Subtract by adding.
Example: 673,493 - 2,763 = 670,730
Add 7 to 3 to get 2,770
(0 + 7) = 7
Add 30 to 2,770 to get 2,800
(7 + 30) = 37
Add 200 to 2,800 to get 3,000
(200 + 37) = 237
Add 7,000 to 3,000 to get 10,000
(7,000 + 237) = 7,237
Add 90,000 to 10,000 to get 100,000
(90,000 + 7,237) = 97,237
Add 573,000 to 100,000 to get 673,000
(573,000 + 97,237) = 670,237
Add 493 to 673,000 to get 673,493
(493 + 670,237) = 670, 730
Final Answer: 630,730
There was a large bonfire burning close off, in the distance. The sounds of grinding Nu-Ouze music and cacaphoneously wild, feral, raucus laughter bellowed a soft, low booming, grumble of distant artifical thunder into the pass above.
"Too easy.", Ruma thought.
She spotted a great sprawling grove of Spruit trees overlooking the party.
"What are we doing here?", Pilsner had asked Antilles, later that night, with a flat resigned tone in his voice that was too exhausted to battle wits with the stone-hearted Commander, anymore. The imbecile had won. He was too defeated to argue stupidity a moment longer.
The Commander's response was most entirely unexpected and way too long overdue, perhaps, even, much too late.
"I told Admiral Krang how much that I had eagerly wanted to die after losing my wife, Valaxia, to the farmer's raid, then I urinated in the plates he had brought out specially for the Lhogg Senator's who were on loan from his home world. After that, they had gone and made a specially made file, just for him and he thought I needed an 'insidious reciprocation'.", the insipid Commander made air quotes and had laughed, unmockingly, at his own sad non-ingenious.
Corporal Pilsner shot him a searching look. The Commander shrugged. Reaching for his liquor, he forced a large guzzled nip of it down the Corporal's throat, until he gagged on it, then took a pull of his own large swig on it, with the luminescant alcohol streaming down his chin like a glowing party favor. Sucking in air, he belched the start of the Nuvo-Achaedianblundtt alphabet, then returned to his tale, "Anyway, he had me analyzed and, turns out, I'm ready to throw my life away. So here we are. Decoys! I have never once had the codes. Idiot! Those are the recipes for Un da Trifla Twist honey dishes. We're here to breathe our last, so don't be such a snivelling whiney butt about it, okay?"
The Commander grinned, "Look, braniac. While I'm being hunted, the real codes are launching a Neumidian Corps airstrike against the Gouadd Nal's upper grand vice palace and the Shri Lauk Menji's allies. See here, you Naxster nut'brained overthinking numbskull of a buffoon, without their Steourmhearst palace, they'll soon fall like Ahkvad flies."
The Corporal began scanning the dark horizon for any would-be assasins lurking nearby. One Menji Gouadd Nal assasin is skilled enough to assassinate a crew three times their size and they left no witnesses.
The Commander drew spittle from his mouth from laughing at the Corporal so hard and, said, to Pilsner, between breaths, "Look at you, freak! Always so serious!", then the overly loud and boisterous Commander Brevick Jayt Antilles stopped talking. He had a new hole in his head.
20 years later ...
"First Captain, Aldebauss Jorrad Pilsner. Says here, in your service record, that you were the solitary survivor of the legendary, 'Angulodd Ribbon Massacre'. Is that true?", asked Litten, the gruffened higher-up who stood before him.
Pilsner nodded the affirmative, not sure where this was going.
"Thanks to your teams diversion we won the Rhiavulette War without too much effort. I was a Lieutenant in the fifty third brigade and took a Thauron grenade to the leg saving a Warrant Officer and two Commodores. Earned me a field promotion and it fueled my career. Great war!", beamed the surly General-Secretary of the Interior, Arthur Primpendulimm Litten.
Pilsner disagreed, but had chimed in, "Yes, sir."
General-Secretary Litten asked, "Tell me, what kind of man was the infamous, world renowned, Commander Antilles? I've long been inspired by his courage and sacrifice. You'll forgive me for prying, won't you, but, you see, official public reports don't indicate that anyone survived, so you are a sweet treat, if I do say so, myself."
Pondering a bit, then, shoring up his resolve, First Captain Pilsner said, "He was a most loyal patriot who, laying down his life, protected the home worlds he loved so dearly. He was a great man and I've nothing but the choiciest pick of words for any who would say, otherwise."
The General-Secretary was delighted, "Good! All that I imagined him to be."
"I'm promoting you, sir, to Under-Secretary of Communications. You've quite the head for it and your last assignment gained you a lot of political points. Points I can use, if you catch my drift. But first, ...", the General-Secretary, closing the manila, color-coded file, with soft, manicured hands and then peering closely with enigmatically intense eyes, queried, "how on Great Gaulite's Mines did you ever survive?"
Pilsner, half-shrugged, murmuring, "I reminded her of a rabbit."
Corporal Pilsner had heard a transport just beyond the pass in the peaks he had used earlier. He found the Commander and voiced his concerns, "Someone is tracking us."
"No one is tracking us.", the Commander was biting down on the seared meat as it crackled between his teeth.
The security men had caught some Valdasyian boars and they now roasted on wooden spits.
They piled surplus ship items and dumped five huge fuel drums on them. The semi-native, gut boars, were all fourteen feet long, tail to snout, with five razor-sharp tusks apiece and weighing in a near, whopping, fourteen hundred pounds, each. Plenty enough to sustain the entire crew, overnight, with leftovers. This much meat had to be cooked hot and fast. The recently unused Alkazine-Stitchtrex fuel from their wreckage was just the meal ticket for the meandering occasion.
All at the Commander's orders, they had their own veritable old world luau. Pilsner dropped the turgid lumber he had wasted his, precious, valuable time collecting. The crew had done felled plump timbers and had them ablaze.
Commander Antilles looked happily, deliriously, reminiscent and, grinning, asks, "You know what a Botch Memosa is, Pilsner?"
"No.", said a perplexed Corporal.
"It's a Jhygaedian meal worm. Three hundred and sixty feet, some of 'em. They eat dirt and sh*t nutrients. I fell right in one once. A female. Only. She wasn't burrowing up, but down and I'd fallen into her hoo-hah. Me being very manly, I'd had to lick the whatcha-ma-kallit and I tongue-lathered that worm, but good. Who knew that it triggered the release of hours-long fermented acidia noctonic gas? Well, I rode that flatulence right on out of that smelly wet cave and, know this, she had never so much as kissed me. Kiss me, now, Corporal Egghead!"
The crew was stitched in hysterics.
The Corporal thought, for a moment, that must be the ever present stench on the Commander and, indubitably so, was about to say as much, when he opted to change the subject, instead.
"The 'Jhorgrhayne Headlines Cycle' reports the high lord of the Menji is assisting in the 'search and rescue' and, you know, he wants the navy's Quarzon sub-space fleet command codes that some moron thought fit to give you.", said the Corporal, motioning to his aural broadband unit on his belt.
Offended, the Commander hissed, "They gave them to me 'cause I'm not some odd 'know-it-all' who needs to go get more firewood! Hey! Listen up, Pilsner, the news isn't real, buddy! I'm not your friend, pal. But, I'll tell your a**, anyways, all those holo-people are just actor's. You are the reason they keep talking. You are gullible. Oh no! The sky is falling, an actor said so!", chuckled Antilles, by the conclusion of his rant.
