbles were hot and yellow bubbles were like cream being rubbed on your skin and the zun bubbles....

... oh, the zun bubbles. I'd have married them on the spot. Seriously. The zun bubbles were like an orgasm, emanating from wherever they touched you, and while there aren't many zun bubbles in the bubbleverse, as I learned, the bubbles use "not many" in a different way than we do, in part because there are, at last count, 1,274,923,193,034,940,749,495,372,010 bubbles. But they breed quickly, so that number may have gone up as I told you this.

So with that many bubbles, even if only 1 in a billion is zun colored, there's... well, a lot. And they were all around me, too, so that the moment I fell into the hall I was not only getting zapped and creamed and heated and cooled and shown flashes of my future (purple bubbles) and flashes of my past (brown bubbles) but I also felt, like, seventeen orgasms starting from not just in my pussy but also in my breasts and one in my head and one around my right knee...

...which is how I ended up curled into a fetal position, gasping for breath as the bubbles swarmed me, saying things like:

get her stop her grab the hand hold her down push her back out choke off her air we've got her helpless get her stop her grab the hand hold her down push her back out choke off her air we've got her helpless get her stop her grab the hand hold her down push her back out choke off her air we've got her helpless get her stop her grab the hand hold her down push her back out choke off her air we've got her helpless get her stop her grab the hand hold her down push her back out choke off her air we've got her helpless get her stop her grab the hand hold her down push her back out choke off her air we've got her helpless

And they did have me helpless. I was writhing around; it was weightless in the Lattice-Planet (which I only later learned was, in fact, the Bubbles' home dimension, and the only dimension anyone in the 73 dimensions has ever seen that can itself travel across the dimensions, probably because there are so many Electric Green Bubbles in it, that being the actual property the Green Bubbles bring to the Bubbleverse: They are dimension travelers and the electrical zaps are just a side-effect of that), and, weightless, I was gasping for breath and panting and otherwise coming, repeatedly, so as they were attacking me all I could do was have images of Bridget's tongue down between my legs, or my tongue on the breasts of The Me (I later figured that was the Bubbles' work, too) as I got wetter and wetter.

"No," I panted, as a wave of delight soaked my cunt. "Noooooo" but then it became "Don't stop" and I kind of curled up more and felt like I was both being fucked and fucking someone and I was inside them as they were inside me and we were both pushing our fingers and tongues whereever we possibly could, and my nipples got about as hard as they ever had, and I couldn't help myself, until I heard this big ripping cracking tearing sound and suddenly all the other feelings were replaced by pain, as the bubbles succeeded in pulling my left hand entirely off of me and they all left.

Every last one. They swarmed off of me and I was left floating in midair in that beautiful, and now-empty, Lattice-Planet, watching the frothing mix of Bubbles recede down the hallway. I looked at the stump of my left arm, glowing blue and pulsating, and I looked after them, and tried to go get them but I couldn't even push off anything. All the walls were about 10 feet from me.

Then the bubbles all disappeared, with my arm, around the corner and I was totally alone.

Or so I thought.

I told you not to go in here,

Came a tiny voice in my head.

"Who are you?"

I'm a bubble. I'd think you'd have figured that out.

"Well, yeah. I knew that. But who are you?"

I'm a bubble.

"Do you have a name?"

As I floated there, I tried to see through the Lattice-Planet to see if I could tell where all the bubbles had gone.

We don't have names.

"Well, what should I call you?"

I'm a bubble.

"Okay. Um. Bubble. Where'd they go?"

That way.

Without being able to see him, or where he was indicating, I knew where he meant: Straight ahead of me, then down an offshoot, into another tube that went sort of shimmy-clockwise to a spiral-y kind of network where they would hook into a big globe.

"How'd you do that?" Then I knew. "You're in my brain, aren't you?"

Yes

"Is that why they couldn't find you? I heard you arguing with them. They were trying to get you. So they couldn't get into my brain?"

No. Any of us could get into your brain. They couldn't get me at first because I was too powerful for them and kept killing anyone who came near me. I fought off the first 875,659,493,942 of them but then you came in here and they forgot all about me. I tried to tell you not to come in here.

"I heard you the first time."

I tried to swim in the zero-gravity and Bubble said:

That won't work. That's why they left you here. You can't move until you reach the edge, and you probably won't drift naturally to the edge for weeks.

"Weeks?"

Maybe longer.

"So what am I supposed to do? They're getting away with my left hand! And why do they WANT it?"
For the same reason everyone wants it. And also to give it back to its rightful owner so she can be reassembled.

"Rightful owner?"

You by now know that your body is not your own.

"Yeah. I got that."

I kept, this whole time, trying to move myself through the air, but the air was very thin and I couldn't hardly feel it as I swung my arms around. So I was mostly just floating there, trying to catch glimpses of the bubbles on the path I knew they would take.

"So whose body do I have?"

I don't know. I only know who your left hand belongs to. And that she wants it back. But other people want it, too.

"Because it's got power."

Lots.

"Do you know how I got this way?"

Yes. Virtually everyone you meet does.

"You DO? So you can tell me? How I got like this? I mean, I know some of it. I know who I was, because I told myself who I was and how this got started and all but that was it, then I got interrupted..." I trailed off as I thought about that. "... Does The Me know how I got this way?"
How should I know? I'm not a mind-reader. Other than being able to read the electrical impulses in your mind, I mean. But I've never been in The Me's mind. I can't tell you what she knows. But everyone knows everything about you. You are almost constantly being monitored by many many groups. Because of your importance.

"Nobody's watching me all the time. What about when I first left New York?"

There wasn't an answer at first, and then I had a clear image in my mind, almost as though he was there right at that moment: I saw Doc, looking at me through that opaque head of his.

"Damn," I said. "I trusted him."

Trust nobody.

"Except you?" I asked, smirking.

Especially not me

Bubble said, and I blacked out.

Go on to the next part by clicking here.

Autism Works: A (Phone) Call To Action

2011-09-15T04:59:00.000-07:00

Autism Works is a post I put on all my blogs, updating you on the latest information affecting people who are autistic or who know someone who is.

I would like you to make a phone call, and to keep making that phone call until you get through. But the phone call is not for me, it's for Mr F and Mr Bunches.

If you follow me on Twitter, you've already heard the gist of this, but it bears examination and repeating. At the bottom of this post, you'll find contact information to email Eric Cantor or call him, so if you know you already want to do this, go there and get that info. If you don't know why you should want to make a simple phone call, read on:

Here is my son, Mr. F. He was four years old when this video was shot:

Mr. F currently gets therapy 20-25 hours a week, in our house. So does his brother, Mr Bunches. They each have teachers and therapists come in every morning at 8:00, and stay until 11:20, when the boys each get on separate busses to go to their 4K classes for three hours. Two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the therapists come back from 3:00-5:30 p.m. There are two to four extra people in our house for 25 hours a week. At school, each of the boys has an aide that helps him in school. Mr Bunches' is part-time. Mr F's is full-time, by his side every second he's at school. They also have speech and occupational therapy, and used to get out-of-home occupational therapy until our insurance benefits ran out for the year.

The cost of just the in-home therapy per year is $50,000 per child. That doesn't count the school support services or the busses that take the boys to school or the ankle bracelet Mr F wears in case he wanders away or the sheriff's deputy who comes to our house once a month to check that the bracelet works.

All that effort is helping the boys learn to do things like talk. Many autistic people are nonverbal.

Mr F, for example, will say maybe 10 or 15 words. He understands what you say, but has trouble talking. When he wants something, he will use sign language and gestures, tapping his chest to say "I want" and taking your hand and pointing it to where he wants things. He, this summer, began being able to say I want but he can't pronounce the words yet. He says "Bo bo," which we know means I want.

He said a sentence the other day: He said "Bo bo GO." Which meant he wanted to go for a ride. It was the first sentence he'd ever said to me... after nearly 2,000 hours of intensive therapy and work. (It's not just teachers. We do it all the time, too. As I was typing this, Mr F wanted his breakfast, which is usually cheese puffs. Autistic kids are even pickier than other kids, in part because they are so sensitive to sensory issues we barely register, so they have to work at expanding their food groups. Before Mr F was allowed his cheese puffs, as part of his education, I had to make him choose between two alternatives [forcing him to communicate], then make him get the bowl out, and then tell me "I want cheese puffs," which he said as "bo bo" and pointing. To ensure that Mr F can someday take part in society, I have to make him work for his cheese puffs.)

Now on to what you can do:

Back in 2006, Congress passed the "Combating Autism Act." That bill -- passed by a pre-Tea Party Republican Congress and signed into law by the Republican Worst President ever -- set aside $924 million over 5 years to develop a strategic plan to expand and better coordinate the nation’s support for persons with autism and their families. It led to important research being started and promising new interventions.

Autism, as you may know, affects 1 in 70 boys, and the costs of supporting autistic individuals in society are $35,000,000,000 ($35 BILLION) per year. Interventions and cures allow autistic individuals to live fuller lives, with less costly supports (if any at all.)

The Combating Autism Act was the most comprehensive health measure ever passed. And it will now expire at the end of September, 2011, unless reauthorized.

That reauthorization is pending in the "Combating Autism Reauthorization Act," or CARA. CARA is almost halfway to becoming law: The Senate committee considering it just passed it unanimously and sent it to the full Senate.

But it has not yet been put up for a House vote, because of Eric Cantor.

Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, co-sponsored the bill in 2006. He is one of 113 House members of the Coalition for Autism Research and Education. He has taken part in "Walk Now for Autism Speaks" events.

But he won't even let this bill go to the floor for a vote.

Eric Cantor won't let America decide if autistic children should have a shot at a fuller life.

You can email Eric Cantor very easily by going to this site and filling out the form. It's a pre-written email that takes about a minute to fill out and send, and you won't get junked or spammed.

Or you can call Eric Cantor at 202-225-4000. I've got that number programmed into my cell phone, and called it 20+ times yesterday. It was busy during working hours, and after hours I was told I could not leave a message.

But I'm going to keep trying. Because if Mr F can work his way through counting to ten, I can certainly make a phone call, and so can you.

Call or email Eric Cantor and tell him to let the Combating Autism Reauthorization Act go to the House Floor for a vote!

Part 20D: Back in Valhalla, Attacked By Bubbles

2011-09-11T04:21:00.000-07:00

It really was a planet, of sorts, that hit me, but it wasn't the kind of planet that you think of as being a planet, really, in that it didn't look anything like a planet at all. It was just the size of one, I guess, more or less.

I'm getting confused. What hit me in the back looked like a collection of globes joined by lengthy passageways: Large round ball-shaped objects of every color (and varying sizes) with silver and white and black tubes running between them, stretching out to my left and right and above me and below me, and, when I was able to catch my breath and turn around, I could see they stretched off into the distance, too, as far as I could see.

It was like a giant lattice-work structure, drifting through space. I lay on the globe that I'd run into, or which had run into me, and tried to gather my wits about me.

"What is it?" I asked the Electric Green Bubbles.

Home
home
home

"You live here?" I asked, starting to take in just how vast this structure was. The globe/ball I was now lying on was larger than many of the buildings I'd seen in the brief time I remembered being in New York, and there were dozens of them within view of me, all of them linked by one or more tubes to each other.

Yes
yes
yes.

"Well, can we go inside?" I asked, testing whether I could kneel on the globe/ball. I could, and the Electric Green Bubbles coating me didn't stop me.

You are required to
You are required to
You are required to
...

"What was that?" I asked.

what was what?
what was what?
what was what?
...

"That!" I said, and looked around at the bubbles covering me. "I heard something. Mixed in with all your jillion little answers."

We must go inside
We must go inside
We must go inside
..

"There it was again!"

The Electric Green Bubbles murmured and whispered and I felt about a billion little more electrical jolts and I looked down at my hands and saw that the bubbles were moving furiously -- writhing all over me in some sort of wild motion or stir of currents, whipping back and forth and around and up and down.

(The feeling, I have to say, was incredible. I found it hard to breathe or even concentrate for a second. They were all over me. Everywhere. And I hadn't been alive all that long enough to get used to all those sensations that I was feeling. Like tiny electrical zapping bubbles on my nipples, running back and forth.)

(I wondered, briefly, if Brigitte would like it, or The Me, and then remembered where I was.)

"What's going on?" I asked.

Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
NothingNothingNothingNothingNothing
...
NothingNothingNothing
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing

I tried to watch the bubbles and concentrate on what I was hearing and I know I heard it again but a second round of voices broke in.

We have to get her inside
We have to get her inside
We have to get her inside
We have to get her inside
We have to get her inside
We have to get her inside

And I heard

We need the hand
We need the hand
We need the hand

And then the globe below me erupted in more tiny Electric Green Bubbles than I could have imagined existed, ever, and they began foaming out of these little cracks that appeared all over the surface, flowing up and onto me and over me, pulling and pushing and zapping and caressing, and I felt myself moved alone the globe. I couldn't move at all now, and I tried to keep watch on my left hand, which I saw had this extra-large globule of bubbles pushing and pulling and tearing at it. It was definitely separating from the rest of my body, even as they pulled me along to where I could see a larger fissure in the globe, the space they evidently intended to pull me into.

There was a chorus of voices all around.

Get her in there
Get her in there
Get her in there

Keep pulling
Keep pulling
Keep pulling

We'll be rewarded, finally
We'll be rewarded, finally
We'll be rewarded, finally

And then I heard it again:

...

The tiniest whisper.

We were at the fissure, and the first thing in there was my left hand. The bubbles pulled it into the crack, and I stopped moving, and I realized that they intended to only pull my left hand in.

With that, I began struggling wildly. If they pulled that hand off, something I didn't much care about except that I didn't want to be a freak, well, more of a freak, a freak with only one arm, they might leave me out here, I thought. I began to try, with my legs and arms, to push myself into the fissure.

I heard it again:

... what are you doing don't be crazy go the other way...

And then what would have been a roar but it was from tiny little bubbles

get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get itget it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it

But who do you listen to in that situation? Covered in Electric Green Bubbles floating on some cracking-open planet-sized jungle gym in outer space after being kidnapped from Valhalla, who's your best advisor there? I ignored them all and pushed my way inside the fissure.

Go on to the next part by clicking here.

Part 20C: Back In Valhalla Again, Attacked By Bubbles.

2011-09-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

this is part 20 of this ongoing story. Start at the beginning: read part 1 by clicking here. Or, maybe download the ENTIRE 500 pages so far, for free, on Scribd.

"Well, I'll never get tired of this," I said, and I kind of surprised myself with that reaction -- but before my sarcasm could be noted, and before I could let it sink in that there's only so many times someone can be sent to a different dimension or thrown into turmoil or ripped from this place into that place before it just doesn't seem as important anymore -- the Electric Green Bubbles wrapped all the way around me.

we are sorry we are sorry we are sorry

They said, and I could feel their little tingling charges all over me as they pulled tighter and tighter around me. I began to struggle against them as they enveloped me, but I couldn't do anything; I had no leverage as I drifted through space, and they simply wrapped around me almost like a second skin. In about a second they were all over me and were creeping up over the top of my head (I could feel it, like someone lifting up my hair) and onto my neck (where they were kind of soft and caress-y) and then

Into my mouth!

"Sto-" I started to say and they flowed into my mouth onto my tongue, shocking me and making my eyes momentarily flash open.

We are sorry again
We are sorry again
We are sorry again

They said but I didn't listen, I was trying to spit them out of my mouth and they were crawling into my nose, too, and up to my eyes, which I tried to keep open, until I realized they would probably electrocute my eyes if I did that so I quick squeezed my eyes shut but I was able to pull my hands up and try to pull them out of my mouth, which I did even as they said

It is the only way It is the only way It is the only way

"What only way?" I asked, my voice muffled because by then they had sealed in my mouth and I didn't want to let them back in by opening up my lips, plus they were over my ears. "I'm not going to let you kill me."

Trust us
Trust us
Trust us

The Electric Green Bubbles told me, and I didn't for a second. I kept pushing and pulling at them, my eyes closed, but everywhere I scraped at they just flowed over from my hands, which were covered by them, too.

This went on for a little bit, until I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere, and also the Electric Green Bubbles weren't doing anything to me; they were just there.

Cautiously, I stopped moving for a second, just drifting in space.

Nothing happened: just the by-now-I'm-used-to-it tingle of electricity all over my body, making it feel like every little hair was standing on end.

I wondered if I could open my eyes, but I didn't feel like that would be a good idea yet.

"Why are you doing this?" I said. Given everything else in my life, it didn't seem so weird to be having a conversation with bubbles in outer space.

To save your life To save your life To save your life

"By wrapping me up in ... in you and putting me into outerspace and pulling my arm half off?"

There was a pause and a shimmer went over me -- I felt this electrical pulse reverberate back and forth through all the bubbles.

I figured later that they were thinking.

outer space as you call it was an accident. So yes, wrapping you is to save your life.
outer space as you call it was an accident. So yes, wrapping you is to save your life.
outer space as you call it was an accident. So yes, wrapping you is to save your life.

"You're smothering me to save my life?" Even as I said it, I realized I was wrong; I wasn't being smothered. In fact, it wasn't even uncomfortable.

We are protecting you. We did not realize when we brought you home that you would not survive here without help. So we must seal you in to prevent your blood from boiling away.
We are protecting you. We did not realize when we brought you home that you would not survive here without help. So we must seal you in to prevent your blood from boiling away.
We are protecting you. We did not realize when we brought you home that you would not survive here without help. So we must seal you in to prevent your blood from boiling away.

That made sense. I wouldn't have maybe lasted so long floating in outer space. I may not feel pain, but things like vacuums could presumably still work on me.

But I'm not stupid. They didn't answer my whole question.

"And the arm?"

that was also to save your life. And to complete our mission. that was also to save your life. And to complete our mission. that was also to save your life. And to complete our mission.

"You have to rip off my arm to save my life?"

yes yes yes

"Explain," I said. "You're going to have to explain that to me."

I still hadn't opened my eyes, and wondered if I could do that.

you can open your eyes. we will not hurt them. you can open your eyes. we will not hurt them. you can open your eyes. we will not hurt them.

"You can read my mind?"

yes yes yes

"How?"
we are inside you and connected to all parts of you. Your mind, like anyone else's, works by transmitting electrical signals, which is how we work, as well. We can interpret them easily, having learned their language. we are inside you and connected to all parts of you. Your mind, like anyone else's, works by transmitting electrical signals, which is how we work, as well. We can interpret them easily, having learned their language. we are inside you and connected to all parts of you. Your mind, like anyone else's, works by transmitting electrical signals, which is how we work, as well. We can interpret them easily, having learned their language.

I sorted that for a while in my mind, and as I did so, I opened my eyes. The Electric Green Bubbles had been telling the truth, at least about that. They didn't shock my eyes. I was able to see, as they pulled back to make a kind of bubbly-mask over my face. Through it, I could see outer space again, and tried to look around. There wasn't much to see: off in the distance a few stars and other bright points of light but not much else.

"I don't know if I'm comfortable with you reading my mind."

We know that. We saw that you thought that a few moments ago but we cannot help it. We do what we must for our mission, but we do not want to hurt you if we do not have to. We are a peaceful people. We know that. We saw that you thought that a few moments ago but we cannot help it. We do what we must for our mission, but we do not want to hurt you if we do not have to. We are a peaceful people. We know that. We saw that you thought that a few moments ago but we cannot help it. We do what we must for our mission, but we do not want to hurt you if we do not have to. We are a peaceful people.

"People?"

In your terminology. In your terminology. In your terminology.

"So each of you is a separate... person?"

No. It's complicated. No. It's complicated. No. It's complicated.

"I guess so." I thought a moment. "What's your mission?"

The reaction was immediate - -there was an even stronger ripple of current all over me, the feeling of the bubbles growing tighter around me, and then the voices came back, somehow louder and stronger:

Classified. Classified. Classified. Classified. Classified. Classified. Classified.Classified.Classified. Classified.Classified.Classified.Classified.Classified.Classified.Classified!

I let that subside a bit, and wondered just briefly how I was able to breath in this bubble-suit, then decided it didn't matter. I couldn't die, so far as I knew, not the way people think of it, so I guess the important thing was to keep this body intact.

I realized something.

"You already told me that you needed to get my arm for the mission, so how can it be classified?"

I looked down at my arm as I said it, realizing that it was still kind of pulled apart and showing that blue-stitching glow. I wondered if I should pull it back together more, but didn't want to draw attention to it, then realized that by thinking about doing it I'd drawn attention to it, too (Is this what it's like to Share, I wondered? No privacy?) so I just tried to pull the arm back myself, but the Electric Green Bubbles, which had been doing that thinking thing with the currents rippling back and forth across me, suddenly stiffened and I couldn't move.

"What the!" I said. "Let me go! I need to put my arm back on!"

no. do not struggle. you are our prisoner. no. do not struggle. you are our prisoner. no. do not struggle. you are our prisoner.

"I'm your prisoner?" I said. "Hardly. What can you do to me?"

They didn't answer right away, but instead, I suddenly felt a terrible blow to my back, as though something the size of a planet had smashed into me from behind, full speed.

Part 20B: Back In Valhalla, Attacked By Bubbles.

2011-08-29T18:20:00.000-07:00

this is part 20 of this ongoing story. Start at the beginning: read part 1 by clicking here. Or, maybe download the ENTIRE 500 pages so far, for free, on Scribd.

So I tried to fight it, but how do you fight a collection of tiny green electric bubbles? I pulled back, but there really wasn't any way to brace my feet -- I still wasn't touching the bottom of the glass box, and it was kind of slippery, so my pulling had the opposite effect: I put my feet down and pulled back, and all that did was slide me down, underneath the Electric Green Bubbles, which pulled up on my left hand and lifted me back upright.

I was suddenly in the middle of them again and I felt a searing pain shoot through my left arm, and heard a ripping sound. I looked up and saw, just near my elbow on my forearm, a little seam appear -- a tiny bolt of glowing bluish light that was exactly like a sewing seam only it was made of light or energy.

And it was in my arm.

I heard more of the ripping sound and suddenly it hurt, which was terrible because I don't feel pain -- I haven't felt pain at all since I woke up in that diner except for that moment when my arm felt like it was being jabbed all over by spikes made of burning sharp knives and I saw the seam grow larger and heard the tearing sound and I screamed.

"Fight it, Mom!" Harper yelled over the sound of my voice screaming and the ripping, and I tried to push back, kicking and swinging at the Electric Green Bubbles, which coalesced on on me and began zapping me, more strongly this time. It wasn't erotic little tickles anymore; these zaps meant business and I felt them all over. It was like being dipped in a vat of electricity.

Which I suppose was what happened.

I kicked more wildly and screamed more wildly and pulled at my left hand even though I didn't have anything to brace with, and then had an idea. I swung my right hand up and grabbed my left wrist and held on to it.

That slowed the ripping, although there was still a bright blue seam glowing right near my elbow, and I could see a gap between my forearm and my elbow -- the Electric Green Bubbles flowing in there and trying to push the arm away while I pulled it back down and they zapped me more and more ferociously.

I couldn't see Harper or the lab anymore and couldn't tell what they were doing. I was yelling and grunting when I was being zapped and then suddenly I heard about a zillion voices all around me, tiny voices like this:

let go of it

But there were, like I said, too many of them. It was more like this:

let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of itlet go of itlet go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it let go of it

You get the point. The effect was that even though I knew each voice was almost too small to hear, they all added up, slightly overlapping: they weren't talking at exactly the same time.

"I won't" I told the voices.

You have to
You have to
You have to

I heard.

"No, I don't." I said.

You don't want it trust us
You don't want it trust us
You don't want it trust us

"I don't even know who you are!" I shouted and pulled harder on the arm. My arm, trying to push it back.

There was a flash of brighter green light and I heard Harper's voice but couldn't tell where it came from.

The bubbles suddenly pulled back and stopped tugging on the arm. They cleared away and stopped shocking me, although I noticed that a small amount of them was still wrapped around my left hand and kept working on freeing it. I kept pulling down with my right, fighting it, as I heard:

We are us
We are us
We are us

"We are who?" I demanded. "Show yourself! And stop these bubbles!" There was a particularly strong tug on the arm and I pulled back down more, only to make my feet float up. I was weightless, suddenly, and started to look around as I heard the voices again.

We are the bubbles
We are the bubbles
We are the bubbles

And that wasn't even the most surprising thing. The most surprising thing was that I was in outer space.

Go on to the next part by clicking here.

My phone is probably smarter than me.

2011-08-29T12:00:00.001-07:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Net10 for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

All right: Ask yourself this: You’re standing on the easternmost part of the U.S., which is… um… geography was never my strong suit… carry the one… let’s just say Chicago. And you need to call someone on the Westernmost part of the U.S., which is … um… also Chicago, but a Chicago that’s on the west coast. Call it Chicago 2: Electric Boogaloo.

What do you do?

If you’re smart, you make that call using Net10 Unlimited—look up the number you need on your smart phone, then call that person, and then send a text to me naming two actual cities that are on the East and West Coasts.

Net10 Unlimited can let you make that call, all the way from Chicago to Chicago 2, for less than you’re spending now per month on your cell phone. Using one of their phones from trusted manufacturers (Kyocera good enough for you? How about LG, Motorola, Samsung? See?), phones you get in the store than then activate online with no contracts and no credit checks (just go to: http://www.net10.com/ and set it up in about three clicks: pick your phone, activate your line start living), you just dial up the number and start talking.

And you can talk, text, or surf the web all you want with their $50-per-month unlimited talk/text/data plan. Or just buy the minutes you need for superlow charges, like $15 for 200 minutes. Or pay-as-you-go, rolling over your minutes each month. You choose, and you switch plans each month if you feel like it until you find one you like. With airtime able to be bought online, you’ll never run out.

But the big thing is that you can call nationwide – of even internationally – they’ve got long distance available to more than 75 countries for just about 15-cents per minute, with special “International Neighbors” programs for Canada and Mexico. So you don’t have to limit your calling to just Chicago 2; you can call other countries like… um…really, you’re making me do this? Like “Foreign Chicago.”

The phones are great – from simple phones for less than $15 to slider/touchscreen phones with full keyboards for under $60. Find out more on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

• http://twitter.com/#!/Net10_Wi…
• https://www.facebook.com/NET10…

Where you can find a Cute NET10 commercial. This lady liked what she saw, and likes her phone even better:

And so did this guy, a Real NET10 customer:

So you could be the next person so loving their Net10 service you record a commercial!

You could film it right there at home. In, um, Chicago?

Part 20A: Back in Valhalla, Attacked By Bubbles.

2011-08-28T05:41:00.000-07:00

this is part 20 of this ongoing story. Start at the beginning: read part 1 by clicking here. Or, maybe download the ENTIRE 500 pages so far, for free, on Scribd.

I thought for a moment we were back in the Void.

After all, I was weightless and everything was black around me. But there was wind, which hadn't been there before, and there was also a hand holding mine.

Harper's hand.

My daughter's hand.

"Mom, open your eyes!" I heard her yell, and I did.

We were in a glass box of some kind, a giant glass cube, floating in midair in it surrounded by a greenish kind of hazy energy that swirled around us like bubbles and, when they touched me, both tickled and zapped me a little.

Harper was floating next to me, and on her other side, visible through a break in the Electric Green Bubbles, was a horse wearing goggles and standing in front of a series of monitors.

"You can let go now," Harper said to me.

I did, and stared at her. The old lady who had said we go way forward was gone. There was a 12-year-old girl floating in midair with me, and as I let go of her hand she made some swimming motions and kicked a little, pushing herself down towards the bottom of the cube.

"You won't be able to actually touch the bottom but it's easier to get to the door if you're kind of walking," she said, looking up at me. Then she turned towards the horse.

"Any problems?"

The horse shook its head and said "Nope."

"Valhalla," I said. "We're back on Valhalla."

"Bingo," said Harper, moving her legs in a sort of skating motion that propelled her to the side. She disappeared into the Electric Green Bubbles for a moment, and I heard a crrrrachcak! sound -- or that's how I would spell it -- and saw some of the bubbles scoot outside. Then the sound came again, and I saw Harper outside the cube.

"You can't let them out," she said. "They disrupt stuff."

"Um. Okay," I said.

"Come on. Like I did," Harper motioned impatiently.

I paddled my arms and tried to reach the bottom. My feet suddenly wouldn't go any further down, but they weren't touching anything. I looked down. The Electric Green Bubbles swirled more and more around me down here, and I stared at them as they moved around in what I realized was not a random configuration.

"What is this stuff?" I asked.

As I said that, the Electric Green Bubbles suddenly pulled back from me, leaving me in a clearing around which they swirled, faster and faster.

"Harper?" I asked.

"Hang on!" I heard her holler. She said something a little lower, and the horse whinnied and said "We could try."

The swirling Electric Green Bubbles began to spin closer to me, and suddenly a frothy tendril whipped out, wrapping around my waist and caressing me up to my neck and head. It felt both weird and wonderful -- like a slightly tingly sponge bath would I imagined, with little staticky teases that made my nipples harden -- but it also scared me because it emphatically wasn't random.

"Harper?" I called again and tried to skate forward like she had.

"Got it," Harper called back but I couldn't see what she got.

The tendril of Electric Green Bubbles had left my neck and was now spinning around me, too, as the wall of the stuff closed in. There were more and more tendrils shooting out, poking at me, running over my head, touching my cheek, my ass, my feet, and it would have, honestly, felt wonderful if I wasn't so nervous about why this was happening.

There was a THWACK! and the bubbles stopped for a second, frozen exactly in place.

"Okay, Mom, come on out!" Harper called.

"Quickly," said the horse's voice.

I started that skating motion again, trying to remember where Harper had gone out the door.

But when I got to the Electric Green Bubbles themselves, I reached out my hand and touched them to try to clear a way, and it was my left hand, and the moment it touched the Bubbles, they leapt back into motion, coalescing around my hand, with a grip -- they'd stopped being fun and a little tingly and instead had mass and were clearly grabbing my left hand and pulling, while the rest of them swirled in a spiral-y shape up and to the right, so it looked as though a giant spring had come from a corner of the cube and grabbed my hand.

I could see Harper, but I was focused on my hand. I heard her yell something, and I said:

"What?!" and she said

"Try to hold your ground. It's pulling you out!"

"Out?" I asked. "Out where?"

"I don't know!" Harper yelled. "But fight it!"

Go on to the next part by clicking here.

Sure, this story is an accurate depiction of the future, but you're concerned about NOW, right?

2011-08-27T21:01:00.001-07:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Straight Talk for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

In the future, as you’ve seen in this story, everyone will eat Squid Jerky, and people will be able to “share” their emotions just by touching, and use their “Read-Or” units to keep in touch with others who are farther away.

But that’s the FUTURE. And in other dimensions. Or something. I haven’t worked it all out yet. The point is, we don’t yet have things like octopuses to keep us in communication, but we have something that’s about as good – and a whole lot cheaper than an interdimensional war among corporations: Straight Talk.

Straight Talk saves you money – just like Mom always told you to do, and mom knows best. Straight Talk saves you money by cutting the cost of your phone and cutting your cell phone bill – in half, even.

Begin with the phone: you can get a phone with an mp3 player and camera starting at just $10. Straight Talk has phones for kids, and phones for adults – smart phones with touch screens and Bluetooth, from reliable manufacturers like Kyocera, and Motorola. How much did you pay for YOUR phone? More than $10, I bet.

Then the signup: No activation fee. No credit check. No contracts. No surprise bills. You just buy your phone, activate, and you’re done.

Then the plans: Straight Talk can cut your bill in half, with things like the everything you need plan that gives you unlimited talk, text, and data for $45 a month. $45 a month! That’s about half of what most providers charge, and Straight Talk has great nationwide connectivity and coverage so you get service wherever you go. Plus, you’ll be saving money – so you can go buy all those things you’ve been wanting to get. Live a life of luxury!

Then the extras: Straight Talk has 411 calls at no extra charge. That’s free information! And you can use their cheaper international long distance from any phone you own, calling everyone, everywhere! (Service to all 73 dimensions not available yet. Just THIS dimension.)

It’s almost like this is BETTER than the future. You know, because you can use this now and nobody’s shooting at you, like in my story.

Here’s some more details from this guy:

And while you go call a friend and tell them about this deal, listen to this real customer:

Part 19D: Meanwhile, That Bomb Is About To Drop On What Will One Day Be Referred To As "That Place That Used To Be Tampa."

2011-08-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

New to this? I recommend starting at Part 1, here. Or reading the list of major characters, here.

"You're blowing me up?" Samson asked the Blue. "But our deal!"

The Blue shook its head again. Samson wondered if he'd met it before. Blues all looked the same -- and that wasn't being alienist it was being practical. Blues really did all look the same, and agreed, in their tiny, toylike, alien, way with anyone who said so. When asked how they told each other apart, every Blue Samson had ever met had said the same thing: Why do we have to?

"It's not ours." he said.

"Bull," Samson spit out and stood up, finally, pushing the last of the rubble from the wall away from him. "I've seen your bombs before and I know what that is. Speaking of which..." he realized that the bomb was less than a quarter-mile up and he had to do something. He fiddled around with his pockets inside his coat, until he found what he was looking for: a small red button, with an arrow on it.

He ripped his shirt open and put the button over his heart, looking at the Blue as he did so. "Tell me why you're bombing us," he said, pressing the button firmly onto his chest. He looked down to make sure the button was pointed to his left. He'd only once pointed it another direction, and that had not worked out so well. Always Left.

The Blue started to speak, but Samson had no time: He pushed the button on his chest.

Everything went black.

Then everything went white.

Then it went sort of a purplish-brown, although purists claim that the Fast Forward button ends with a sort of mauve haze, if done right.