"You're the Commander of a three eighty seven 'A'-stock Gunythe-Syll's-Krorthrite Cruiser and, you're telling me, that 'you' don't believe in the secure news from your employers? How do you know how to do your job? You 'did' just wreck a thirty point twelve million manno-tonne Cruiser, hours ago, on a simple planet orbit routine, you know? What a maroon! Now, we're exposed and lit up like a Hallion Sun for every Qui'i sniper to see and take aim at. You're seriously not even vaguely or remotely concerned that the person looking for us most actively, is the leader of the enemy!?! While you, you moronic pile of dung, just sit right on stuffing your face and hurling trite!", Corporal Pilsner was dripping venom and, for the fête coup de grâce, an ungraceful crowning hiss of, "Tell me, ignorama-pod, for soothe, you fastitious ox, do you truly write your own name on sticky pads just to remember who that fool in your silver mirror is before the lens breaks under the cold, dead weight of your horrid ill-reflection?", blathered on an angrily infuriated, hostile, hungered, morally turpidless, emotionally drained and highly beleaguered, Corporal.
"See? I knew you cared.", remarked Antilles to the cackle of the, largely astonished, onlooking crew of the 'Fated Glory'.
"I just get orders faxed to me and I'm following them, then I'm not thinking of anything, 'till the next orders. Got it, smarty pants?", said the Commander. Proud of himself.
Curiously, Corporal Pilsner inquired, "And. What 'are' your orders?"
"Go get some more firewood!", came the aggravated response from the Commander.
She was a diminutive contemporary among her peers with gaunt, slender, pragmatic hips and thighs that could jackhammer hormonal words like "pummel", deep into submission.
Her stark, bleak, world was noxious, suffocating and would steal your new baby's breath and that was just the pallid baraethryllium gas that rapidly sustained her as it passed her throat. A supply stemmed into the cut vase of her torso.
The nights were a cyan-azure tinctured mix of thaumopolis winds so biting, she'd forgotten it wasn't a lovers dank foreplay riddling her body.
But, not here.
This world, Genoue, was a green and blue, multi flouraed, bioluminescent, paradise and she, one Mrs. Ruma, became stoically determined, after crushing on some local fauna, that she would be returning for pleasure, again and again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The vapid stew simmered for fifteen minutes before it had been ladled into the waiting bowls.
Roeückblatt never tasted so good. But it had an attitude which many customers disliked.
The Roeückblatt gurgled euphorically at the virile Nylers most unfortunate loss of much of its liechenstacht soeamposium's purlnapping from the tri-annual ritual: the Hansha Gri-Lordac Throgrhat Tree's mass rooting, transplantative, displacement of its lucious, curled, vibrant and protuberant Maccenack thorns.
Named for Fredliss "the Visionary" Janeer Jon Maccenack, the crippled blind man who used them to cure the spread of the contagious and deadly, Drydaughtt's Syndrome.
It was a mating ritual that Thron the Nyler was not thrilled about, but he had bedded sixteen furry vixens and, at least, four would litter his rampant offspring. He was exhausted and he was dissapointed at the loss of his Maccenack thorns which he invested ample time and rare resources in growing and grooming.
Bitter, the Nyler salted the stew and slurped it down. The farajak spices scented the eatery with pungent-sweet deli'd scents and the blue collared frere rabbit began grumbling loudly, in order to, help mildly distract him from hearing its liquidy laughter still continuing down into his gullet.
The rabbit quickly scurried off when she had entered. Ruma was a tad bit heartbroken. She loved a rabbit once, but he ran off. It wasn't so long ago. She shook off her coat and sat down to the rabbits stew. Nyler rabbits, it appeared, always ran off.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I used those two peaks right there, on top of the Angulodd Ribbon, for a compass and map triangulation. We're at 118° with an inclination West of 12° for a true bearing of 106°.", said Corporal Pilsner, trying to show Commander Antilles the map, but the infantile Commander, annoyingly, waved it away.
"Egghead!", the Commander exclaimed. Then, the Commander began trying to shove a yellow sticky note with the words, "You're a cod, bone head!", on it, into an irritated Corporal Pilsner's face, while asking him, "Wanna come into my Cruiser cabin? I see how you look at me. I'm not that way, but you look like you'll cry if you don't get your way and I like sissy girls. You a sissy girl, egghead?"
Unperturbed, the Corporal shot back, "I know you're trying to be fecetious, however, most women I know would snap you like a twig and are twice as commanding as any man. Those who aren't are soft, beautiful, gentle and have more ounce of care in one little finger than you have throughout the whole lot of your being. I'd have been proud to have been born a woman, I should say. Beats being born the man who has to put up with you. Besides, you lout, this here cod, bone headed, egghead's gonna get us out of here!"
The Commander shook his head and laid a heavy, muscled hand onto the Corporal's shoulder, saying, "Face it, screwy. We're lost."
"We're not lost!", the Corporal threw the map onto the ground.
"Spare me your psycho babbling!", an irritated, child-like, Commander said, while pulling an antiquated Emerald-Verdiean liquor, far too nice for the very auspiciously grooted and messed up occasion, from a broken shaft compartment on the downed Krorthrite craft.
The Corporal felt like a groot because he didn't resonate with being subjected to the unwanted advances of the Commander or his personal conduct and bottle-filled living space, period, and, most certainly, not when receiving a loving sticky note with quantumnuscopic three point alledos font and a look of unpreproportional squinting at the incessantly neurose, vain and the absurdly uncompromised, nigh' unyielding, berating on the part of, his High Royal Supreme Lord of Retardedness, Commander Antille's.
Antille's, oblivious of the Corporal's unassauged displeasure, continued ...
"I get it. I do. We're all here. This is in the eternal now and we're just viewing panaramic slices of time, 'cause we can't wrap our head around it and we all have our feelings hurt! So we can sit around and 'Whah! Whah!' All day.", motioning with rubbing hands to his eyes as he prattled off his insults.
"Noo! ... It's on the map!", the Corporal said, slowly, so the simpleton before him could follow and understand.
"What are you gonna believe? Pictures or your own eyes?", then the Commander made a "V" with his fat, pudgy fingers and went to poke at the Corporal's eyes.
"Well, you stay lost, I'm getting out of here.", the Corporal leaned over and scooped the map off of the ground.
The Commander squeezed his arm before Corporal Pilsner could take another step, intoning, "Noo! ... We need 'you' to set up camp."
"You Kurlagh-f**ker!", spat the Corporal.
"Aww, the egghead's mad. Be careful! He might throw a Grigand Stohl book at you.", said the Commander walking off while guffawing about his own joke about the author who had been crushed to death by his own two-billion-some, paginated-ly monstrous, work of a novel.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You'll want Commander Antille, located on the Anlil footpaths off of Fozzner's Peaks.", said the confident local who served her at the low eatery counter. He brought her a plate of Ancillaeyan dives and Spraütznasster cheese. The cheese was still moving. The hot Roeückblatt stew was just an appetizer, the cheese and dives were the main course. The Menji had contacts for the their elite Gouadd Nal assasins, everywhere.
"How much is the lottery up to?", Ruma asked.
The informant server said, lowly, "I hear it's up to as high as three million six hundred fifty seven thousand and a delectable eighty-icious beads of Ka'ron with a remarkable two point three anthrocite vials."
Just the payday, Shareefa Ruma, the Nal trans hyper galactic corporate world's assasineness had, forever and a day, dreamed of.
How to do big multiplication fast?
Here's a fast and easy multiplication method that I currently use. Vedic and traditional methods, as well as, some other multiplication tips, tricks and strategies are fine, but this multiplication method requires absolutely no guessing, it's not difficult mental gymnastics and the numbers are readily known to anyone adept at (1–9) × (1–9) tables and proficient at adding and using compliments to add.
I'm only interested in basic math functions and this suits my needs, often I just do the work in my head and write the results as I go.
Multiply by combining. I can look at something like (213×7) and know it's 1491, without having written anythng, because (213×7) is (7×2) = 14 and (7×1) = 7 and (7×3) = 21 and I picture the 14 7 21 and separate any available tens places from available one's places to their left 14 (7 2)1 then add 14(9)1 to get the total 1491 I'd write it, like this, if I didn't just do it in my head and write the product as I went, which I won't do herein. :
What about additional carrying? (687×9) is much the same: 54 72 63 is 5(4 7)(2 6)3 is 5(11)(8)3 is 5(11)83, but what of that double digit 11? Carry it by combining again. (5 1)183 is (6)183 = 6183
Do the same with each digit in multi-digit factors, but tack on zeroes for place value holders at the end of the appropriate results and, then, you will add the results, together.
For instance, (345×7889), you do (3×7889) but 3 is actually 300, so you add two zeroes onto the end of the result, then you do (4×7889), but as 4 is actually 40, so you tack one zero onto the end of that result and, finally, do (5×7889) and 5 is actually 5, so there's no additional place value zeroes that are needed, so, now, just add all of the results.
Note: Subtract by adding. For instance, (35–4): (4+6) = 10 and (10+20) = 30 and (30+5) = 35 so 6+(20+5) = (6+25) = 31
Moving on to some exponent examples:
27(3)^2 - 4(3)^3
27(5)^2 - 4(5)^3
27(6)^2 - 4(6)^3
Bonus multiplication problem: 12345×67890 the vedic criss cross method would do this in one line, but requires too much thinking for my tastes, especially, when the factors get much larger. This took me hardly any time or effort.
First, I wrote the formula, then all the multiples, which were already known multiples, so, I didn't have to calculate anything, then I did all of the carrying, then I lined up and wrote the results with their place values and then I added them. Finally, I wrote the answer.
Easy peasy. Took less than a few minutes to do.
Could have been faster, but I'm still a learning and take awhile. I still use calculators to check my work.
We've used exponents, so, here's an easy way to solve exponents using binary. You can learn to Easily Convert Decimal to Binary , but for now, I'll just use this guide.
Find the binary of the exponent. For instance, in 8^6 the binary of the exponent 6 is 110, so, drop the leftmost binary digit to get 10, now, for each 1 put an S8 (S means we square and 8 means we multiply by 8, we use 8 in this example, because that is the number being raised by the exponent) for each 0 put an S (again, S means we square, which is just multiplying a number by itself). So the binary number 10 becomes S8S
“S” square 8 = 64
“8” multiply 64 by 8 = 512
“S” square 512 = 262,144
8^6 = 262,144
Here's how I would sloppily do it:
Another example: 12^9
Binary of 9 is 1001
Drop leftmost binary digit 1001 becomes 001
Assign S12 (the number being raised by the exponent) to the 1's and S to the 0's to get SSS12
“S” square 12 = 144
“S” square 144 = 20,736
“S” square 20,736 = 42,981,696
“12″ multiply 42,981,696 by 12 = 5,159,780,352
12^9 = 5,159,780,352
Here's how I would messily do it:
So you see, x^2 would simply be x squared and x^3 would simply be x squared and the result multiplied by x as I have done in your examples above.
Be proficient at adding the following 55 pairs of numbers to get the total in bold and subtracting one of the numbers in the pair from the total in bold to get the other.
0 : 0 0
1 : 0 1
2 : 0 2 : 1 1
3 : 0 3 : 1 2
4 : 0 4 : 1 3 : 2 2
5 : 0 5 : 1 4 : 2 3
6 : 0 6 : 1 5 : 2 4 : 3 3
7 : 0 7 : 1 6 : 2 5 : 3 4
8 : 0 8 : 1 7 : 2 6 : 3 5 : 4 4
9 : 0 9 : 1 8 : 2 7 : 3 6 : 4 5
10 : 1 9 : 2 8 : 3 7 : 4 6 : 5 5
11 : 2 9 : 3 8 : 4 7 : 5 6
12 : 3 9 : 4 8 : 5 7 : 6 6
13 : 4 9 : 5 8 : 6 7
14 : 5 9 : 6 8 : 7 7
15 : 6 9 : 7 8
16 : 7 9 : 8 8
17 : 8 9
18 : 9 9
Once you have done this, just match the pairs, carrying any tens place digit in the total in bold to the total in bold to the left of it and keep with the carrying, as needed.
123+456 = 579 No carrying necessary.
5 : (1 + 4)
7 : (2 + 5)
9 : (3 + 6)
579
456+789 = 1245 Carrying necessary.
11 : (4 + 7)
13 : (5 + 8)
15 : (6 + 9)
1(1 + 1)(3 + 1)5
1(2)(4)5
1245
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Arcanum by Simon Morden
Thieves World: Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn by Robert Aspirin
Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
In Times Like These: A Time Travel Adventure by Nathan Van Coops
The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Joshua: A Parable for Today by Joseph Girzone
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian
The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey
Ralph S. Mouse by Beverly Cleary.
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice
Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover
She sat down on the large Goldenrod couch, beside him. He leaned in to kiss her, but she put her hand to his lips and said, "You didn't answer your phone last night or call me back. "
He leaned back some and looked her in the eyes, responding with a shrug, "I know."
She crosses her arms, pouts her lips, as rosea salmon as her tongue and flower, and she asks coyishly, "Did you know I called?"
He looked her in the eyes, nodding, "yes" and says, "I didn't want to talk."
Her face screwed up in concern for him, "Why not?"
Matter of factly, he responds, "I was too messed up." He makes the signs known for smoking, popping pills and drinking.
She does these things, too, but says, "I'm mad."
She was, too.
She fumed.
Not once did she have anger in her voice nor he in his when he stated to her, "I should be mad that you're mad."
He explains sweetly to her, "You know what I'm like and I will make no apologies for it. I live in a dangerous world and I have to steel my last nerve just to go outside, much more, when it is I have to deal with some of my life and you know that when I'm not going out and stuff, sometimes, I easily get carried away."
Being more serious toned, "Last night was one of those sometimes. I told you, I'm no good for you. I'll only bring you down. Quit this life. Quit me. But I won't make up your mind for you. Set boundaries where we don't cross."
Softly and with concern, "I must have alone time and you must have yours."
She listens quietly as he pauses for a breath, then, continues, "We don't ask and we don't tell about it, unless we're prepared for something we may not like. We should only ever leave us our mysteries to help stay on our toes.", he says and smiles a sheepish grin.
He says, "It's us versus everybody. Even versus ourselves and you can't fight any of my demons for me. Nor can I yours, for you."
He sighed and looked down a bit and, then he had looked back in her eyes, shrugging once more, he continued, "Be mad at the addict, but you can get over fighting with my addictions, because, it's not your war."
Both were very calm, smooth and relaxed. They were always polite, social and civil to each other, to a fault, and they always would be.
They moved from the middle of the couch to opposite ends. They were looking away from one another and keeping their silence. The others in the room, his sister and her friend, froze in step, too nervous about being present, but then, the couple kept looking back over their shoulders to one another, longer and longer, going slowly from the fast stealing of glances when the other's not looking to having turned to be all the way around and both of them getting lost within each others eyes.
Finally, still mad, they said, "I love you", cutely, together, then they went and moved back to the middle and had all, but made out; to the mild disgust and relief of the others in the room.