Samson didn't care. The Blue was talking, and Samson's Fast Forwarded ears heard him in slow motion.

"Noooooooootttttttttttttt" the Blue moaned, its voice lowered by the difference in the way time flowed around each of them as Samson scooped him up and ran.

The Fast Forward button, he knew, would last about five minutes of his time, now, but his time was not the rest of the world's time. The button, activated by the Sharing circuits in his skin and his biomechanical energy, slowed down his time, allowing him to move with what appeared, to others, to be super-speed. So many soldiers had died, trying to supercharge them, he remembered, but the body -- at least human bodies, still all together -- could not bear that kind of stress and so the men would explode or melt or sometimes disintegrate, the latter being the worst because each cell of the man would be sentient and alive and screaming until put out of its misery, and then one day someone had said "Why don't we just slow down time instead of speeding up the men," and they'd worked out the kinks to slow down time just for the person wearing the button, and it was called the Fast Forward button because that made sense, even though it didn't do anything of the sort.

And he remembered all that in what would have seemed to the Blue to be about a millisecond, and what to Samson was about thirty seconds, during which time the Blue had said:

"Oooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" meaning "our"

and Samson had run away from the immediate environs of God's house. He was breathing heavily, moving at a steady jog, and looked back over his shoulder to see that the bomb he'd first noticed had dropped a little in the sky.

"What's the blast radius?" he asked the Blue, who just looked at him.

Damn. The Fast Forward button made it impossible to communicate with others, who couldn't understand his words in the time lag.

"Ffffffffffffffffffffffffiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsssssssssssssssssssssssttttttttttttttttttttt" the Blue said, a word Samson recognized as first, and was trying to puzzle that out while he tried to do the calculus that would let him know just how much time he had to get away from the bombs that were falling, for he could see that there were, indeed, bombs, as he looked around while he jogged.

Two minutes of my time, now, he thought translates to what in real time? But he couldn't do the math, and he settled for noting that there were two different kinds of bombs falling, ticking slowly through the sky, easily perceived by him from this relative vantage point, and that's when what the Blue said made sense.

"Not yours first," Samson said to him. The Blue didn't understand. Samson was at the ocean's edge. He ran along the shore and looked for a hydrofoil, submarine, something. He tried to remember how to get a Fast Forward button to work on machinery, couldn't think how, and instead settled for wading into the water still holding the Blue, who didn't struggle at all, as it didn't need to breathe.

The water flung out from Samson in huge sparkling sheets, driven not by the force of his entry but by the ragged interaction between his time and its, and he was up to his shoulders and then swimming, leaving a flume behind him, the Blue having climbed up onto his head again. He risked stopping, looking back.

One, two, three, he counted bombs, stopping when he reached twenty-three, all of them not more than a hundred yards over the ground now. The Fast Forward button on his chest was flashing. He dove underwater, paddling down as hard and fast as he could, holding his breath and feeling his pulse pound in his ears.

The concussion of all those bombs, when it came, pushed the ocean bottom up underneath him as he swam along it, and he felt the swell of the water begin to carry him even faster than he could react.

Go to the next part by clicking here.

I'll just say it: The video made me cry (Autism Works)

2011-08-20T06:30:00.000-07:00

This time around:

-- Project Lifesaver may be having problems,

-- the Autism Society of Greater Madison golfs,

-- college for people on the spectrum,

-- and a review of a semi-autism-friendly business,

but first this:

That's from "Lou's Land," and I had to stop watching it halfway through and then watch it in pieces because it hit home, especially the part about "discovering a new normal." I won't take away from Lou's story by telling my own here; I'll just say that I understand exactly what he means and I've bookmarked his blog. You should, too. You can't help someone unless you try to understand what they've going through, and blogs like Lou's can assist you in knowing what it's like to live with autism.

On to happier, more hopeful things, like college for autistic people. The Autism Speaks official blog has a post on helping students on the spectrum achieve in college, pointing out something that I didn't know -- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that colleges make reasonable accommodations to people with learning disabilities, including (but not limited t0) autism spectrum disorders. The protections and services aren't as aggressive as those for kids in high school and lower (provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA]) but they're there and may help kids on the spectrum get into and through college. Autism Speaks has some pointers and links for more information, but the school counselors can provide information, as well.

Update on Project Lifesaver: On August 7, I mentioned elopement and wandering and recommended "Project Lifesaver," a program that fits wanderers with GPS-enabled bracelets.

On August 16, we got a letter from the Dane County Sheriff's Office that raised concerns about this program. The letter says the office "has been experiencing significant equipment failures with many of our Project Lifesaver clients" including the "lack of any transmitted signal," which, of course is the whole point of the bracelet. The letter concluded that:

Without reliable and operating equipment in addition to the lack of support from Project Lifesaver International, the program does not meet the standards of the Dane County Sheriff's Office... the Dane County Sheriff's Office will not longer implement the program.

The Dane County Sheriff's Office will try to find a substitute program; if you have a friend or relative on Project Lifesaver, please pass this on to him or her, and don't trust the equipment. (We haven't; Mr F still doesn't get to go outside alone and we keep all our windows and doors double-locked.)

Business Review: We took our kids to get their annual photos -- Sweetie starts planning her Christmas cards around June, and the annual Christmas card photo is usually taken in August. We don't go anywhere fancy -- just to the Sears Photo Studio at the West Towne Mall in Madison, Wisconsin, and they're generally pretty good there.

It's hard to get some kids on the spectrum to sit still for anything, let alone pictures taken by a strange person. When we took the twins for haircuts last spring, for a week before their teachers played "hair cut" with them, telling them social stories about getting hair cut (social stories are stories designed to teach autistic kids social skills) and pretending to cut their hair, and it worked great; the boys sat still during their hair cuts and Mr Bunches actually enjoyed it. (Mr F still cried, but quietly and sitting, instead of hollering and trying to escape like he used to.)

We tried the same thing with pictures -- for two weeks before, each therapy session ended with the therapists posing the boys and taking their picture with our camera, just like a photo studio, and those sessions went well. The actual day of the photos, we had a bit more trouble.

We arrived about 10 minutes early, and had to wait about 15 minutes later than our appointment, which was problematic. While no business can entirely control their schedule, waiting with autistic kids is trouble, because we'd taken the time to have the boys tired out a bit by playing (another strategy the therapists had recommended), but that doesn't work so well if they then rest up.

Mr F was also upset because -- something you never think about until you're with an autistic kid -- we'd walked through the store to get to the studio, and the store was full of clothing hangers, which Mr F likes. I try to discourage him from simply taking a hanger as we walk through the store, so by the time we reached the pictures, he was disgruntled and getting upset.

(The worker didn't mind that we then borrowed a hanger from a nearby department, which helped calm him down.)

Once we actually got the pictures going, the photographer was great -- she followed our instructions on what order to take the pictures in (get the little ones done first) and followed our instructions to just start snapping pictures, not worrying about whether kids were sitting correctly or facing the camera or smiling.

About 10 minutes of photos later, we had some of the best ones yet. So other than making us wait (even though we'd reminded the woman when we made the appointment that the boys were autistic) the trip went reasonably well.

Golf Outing: If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I began volunteering with the Autism Society of Greater Madison (ASGM) last night; my first volunteer effort was helping out at their annual golf outing, "Golf FORE Autism" at the George Vitense Golfland:

I was there from 6-8:30 p.m., helping people navigate the mini-golf course and then helping move tables around. Several area businesses including NBC 15 sent teams out to play in the par-3 midnight golf outing, and while I had to leave before the night was over, it seemed like everyone was having a great time.

ASGM is the oldest autism chapter in the country, and chaired by David George of NBC 15; if you are interested in the many events they sponsor or are looking for help beginning to navigate the world of autism, go to their site.

Autism Works is an across-all-my-blogs post that attempts to spread information about resources, businesses, apps, and other things of interest to people who have autism or have a relative who is autistic. If you have information to share, leave a comment or Email me ; please put "autism works" in the subject line.

Just walking around, looking around? (Autism Works)

2011-08-08T04:51:00.000-07:00

Autism Works is a post I put at the same time on all my blogs to help people learn about places, people, and things that help special-needs individuals.

A study this week examined "elopement and wandering" in autistic people, which sounds a lot more fun and/or romantic than it is, since "elopement and wandering" is running away, something we actually are quite familiar with, as Mr F is a wanderer.

Mr F has always run away -- from when he was able to walk, he'd take off if you let him. We'd go to the park and one or the other of us had to constantly be taking off after Mr F to bring him back to where he's supposed to be.

Wandering was described in the study as the tendency to bolt, or to simply leave a safe place without being told or allowed to do so. While all kids tend to wander away now and then (I got lost at the State Fair when I was about 5 or 6), kids on the autism spectrum do so at a rate of 4-8 times their unaffected peers:

What makes wandering so problematic is that in the case of kids like Mr F and many others with autism, they have only limited communications skills -- so when found, they can't tell people who they are or where they're from. Add to that the fact that many autistic kids don't appreciate fear the way other people do -- neither Mr F nor Mr Bunches are particularly afraid of traffic, for example -- and you've got a recipe for disaster -- like the 4-year-old autistic boy whose body was found in a pond.

There's a program called Project Lifesaver International that can help with this. Project Lifesaver, working with local law enforcement agencies, fits a bracelet on the child's ankle or wrist. That bracelet has a tracking unit in it that can be quickly located if the child wanders away, providing some peace of mind for the parents. It's not a replacement for precuations -- we've got all our windows locked securely shut, and put extra locks up out of reach on doors that lead to the outside -- but it's a nice backup.

Each day, the parents have to check the battery in the bracelet to make sure it's working (there's a little tester) and record the results. The bracelet is removable, but it's tough to do and eventually the kids seem to get used to it. (Mr F got it off just once, and hasn't really tried since then.) It's also fairly unobtrusive; Mr F's is on his ankle, and sometimes kids notice it, but mostly they don't seem to see it. (He's wearing one in that picture above. Obviously, it's more hidden during pants season.)

I wasn't able to find much information about charges. Around us (Dane County, Wisconsin) we haven't been asked to pay anything; the local PD administers the program. The website says that Project Lifesaver has no agency membership fees. It may be that other local law enforcement agencies charge fees; I don't know. If your local law enforcement agency isn't enrolled in Project Lifesaver, they can get information here to sign up.

And now for something a little more fun:

That's Mr F, enjoying his "therapy swing." The swing-as-therapy was something that the occupational therapists the twins go to used quite a bit; their "therapy" rooms looked a lot like playgrounds. The boys used to go to OT every Tuesday before the insurance coverage lapsed and we had to stop for the year (that's why single-payer health care is so important: nobody should be forced to choose between groceries and necessary health care) and Mr F was making great strides there, so we purchased our own swing for use in our house.

"Therapy swings" are available at a variety of locations -- but be careful and shop around. There's what I think of as a gray market for autistic-friendly products out there: things that autistic kids use that are higher-priced simply because the word "autism" is slapped around their website.

The swing we have looks a lot like a regular hammock -- it's mostly netting with a bunch of strong cords and silver rings. It beats a lot of other swings because not only can the kids swing in it, but also they can spin or just sit.

We got ours for $99.95 at Sensory Edge, and didn't bother getting the almost-as-expensive hangers. Instead, we went to the hardware store and got two lengths of rubber-covered chain and some sturdy hook-and-eye loops. My brother-in-law drilled two holes into the support beam, and we had a swing that hung up just fine.

Mr F spends about 70% of his time on the swing -- and it works for him by settling him down and letting him focus. Since installing the swing, he's learned to count to 12, and can say his ABCs with help. Plus, it helps him relax when others are around, so if relatives come to visit, Mr F's more likely to remain in the room.

__________________________________________________________

Update: I reviewed My Autism Team last time around, and have continued to check in there from time to time. Mary Ray, from that site, emailed me to say this:

Thanks so much for checking out MyAutismTeam. I just read your post about the site. Thank you very much for checking out the site. Besides adding providers/organizations/sports leagues that may not yet be in our database, parents can review those providers. Right now we have over 1200 parents on the site nationwide (in just a few weeks since launch) and 30,000 providers/businesses in our database. Our goal is to get 100,000 parents using the free site by next year. Definitely the more parents participate and contribute the more valuable the information exchange.

Not sure if you knew this, but you can actually write a review about a business. If you go to a business's profile page, click "review."

We have the All Updates stream, where parents can connect with each other. Soon, we'll refine our search in the Browse Parents tab so it's easier to find local parents near you in case you want to exchange inside tips about coverage, businesses that wouldn't normally be thought of as autism-friendly, and more.

I hope you are able to continue using the site and providing us feedback. We rely on parents feedback and our partner relationships with Autism Speaks and Easter Seals to be a value contributor to the community. We have more features to come and announce them on our blog/facebook/twitter.

As part of this post, I attempted to add the "Project Lifesaver" business to the site, but was unable to do so; three times, when I clicked to enter, it told me to fix errors on the page without telling me what errors were occurring. There were blank spots on the page that I didn't have information to enter (such as a name associated with the business.)

But, I also used My Autism Team to post that people should provide links to information and businesses, and Eric, from San Francisco, suggested The Thinking Person's Guide To Autism, which says about its mission that:

The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism (the website and the book) exists to help people with autism and their families make sense of the bewildering array of available autism treatments and options, and determine which are worth their time, money, and energy. We also want to encourage respectful attitudes towards autistics and people with autism.

The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism (TPGA) is the book and website we wish had been available when our loved ones with autism were first diagnosed.

Autism misinformation clouds and is perpetuated by the Internet. We want to make accurate information about autism causation and therapies visible, accessible, and centralized.

I've now bookmarked that site and will include it in my future reviews and information; I don't know yet anything else about it.

Got information that would be helpful to parents of special-needs kids? Know a business that is special-needs friendly, or someone with special needs doing something interesting? Email me with the words "autism works" in the subject line

Just think what I could've used those 2 hours for! I could've been watching TV or something!

2011-08-03T14:01:00.001-07:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Net10 for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I spent two hours on the phone the other night – but not in the good way. I spent two hours on my wife’s phone trying to get help with my phone.

My phone hadn’t been working that great, and my provider said they’d send me a new one to replace it; only the new one took a week to get here and then when I tried to activate it, I couldn’t, and it took me TWO HOURS to finally have my provider decide they would send me a different new phone.

All of which made me question why I’m sticking with this provider, and so I went looking around to compare providers, and I found Net10 Unlimited, which made me see the Light.

Net10 Unlimited doesn’t have any contract, credit checks or surprise bills. What they DO have is unlimited everything – that’s talk, text, and data – for $50 a month.

Fifty smackeroonies.

And their phones are good ones, from trusted manufacturers: Samsung. Kyocera. Motorola. Nokia. Companies like that. So for $50 a month, I could get a great phone and unlimited everything, and it’s easy to start up – just get a phone, then go to their site: http://www.net10.com/ and activate it.

I could even keep my same phone number, so I don’t have to call everyone I know (both of them) and tell them my new number. And they’ve got options for people who might want something other than $50-per-month unlimited everything. They’ve got Easy Minutes Plus plans ($15 for 200 minutes, up from there) and Pay-As-You-Go with carryover minutes, and best of all, you can switch plans anytime: each month you can try a new plan and see how it works for you.

The more I looked, the more I thought I might just switch phones – and maybe even convince my partners to get phones for our staff: phones start at $15, and with the $50-per-month unlimited plan, they can use the phones for business and personal use and we’ll keep our costs down - -so it’s a perk that’ll make them more productive.

If THAT wasn’t enough to convince me, then I was swayed even more by the information they’ve got about Net10 on Facebook and Twitter, includijng 10 Good Reasons to switch:

And this video pushed me over the edge:

Now, as soon as I get my new phone, I can send back my old phone – and then trade them all in for Net10 unlimited. And then maybe I'll make a video like this real NET10 customer:

Part 19D: Take Harper's Hands.

2010-07-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

"Mom..." I echoed, almost silently. This old woman? My daughter? Just born?

I think that from the moment I ... woke up, or whatever... in that coffeeshop, my mind never really settled down. I couldn't keep track of the number of ways this world, these worlds, kept boggling me, and everytime I thought I had a handle on it, then suddenly there was some kind of curveball thrown at me, the latest in the version of the old woman who hobbled forward and thrust her wrinkly arms into the cage, carefully avoiding touching the bars and leaning her face into me, smiling with a grin that showed some yellowing teeth but glowing eyes.

"Mom! I knew it was you! I mean, of course I knew, but that is, I mean, it's different from all the other places and times that I knew you, too. I suppose I could have remembered this, after all, I've lived through everything kind of at once but it's hard to keep it all straight and I'm not sure where I'm going to be at any one time. The real me, I mean. Well, not the real me. You know what I mean. The me that's me, that I'm experiencing. It's all in there," she tapped her head and then put her arm back through, and I looked down at her hands, which were palm up and she looked at me encouragingly.

"Get away from there" a man yelled and grabbed at her shoulder. Harper, the old lady, leaned forward and continued her babbling:

"It's all in my head. It's all in my head. Take my hands. I'm getting rambling. I know you're thrown off by this body but don't be 'cause it changes all the time and I'm still me you know, well you don't know..."

The guard pulled at her and she shoved away again without stopping talking as another woman hove into view behind her: Brigitte!

Brigitte! With those lovely pouting full lips rushed forward, her arm reaching out to me, and her breasts heaving, her shirt torn almost open with her bra hanging out deliciously, lacily, even as pregnant as she was.

"Leave her alone!" Brigitte yelled.

The guard turned.

Pregnant? I thought.

Old Lady Harper kept talking "And that's why you have to take my hands because even though you just met me we go way back you and I only way forward would be a better way to put it and take my hands" I looked down, the words sinking in, as the guard turned and saw Brigitte, or rather, saw Brigitte's heaving chest as she tried to get to the cage.

"Rachel, DON'T! We'll find a better way out of this! Harper, don't you dare!" The guard grabbed her around the waist, not roughly, and she looked up at him. "I felt that!" she snarled, and I saw a flash of her tongue and felt a flush break out on my neck. God, how could I be mad at her, I wondered. Brigitte looked back at me. "Don't, Rachel!"

"Do, Mom," the old lady said. I heard other shouts and looked at the ancient eyes that stared at me, hopefully, through the bars. In the curl of her smile, a little sly winking at the corner of her mouth, I thought I recognized something. In a flash, my memories tossed up the site of The Me, laying on top of me in the woods at twilight on Valhalla. I saw that same smile.

My smile.

She had my smile.

I touched my hands to hers. There was a flash of light and then darkness.

If this was Rachel's era, I'd be appearing on a Read-Or Unit. But it's not, and I'll be on the radio instead:

2010-07-30T06:25:00.003-07:00

Just a reminder that I'll be a guest on the wildly popular radio show hosted by James Strait; I'll be appearing at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time, August 1, 2010.

As the post title notes, you probably have a radio laying around, but why bother ever looking away from your laptop screen? You haven't turned off the Internet in 3 years, so don't start now. Instead, You can listen live here.

Originally, we were going to talk about indie publishing and my blogs. In light of recent events, I'm expecting to repeatedly explain that although I have sky-high cholesterol, that wasn't why I almost died. So jot down the date and time and tune in.

I'll be giving away a book to anyone who listens -- all you have to do is comment or email me with a quote from the show I'm on and you'll get a free book.

See you on August 1 at 6:30.

Part 20: Back In Valhalla, Attacked By Bubbles.

2010-07-30T06:25:00.001-07:00

A: Harper's Lab isn't safe.

B: How do you fight bubbles?

C: Kidnapped... again.

D: I find the Bubble Planet, or it finds ME.

E: Inside the Bubble's Lattice-World Dimension.

F. Harper shows up again.

G. Battling for control of Rachel's mind.

H. Disintegrated!

Meanwhile, remember how all those bombs were dropped on "That Place That Used To Be Called Tampa?"

Watching and waiting...

2010-07-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

What's the two things that everyone has in common?

That's right: We're all moldy cows.

No, wait, I got my riddles mixed up. "A moldy cow" is actually the answer to the riddle "What's green and has four legs and if it fell on you would kill you?" (Alternate answer: A sentient pool table. Why a "sentient" one? Because it's funnier.)

Anyway, the answer to my question about what every person has in common is this: We all have a wrists, and we all move in time.

That means that we all, at one point or another, need a watch: Because what else are you going to use to cover up your wrist? A sweatband? Please, Richard Simmons -- those are out, like shoulder pads in blazers. Although I think shoulder pads are making a comeback, for men, at least, and I for one welcome the chance to finally look like Melanie Griffith in "Working Girl."

I'm getting distracted -- so let's focus a minute on something like the traser h3 watch that you can get at Blue Dial.com. That's a classy watch -- click the link to check it out -- and it does an admirable job of both covering your wrist AND telling you the time. Think of all the uses you'll get out of it. Like, um... telling time.

Okay, don't worry about that. Instead, think about this: your watch is a part of your outfit and your life. And you need to make sure that it says what you want. If you're out jogging, you don't wear a fancy Dolce & Gabbana watch, and if you're in a meeting you don't want your Velcro-banded sports watch staring at your boss. So check out Blue Dial and get yourself a watch for every occasion. They've got them on sale all the time and they have, so far as I can tell, every watch in the universe. That way, you'll always look sharp, you can accessorize your outfit in a functional way, and also you'll have more time to chuckle at my riddles.

"Moldy cow." That's funny.

Part 19C: Meet Harper, Rachel's Daughter.

2010-07-10T05:53:00.000-07:00

"No," I said.

Then: "NO!" I turned away from screen's view of the crowd of zombies... of women like me... and wanted to go somewhere else, but there was nowhere else to go.

"Rachel," said Reverend Tommy, "These women, these things, they're nothing to you. They are not your concern. You have to watch out for yourself, for your life... for your baby. Your daughter."

"Leave me alone," I said.

"You want to raise your daughter, don't you?" Reverend Tommy asked, the same even tones that I hated so much.

"Go away," I said. "You can't do anything to me, anyway."

"What do you mean by that?" he asked.

I looked back at him. He had put the Read-Or away and was standing there, arms crossed.

"I mean I know I can't be killed. Not right now. Maybe not ever. You can't kill me, and you can't kill them." I pointed at the Read-Or unit. "And you're not going to do anything else to me, or to anyone, are you? You're not going to kill Brigitte, or my daughter, if she exists and isn't some kind of trick."

"I exist!" came a voice, and Reverend Tommy turned and said, quietly, "I thought I told you to get her out of here," but over his whisper, which I barely heard, I heard "And you can't keep me quiet. Or tied up! Can you? You know you can't!"

I craned my neck, trying to see past the guards and people watching this and the bars that held me in this demon cage.

"Go on, get her out of here," Reverend Tommy said, but someone came rushing through the crowd, a young-ish woman who was panting and sweaty and had a disheveled look about her.

"Reverend Tommy! Reverend Tommy!" she yelled as she rushed up. Off to the right I heard the same voice -- my daughter? -- yelling "Let go of me, you jerks," and someone, a man, saying "Quit biting!"

The woman who'd rushed up was panting. "Reverend Tommy! It's... the blues..." she said.

Off to my right: "What happened to her?" a man said.

"She's... what? Who are you, old lady?" another man said, off to my right, while Reverend Tommy said to the woman:

"What about the blues?"

"They're... attacking. They came out of this hole in the wall and there are like a thousand of them. They've got stunners. And disintegrators. We're taking heavy losses."

"What do the blues want with Hell?" Reverend Tommy said, then acted: pointing his arms at two men, he said "Get the jetpacks and monsters going. We need to close off those caverns. Shut the entrances. The disintegrators only work on living things, so they'll be trapped for a while, at least."

Off to my right: "I'm still me and don't try to touch me," came an old lady's voice, gnarled and kind of rasping... but familiar. People were starting to rush in every direction, and Reverend Tommy was saying something into the mouthpiece of his Read-Or unit, something finishing with "if we have to we'll simply disintegrate their bodies. Save some of the weapons if you can."

He turned back around. "I wish you'd decided to help," he said. "You'll stay there for now. Guard her," he said to two of the men, who moved a little closer to me. "The blues may want her, too. Everyone does." He looked back at me again. "Everyone but me. I don't need you, Rachel. You should remember that." He strode away and I heard scuffling off to the right, where I couldn't see. I moved to that side of the cage and listened.

"Pin her down," a man said.

"What's the matter, can't handle an old woman?" the old lady's voice came again.

"Harper!" came Brigitte's voice. "Go, now! Get free. Help Rachel.. your mom!"

"What's going on?" I asked nobody in particular. There was more fighting and pummeling sounds and then the two guys guarding me suddenly moved over in front of me. I couldn't see between them.

"Drop it," said one of my guards.

An old lady's voice: "No. You drop yours."

"I mean it," said the guard. He and the other one both hoisted their guns up to their shoulders, and as they did so, both suddenly crumpled down and fell onto the ground as the sound of lighting crackled. I saw an old woman, she must have been a hundred at least, bent over and smiling. Her knobbly hands held some sort of gun that she regarded with a look of disappointment before she looked up at me and grinned ruefully.

"I thought it might be a disintegrator. Just a stunner, though." She hobbled forward, limping a little, and put the gun down on the ground. Her hand came up, reaching through the bars, one finger -- more wrinkled than I could imagine a finger being, and with outsized knuckles, it trembled with age -- pointing at me.

"Mom?" the old lady said, and I saw she had a tear on her face.

Part 19B: The Real Army Is Found.

2010-06-22T04:37:00.000-07:00

"What?" I demanded. That can't be right, I thought, and kept thinking. She lost the baby, and she's a liar... this is a new trick.

"It's true," said Brigitte.

"You two stop talking," said our guard. "I'm sure you're not supposed to be doing that."

"She's my lover," Brigitte said.

"I'm not," I protested. "It was all a trick. Like this. This is a trick, too, isn't it? Did your dad tell you to do this?"

"I did not," came a voice I recognized as Brigitte's dad's.

"Seriously, stop all this talking," the guard said. "The Reverend is coming and I don't want to get in trouble."

"What are you doing here?" I asked the voice of Brigitte's dad. I tried peering around the corner of the cage, but couldn't see anything. When I turned back, Reverend Tommy was approaching; the guard hadn't been lying. Reverend Tommy walked up to me with about 10 men and women behind him.

"Comfortable?" he asked me.

"I want to talk to Brigitte," I said.

"I expected as much."

"Not because of why you think," I said but he cut me off.

"I need your help. So if you help me, I'll help you. As I said. I will let you live, if you do me one favor. It's a large favor but I expect that you won't have any trouble helping me with it, if everything I've learned about you and your type is true."

"What is it?" I asked him.

"Rachel, no!" Brigitte yelled. Reverend Tommy turned to the guard, who looked more attentive. "Go move her somewhere else, please," he said.

"No," I said.

Reverend Tommy turned back to me. "What?"

"She said she's got my daughter."

Reverend Tommy folded his arms. "Yes, that's what she claims. Quite amazing, actually. A neat trick, and I will need to understand how she managed it."

"So she does?"

"Does have your daughter? You can't have a baby with her. Your short life and lack of memories may be interfering with recalling that. It's not your daughter. But she does have a baby, a baby that she didn't have when we began pulling her up out of your underground cavern."

He gestured back over his shoulder. I didn't really pay attention. Brigitte really had a baby? I suppose I shouldn't have expected such a blatant lie. She hadn't, though, looked especially pregnant when I'd last seen her.

"That's not your concern. I will deal with those infidels on my part and I expect that, too, will cause you little compunction."

"Why do you say stuff like that?" I asked him.

"Because you have no morals or conscience, no compass to guide you. I know this, and I know that it helps determine the path of this sad existence you cling to."

"I have morals," I said.

"Do you?" he asked me. "I'm aware of only a little bit of what you've been doing since you brought me here, but that little that I've seen suggests that you will do almost anything with anyone."

"Wait, that's not true. I only... it was me. I mean," I wasn't sure what he was talking about, unless it was with the Me in the forest, but he was already going on:

"Which is exactly why you were created. Not for the sex slavery trade, not exclusively. That was a byline that allowed them to make some money off of you while trying to find the leader of the little army they were creating; a bevy of pliant, newly-lesbianed slaves who could be sold to rich men who liked that sort of thing, and rich women since that is the world we've found ourselves living in before you brought me here and I realized my true destiny. The process by which they make you makes you perfect slaves, and highly sexual, both of which are undesirable enough to me and my followers while being exactly what some people want, but that was not the goal of making so many of you."

He motioned to his left and said "Bring him over." The guards brought Brigitte's dad, and I was shocked all over again; I hadn't remembered, at first, that he'd been made into a zombie himself, ill-fitting parts attached to his torso, barely animate. He looked terrible. He was gray and drooping and one leg hung limply. The guards had to practically carry him. His eyes were glazed and had trouble focusing.

"It's a process that works not so well on men, you see," Reverend Tommy said. "But it's a process that I want to wipe from the face of the dimensions. And it begins with my cleansing of this dimension and remaking of Hell -- this being the place where those damned lesbian zombie souls rest while their bodies on Earth are not being used."

I remembered the cave of zombies we'd found, that I'd helped lead out.

"I've found them, Rachel," Reverend Tommy was saying. Of course you did, I thought, but they're not here. They're guarding that door outside of Heaven. I didn't say that. "I've found the entire Army that they created."

He took, from the hands of another person near him, a Read-Or unit and dialed it around. He held it up to me. I saw a vast plain, from above. "This is a recording we made, with the help of some winged demons that have abandoned their former evil to work with us." The picture swept up and then out and I saw that the ground was covered in some sort of specks. As the frame zoomed in, I realized that they weren't specks at all. The picture went closer and closer and then was zooming about twenty feet over row after row of naked women, standing at attention but eyes closed and flickering a little here and there. The shot went on forever, it seemed, woman after woman after woman flashing by, and then pulled back up. The focus stayed on the plain, and I was surprised all over again as I realized how many there must be. I'd taken only a small number from that cave -- there might have been 300 there.

There were probably a hundred thousand lesbian zombies on that plane, all just standing and waiting.

"I want you," Reverend Tommy said, "To destroy them for me. In exchange for which, I will let you live."

____________________________________________________________________

You don't have to create a lesbian zombie army to find a kinky friend, or friends. Just go to findkinkypeople.com and you'll discover a person who's just right for you!

Part 19:

2010-06-20T05:12:00.000-07:00

A: Rachel's A Mom!

B: The Real Army Is Found.

C: Meet Harper, Rachel's Daughter

D: Meanwhile, That Bomb Is About To Drop On What Will One Day Be Referred To As "That Place That Used To Be Tampa."

Part 19: Rachel's A Mom!

2010-06-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

All around me as I was dragged up onto the ground were people, crowds and crowds of people. Most of them were standing, but a few were sitting on those tank-things that had been in the battle before. There were probably a thousand people, I guessed -- picking that number because it seemed like a pretty high one.

"Put her in the containment box," Reverend Tommy ordered, and I was shoved and dragged over to the same cage I'd seen that Grabber thing in during the battle. As they brought me up to it, some of the blue lines erased away, creating a gap. I was pushed in, a little too roughly, and fell down on my knees. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw the bars had re-formed.

The man who'd shoved me in pressed a button and the bindings that were holding fast to me dropped off onto the floor.

"Stay," he said, and I couldn't tell if he was joking. The cage was large enough that I could stand in it, but there wasn't anything to do except sit or stand. The only other thing in it was the cuff-thing that had trapped me as I was brought here. I stood up and looked around.

There was a lot of activity to look at. All around me, people were moving purposefully, this way and that. Some carried weapons. Some shepherded children around. Some were cooking food-- which made me realize how hungry I was. I tried to think back to the last time I ate, and couldn't.

"Hey," I said, to a woman near me. "Excuse me?"

She looked up at me and backed away a little.

"Don't be afraid," I said.

"We're not supposed to talk to you," she said, quietly. Another woman came over and said:

"What's going on, Joan?"

"She's talking to me," Joan said, and pointed at me. The new woman looked at me.

"Haven't you done enough already?" she asked. "Don't cause trouble."

"I didn't do anything," I protested, but they were already walking away, the woman leading Joan by the arm and whispering to her.

The food still smelled good. I breathed it in and looked for someone else. There was a guy near me and I called out to him. He didn't seem to hear me, so I called louder, trying to be heard over the bustle and din. "Hey, man, hey," I said.

He finally looked over at me.

"You shouldn't be talking," he said.

"What, does everyone here think I can hypnotize you with my words or something?" I said. "I'm hungry."

"I'm not in charge of food," he said.

"Look," I told him, as he kept watching me. "I'm not asking for much. I'm just hungry. I've been in a void and in Valhalla and in Hell and on Earth and I think I ate something about a year ago maybe but I'm not sure. That's how long it seemed, anyway." I pointed over to the food. "Can't you ask someone if I can get something to eat?"

The man sighed a little. "I'm supposed to be a guard," he said. "I can't leave my post."

"I don't need guarding," I said. "I'm in a cage, for God's sake."

"Don't use His name," the man said, warningly.

"Sorry." I said quickly. "Sorry. Really. I am. I'm just starved. And I don't need to be guarded at all. Like I said. This thing held a demon. I saw it. I'm not going to be able to get out."

"I know that," the man said. "I'm not guarding you. I'm guarding these two." He motioned off to his right.

I couldn't see who he was pointing at. His gesture was vague and the back of the cage -- the only solid wall in it -- blocked my view of the far right.

"Who?" I asked him.

"He means us," I heard Brigitte's voice say. "Me and my dad, Rachel. And the baby."

"What?" I asked. "The baby?"

"Yes," came Brigitte's voice again. "There was sort of a little time-warp thing, and now you're a mom."