His sisters friend told his sister, "I thought they were really arguing, but, I guess, they were only playing."
His sister says, "No. He's really mad. She's really pissed. That's how they fight. They're perfect for each other. They've made up. You got to see the whole thing. Start to finish. That's how it goes, everytime. See? They've already dropped it and, no, won't ever bring it back up and it's so cute that it kind of makes me sick and I really do want to find that for myself."
His sister's friend smiled, "Me, too."
They eventually came up for air and she had to leave to run errands and go home. As she's leaving, she says, "Call me."
He walks her to the door and says, "Maybe. Call me. I might answer."
She's goes out the door and he dials her number on the phone. She picks up.
Him: I just wanted to call you, before I forget.
Her: I'm glad you did.
Him (whispered): I want to c*m inside of you, right now.
Her: I'm wet.
Him: Want to talk?
Her: Yes.
Him: Okay.
She talks, he listens and he keeps on asking her some relevant questions.
He likes to make it all about her and not about himself and she feels like a woman.
She tells him, "My family's driving me nuts. They talk and I just want to stab them in the face and I think I must really be a monster."
He calmly says, "Wow."
She goes on, "I'm stressed."
Him: What are you gonna do?
Her: I don't know.
Him: You know what's not working for you and we should be willing, within reason, to do what is necessary to do, in order to, change it. If we don't, then it's our decision and we can always change our minds, if it's not too late.
If it can't be changed, well, then, at least, we'll know that, whatever it is, can't be changed by us. None of our worrying will make it so.
Manage what we can, but if it's plain unmanageable, well, then sh*t happens. F*ck it.
Her: Well said. You know, I was just talking about you the other night to one of my oldest friends.
Him: How'd that go?
Her: I told her you're the best lover I've ever had.
Him: You've got to stop lying to your friends.
Her: I tell all my friends that.
Him: Sounds like you owe a lot of apologies.
Her: Nope.
Him: You're a bad friend. You're lucky I like you.
Her: I'm kind of partial to you, too.
Him: I'm sorry your family upsets you. You can borrow mine. I'll probably stress you out, too, so, if you want to call, write or see me, I'll try to always make time to piss you off. I promise not to piss off anyone, but you. I might even make your heart smile, a little. Not too much or I'll have to pay a female to smack it back down for me.
Her: Make sure she's cute and I might let her spank you.
Him: I can't wait to get under your skin. I love. See you soon.
Her: Thank you for blessing me with a good conversation. You've made my day.
Him: My pleasure, princess. Talk to you later, punkin'.
Her: Okay.
They each hang up and have a great rest of their day, feeling aroused and unconditionally loved.
Idylai was knitting a "flat with seams" sweater which she had worked from the bottom up; knitting the flat pieces, then seaming them together at the sides and sleeves. She liked working with flat pieces. They were handy for when she was on the go and she didn't want to carry the entire sweater in her bag.
Idylai Nunez had high blood pressure, she also smoked a pack a day and, on top of that, she was obese and, so, these factors contributed to her heart disease. She had just taken her blood thinner and a round of vitamins, but her blood pressure kept on raising and she had called the ambulance and was knitting as she waited. Not that she was getting any knitting done.
Breaking news had been alerting to a bank heist and were concerned with the current whereabouts of one, Callo "Kalisto" Edwards Runyan, wanted in connection with the armed robbery.
The phone rings and Camphor Nunez answers it, "Nunez residence."
"What? Sh@t! No. No. It's fine. Yes. I'll be right there.", Camphor hung up the phone, scooped up his car keys in the nearby dish and rushed off to Mercy General hospital.
Kalisto Runyan wasn't watching the car's rising speedodometer, he was counting money in his head as he headed out of state.
"There must be several hundred thousand in the bags," he thought and considered vainly, "I'm gonna buy me some more guns and see how much more I can rack up. These banks won't know what hit "em." He was so engrossed in thought he ran the yellow light and careened himself right into Camphor Nunez's truck in the intersection.
The blackness faded and Camphor was disoriented but he could make out voices.
"Hey! Yo! This dudes dead! Whoa, ho! What've we got here! Hey, yo, D! Check out this loot!"
"Ah snap! Hey, y'all get all that sh@t and kill that other fool!"
Camphor heard the sound of steel on steel and thought he heard the report of a gun shot, then he lost consciousness, again.
"Camphor. Cam. C'mon Cam, wake up.", the voice was that of his mother. He opened his eyes to see her in the passenger seat of his 1999 GMC Sonoma.
"There you are.", she said. "Are you okay?", she asked.
"I. I don't know. It burns like hell.", he said.
"Well, don't move. I've called you a cab to the hospital.", she set his green cased cell phone on the dashboard.
"I thought 'you' were at the hospital.", he queried with a riddled look.
"I'm fine. Don't worry. I came looking for you and good thing I found you, too.", she leaned in and kissed his cheek, then taking his hand in hers, said, "Momma's here. It's gonna be alright. You remember when you were little and you got scared and I would tell you a story. Let me tell you the story of The Little Prince."
Idylai tells Camphor of a pilot who crashes in the Sahara sand and then befriends some lost little boy from another planet, but, by the time she tells of the little boys reconciliation with a rose on the big asteroid he calls home, he has gone and fallen unconcious again.
When Camphor awakens, the local checkered cab has arrived and the driver helps him into the car, but then, he notices his mother is nowhere to be found. He arrives at the hospital and pays the cab fare and emergency room staff wheel him in and rush him off to surgery.
The following morning, Camphor awakens to a nurse adjusting his intravenous piston inserted in the back of his hand.
She greets him warmly and rushes off to inform the acting overnight physician, who was in the process of preparing to go home for the day, and he appears in the room shortly and says, politely, after having performed a round of very close and meticulous inspections of his fresh wounds, "It's good to see you awake and alert, Mr. Nunez. Your injuries were extremely life-threatening, but you arrived in time and you will be fine. You can go home today. I'll prescribe you pain killers and plenty of rest. No heavy lifting or strenuous activity until the healing has taken hold. Ok? Any questions?"
"Thanks, doc. Hey, listen. Any idea what was wrong with my mother last night? Idylai. Idylai Nunez." It hurt to move, but he could move and then he sat up while grilling the doctor for what information he could give him.
The doctor looked taken aback, at first, but immediately recomposed himself and said, "You don't know? I see. There's no easy way to put this ... I'm sorry to inform you, Mr. Nunez, your mother died within 15 minutes of arrival here last night."
Camphor Nunez was confused and in such disbelief. That couldn't be right.
"No! That can't be. She was fine, last night. She was with me. Wasn't she? I don't ... What happened? What went wrong?", he asked, unsure if he was dreaming or hallucinating.
But then, it occured to him, "Who called the taxi?"
The doctor tried to answer his short barrage of questions as simple and directly as he knew how, "Your late night ride had left before police could ascertain even the name of the company or the driver, they're making inquiries, but, as you know, it's such a humungous city and there are scores of services. They just don't have the manpower or resources to dedicate to a proper investigation. As for your late mother ..."
"She had died shortly as a direct consequence of the, sadly, fatal hemorrhagic stroke which had resulted from what we call, an arterial embolism. A cerebral embolism, to be exact."
"Idylai's delicate blood vessel in her brain was obstructed by some foreign matter travelling through her blood stream."
"It was largely due to her pre-existing heart disease."
The doctor paused a moment, then continued, "There was a weakened blood vessel with a bubble in it that grew until it burst or ruptured and bled into her brain and it did not get enough oxygen and nutrients which caused brain cells to die."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Nunez. We did all we could for her."
Camphor broke into tears, his chest filling with agony. Through his sobs he said, "Thank you, doc. I don't know what I'm gonna do without her." That was all that poor old Camphor could manage to muster up and give voice to.
"Again, I'm so very sorry for your loss.", the doctor said as he closed his charts.
"As soon as you feel ready, we have some paperwork for you to sign, then you're free to leave. The hospital will contact you about the arrangements for your mother. Unless there's anything else I can do for you, I'll leave you to absorb all of this.", said the attending doctor who had paused a moment and, having further heard no response, left the room.
About half an hour later, Camphor Nunez was flummoxed and pondered aloud, "I wonder how The Little Prince ended?"
An aid, one of the many lovely great beauties in teal uniforms with light flowered vests that had frequented his stay at the facility, had finished disconnecting all the medical rigging that had attached him to the slow and steadily dripping saline bladder and said, in a sound which was both soft and caressing as she spoke, "The man was able to go home and, not finding the prince's body, believed he had returned to his rose on his own world."
Camphor smiled the satisfied grin of a sheepish boy. He then inhaled deep and noisily through his nostrils before fast exhaling what was an even much louder forced breath, then he firmly reached and ripped back the linens and began to heave himself out of the bed. What he was now certain of was that Idylai Sirrilous Nunez had saved his life and he wasn't about to waste one solitary moment of it, anymore. He would begin by thanking his mother with the happiest and grandest ceremony that he could afford and that turned out to be quite a bit as police had apprehended the suspects who shot him and fled with the money and the bank decided to give him twenty percent for indirectly helping to recover the stolen goods.
He keeps a piece of the old Chevy's dashboard framed with the phone attached where it sat.
The pain is gone, too.
The scenery was overrun with Hilmdell's most popular conifer tree, the Colorado Blue Spruce. Distant buildings below were lit up bright and helicopters were encircling. First Detective Cigrand Bawlack knew he would be joining them soon for the after party at the Governor's farm.
The elusive Kingpin had been caught and his entire operation seized and his operatives apprehended, hours ago.
The Kingpin called, "Untouchable" was none other than really small time package delivery man, Sean Parnell Watson, who called police, moments after the final raid, turning himself in.
He didn't look like the crook that the spry First Detective had imagined him to be. The middle aged man seemed too uncommanding to head the largest criminal syndicate in the state.
When he called, he said it's time for him to retire with a nice, new clear record. Fat chance of that. He was getting lethal injection, for sure.
The detective asked, "So, you're the one running this city?"
The Kingpin lit a cigarette and in a practiced voice, smooth and flowing, said sternly, "Self empowerment's dirty little secret is that the only one who'll put you in power is you. Hard work and sacrifice are so d*mn instrumental to success. You can be the pièce de résistance, the best, brightest and tallest and you're still not guaranteed success, but be good, smart or even tall enough and you can be the most important piece in the dish and have the opportunity to succeed, if you'll only take advantage of it and hone your craft every chance you get."
"Oh. Is that what you were doing? Honing your craft? Empowering yourself?", queried Cigrand calmly as he lit a cigarette for himself and continued, "Men, women, boys, girls, infants. Whole families suffered and some died for your billions and you're just gonna wear thrift store clothes, work a dead end sh*t hole job, ride a rickety bicycle and not even put up a hint of a fight?"
Sean took a deep drag from his non-filtered, full flavored, specialty brand, wide turkish cigarette, french inhaling the soft, bluish grey billowed whisps of smoke, reminiscent of the silvery cotton puffs of cirrous clouds, then studying the oven within the cherries glowing red ember, asked serenely, "What do you think life is, detective?"
"Choices. You made the wrong one's. Witnesses, records, warehouses full of goodies, well over 35 some years of transgressions. You don't get to walk away from this. Not alive. You're out of choices, ", remarked a cock sure, Cigrand. Then he produced a set of iron mancles from his utility belt and threw them to Sean, who then put them on.
When they made their way to the detectives undercover unmarked patrol car, the Kingpin, Sean the "Untouchable" Parnell Watson jeered, "I'm walking away free and you're right, there 'are' choices, in life. Such as the choice you made to let me go."
"What choice?", puzzled the detective who now started the engine and he began to drive down the path on the overlook, back towards the hustle and bustle of Hilmdell which, up until tonight, had the highest crime rate in the nation.
Sean, sighed heavily and began, "You chose to bring the entire police force down on my location. I am unarmed. I called you and was coming willingly, without any resistance, but you didn't believe me and you didn't respond to the house fire and save the life of one Harold Ermondo Kingsley.", then Sean looked back through the window at the glowing skyline over the city.
"Since when did you care about people?", shot the detective trying to hide his interest for the wily Kingpin's sudden interest in this Harold, fellow.
Sean grimmaced a grin, "You wound me, detective. Ermondo was called every night for a predetermined code phrase by the international organization. See? It's a lifetime job. You miss one phone call and it's an automatic, live, quick and instant incineration and decimation of Ermondo's beloved community."
The city-wide explosion thundered through the detectives car, threading it off the road. The mentally delicate and vulnerable mind of the detective, shattered beneath the weight and pain of deep, dark, troubled and highly disturbed emotions which jutted out of him through iron gritted teeth, seething as he inquired of Sean, "My whole life was in that city. My wife, my kids ... those cops were my friends. Why!!?!!"
Sean beamed brighter than a head light, "My success has come with many good sacrifices. Whatever you had on me, it's gone."
Sean's calm, arrogant, demeanor soon took an unexpected turn for the worst when Cigrand Bawlack forced his service pistol through Sean's teeth, satisfied to see so much blood gushing from his ugly weapon-filled mouth as he leaned in further across the front seat to mouth the last words the "Untouchable" Watson will ever hear, "I told you, there's no walking away from this alive."
The bars slammed shut on the former detective and new death row inmate, as he laughed aloud about being the Kingpin's final victim. From the cell beside him he heard the guard call, "Aleister Riebauld Kingsley, also known as, Sean Parnell Watson, to the inner circle, your eminence, you are being released today."
Confused, Cigrand Bawlack pressed his face to the bars, only to see a mountain of a man eyeballing him with a look of utter joy and quipping, "Ha, ha, hah! You shot a migrant I was incarcerated with my first year, instead of saving my cousin. He was dying and I offered tens of thousands to his family, if he would meet with you and pretend to be me."
"I've been hiding as an inmate who isn't on record for decades. All of the guards work for me, as do the people who knew the truth and helped to hide me here as I ran my empire, but now, my record is clear and you're out of my hair. You have come closer than anyone to putting assunder my life's work."
"But, now. My, my ... now, I can retire a seriously wealthy man without you being two full steps away. I knew that you would kill me as soon as your precious family died in that fireball. It was too easy. You killed him before they were even ashes. Untouchable, baby! Untouchable.", then he rattled Bawlack's bars in a diabolical fit of laughter and, with that, he left.
"Ear hair, ear wax, eye gunk, wet snot and dry boogars. Rotted teeth and oily hair. His energy level, caput. He looks young, but sounds old. He is old. Over the hill and burnt out.", Chase said, describing his father, Donnellson, whom he was arguing with, at the moment, and he was angrily being spiteful.
"Okay, it's time to meet.", said Mary Ann. "I'm pulling into The Cardigan, lot, now."