Meanwhile, Somewhere Between What Will Be Left Of Tampa, and New York

2010-06-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

Somehow, the man thought, this horse is holding me up.

Although he was not as tall as the Valkyrie who sat behind him, he was far wider and probably more muscular. He thought he must be heavier than her and worried that the horse would fall.

Don't worry about that, came a feeling in his mind. Rogers can carry both of us. And more if he had to.

The man was uncomfortable with the Sharing, and even more uncomfortable with the thought, and the feel, of the Valkryie's firm, solid breasts pressed into his back. He thought he could almost feel the nipples through her armor and knew that was crazy but his mind wouldn't let them not feel them. He tried desperately to ignore the white, smooth, large thighs that pressed into each of his own sweaty, somewhat pudgy legs, holding him tight between them.

He couldn't ignore the slim long fingers that pressed into his stomach -- a stomach just beginning to go soft after years in the military -- at the end of the arm that encircled him and held him to Czaranya sitting behind him.

And the worst of it was, because of the Sharing, he knew that she knew what he was thinking, and what he was thinking was how arousing this all was and how disturbing this all was and how terrible this all was.

That got him thinking, then, about all the other naked, sexy women he'd seen: Women standing on the streets in skimpy clothes, beckoning to him and other passerby and offering sex for money -- those were the most common targets for him, as he worked to fulfill all of the orders that came in, and waited for further instructions from Lieutenant Samson, instructions that had not come and had not come and had not come, so he'd kept on doing what he had been doing: running the diner he'd bought on his military pension during the day, and, when asked to, going out and finding women to dismember, remove chips from, and piece back together as sex-slave zombies to be sold to whoever it was that had ordered them.

Just like the Lieutenant had asked him to do.

It's not evil, he told himself. It's not wrong. I was doing them a favor. They were going to Heaven and their bodies were being used here to serve a better purpose. That's what the Lieutenant told me.

Czaranya clutched him more tightly and Rogers The Horse rose in the air.

He was lying to you, she Shared with him, the words and emotions and images all flowing together in that peculiar form of communication, creating not so much a sentence or image as just a sensation of what was being communicated.

He had his own purposes and he used you.

The man began to cry, then, in earnest. Tears rolled down his face and he put a hand to his mouth to cover a sob.

Czaranya tightened her grip on him, in sympathy. She had, through Sharing, known instantly what caused the tears, as the man's mind filled with image upon image upon image of all the women he had slain and transformed into zombies, shackling their souls to dead, pliable bodies that were easily manipulated, banishing those souls for periods of time to Hell. The man's shoulders heaved with sorrow.

So many, Czaranya thought, and it was not meant to be dismaying to the man -- although it was -- it was an expression of shock, and surprise, and dismay herself, because the fact that there were so many lesbian zombies, such a strong army of them, meant a great deal of work for the Valkyries -- who would have to kill them all.

Meanwhile, in What Will In Mere Moments Be Referred To As "That Place That Used To Be Tampa..."

2010-05-19T04:44:00.001-07:00

Samson laid underneath the rubble of what had only moments before been God's house in Tampa. A beam lay across his back, pinning him down. He had trouble breathing and hoped it was merely because he was pinned down and not because something was injured, although based on recent experience, he doubted that he was, in fact, injured.

"I might be immortal," he whispered to himself, and pushed a little, then pulled a little, trying to free himself. He couldn't do it, though: the weight of the debris on top of him was too great.

"Nice," he said aloud. "I can't die, and I'm trapped under a house." He looked around for something to use as a tool: a lever, a brace, a gun, maybe? One of those Valkyrie's spears? Did they gather them all up, he wondered? Probably. Stupid Valkyries are too careful.

He reached and tried to pull a board from underneath a pile, not sure what he'd do with it, when something stopped him.

"Who's there?" he asked. He tried to crane his neck around and see on his back. "Who's there?"

He could have sworn he'd heard something. He went as still as he could, trying not to even breathe as he listened.

There. A faint sound, just behind him. He tried as hard as he could to twist and see who was there. It had been a tiny scrabbling sound. One of those animals God made? He wasn't sure.

Then he felt a foot on his leg. Then another. It wasn't an animal's foot. It was a boot or shoe. Two steps onto his leg and he shouted "Who's THERE? Get off of me?"

It didn't, though: Instead, it ran up his leg and he heard scrambling as it must have gone over the giant beam holding him down. Two feet dropped onto his upper back and then stood on his head. He tried to look up but couldn't see.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Shh," he heard. The thing jumped down, and he recognized it: a Blue -- the aliens that looked like kids' toys.

"What are you doing here?" he asked it.

The Blue ignored him and pulled out a plasticky-looking little box. It spoke into it in a low voice, turning away from Samson. Its voice was squeaky and high but Samson caught some words: him and alive and hold.

Then the Blue shook his head. It looked back around at Samson, and spoke to him directly for the first time.

"Sorry," it said, and pointed to the sky.

Samson craned his head back as far as he could and saw tiny specks, far above, growing larger and larger very quickly. There were four of them that he could see. There might have been more.

"Rescue?" he said -- but knew he was wrong.

The Blue shook its head again.

"Bombs," it said.

Part 18F: Just Because Things Exist Doesn't Mean They're Good?

2010-05-16T06:01:00.000-07:00

"What do you want?" I asked, and then a thought occurred to me. "And how do I know I can trust you?"

Reverend Tommy shook his head. "Rachel," he said. "I'm not like you. I'm a human. I can be trusted. You can't, but I can. I give you my word, as a man of... well, as a man."

I didn't have time to wonder what he was about to say. Two of the men helped me to my feet, not roughly but efficiently, and I stood in front of him. I tried not to hang my head, but it was hard: He had a way of looking at me, of talking to me, that made me feel...

... feel like what he'd said: not human. Still, I forced myself to look him in the eye.

"Where's Brigitte?" I asked.

He motioned above and asked me: "Why do you care? From what I understand, you're upset with her. That's what my people tell me, anyway."

I wondered at first how he knew, then decided that wasn't important.

"And the others?" I asked.

"Like what, those abominations? The other undead thing, and that horrible bird? We're tracking them down now. I am not interested, though, in providing you all the details. As I said, I need something from you, and then I will set you free."

"Yeah. As you said. What is it you want from me?"

"Remember your army of Lesbian Zombies?" He asked. As he said the words lesbian zombies, his voice went a little colder and deader and removed, as if he was describing the corpse of a poisonous snake. I couldn't help but be a little impressed, and a little more angry.

"What have you got against me, anyway?" I asked him, trying to keep the anger going.

He just looked at me.

"Seriously. I didn't ask to be this way, you know. I know a little about who I am and what I was. I found out. Did you know that? And I know I didn't choose to be this way or anything like that. I just ended up like this. So why do you hate me?"

He pursed his lips, in a way I'd seen him do a few times up on the stage at his church. Then he said, quietly: "None of us choose to be who we are. We simply are. But the fact that something exists does not mean it is right."

He turned away and then turned back suddenly: "Look around you, Rachel. Look around!" He swept his arm around, indicating, somehow, everything. "Do you see? Do you see what surrounds you? This world! And more worlds like it, as we all know. And in those worlds, all manner of evil exists, all manner of abominations, all manner of trouble and toil and terror. And would you have me believe that because it exists, it is acceptable?"

There was dead silence around me. I stared at him.

"No," I said quietly.

He turned away again and motioned to have me brought after him. I was prodded a little and started walking forwards. The blue glowing band kept my arms pressed tightly against my sides and made me take shorter steps than I wanted to. My head was spinning with his arguments, and I couldn't at first think of what to say.

He was almost to the rope ladder when I found my words: "But just because you don't approve of something doesn't mean it's evil," I said.

He turned back and stared me in the eyes. "I know that," he said, simply. His eyes, wide and serious, forecast what he would say next, and it hit me like a punch in the stomach: "But when something is created from parts of living beings, sewn together by a madman working in a cellar, when that thing that is made out of other human beings has the power to control people, and when that is all done in the service of a group of people who are intending to destroy the universe... then, Rachel, that is evil."

I was lifted up the rope ladder with tears rolling down my cheeks. Was he right? Am I evil? My mind was in a turmoil, more so than it usually was and I couldn't hardly breathe, I was so confused. I could feel the tears rolling down my face and blurring my vision. At one point I was hanging upside down as we got onto the surface of Hell, staring back down into the room. I wondered where Bob was. I wondered where The Me was, and Ivanka. Reverend Tommy and his people had Brigitte, and I couldn't count on her anyway, could I? And of all the other people I'd met, only a few of them seemed like they really wanted to help me... and they were all a couple of dimensions away.

Through my tears, I thought I saw something, out of the corner of my eye. As they hauled me the last few feet up through the hole in the ground, I blinked furiously and looked. Off in the corner, I could barely see what I thought I'd seen in the first place: That little blue guy. He was peeking out of the doorway he'd gone through, making some sort of gesture at me.

Then he was gone, and I was up on the surface of Hell again.

Part 18E: Reverend Tommy Needs Something.

2010-04-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

I stared at the barrel of the gun as Dan -- whoever he was, some guy off to my side -- began yelling "She's over here! We've got her!"

The woman looked at me as I looked at her.

"Don't move," she said. "I don't want to shoot you."

"Then don't," I said.

"I will," she said, but she sounded doubtful. I wondered if I should try to make a break for it, and tensed up a little.

"Please don't," she said, and she sounded even less sure. I made up my mind: I'm going to bolt, I thought, and tried to think, quickly, where the little blue guy had gone. Behind me and to the left, I thought, I was pretty sure, and I got excited. I'm going to do this ran through my mind. I'm going to take charge instead of just always giving in ran through my mind, too, and I felt excited. I moved my hand, just a little, ready to jump up and roll off to the left, but suddenly, a thick hand grabbed my shoulder and pushed me down.

"She's right here!" yelled a male voice. "We've got her. Bring the bindings!"

I was smushed down onto the dusty floor with more shouts and yells and boot-stomps. I saw feet coming up by me as the big hand pressed down onto my face. The woman knelt down and looked at me.

"I'm sorry," she said. "But we've got no choice. You're evil."

"I'm really not," I tried to say, but the hand ground down onto me.

"Don't talk to her, Sharon!" The man holding me down said. "She'll bewitch you or something."

"Dan," Sharon began, but another voice interrupted.

"Here. Bind her up." That voice came from heavy boots right in front of my face. I heard a staticky-crackling sound and saw a blue glow emanate from above where I could see. I couldn't turn my head at all as the hand pressed down on me.

Behind me, I heard some more yells and shouts. "That bird thing is over here! Send some help!" someone called out. Another person said "Main room secure!"

Someone near me said "He'll be right down here. Let's get her tied up." I felt a cold band on my back and then rough hands turned me over, rolling me onto my side and then back. Quickly the cold band was looped around me. As I watched, a couple of guys cinched the band tight and then pressed something. The blue glow began again, I heard the crackling, and I stiffened a little as I felt a tingle run through my whole body.

Sharon spoke: "It's a low-level electrical current. It won't hurt you -- it just makes all your muscles feel like they're already doing something. If you don't struggle you'll get used to it."

"You shouldn't talk to her, Sharon," Dan said again.

"We don't have to be mean," Sharon said.

"No, we don't have to be mean," said another voice, one I recognized. Reverend Tommy's face appeared above me. "Meanness is not the way to go. But you should still not talk to the face of evil, Sharon," Reverend Tommy said. He squinted down at me.

"Hello, Rachel," he said to me. He was not smiling. He bent down a little further. "I need you to do something for me, Rachel. Just a little quick job, and then we'll put you out of your misery."

___________________________________________________________________

This Is Why I Hate People:
"The World's Only Blog Without A Subtitle."

Part 18D: "I've got her."

2010-04-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

Author's note: If you've been following closely, then you know that I haven't been following closely. Specifically, Rachel has been talking to Steve the revenant these last few chapters, which might surprise you as a reader who follow things closely given that Steve, as we know, is the Revenant-leader-of-the-blockers, who Rachel hates. (She switched sides here, remember.) I of course meant to have Rachel run into Bob, her beloved revenant friend we met here. I've fixed it here and I apologize... but continuity errors have to be expected when (a) you're making it up as you go along and (b) you're me.

"Take over whose job?" I asked. It was one of those dumb questions that people like me tend to ask when something remarkable gets said and it's all quiet and the thing that was just said needs to be worked through but still something needs to be said, and Bob didn't take it as a serious question. Instead, he kept talking to Brigittte:

"That's what he's up to, you know. He's trying to entirely remake Hell, and turn it into a world of peace and harmony. That's what he says in his speeches, and he's already gone a pretty good ways towards that goal. He's captured most of the Blockers' stuff that was on this plain of existence, and he's been using it to destroy the demons."

"Hell looks the same to me," I said, and Bob looked at me.

"It is, mostly. It's not a pleasant place. And remember, he's only been at work for a few days. Hell's been like this for..." Bob paused and looked as though he was thinking. Or maybe counting, and I expected him come back with a number. He even held up his hand, as he looked skyward. So when he didn't say a number, or even a range, like eons, or something, I was surprised -- but that might also have been because of what he did say: "Oh! Holy shit!"

He yelled it, but he didn't need to because we all saw what he was looking at just as he yelled: the ceiling had begun glowing, in a widening circle of bluish light that got brighter and wider. As it did, I could see cracks in the rock that made the ceiling.

Bob yelled "Get out of here," so I turned and ran, directly in the opposite direction I'd been facing. Only a few steps away I got to a bookcase, and I turned to my right. Behind me, there was a roar and a blue flash that lit up the wall in front of me. I was momentarily blinded and then the dust rolled through as whatever had been used to blast into the room caused a ton of not-yet-vaporized rock to fall in where we'd just been standing. I choked and coughed and waved my hand ineffectively in front of me and tried to figure out where to go as voices came echoing down the new hole in the ceiling.

"Get down there!"

"There are people down there!"

"Watch out for traps!"

"Are they demons?"

I couldn't see Bob, or the other Rachel, or Brigitte. I did hear people clambering down and saw rope ladders falling into place. There was an ominous throbbing noise above us.

"Rachel! Over here!" a small, tinny voice called out. I barely heard it -- but the pitch was higher and squeakier than anything else around here, so it sort of cut through the rest of the tumult. I looked around for who was talking.

It was a little blue man -- and I thought maybe I'd seen him before, or something like him, but I wasn't sure and there was a lot going on. He was about half my height, and was wearing a silvery kind of space suit that looked, to be honest, fake. It was all foil-ish, like it'd been made by hand by a mom for a little kid, and it was all crinkly. He had a plastic-looking belt on with a plastic-toy looking gun on it. His hands had only three fingers. His face was dominated by the nose, a nose so large it looked like it was pretty much his whole head. He had two large eyes, too, one on either side of the nose, and a tiny mouth that squeaked out his words:

"Hurry up! They're down already!" I looked back and saw that people had indeed gotten down the rope ladders. They looked like ordinary people, like me and Brigitte... well, like Brigitte. They must have been (I realized later) the people that had been accidentally sent to Hell, the people that shouldn't have been there.

They were armed with ray guns and began shooting them around. I threw myself to the floor, into the still-settling rock dust that covered me a little. I looked at the blue man ahead of me and saw him turn around. To my surprise, he had a face on the back of his head, too.

"Come on!" his back mouth said. This face had the same giant nose ande was, I realized, identical to the to the front face; I wasn't sure at first that the blue man HAD turned around, but his feet were now pointing away from me.

Off to my right, I heard Bob yelling directions, to someone, and I heard some shouts from the Reverend-Tommy-led people. There were fires starting from the ray guns that were being fired wildly. Someone screamed, and I recognized it as Brigitte.

I had started crawling after the blue man, who was ducking into a lower door off to my left, just beyond the bookcase. "Come on," he said again, more urgently still, and motioned me with a hand. But Brigitte's scream had frozen me. I turned and looked to my right to see if I could find her, but saw only a woman, advancing towards me with a ray gun.

I recognized her, too. I'd seen her before, and it didn't take long to realize that she was one of the women we'd rescued from the giant cauldron, one of the souls we hadn't gotten back out of Hell the last time we were here.

She saw me, too, and for a long moment, we stood there, staring at each other. I was on my hands and knees, looking to my right up at the wide barrel of the huge ray gun she was pointing at me. She stared down at me, legs spread out and shoulders squared. Her clothes were torn, her hair messy, and her face dirty. I bet I looked about the same, only my parts didn't match.

"You," she said.

"Me," I agreed. I said it really quietly.

"You..." she breathed it out, barely saying it.

"Uh-huh," I said. I wondered how far behind me the little door was.

"Let me go!" Brigitte suddenly yelled, and there was even more ruckus, rising above the sound of ray guns shooting and people hollering down and the roar of whatever was up above. Off to the lady's left, my right, we looked and saw a man carrying Brigitte, arms wrapped around her and pinning her arms to her side. She had her back to him and was kicking and shrieking. "Let me go, let me go, don't hold me like that I'm pregnant put me down help help!"

The man didn't put her down, but instead got others to help, too, and as he held her, they clamped some metal-computer-y looking thing around her arms. As they did, Brigitte went rigid and her face went blank.

"Bring her up!" the man yelled, and the thing they'd clamped around her sparkled and winked lights and Brigitte began rising up into the hole in the ceiling.

The lady turned back to me and I turned back to her.

"We're supposed to be looking for you," she said.

"I know," I said.

"You rescued me from that cauldron," she went on. "But you didn't tell me what you were."

"What I am doesn't matter," I said, a little desperately.

"It does, doesn't it?" the woman asked. "Evil things can't do good. That's what Reverend Tommy reminds us. Good things cannot do evil, and evil things cannot do good. That's what he says."

I thought I remembered that as a stock phrase from Reverend Tommy's sermons. The woman kept talking: "So if you've done something for us that I thought was good, but you're evil, then I was mistaken."

"I'm not evil," I said.

"It's in your nature," she said. "You're a construct. You're one of them. In fact, Reverend Tommy says you're their leader."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I said "What I am is not how I am. I didn't have any control over being this way. Don't you know that?"

She looked confused but by then the roar had died down and someone saw us.

"What's going on, Sarah?" a man asked. Sarah, the woman holding the ray gun on me, paused only a second and then said:

"I've got her, Dan. I've got her."

Part 18C: A Little More Conversation, A Little Less Action

2010-04-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

I looked down at the hand, wondering why it had done that.

"It is responding to me," Other Rachel said, and stood up from the chair she had only recently sat down in. She walked towards me and without asking permission, took my left hand, and picked it up. She held it in her right hand, which felt cold and unfriendly, and turned it over and back and then held it up to her right hand, palm to palm.

They were the same size, and indisputably from the same person.

"It's my hand," she said. "As I thought. Or knew. Damn that Lysanya."

"Who?" I asked, but I knew, even as I did. Sometimes you don't need telepathy or Sharing to figure stuff out.

"The She," Other Rachel said. "The imposter She."

I didn't say anything. I'd liked the She, so much as I could tell in the brief time I'd been around her.

"I suppose you liked her," Other Rachel said. "You would. That would be a natural. After all, they worship you. All of them, all the ones who survived and remained in Valhalla after the Revolution. The Revolution you caused."
"Me?" I asked.

I'd just been feeling a little more certain, recently, of my position in the world, or worlds, or dimensions. I'd only been around, really, for two weeks, but I had been coming to understand stuff a little better and feeling like I was more of a person instead of this thing that I really am, this thing that was created, but as Other Rachel spoke, I was reminded of the giant statue of me, and the way the Valkyries doted on me, and that vision I'd had of old me, real me, performing and the Valkyries coming down and I was confused all over again, and I felt guilty, too, but I didn't know what about.

I hadn't done anything, had I?

Had I? It's hard to tell what you're responsible for when you can only remember back a few weeks and you're a reconstructed zombie person.

"Ask yourself this," Other Rachel said, as I pondered that. "If they really love you and really worship you, why'd they have you cut into pieces and rebuilt? You didn't ask for that, did you?"

I shook my head.

Steve tried to interrupt: "Rachel," he said, looking to her and not me, "This is getting us nowhere. We have bigger problems to deal with."

"Bigger than the return of my left hand, and with it, the possible ability to bring the remainder of my clan back and retake my rightful throne?" Other Rachel asked.

"Yes, in fact, quite a bit bigger than that." Steve touched a portion of the table and a little glowing hologram globe sprang up. I squinted at it, but Other Rachel ignored it. In the globe there was a large group of people walking, or maybe marching, because behind them and in between them were all kinds of tanks and machines and things, and they appeared to all be holding some sort of weapons, ranging from simple swords and spears to gun-looking things that were too little for me to make out the details. "The Army is coming," Steve said.

"Who's Army?" I asked.

Brigitte moved over and looked more closely at the globe. "I recognize that symbol," she said. "It's from The Church Of Our Savior Of Living People Only."

"What?" I asked. Like I said, I was feeling less sure than ever.

"It is," Brigitte said. "I've been going to that church for a long time, Rachel. I wouldn't forget that symbol. I saw it every Sunday for like five years, after Daddy told me to start attending so that he could keep an eye on Reverend Tommy."

"You just do everything your dad tells you to do, don't you," I said, and it came out before I could stop.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I do," Brigitte said. "He's my daddy, and I love him, even if he's now this... horrible... never mind. But I love him and I do what he tells me what to do to help him, and he's a good man, so I'd want to help him even if I didn't love him and he wasn't my daddy. So what's it to you?"

"What's it to me?" I asked back, standing up. "Oh, only that you pretended to fall in love with me so that you could use me for your stupid daddy's plans and got me kidnapped and in Hell and attacked and you broke my heart, Brigitte and then you made up all these lies about being in love and being pregnant..."

"Those aren't lies," Brigitte yelled back, and started crying. "I really do love you, Rachel, and I really am pregnant, at least I think I am if the baby wasn't disintegrated and it's possible to do what someone tells you and really fall in love anyway, and that's what happened. I didn't even think I was going to love you and I didn't want to do it, when Daddy said that I had to walk past the path where you were hiding that morning and get you to fall in love with me, I didn't want to do it, and I didn't think I'd like it, Rachel, because I knew what you were and I didn't think I could ever love someone like that, someone like how you were before you were dead and someone like what you were after you were dead."

"Don't lie to me, Brigitte! You never loved me. It was just all a trick so that you could do whatever it is your dad wants."

"It's not a trick!" Brigitte yelled back, and we were both crying now, standing face to face, or my-face-to-her-neck because she was a little taller than me. Fuzzy Bird moved closer, I'm not sure why, and Steve stood up.

"Rachel! Brigitte! Stop this. We have more important things than all these petty grudges right now, and more important things, even, than retaking Valhalla, because in a few minutes, Reverend Tommy's army is going to be right above us, and he's going to try to kill me, and you," he said, pointing at me, "And probably you," he said, pointing at Fuzzy Bird, "and certainly you," he said, pointing at Other Rachel.

"And you," he said, turning to Brigitte, "He's going to probably want to take hostage so that he can find out where your dad is and stop that plan, too, because I don't think that Reverend Tommy is going to go to all the trouble of taking over Hell and making it into his own world just so that someone else can go marching into Heaven and take over God's job."

Part 18B: I Don't Like Other Rachel

2010-03-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

Steve looked awful. That wasn't why I was crying, but it might as well have been. His head was held together -- barely-- by bandages and wraps and I think a piece of wood, too, tied in there somehow.

The last time I'd seen him, he'd been having his head beat in by a rock. A rock held by Reverend Tommy, who'd been taken to Hell with me, accidentally (along with a big part of a museum in Chicago). I thought I'd lost him, forever, and even though he was a gross revenant who probably had to constantly hold himself back from stealing my soul (if I have a soul, but I think I do), I loved him, in my way, and Steve was, at this point, my oldest friend. We'd spent what felt like years in Hell, one night...

... I don't like to talk about that. Not yet.

But I loved him and I'd thought he was dead, and now here he was, hugging me back, his bony arms trembling. I could feel his hands on the back of my head, pulling into me. They were bony, too, and cold, and smelled a little, but I didn't care.

"Steve! Steve! Steve!" I kept saying, over and over. I didn't know what else to say. He didn't talk at all, not at first. He just hugged me.

Finally, he pulled back a little and I pulled back a little. By then, Fuzzy Bird and Brigitte and Doc were down in that little room, carved out underground or part of a cave or something, and the one-handed lady was still standing there. They were all just staring at us.

"What's he doing here?" Brigitte asked.

Her dad had been working with the revenants, so I didn't expect her to not like Steve. I turned to her. "He has as much right to be here as you. He has maybe more right to be here than you." As I said that, Brigitte looked a little hurt. I saw a flash of sad in her eyes and wondered if she was acting, or if I'd really gotten to her. Then I had another thought.

"Where is here?" I asked Steve. "What's this place? And who's she?"

I looked around the room, which wasn't dimly lit the way you'd expect an underground room or cave to be. It was warm and bright and had carpeting, really soft carpeting, the kind that made me want to sit down on it, and take off my shoes.

I realized, only then, that I wasn't wearing shoes.

The carpeting felt excellent on my feet, plush and kind of tickly and soft. The room had comfortable-looking furniture in it, chairs and couches and a lounge-y kind of thing. There were sunglobes all around -- I realized that was the source of the light and the warmth, and then I realized that must be how Doc was still able to flit around and hover near me, when the first time we'd come to Hell he'd run out of power. Octopi are solar-powered, and Hell's sun doesn't supply the right kind of power (I'd learned; I never knew all that before.)

"Here," Steve said, "Is home base. For now. And our hideout."

"Hideout? Who's after you? Is it Reverend Tommy?"

"In a way," Steve said, and glanced over at the one-handed lady. "In a way, he is. Not me specifically because he probably thinks I'm still dead, to the extent that he thinks of me at all in a specific way, which I'm pretty sure he doesn't, given that he'd barely met me when he tried to kill me."

"How come he didn't kill you?"

"It takes more than crushing a skull to kill a revenant, Rachel. You should know that. You practically have to disintegrate us." Steve sighed.

I remembered, one night, hiding out on the plains of Hell, behind a couple of large rocks, freezing nearly to death (only you can't freeze to death in Hell, you just freeze forever) because we couldn't light a fire for fear it would attract demons... or worse (and if you don't know what could be worse than a demon, lucky you because that means you haven't been in Hell or haven't been there long), and I was trying to sleep, but I heard Steve sighing over by the rock.

"What's wrong?" I'd asked him.

Steve had taken a deep breath -- a deep unnecessary breath -- and had mumbled something.

"I didn't get that," I told him.

"I said," Steve had repeated, more clearly, "That it would be nice if I could die in some easy way."

When I'd asked him what he'd meant, he explained how hard it is to kill a revenant, and then went on to say "But I don't want to live like this, and I'm using live loosely, Rachel. Most of the time it's okay, but at night, when I'm all alone and it's dark and I see you shivering and I realize that I can't feel the cold anymore, I can't feel anything anymore, except sometimes pain, and except for the feeling of stealing someone's soul, and I don't want to do that... when I realize those things, I sometimes just want to stop being... in a position to realize them and start... not being. But it's not that easy for revenants."

Now, in that cozy little cavern, I hugged Steve again. "I know, Steve. I'm sorry."

He patted me on the head. "Thanks," he said, and turned to the one-handed lady. "Anyway, like I was saying, Rachel, here, and I are kind of on the run, only Reverend Tommy doesn't know that we, specifically,"

I interrupted him again.

"Rachel?" I asked him, and looked from him to her.

"Yes, Rachel. Rachel," he said, putting his hand on the small of my back and indicating the one-handed lady with his other hand, "Meet Rachel. The two of you have something in common."

"My hand," we both said at the same time. I'd meant to extend my right hand to shake her hand, but instead, my left hand had gone forward, at the same time as Other Rachel had extended her own left-arm-missing-a-hand.

We both looked down to where my... my?... left hand was reaching out to hers, and her left arm was reaching forward to mine. Before they could touch, Steve stuck his hand down and glared at Other Rachel.

"Not yet?" she asked him.

"Maybe not ever," he said to her.

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth got real thin.

I didn't like her. I right then and there didn't like her. I pulled my ... her?... hand back and put it behind my back and backed up, bumping into Fuzzy Bird, who snuffled a little and tried to back up and caused a little commotion as he knocked down a chair and bumped into Brigitte.

"We should move someplace bigger and explain," Other Rachel said. I watched her. She didn't look anything like me, or act anything like me. Was the name just a coincidence? I wondered.

She didn't look at me, but looked at my hand -- and then back at Steve, who said "The control room, everyone. Let's go." He waved a hand and a piece of the wall, a bookshelf, disappeared, fading out slowly from the center to the edge.

"Hologram," he said to me, and I thought he might have winked but maybe that was just a bandage flipping a little. We walked through the now-empty spot where a bookshelf, or image of one, had been, and into a larger, but equally warm-and-inviting room sat. At the center of the room was a grouping of chairs and couches and a big table. The table was silver and shiny and smooth and had 8 or 10 legs and was pretty big. Steve motioned us towards that grouping. As we walked in, I looked around. All around the edges of this room were more bookshelves and display racks and little desks and tables and cubbies. It was like a library tucked into a cave -- a personal library from some rich person's house, maybe.

Steve sat down in the largest chair, and Other Rachel sat next to him. I took a chair opposite her, as far away as I could. Fuzzy Bird wandered away. Brigitte sat down next to me and reached over and tried to take my hand (my right hand, I noticed.) I didn't let her, and she looked hurt again.

"What is all this, Steve?" I asked. "I never thought I'd see you again, but I really didn't think that you had all this... stuff." I waved a hand around and tried to indicate all the stuff.

"I don't," Steve said. "I don't have any of it. It's Rachel's." He pointed to her, as if I needed it. "She's been getting it all, stocking it up for... I don't know how long. A really long time."

Rachel leaned back and kept her eyes on me. And on my hand. She seemed to divide her attention between the two of them equally.

"It's been quite a hardship, being here," she said. "I never intended to stay as long as I have, and now I may have found my way back home."

"Home?" I asked.

"My own dimension, from whence I was exiled."

"Which dimension is that?" I asked.

"Valhalla," she said.

As she said it, my left hand clenched into a fist.

Part 18A: The One-Handed Lady In Hell.

2010-03-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

We weren't Outside for very long -- barely enough time for it to register -- because we moved a lot faster when it was just me and Fuzzy Bird and Doc and Brigitte, who still clung to me.

I tried not to think of her, hanging on me, there, but it was hard to do and in the few moments from when we left the Army and the little door, I ran through a range of emotions starting with I should just push her off and leave her there to man, that feels really good to have her back to is she really pregnant and then briefly back to man, that feels really good, at which point I looked away from my view behind Fuzzy Bird down to Brigitte, who was holding me just around my back, under my arms, her legs wrapped around my waist. That put her a little below me, even though Brigitte is taller than me.

As I looked at her, she was looking at me. She looked worried, and scared. I felt bad for her for a second and then wondered if that was what she wanted me to feel -- and then I wondered if there was any way, ever again, that I could ever trust her?

Or if I even wanted to, as the thoughts of the Me in the forest came into my head.

Before I could sort that out, though, I saw that we were headed for a red, giant dimension, looming straight before us, and growing larger and larger. The whole trip, from the door to Outside to this red globe took far less time than it takes to tell you and some of what I thought I only worked out, in detail, later. Lots of times you can think stuff or feel stuff that you can't quite describe but when you get a chance to sit down and mull it over later -- as I would, now -- you can really sort things out.

Mostly.

Before I realized what was going on, really, Brigitte said "Not there!" and squirmed a little, but there wasn't much she could do, because if she let go of me Fuzzy Bird would have left her there, Outside the dimensions, and nothing good could come of that. I didn't know why she was upset until we plunged Into the dimension just then, and I smelt and sensed the acrid, fetid air and heat and saw the sky, with its mottled bruisy colors, and saw the ground, with its jagged sharp edges and endless deserts and brutal looking mountains.

"Hell," I said, quietly. My mouth went dry and I felt a little pale.

I'd been coming to Hell for too long now -- or been here too long, everytime I fell asleep, for a while there, trips to Hell that had lasted longer than an ordinary night's sleep, sometimes months while my body slept in the "real" world, and then I'd actually come here, but then it had all stopped and I'd almost forgotten what it was like, or the fear I had of sleeping.

That's not true, exactly. I couldn't forget that. You don't go to Hell and forget it. I deliberately never thought of it, something I'd learned to do, quickly, on that walk south with Doc, because even though I spent every night in Hell, I didn't want to spend my days reliving that. I couldn't have; I'd have gone nuts.

So when I didn't go there every night -- for the last few nights, at least, since we'd escaped here the last time with the Valkyries-- it'd been easier, each day, to not think about Hell and get it out of my mind, at least a little.

Plus, you know, I'd kept really busy since then.

Now I was back and the ground loomed up larger and larger and faster and faster.

"I don't want to go here," I said to Fuzzy Bird, using my quiet, Hell-voice that I used to not attract attention when I was here. Attention is not something one wants to draw in Hell. But Fuzzy Bird didn't listen. He zoomed down, so fast that the air burnt on my skin as we swept through it, so fast that I only had time to take one crummy, smog-filled, burning stinking breath of air before we were again on the ground.

Brigitte let go of me and stood up, staring around, seeming scared for real. She'd not been very lucky the last time we were here, and hadn't been here as much as I had, so it seemed real.

"I never wanted to come back here," she said, and her voice had a quaver in it that seemed real to me. She looked like she was trying to decide whether to shriek, cry, or simply fall down in a faint. Or to try to do all three. Her hands were shaking.