"Okay! I just pulled in, too. What a coincidence.", said Chase Ambrervs, then he put away his new cell phone, pulled up to Mary Ann and passed off to her a money envelope, saying, "Rent and sewer.", then saying goodbye to his landlady before driving off. He pulled his cell back out.
Across town a holiday dinner party was taking place. "Chase is getting the groceries.", Misty announced, hanging up her cell phone.
Momma Netty was checking on her green bean casserole. Never enough bacon. Just a smidgin of pepper.
Aunt Nell, being the youngest was the one to watch over the kids as she had always taken it upon herself, anyway.
Earl Ron nabbed an early plate to go as he had to leave early, as he has a luncheon restaurant to run. Emma Rae Jean and her brood were going with him.
Elron was already working the holiday shift at his father's luncheon. Pencil and pad in hand, he had just taken an order for a Japanese A5 filet mignon, an American rib cap, Australian shirt rib, Wagyu ribeye, stuffed rigatoni, corn sabayan and carnevina for the table with two mountain of a men.
After watching two big fellows order enough meat to feed a dinosaur, both Kovassis, with his kobe beef, and his granddaughter, Antoullina, with her bar mala, went back to dining.
Elron gave his ticket to the kitchen then headed off for his break.
"Can you run to Graffbergh's and get us some onions? We're gonna run low.", Melanie asked with a kissyface and baby talk she used when conning him into doing her a favor.
"Yes. Hunny bunny. But you'll have to get my tickets.", he kissy faced and baby talked back, humourously sarcastic.
Elron climbed into his 1991 Chevy Caprice and wrestled with the starter.
It had fire, but it was going out. When it turned over, he heard a voice from the backseat, "Don't turn around, just drive where I tell you.", the man's voice gave him directions to the next town over.
"Chase is back with the groceries! He's out back grilling with the fella's!", shouted Kirie to Mary Ellen.
Melanie looked up from her tickets and called out, "Hi, Earl Ron! Emma Rae, have you heard from Elron? He went for onions just over fourty five minutes ago. Store's just on up the road."
"No. Maybe, they were closed for the holiday and he went elsewhere, drivin' around looking for something open."
Elron pulled up to a very non descript house in the boondocks.
Stupidity or courage made him turn around to see a frail young man, who smelled ranking of whiskey, holding a toy. He looked so frightened and embarrassed. Elron is shocked that 'this' is the man he was scared of.
The man said, "I'm so sorry. I wanted to see my kid. I'm not allowed contact and so I sneak over once every year and leave a toy in the yard, then sit into the tree's shadow and watch and see if I can see anything. Most times, I can't."
"You didn't have a way here?", Elron asked, almost sympathetically.
"I see you working when I come in, you know, and I overheard you was goin' to the store and I didn't think you'd gim'me a ride if I asked and your car was open."
"Let me call off work and I'll wait for you on the other side of the block, up over there, so I don't draw attention. Take your time, because I've got all night.", offered Elron, knowing Emma Rae's oldest two could both cover for him and get the onions. The man got out of the Caprice and ran fast as he could to the darkest part of the yard.
Mary Ellen got a call from her friend, Longo, a deputy in Rochester. He had said he had picked up her brother and said he had to detain him for the rest of the night, until the judge could see him in the morning.
He was currently being charged as the getaway driver for a well known felon who had forcibly broken into a home, in his county, and had stole some jewelry, also, that there was a kid's toy in his backseat filled with cocaine, so there would certainly be felony drug charges, too.
He continued by saying that her brother, Elron, denied everything, but it was out of his hands. He was probably looking at some prison time.
Mary Ellen thanked him and hung up and she called their dad, Earl Ron, to give him the news.
He would probably get his golfing buddy, local criminal lawyer, Northrup Daniel's, to represent him. They were supposed to drive back to their college university tomorrow. He was her ride and it was three states over. She sat and cried.
Our two heroes on a hill overlooking the Great City. Galtus, the big, large, beastly scholar and Aelrod, the whispy genius.
“What, for love of sheep bladder lining, shall I say of the overwatch, who has, for eons, prized pointed barbs of dim wit from their bare gums, picking carcassed spirits from the between of their teeth, guts full on the succulent crackling meat of cooked long pork's most carniverously sour devouration of a lucid conversant?”, crones Aelrod in a nasaled whine.
Retorts Galtus reassuring and gruffly guffawing, “Say then, they are animals and feasting fattens for feasting. Say they are treif, avoidant of any true flavor, availing only on the stalen common old spices of war and violence to herb and pepper a hotly profuse contemporary avarice and swoll with the callous linguary necessaries of ignoramity and her saucily diminished stations. Say, here is the overwatch, lost in a mentacular fog, unable to closely or to remotely fathom or to comprehend the viceries of one's constant, steady, fixed, consistent and tactfully nuanced experimental observation of some comparative dimness and clearness, to infer with such great exactness the rote configuration of the object observed and with the crude squatting of bowel elimination, mawkishly abandoned reason. With a maniacal fervor, moronically enabling the successive generations to the extrication of noun building exercises. Wearing verbs like a cilice? No. Those archaic words lamentably lost like the waning passage of blue eyed Fuchsia's in villatic fields. Transfixed with bulk siring a dire, thick headed, brood to dine via fluidic on such an object as a slovenly and disheveled host groats diction like crushed oat. Say that they would all the sooner warm from the fire of burning books than to burn from the fires of a warm book. Say nothing, Aelrod. Saddle the mount quickly and ride away, before the inferno of sardonic breath is all but consumed. They are sluggish dullards who lack proper filter when they speak, so, you'll never find yourself having to wonder what they think. When you encounter them, do not compliment them. Spit and piss vinegar. They're predictable. They aren't so bad.”
“They aren't so good, either.”, says Aelroed fidgety with the stress of his task, “The overwatch, take my speech, Galtus! Do hear now that my voice is more recalcitrant than the deliriously blunderbus speeches of the meek cum meandering conversationalist's who have made entrance into their boorish rank and file.”
“Yes. Daily, quadruples in your state, Aelrod, of the truculent and obstinately uncooperative vile behaviour, into a sullenly sunken manner which the vastly physically superior might and sheerly numerous hordes of barbaric, quasi-unsentient, sentinals of the low, unruly throng that we call, overwatch, find most delictable.”
Aelrod drops his flagon of what can only be described as oil residue and worm's piss and dismounts to retrieve it, “Would you have me silent? Ergo, as like one unto death? If only I had a silky smooth, rounded, pronotum affixed behind my head like the Gryllidae, I then could ring hollow betwixt their granite ears with the strong, masculine, sounding of rhythmically chirping sonatas, until hallucinations comforted them. Why must we live in secret, our order, why not live in the light? Can't the baffonic simpletons see that we can help them, help themselves? I hate them so much the butterflies have died in my stomach.”
Galtus winces at the risen sun, “Be that as it may, the overwatch reflects the will of the people. They fear an education lends too much power to one over another. They want their literacy akin to an unspoiled maiden and, so, hence, by their blemished gyobi-like berries and daftly erroneous hours of dead-reckoning the stars for a route to immortality, fruitlessly, I might add, well, then, Aelrod, your intercourse with beauteous tattered bindings and succour for age-scented rolled parchments, defile their un-literary flower. When you are evermore met with blind avarice and wanton abandon and to disregard for your affects and person, you are cautioned to speak the tongue of the base and brute.” Galtus plops a heavy hand to Aelrod's should giving the sod of a nervous wreck a few grips of hard, tight, squeezes with a disheartened sigh. “We hide, because we are living books and books are burned.”
“I shall rule them all with an iron fist, Galtus.”, says Aelrod remounting his steed after struggling a bit.