"I didn't either," I said, and turned to Fuzzy Bird. Doc was sitting on his beak again, looking a little dimmer. I remembered that Doc's power wouldn't last much here in Hell -- no sunlight to operate on. (Hell has a sun -- a too-close, too-purplish sun that doesn't so much light up the sky as infect it, making it simultaneously too hot and too cold, too light and too dark. If there's an uncomfortable or painful state of existence, Hell has it -- sometimes all at once.)

***It was necessary to bring you here*** Fuzzy Bird squawed at me, quietly.

"Says who?" I asked, still using my quiet voice.

"Says me," a voice said from behind me. A voice I recognized. I turned around, and didn't see who I expected to see. Instead, a trap-door had opened in the ground, one held up by a woman who looked... not quite right. Not normal, but I couldn't immediately place what the problem was or why I thought that. She beckoned to me.

"Did you talk?" I asked her. She shook her head, and then spoke, in a voice that was so beautiful, so melodic, so enchanting that I almost began to cry when I heard it:

"No," she said to me, and in that one syllable nearly hypnotized me. She went on: "Come in. Now. You need to stay out of sight."

She beckoned again and then dropped down into the trapdoor. I was mystified, not least because of the voice I'd heard first, which was not this woman's voice. I looked at Fuzzy Bird, and Doc.

"That was... I heard... Is he here?"

Doc lit up, a little. Yes, he said.

I turned back to the trapdoor, which was slowly settling back down. I quickly rushed forward and pulled it up, to see the lady disappearing down the ladder, slowly. She was hampered in her climbing, I saw, by the fact that she had only one hand. As I watched her, she looked up, met my eyes with hers, and then looked back down and climbed the rest of the way, into the dark.

I climbed in and went down, as quickly as I could. I heard Brigitte above me, protesting a little but Doc and Fuzzy Bird told her she could stay there or follow and then I heard footsteps above her. It's a testament to how excited I was that I didn't even look up and try to see up her skirt (although I thought about it. As I've said a lot, Brigitte's underpants are very distracting.)

But I didn't look up. I got to the bottom and saw a hallway that opened into a room with some regular-seeming lights on and a man... kind of... standing there.

He was dressed in blue jeans and an old rock concert t-shirt that advertised a group I thought maybe I'd heard of before. His arms and legs were rail-thin and starkly grayed. His head, when I looked at it, was worse: It was bandaged up and wrapped, almost like a mummy, with eyes barely visible through the layers, and even with the bandages I could tell it was pretty mangled.

"Hello, Rachel," the man said, in a voice that rasped and sounded evil. I didn't care. I ran to him and hugged him, careful not to jar his bandaged head.

"Steve!" I said. Then I really did start crying.

RECAP TIME!

2010-02-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

I know that most of you have probably been following this story from the beginning, just as I know that most of you are not at all drawn to this blog simply by the illustrations posted with each entry:

But for those few who arrived late and haven't caught up, I thought I'd recap, from time to time, what's happened so far. So here goes:

Rachel woke up one day as a waitress in a diner -- only she didn't know who or what she was or why she was there. On instinct she walked to her apartment, where she met her cyberhelping Octopus, Doc (think an iPod with legs and some intelligence.) Doc told her to walk South, so she did, running into a small town where she met and fell in love with Brigitte.

Within days of moving in with Brigitte, Rachel is attacked by revenants and must go on the run with Brigitte and her dog. They're joined by a damned soul Rachel pulled out of Hell, seemingly accidentally (when her body on Earth goes to sleep, Rachel's soul travels to Hell, and comes back when she awakens.)

That Damned Soul turns out to be Lieutenant Samson, who tries to help Rachel and Brigitte, but Rachel is captured by Reverend Tommy and some local cops working with Brigitte's father, who invented the Octopi -- among other things. Rachel ends up getting away and taking Reverend Tommy and some others, plus a chunk of Chicago, to Hell with her -- where she learns of the existence of others like her, a Lesbian Zombie Army being created by "the man," a nameless worker in Samson's employ whose job it is to create the lesbian zombies.

Rachel, Brigitte and Samson escape Hell -- again -- with the help of the Valkyries, whose dimension worships Rachel as a goddess, so much so that they've embarked on a program of cloning her. Before learning that, though, Rachel learns that Brigitte was ordered to fall in love with her, and the resultant fight drives Rachel to Valhalla where she meets and falls in love with a clone of herself, but before they can get very far an invasion of flying saucers led by Brigitte disintegrates Rachel and sends her to Limbo, where she's shortly joined by most of her Lesbian Army and Brigitte, who claims still to be pregnant but is actually there to trap Rachel. Pulled back to Valhalla with her army, Rachel gets away this time when Fuzzy Bird, a creature created by God at his home-in-exile- in Tampa, pulls her free.

Through it all, Rachel learns that she is instrumental in the upcoming fight to either bring about, or avoid, Armageddon, as Heaven's Gate has been blocked off and a variety of groups are battling to determine what will happen to the 73 dimensions.

Got all that?

If you want the long version, feel free to browse around the site -- or download the story so far (493 pages) on Scribd by clicking here.

Meanwhile, In Tampa...

2010-02-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

Samson stood back up. His hand tingled a little from where he'd grabbed the spear. He hadn't known that, about touching a Valkyrie's spear being instant death... but that didn't matter for him, it seemed, because he'd done it and hadn't died.

He'd dropped out of the sky, been shot by the Valkyries, and grabbed their spear, and he was still alive.

He blinked a little, and noticed that as he blinked, he saw a glimpse of a black area... black wasn't quite the word. It was dark, sure, but dark in a way that seemed to be different than an absence of light. It was almost as if the dark was the light, like there was a light bulb or sun or something that was giving off dark waves instead of light waves.

He blinked again and decided that he didn't like the look of the place. So he stopped blinking and stared at the Valkyries.

They stared back, holding their spears at him. One leaned over and mumbled something to another, and the second nodded.

"What?" Samson asked.

"You're full of energy. It's literally leaking out of you."

Samson looked down and saw that his skin was glowing and little fizzes and pops of energy were smoking up from his pores. He held his hand up and saw what looked to be flames coming out of the ends of his fingertips.

"Honestly," said the first Valkyrie, approaching him. "Why haven't you died yet?" She was about an arm's length away when Samson threw up his hand:

"Stop!" he said, and tried to blast her with the energy he could now feel crackling through him.

Nothing happened, and the Valkyrie laughed.

"It looks like you know nothing more than we do at this point."

Samson shrugged.

"It was worth a try," he said. He looked around at the guards, captured by the Valkyries, and at the remaining living female warriors who were gathering up the dead and putting them in one location, horses and giant attractive women laid lovingly down. "It looks like we have a standoff," he said.

"How so?" the Valkyrie nearest him said.

"You can't hurt me," he said.

"We don't need to hurt you," she told him. With a lightning quick movement she reached out and grabbed his hand. In her other hand, she had a knife that she brought around more quickly than Samson could react. He tried to pull back but even as he did so, the Valkyrie's knife slashed into the first knuckle of his index finger on that hand. Blood spurted out, and the Valkyrie stepped back with the finger she'd sliced off. Samson pulled his hand back, swearing, and retreated from her. He ripped off part of his sleeve and pressed it onto the wound, slowing the blood flow.

"What the hell was that about?" he demanded.

The Valkyrie handed the finger to another, who hopped onto her horse, which leaped into the air and began galloping off into the sky. It disappeared shortly, probably, Samson mused, heading back to Valhalla.

The remaining Valkyries ignored him, except for the two he'd been talking to.

"You'll find out," one of them told him.

The other turned towards the man, and said "I want to see where you worked."

The man nodded. "It's not here."

The Valkyrie said "I know. You can take me to it. Take my hand," she said, and held out her hand. The man gripped her hand, carefully and tentatively.

He waited a second, and then smiled. "You seem very nice, Tatanya."

"I am nice," Tatanya told him, still holding his hand. "You can trust the Sharing."

The man nodded. "How will we get there?"

Tatanya turned to her horse, which had come trotting over. "We'll ride," she said. She turned towards the other Valkyries. "The rest of you: keep cleaning up and get our fellow warriors back to Valhalla. Take the prisoners, too." To the nearest one, the one who'd cut of Samson's finger, she said:

"Come with me, Czaranya." Czaranya nodded and her horse came over, too. She hopped on.

"Where are you going?" Samson asked.

"I said, to where this man worked," Tatanya told him.

"Don't take them there," Samson said to the man. The man had climbed up onto Tatanya's horse behind her, and was holding on, lightly and with a slightly nervous look on his face, to her waist. He turned towards Samson, who continued "That's a direct order."

"You lied to me," the man said.

"I didn't," Samson responded.

"You said I was sending the women to Heaven," the Man said. "You said their souls were in Heaven, and that their bodies weren't anything, and that if I kept it up, someday I would be rewarded by meeting Her."

Samson tried to remember that last part. Had he said that? "Her?" he asked.

"The one from the Display."

Samson remembered. He remembered asking the man about the Display and the man had said he was creating it from his memory. When Samson had asked what memory, the man had said of the future. Samson had chalked it up to the man's limited intellect, and when the man had said "Do you think I'll ever get to meet her," Samson had said of course he would, when his work was done.

"You've met her," he told the man. "Maybe you didn't realize it, but you met her."

The man looked at him, blankly.

"The one who walked away, a few weeks ago," Samson said. "Rachel."

The man thought about that.

"I didn't know it was her," he said.

"Well, who did you think it was?" Samson asked.

"Don't talk to him anymore," Tatanya interrupted. "I want to see this Display."

"Okay," the man said.

"Don't take her there," Samson said.

"What about Heaven?" the man asked him.

"What about it?" Samson asked back.

"You told me I was sending them to Heaven. But they're not. They're not getting in because Heaven's locked up. You lied to me about that, too."

Samson took a deep breath, and said, calmly: "I didn't lie. You were sending them to Heaven. I didn't lock up Heaven. The Blockers did. You don't know them, but they did. And your little friends here are trying to keep it that way. So they're the reason the women aren't going to Heaven."

The man sat still for a moment. Samson wondered what Tatanya was saying to him, through the Sharing. He didn't get a chance to find out, because as Tatanya nodded, the other one, Czaranya, nodded back, and leveled her spear at Samson, blasting him full on with all its power. He went flying back, his chest and face scorching from the blow and the energy. He felt his body smashing through a wall of God's house, then another before he came to rest. He heard other blasts of energy and had just enough time to see Tatanya and the man, and Czaranya, take flight on their horses before the other Valkyries, shooting at God's house with their spears, brought the entire structure down on top of him.

Just Exactly How Life Looks

2010-02-24T06:26:00.001-08:00

Josh and Presley wander in the desert, alone with just their horses and those specks on the horizon. Josh is slowly going crazy, and Presley's not talking. That's Buzzards Loop, one of the brilliant stories you'll find in Just Exactly How Life Looks, the new collection of short stories I've published:

You can read Buzzards Loop for free on Scribd (click here). Purchase Just Exactly How Life Looks on Lulu.com (click here) or on your Kindle, starting at 99 cents.

Part 17F: Outside, then The Door, Then Outside Again.

2010-02-18T07:27:00.000-08:00

Fuzzy Bird dove at me, Doc clinging to his beak, and the two of them didn't seem to be bothered by the goo all around us at all. It didn't slow them down in the slightest.

As they dove, Brigitte struggled to pull me towards her. "Stay away from them, Rachel!" she yelled, but I could barely hear her over the squawing sound Fuzzy Bird was making -- it rattled my bones and made it difficult to concentrate.

Its that bird! the Me thought in my head. What does he want?

I don't know, I thought back, and then Fuzzy Bird was on me, his feet grabbing at my arm (the one Brigitte wasn't holding) and he pulled back up. I felt Brigitte's hands wrap around my waist and she grabbed onto me. I felt a couple of hands grab onto my legs, too, as we pulled up and I thought, quickly Army! Grab onto each other and hold onto me.

There was a tugging at me as they all did that, even as Fuzzy Bird pulled up and up, at first struggling only a little as all the weight glommed on, but then picking up speed. We rose up through the goo, which I could feel sloughing off of me and clinging, but I could also feel us getting faster and faster.

"Let go of him, Rachel! You've got to let go!" Brigitte yelled.

Where's he taking you? the Me thought to me.

I don't know, I thought back. I looked down at Brigitte and said "I'm not holding on! He's got me!" We kept rising -- I don't know how I knew the direction we were headed in was up but that's the feeling I got.

Ivanka's trying to track you, the Me thought, and I had an image sprung into my mind: Ivanka, with a couple of other Valkyries on their horses, flying up alongside a blue, gelatinous wall at the edge of a forest clearing. Almost as soon as I got that image, from the ground, looking up, I got another thought:

Rachel, we will help you. Keep thinking, strongly, and we will try to rescue you. Ivanka -- I recognized her voice, or mind, or thoughts, or whatever. The picture was replaced with a scene looking down, now, at the clearing. I could see the Me standing there, on the grass, looking up with an anxious expression on her face.

Fuzzy Bird kept tugging and squawing and I saw that Doc was climbing down him, now. Doc couldn't have flown, not in that goo and not at the speed Fuzzy Bird was traveling at. Instead, he climbed up over the head and down the neck and back, towards me. Brigitte saw him, too:

"Doc!" she yelled. "Tell Rachel to trust me!"

Doc buzzed a little and I heard his voice:

"Rachel, grab on to Fuzzy Bird."

"What?" Brigitte asked.

I didn't know whether to trust Doc, now. After all -- he'd been created by Brigitte's dad and had been in the flying saucers with Brigitte.

What do I do? I asked the Me, in my mind.

Don't let Fuzzy Bird take you! Both the Me and Ivanka thought back and Brigitte yelled, then:

"They're right! Don't let him take you, Rachel! Fight him off. Let go!"

My head was spinning and it wasn't just the goo and the speed and the squawing, which I swear was going to make my ears bleed. Brigitte and Ivanka and the Me all agreed on what to do? And they disagreed with Doc?

In my mind, then, I felt a new voice:

Rachel, I would stay with Fuzzy Bird.

I looked down and recognized one hand on my leg.

"Naked Girl?" I asked, tentatively.

We kept moving up, and Brigitte said "Who's that?" She was clinging to my stomach, her head just below my own small breasts, the way I used to lay on her when we first met, her arms wrapped tightly around me.

It's me, Naked Girl thought back.

Naked Girl? The Me thought.

One of my army, I thought, and Brigitte looked up at me as I thought that.

"You're going to listen to her?" Brigitte asked.

I was too exhausted, suddenly, to berate Brigitte for listening in on my thoughts, and I didn't want to. I didn't know what to do, right then, or who to trust. Fuzzy Bird's claws were clamped tightly to me.

Doc said: "Rachel, it is very important that you come with us. We need you and your Army."

Fuzzy Bird screeched, then, in that weird voice of his ****You must come with us. Everything depends on it****.

I looked up at him, and at Doc, and said "Where are we going?"

Naked Girl, in my mind, then, said Rachel, I trust them. You should trust them, too. They seem good.

They did seem good. That was the weird part. I felt like I should trust, at least, Fuzzy Bird. And I wanted to trust the Me and Ivanka, too, but they were agreeing with Brigitte, who I wanted to trust, most of all! I wanted, as I thought about it, to rewind and get back to the part before I'd learned that Brigitte had been told to love me, to move ahead in a different direction, one where Brigitte and I were still in love and she wasn't part of some kind of plot...

Rachel, it's too late for that, the Me said, and I knew it was.

How are you on her side? I asked the Me, and added Is Naked Girl right?

I'm not on Brigitte's side the Me said. We just both happen to agree that you shouldn't go with Fuzzy Bird. Don't trust her, either.

"Rachel, you can trust me! You have to trust me," Brigitte interjected.

I don't know the others, Naked Girl thought to me. But I do trust the Bird.

We're almost to the top, Ivanka thought. If he gets out before we figure out a way in... but she didn't finish the thought. There was a POP! and we were free of the goo, or I and Brigitte and Fuzzy Bird and Doc were. I looked down and saw the blue gel receding from us, a chain of lesbian zombies clinging to my legs and each other, dozens or more of them pulling out of the goo, too, each with a pop! of their own, like a series of bubbles bursting. Brigitte gasped and looked around and in my mind I heard

We're outside... before that cut off.

From the Me I got a bare glimpse of Ivanka's horse stopping at the top of Valhalla's sky, cut off by the edge of that dimension, and then her presence faded out. I couldn't feel Naked Girl anymore, either. We were outside Valhalla and telepathy didn't work anymore. I couldn't Share, either, not the way I was. None of us zombies could Share. Not that way, anyway.

The chain of women held up by Fuzzy Bird ended with the last one pulling free of the gel that marked the boundaries of Valhalla and I looked away from that to see that around us was that swirling, weird, sensory haze that had marked our trip here, too, the outside, as Brigitte said, the space beyond all those other spaces. Fuzzy Bird sped up, even more, and the line of naked beautiful women clinging to me blurred as we looped around. I blinked several times in the glare of the Outside and then suddenly, we stopped moving.