The two laugh.
“Aelrod, noble your intent, but obstructed your cause. The one does not rule the many. It is the many that rule the one. The wealth, power and fame, these are just to delude and to painlessly pacify and restrain societies real prisoners.”
Aelrod fell silent. The two men rode off on their own separate ways and when Aelrod reached the gate of the Great City, he thought, “What's the best way to pass for an imbecile? What would the wise Galtus do?”, so, he poured out all of the big coins from his purse onto the ground and said, “Al'od, on'y haff diss much monies, can't coundt ‘dem. Can for he buy some'think for to eat?”
The mountain of a guard responds, “Me, Gyma, not know how coundt ei'derr. Me takes’es all'za monies, you go. Go ‘way! Go 'way!”, then the bully of a guard begins bashing frail Aelrod's leg with the broad of his sword, slashing the fine threading and nicking his bruising flesh.
Aelrod kicked his olden, used, war horse into a gallop and, now, broke, rides far away, quickly.
He'll have to hunt and forrage scraps from the unlit, mangy, forest of nearby thorn covered, ill, scraggly looking trees. Delightful. Aelrod halted the horse and looked back to the distant rise of spires from the Great City. Galtus would be long gone by now and he was all alone save for eyes watching from the woods.
He'll never survive in a world of the uneducated.
He called back, “Someday, Gyma, I'll make you go away! I'll make you all go away!” He waived a fist for emphasis, but there were none around to see. The decrepit creamy beige destrier bled from its nostrils as it snorted heavily and began stamping worn-shod hooves.
A pack of ravenous wolves descended from the tree line, the haggardly nag collapsed of a burst heart from the stress of it all, pinning Aelrod to the blue clay of the earth beneath him. He read about this somewhere. It didn't end well for the rider. A volume on the history of the inner world falls unbidden from a satchel with a torn V-belt and busted brass prong and buckle.
Aelrod throws the book at an encroaching wolf, which serves only to rile up it's advance. He can feel the biting sting and hear the crisp crunch of bone caused by unforgiving fangs sunk into his pain ridden face as hot breath, drool and blood mixed together. His last follied thought was one of why he'd not set his books down and learn to be a warrior, instead.
Reason being, he thought he'd never have to fight to survive.
"You please me, immensely, J'oran, son of Marlduke, prince of the riders.", said Selene who sat straddled atop him, feeling the waning pulse of his manhood as it slipped slowly out of the warmth of of her womanliness.
She went on to say, "You are the best lover, I do know, but then you're the only lover I've known."
J'oran ran his hands down Selene's sides, running the backside of his fingers down to her hips, before turning them over to get a good grip on her flesh, squeezing firmly, then relaxing his hold as he scanned her naked fruits in the candlelight. He had loved her since he first eyed her in the traders market and paid handsomely for her.
He spoke soft to her now, "I have been trained by the ladies of my fathers court. I can show you ...."
"Spare me. Another time, perhaps.", Selene cut him off, a little sharper than she had intended.
Sliding off of him, she made her way to the edge of the bed and stood on the mat laid on the floor of the tent.
She turned back and gazed upon him only for a moment, observing that he was struggling with something caught in his throat, he paused long enough to smile at her.
Picking up her clothes, Selene began to dress. J'oran looked disappointed to see the brown half dollar areolas disappear beneath the linen.
She thought to herself, "ladies of the court, indeed." She knew of his frequent trip to the brothels.
Quipping sardonically, she sighed and blurted aloud, "You really know how to flatter a lady."
With more harshness in her voice, she queried in a half whisper, "Did the dear ladies teach you that, as well?"
J'oran said nothing, but was rubbing his throat and trying to clear it with more vigor.
Selene poured some water from the ornamental vase and offered him the drink, then continued, with a much more gentle tone, "My brother, Qen, is holding his wedding ceremony, he's loved her his whole life, and I am here on this accursed battlefield."
J'oran took a big swallow of the water then set the cup down on the small elm wood bedstand. That seemed to do the trick, his cough had now subsided.
He was a little stern when he had told her, at last, "Your place is here with me. Custom demands it. We can just arrange another ceremony for them, if you wish, after the war is ended. He can make oath to her twice in one lifetime."
Selene smiled with a far away look on her countenance. She spoke to him as if she were miles away, "He would gladly make oaths to her for his entire lifetime. But, as for me? There is only one oath I honor, tonight."
"You have honored it well.", beamed J'oran from ear to ear.
"I wonder if you shall always think so.", Selene pondered, as if to herself.
J'oran tried to understand, but he struggled with it and asked, "How is it I could think any less of such a lover and wife, as yourself?"
Selene looked at him sharply and said, "We'll see." J'oran put his hands to his head, cupping his skull. Selene asked him, "Did you have to make war so late in the fall?"
J'oran lowered his hands and shook as if shaking off a cold draft, adjusted his eyes a bit and remarked, "Perhaps, some of my wounded men would have preferred to have died of their injuries in the biting freeze of winters embrace where they could surely just shiver, hog wild and uncontrollably, as they bled to to their deaths."
"Spring, perhaps?", Selene retorted, as if oblivious of his soldiers sufferings.
J'oran did not like her cold, quick and sudden dismissiveness and he darkly grumbled back, "Next time the enemy invades I will have them check with your schedule."
J'oran was so upset he flew into a raging fit of coughs. As fast as they had come, the coughs subsided, once more, but he had, very soon, found himself both unable to move or speak.
"Actually, they already have. I assured them I could poison your drink before you bedded me.", she laughed, "Next time that you take a wife from among the slaves, make sure your father's mercenaries didn't kill hers."
She reflected a moment and giggled some more, "Did I say next time? Why, how silly of me." Then Selene kissed J'orans cheek and headed for the tent entrance, saying, "As much as I'd like to watch your eyes roll back into your arrogant, thick head, in a few moments, and seeing your gorgeous, fine, sculpted young body convulsing, you'll simply have to forgive me if I don't stay. Your father, the old wretch, won't be pleased and I've much to live for. You will have such a marvelous funeral. It's quite a shame I will have to miss it." Then, almost as if an afterthought, "Do say hello to my departed father when you see him, won't you?"
With that, together they slipped into the waiting darkness.
"There's treasure.", wailed old Captain Sirrauch. He was tied securely to the temple beam with strong, rough hewn cordage. Only mere hours ago he was aboard his ship, the shadow runner let hormones replace critical thinking, and now he was at the mercy of the rebel queen, Khalil's, footmen.
He had stolen the Auerrat Map, ancient map to lost worlds, empires as vast as they were rich. He had followed the rebel queen to this temple and seized her and, enamoured by her beauty, had his way with her, which is why he had not noticed the footmen approach from the temple vaults.
"I have no interest in such things.", replied Khalil. She stood five foot nine, but, in this light, she seemed taller. Long flowing locks of auburn hair draped an olive face with sea green eyes, ruby lips, a soft, sloping nose and high cheek bones.
She commanded four hundred thousand soldiers and a formidable navy. Ruffians, vagabonds and drifters all. Not bound by the pursuit of wealth and fame, but freedom and liberty. Captain Norville Sirrauch believed such things should be bought and sold. To that end, he was now trying to buy his own freedom.
"You could buy a large army. Gold. Jewels. Ships. Anything." By the time he said "anything", his own doubts had crept into his voice.
The rebel queen wasted no time with her reply, "I've lived this long without it. I could go on the rest of my life and it would be unnoticed."
Sirrauch's men, began to grumble at this point. One louder than the others, "I told you she'd call your bluff." He was a slender man with wood for teeth.