I was standing, on a little square of pavement, outside a wall. The wall was white, but it seemed to be layered in coat after coat after coat of some translucent but glittery substance, like someone had taken paint made of diamonds and kept painting coat after coat after coat of it onto a wall -- and then had removed the wall, leaving only the layers of diamond-created paint, which gave the wall a feel of both being there and not there, of solidity and ethereality of substance and air.

I didn't think all of that then - I just thought it was both the most beautiful, and strongest, and most delicate structure I'd ever seen and I wanted to touch it.

Around me, on the pavement surrounding the wall -- pavement that, oddly, stretched out only about twenty feet from the wall before fading into nothingness -- were Fuzzy Bird and Brigitte and Doc and all the lesbian zombies in my army, all looking as equally dazed.

Then, before I could take that in, I noticed the door -- a small wooden door, with a small brass knob, oddly out of place in that wall, a door that was only about 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide, a door that would have made sense if it had been standing in a hut by a farm, instead of placed in a giant wall that stretched higher than I could see and farther, on each side, than I could imagine.

**** Tell them to guard it**** Fuzzy Bird said.

"What?" I asked.

He pecked at me and nodded towards the lesbians. ***Guard. Tell them to guard it. Nobody enters.***

"Why?" I asked.

Brigitte suddenly gasped, again. "We're here!" she said, and rushed towards the door. Three things happened then:

Fuzzy Bird said ***Tell them to guard it!*** with such force that I yelled

"Lesbians! Guard that door! Nobody enters it!"

The third thing that happened was that Naked Girl-- the closest lesbian zombie, jumped at Brigitte, who'd been heading towards the door, and knocked Brigitte into me.

Then the fourth thing happened: Fuzzy Bird grabbed my arm and took off again, with Brigitte again clinging to me. We left the lesbians behind, standing on the narrow pavement guarding the door, and headed Outside again.

Alone, adrift... hands covered in the blood of his crewmates: Claudius' trip to the stars is a mind-bending thriller of a story. Read "Eclipse" and find out what REALLY happened...

Available at Lulu.com and on your Kindle for $0.99!

Part 17E: Time to Leave The Blue Gel, But Not The Way Anyone Planned.

2010-02-13T13:17:00.000-08:00

Want to read this in hard copy? I've updated the Scribd version today -- so all 492 pages so far are available for free, just by clicking here.

"It's who?" Brigitte asked. Her lips were still right next to mine, but the way she breathed had changed. I stared into her eyes, our eyelashes almost touching.

"It's Me," I told her, again, and tried to pull back myself a little as Brigitte's hand grabbed my waist more harshly. "Stop it!" I snarled at her. I could feel the hands on my legs -- my Army-- pulling at me, too. I didn't hear anything though; they must have lost the ability to talk. Brigitte grabbed at me even harder after I told her to stop.

"Listen to me, Rachel! You can't go with her! She's not to be trusted."

I remembered the walk in the woods with the Me, and how it was about the only time, since Albuquerque, that I'd felt happy or at peace for even a minute. I remembered making love with the Me -- telepathically and physically, our bodies moving together as our minds melted into each other, so that I could feel emotions like they were hands on my skin. Those kinds of thoughts flashed through my head and I struggled in the blue goo to get away from Brigitte, to get her hands off of me, even as I said "What do you mean, she can't be trusted? She's me, you know. So I can't be trusted?"

But Brigitte was looking at my eyes, and had a glazed-ish look. I realized that she was seeing my thoughts and I tried to clamp them down, to stop her. Her eyes focused on mine as I wormed my hand up through the goop.

"That's how it is?" she asked, softly, and bit her lip. I'd pulled my hand free, almost, and tried to slap her on the face. It didn't work, hardly, because I couldn't move that well in the blue gel, but the message was the same.

"Don't you read my mind," I told her, and tried to pull back more, my hand now stuck in the blue next to her face. "Stay out of there! You don't have the right!" Part of me was worried that Brigitte would read the parts I didn't want her to read -- or the parts I wasn't sure I wanted her to read, yet. The parts about her. Even as I thought that I realized that thinking about those thoughts would bring them front and center and she'd be able to read them if she wanted to. "Don't do it! I said."

In my mind I saw Brigitte's underwear, lacy stuff made of black wisps that barely seemed to contain her firm, round, butt. I saw her climbing up that ladder the first night we kissed, my hand wanting to reach up and touch her... and I locked eyes with Brigitte now, in the goo, and tried to figure out what I saw there.

"Geez, I've got to get out of here!" I said, suddenly, trying to cover up my thoughts. "Where are we?"

Brigitte didn't answer at first and I stared back at her. "You were..."

She shook her head, as much as she could. "No," she said. But I think she was lying, and as I tried to see if she was, I thought again about the underwear... and then tried to stop as Brigitte started talking.

"We're right outside of Valhalla," she told me. Her voice had changed a little, not so bossy as when she'd said not to trust the Me. "We were being pulled back there by the Grabber that the Blues brought with them to this battle, and they were supposed to pull us back from Limbo. I'm being totally honest with you, now, Rachel," she interjected when I was about to talk. "I was supposed to follow you into Limbo, once we figured out that you'd been disintegrated and sent there. And I was supposed to convince you to come with us, one way or the other. I hoped to actually convince you but regardless, we need you so I had to take my chances that if I couldn't convince you to help us I'd have to bring you back no matter what. So I did. I grabbed you and then the Grabber got me and was pulling us back, but all those women," she nodded down towards where I assumed there was a giant trail of Lesbians clinging to my legs, "Made it too hard to get all the way through the Goo that surrounds Valhalla."

"Goo?" I said.

Brigitte shrugged. "Valhalla is surrounded by a blue gelatinous substance. The actual dimension is only about a couple of miles wide. Once you get to the edge of it, the Blue Gel starts and encloses it on all sides and above and below, as far as anyone can tell. It's impossible to get through, generally speaking, without using a Grabber or something similar. Not that you'd want to try, because there's nothing outside except Limbo."

"Where we were?"

"No. Limbo is not In Between. It's not like The Void. The Void is In Between all the dimensions, but it's not really a dimension. It's just what's in between them. Limbo is what's outside them. Nobody's ever been in Limbo."

"How do they know it's there?"

Brigitte said "They just know." She looked around again then back at me. "I don't want to get too distracted. Do you see my ring?" I looked up at her hand, but she wasn't wearing a ring, and I said that.

"I know. Do you see it?"

"No, Brigitte. I don't see anything. Except goo, and a little bit of your face. Why is Valhalla surrounded by this?"

Brigitte said "I don't know. Ask God. It must have gotten pulled off."

"What did?"

"My ring."

"Why do you need it?"

"Because it's how the Grabber will find us. Once they realized that we didn't get back, that we'd slipped out of its grip, they'll have it try to get us again. It'll need a little rest and some food, but then once it's ready it'll home on the ring. That's how it found me in the Void. I hope it's at least close to us."

I pictured the Grabber that had been in Hell. "What does it eat?" I asked.

"The Grabber? Don't ask," Brigitte said. She seemed suddenly very businesslike about this, and I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I didn't want her to be all lovey and Brigitte-y, not yet, but I didn't want her to be too distant, either. I wasn't sure what I wanted, other than to not be trapped in blue gel with Brigitte while some demon tried to find us.

"Why?"

Brigitte looked at me. "It eats souls, Rachel." I must have shown shock, or sadness -- I felt both -- because she said "I told you not to ask."

Before I could say anything, I felt something in my mind.

Rachel, don't react in any way can you feel me?... came the thought.

I held my breath.

Yes, I thought to myself. I tried to go blank. Brigitte, in front of me, was trying to slowly turn her head and see if her ring was above her. I don't know why she bothered; nobody could see more than a few inches.

Is Brigitte right there? came the thought. It was the Me. I recognized her mind.

Yes, I thought back. She's right in front of me.

Is she touching you?

Yes, I thought again.

Where? the Me asked me. Brigitte was turning her head back, slowly. I took inventory.

On the small of my back, I told the Me. She's got one hand on my back. Why?

Can you move away from her? the Me asked.

I considered a moment. Brigitte's arm was almost around me, with her hand in the middle of my back. The Blue Gel made it really difficult to do anything. But the Army still had their hands on me.

I realized that Brigitte was looking directly into my eyes. She looked, for a second, suspicious but then almost instantly that went away and I thought it might be my imagination.

"Rachel," she breathed. One lip touched both of mine as she said it, brushing over them. She'd ended up a little closer to me than she had been before.

I don't know if I can, but the Lesbian Army is clinging to me. They might be able to pull me, I thought.

"Do you know what I was just remembering?" Brigitte said, huskily. Her eyes closed, only a little, and her irises seemed to grow larger and softer. Her eyes were still the same amazing blue, a shade that felt like looking at a clear blue ocean on a sunny day... an ocean where you were going to go swimming, naked, with someone you loved whose body you wanted to lick all over. That kind of blue.

"What..." I said, almost against my will.

Can you tell them to pull you? the Me asked in my mind.

Brigitte's hands caressed the small of my back. "Our first kiss," she said. "In the diner." She pushed forward just a bit more, her lips now matching up with mine.

I thought to the Me Now her lips are touching me, too.

Yeah, I got that, the Me said. Can you tell the Army to pull you? On three?

"You tasted like apple pie," Brigitte said. Her tongue sneaked out and touched my teeth.

I can try, I told the Me, not sure that I wanted to do that.

You've got to do it, the Me told me.

What's going on? I thought to her.

At the same time, Brigitte put her mouth fully on mine.

On three, the Me thought. Brigitte was saying something into my mouth, her tongue tickling mine. I took a moment to figure it out, but I did, and she was saying:

"The Valkyries are going to kill you, Rachel. They're going to use you as bait." She whispered it into my mouth, and then held her lips on mine. Our eyes met, over the kiss, and she looked sincere.

In my mind, at the same time, the Me said She's going to kill you, Rachel. She's going to use you as bait.

Brigitte wriggled her other arm up around me and put it on my face. "Don't leave, Rachel, please!" she said, loudly.

In my mind, the Me said Tell them to pull, now! and at the same time, I thought Pull, army! but my mind thought that as my mouth said "I love you, Brigitte!"

The Army pulled on my legs and tugged me down as Brigitte kissed me and I felt something large, really large, grab and start tugging me away from her while at the same time something pulled Brigitte and me back towards Brigitte, and that would have been bad enough, being tugged in two directions and not knowing which way I wanted to go, but at the same time there was a horrible squawing sound, that loud hideous squawking squeal that I instantly recognized, and looking up, I saw Fuzzy Bird diving down on us faster than anything I'd ever seen move.

Oh, and Doc was sitting on his beak.

The Home Buyer Tax Credit -- $8000!-- awaits you.

2010-02-13T13:08:00.000-08:00

You've got only 76 days left to actually take advantage of the Home Buyer Tax Credit. Either get yourself a written contract to purchase a house by April 30, 2010 (with a closing date by June 30, 2010) or miss out on up to $8000 in free money.

Yep: Free money -- $8000 in tax credits. Eight-thousand dollars, just for doing what you're going to do anyway, which is buy a house.

The Home Buyer Tax Credit has been expanded, too, so people who didn't think they could qualify might. In addition to covering people buying their first home ever, you also qualify for the tax credit if you:

-- haven't owned your own home in three years, or
-- if you've lived in the house you own for 5 of the last 8 years.

So if you've been living in your house for five years (or more) you can quality for the Home Buyer Tax Credit, too -- up to $6,500 off your new house for people like you.

The income limits are pretty high, too. You can earn as much as $125,000 if you're single, or $225,000 if you're married, so almost everyone will now qualify for a new house.

But, remember: Contract by April 30, and close by June 30, or you're giving up on that free money. So get moving!

Part 17D: Me Is Coming!

2010-02-08T07:29:00.000-08:00

I got jerked forward and at the same time as that happened, I felt a bunch of hands grabbing at my legs and waist and feet, grabbing and tugging and pulling. My body felt like it was stretching.

All around us were flashing images and floating colors and stars of light exploding. I couldn't really concentrate, but it seemed as though we were spinning and twisting and sliding around and outside a series of globes, or circles, or something, clear little glass-enclosures that I thought had stuff inside them but I couldn't quite tell because the elaborate and confusing light show that I was suffering through made it difficult to concentrate.

And I do mean suffering. The lights were flashing and popping and twirling all around me, but more than that: they were physically affecting me. They were pinching and pulling me, somehow, and I didn't understand that, because I knew it was light, but it was more than light, too, and even as it pulled at me and stretched me out I could smell it, and taste it, too.

Have you ever smelt ultraviolet? I have.

I was getting pulled back, and on, too, and heard screaming and yelling but off in a distance, ahead of me, behind Brigitte, who still had me by the waist and whose face, as it turns out, was right next to mine, but distorted. She was more translucent and her face was elongating, a bit.

"TELL THEM TO LET GO" Brigitte managed to say to me, her voice strained and warped by the colors.

I looked back, somehow doing that without turning my head, or even my eyes; I just sort of turned my awareness, and saw all up and down my legs, hands and arms, and I could see glimpses of heads, legs, breasts, shoulders, knees. I also saw eyes, peering at me anxiously as the women those eyes were in clung on to me for dear life.

I turned back to Brigitte:

"No," I said, as firmly as I could.

Her eyes met mine. Her mouth set. "You're going to kill us," she said. "You're making this more difficult than it has to be."

That was quite a mouthful, under the circumstances, and she closed her eyes as the spheres whipped by us, and we shot through a zone of pure violet, then lighter purplish. I could see the purple growing lighter, and feel things getting heavier, and more solid. I realized that, as it did, I could feel my arms and legs and all those hands, and Brigitte's arms around me...

... which I liked, and didn't like, because I'd wanted her arms around me for so long now, but then once they were I couldn't get away from thinking about how she'd used me, and even shot me, so it didn't feel that great anymore, only, and this confused me, it still felt really good, and for a second, I wanted to just close my eyes and have Brigitte hold me again, and try to forget all the stuff that had happened in between the last time she did that, and this time...

But then we jerked to a stop and I felt all this gooey, gummy, hard-to-move-in kind of substance around me. I was suspended there, almost face-to-face with Brigitte, with the hands and arms still on my leg, but I couldn't really move at all. Everything was blue, sky blue, a light, inviting color that would have been very pleasant if I hadn't been suspended in it like something trapped in gelatin. I couldn't see very far through it; it was kind of see-through but only close-up, so I couldn't see much more than a foot or two beyond me.

Brigitte's nose was actually touching mine, now, side-by-side. Her head was slightly turned to her left, so that her lips were just off-center with mine. When she spoke, it was almost like when we used to whisper just before we kissed.

"Great," she said. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, turning her head slowly in the whatever-it-was-we-were-caught-in. "I told you to have them let go," she said, but she didn't say it unkindly. Her hand patted me on the shoulder, where it was pressed against me. "Now, we might be trapped here."

"Where's here?" I asked, my own lips moving slowly. I almost -- almost-- felt them brush up against hers.

Brigitte looked back and forth. "I'm pretty sure," she said "That we're just outside of Valhalla. We were supposed to be pulled back to that dimension by our own Grabber. But it must have been too much weight." She looked down, then, briefly, and then back at me.

"I'm not going to leave them behind," I said. I wanted to say and I'm not going to help you, but I couldn't. Her skin was so soft, her hands on my back so nice...

"We could have done something about that. I know why you don't trust me," she said. "And I'm sorry it all came out like that. But you've got to start believing me again."

Her hand rubbed my shoulder a little, encouragingly.

But I didn't want to cave in, yet. I could still feel it, a little, where she'd shot me, and even though I don't feel pain, I feel things. And, more than that, I can see, and I remembered her face as she'd shot me. She hadn't looked sad or sorry at all.

I didn't know what to believe. I didn't know what to think. My mind was all racing and thoughts were running through it as the Lesbian Zombies clutching my legs began squirming around, trying to free themselves from the goop and as Brigitte rubbed my back a little, moving her arm down a little more, and as she turned her head just slightly so that I could feel her warm breath on my own lips. My thoughts were jumbled and didn't seem to be my own.

I'm coming...I thought, or did I? I wasn't sure. It didn't seem like me.

I'm coming... I thought again, and that made me start up a little (as much as I could, in that containing gel), because it wasn't my thought. It wasn't me at all.

I'm coming... Rachel... I'll be there soon. I recognized the thought, the way of thinking.

"Me!" I yelled, surprised. "It's ME!"

Brigitte's eyes narrowed.

Part 18: In Hell, Again.

2010-01-28T08:12:00.000-08:00

A: The One Handed Lady In Hell.

B: I don't like other Rachel.

C: A Little More Conversation, A Little Less Action.

D. "I've Got Her."

E. Reverend Tommy Needs Something.

F. Just Because Things Exist, Doesn't Mean They're Good?

G. Meanwhile, in what will in mere moments be referred to as "That Place That Used To Be Tampa,"

F. Meanwhile, somewhere between what will be left of Tampa, and New York...