Khalil was not in the mood to do any slaying today. She was on the hunt for something and her men were close. She raised a calloused hand, "Do not be so hard on him. It was a valiant effort to save your lives."
This time it was a portly man who'd responded, "Save his own skin's more like it."
"It's worked. You men will be spared, but he has entered me unbidden. He will not see the morning sun.", and with that Khalil glowered at Captain Sirrauch.
"Please, let's talk about this.", stammered the Captain.
With a tight, thin lipped smile, the queen snarled, "Any last words?"
The Captain, lowering his head, was silent.
"Send him to his god in pieces.", commanded Khalil, rebel queen of the commoners who were recently driven out of their homes by King, Dyenatt Anteries, whom Captain Sirrauch had so faithfully served, then the rebel Queen, with her new found purpose, turned, and with firm steps, headed to the temple vault to interrogate the clerics.
The Flute of Sanzir would bring down the mechanical armies of Anteries and she was determined to find it. The clerics, she had it on good report, had given the rare magical instrument to it's new guardian.
Her oral sex had healing powers and when Dyenatt was a teen he had been severely burned by a flash grenade from an assasin who had entered his palace. His mother, Queen Anguitina de' Roush La' Embert promised asylum to her tribe within the kingdom if she had given him a life saving massage to his member from her mouth. In reward for her efforts, her tribe was drowned in the Plasheer Lake and she was banished to the barren frost La'aedlands. Thirty seven years later and she had amassed a formidable force of great size and was near at hand to sweet retribution.
The two teenagers split a large honey, jalapeño, triple bacon, steak, potato and sriracha burger breakfast skillet with 32 ounce soda pop's for each of them. Plus, Brad had himself an 8 oz. orange juice and Alicia had herself an 8 oz. milk.
The old restaurant owner, Walburgh Brennan, was deep into one of his lectures, "I don't know about you kids. I only know that limestone, marl, iron ore, clay, shale, sand and, in some cases, industrial by-products are used to cement things in Portland. Yes?"
Brad and Alicia, looking lost, dazed and confused, simply shrugged and, mumbled their, "I guess"es.
Wahlburg, whom they called, Wally, began bussing the nearby table and he continued, "I don't know how to cement a friendship. I am much like the calcium silicates, Alite and Belite."
Observing their blank faces, he forced an exhale, comically, threw his hands up in feigned surrender and further explained, as best that he knew how, "Sometimes, I harden soon, and real quick, but sometimes, much later, and when I up and get hard", Wally, fast catching himself, paused, then had bustled some dishes and looked back up at them from his arduous cleaning work, blushing quite a bit, "Let's just say, it reinforces the structure in my life."
Wally, then carried on, to no one, in particular, "But love? Love is like hydration with soft water. Nice, soft, flowing water", pointing to Alicia's un-drunken glass of complimentary water, "like that there, good to drink. Oh, yes! Very good to drink."
Wally turned to Brad, "Now pay up and finish your drinks. I need this table. The register doesn't fill itself."
"Wally, your parent's spent real good money on your education, yet, all they had to buy you was a plain 'ole glass 'o' water to love.", teased Brad.
"Leave my parents out of this. They may have bought some expensive paper, for me, but they weren't paying customers.", laughed the always jolly, Wahlburg Brennan, who then took a load of dirty dishes back to the kitchen.
Alicia watched after him and, as he made his way to the back of the house, she inquired of Brad, "Do you think Wally is lonely?"
Bradley Cunningham just jeered, in response, "Nah, he's married to his restaurant."
Alicia just opened her gray eyes wide, shrugged, laughingly, gesturing with outstretched hands, palms upwards, nodding her emphatic agreement.
"I guess, you're right.", she said.
Once outside, Brad quickly insisted, "Com'ere, Alicia, I wanna show you something."
Without waiting for a response he led her to an outcropping by the nearby Blue Harbor pier.
It was when they came close that she could see what all the big fuss was about. Alicia then rushed to some rocks, excitedly announcing, "Baby heron's!"
"I found them here last week.", Brad boasted.
"Where's their mother?", asked a very worried Alicia.
Brad said, "She's around, probably gettin' food.", after a pause he asked, "Alicia, do you think two friends could ever be more than friends?"
"Hey, you two!", the voice of their new friend, Roger, startled them, then their other friend, Marrick, added, "We've been looking all over for you." She gave a coy look to the pair of them.
Brad and Alicia were both like, "Hey guys! What's up?" Everyone nodded their hellos and Terrance popped off with, "Lenny wants to get to the fair early."
An eager Lenny pushed fair tickets into their faces, exclaiming, "My dad gave me my sisters extra tickets from yesterday!"
Alicia turned to Brad, "What were you saying, Brad?"
An embarrassed, Brad wanted to just casually dismiss the whole darned silly conversation and move on to some other topic and he settled on saying, "Oh nothing. Let's get going if we're gonna go."
Everyone could see the way they looked at each other and Marrick cut the tension with her own personal brand of butter-knife, by remarking, "What are you two gonna do? Kiss?"
Terrance interrupted, with gagging noises, and one, Monza P. Ford, who had been quiet, up until now, bolsters out, impatiently, "Move it already! I wanna go!"
Everyone laughed hard and they had put feet to pavement and headed to the fair. Alicia smiling, more than usual and Brad cautiously looking at her, constantly, trying 'not' to be seen smiling.
The 60's brought peace, love, flower power and Honeycrunch. Just right for a hardened, biting-cold, Minnesotta winter.
I worked the hinges on my mandibles a bit and wondered if my jaw would disarticulate like so many broken and disjointed thoughts of late, like the illuminatingly foggy notion of joyfully extricating a worm from the hole it had made, only there was no worm, but it dawned on me that the taunt stem was reminiscent of an old germanic irminsul pillar and I fancied saxon pagons in fervored dancing around the trunk.
The crisp had a greenish-yellow background and was covered in a reddened orange flush and the sun had kissed it with a hint of pale pink from its furnaced lips.
His sagastic grandparents, the famed Golden Delicious and a firm Haralson, birthed with glee, sacchrinistic Honeygold, in the turbulent 30's who was thought to have wed Macous, but had likely married, Keepsake, and gave birth to dear young, innocent, Malus, the Honeycrunch who sat before me, who didn't know his mother and only had inconclusive DNA tests to rely on. I took possession of him while he was still small.
The market, scented with apple blossoms, held scores of his kind. I would be returning, soon.
Though not as bright as his friend MacIntosh, I pierced his virgin white flesh, with my molars leading the charge, filling the air with a viscous soft crisp crunch, disturbing flecks and russet dots. He was bred for this and discharged his solemn duty, faithfully. I hungrily ingested his tender purity and digested his wholeness within me.
Malus was a sweet young pomaceous rose with but a trace of pear-drop settled on my coralled salmon mouth muscle, Too bad the domesticus had neither depth nor complexity.
But still, life was seeded in his core beliefs and I would plant them for future generations. This, in stark contrast to having just tossed out his remains for the dark ravenous birds to salvage without so much as even pomp and ceremony.
'We no longer know the monster standing in our broken eyes. But, somewhere in the shadows, an inner child hides. It wants to cling to mummy, wants dad to make it right. Can you save them from the monster? Can you save that child's life?'
"Cowboys and gangsters, soldiers and life. Will you stop the tears or will others have to cry? Those who cause our fears are desperate for the light. Winter wont forgive us. Like a chill touch in the night. Without a helping hand, the pen doesn't know how to write.'
