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| fig.023) china-snake take out party |
This is the Splash Page: Located visual center on a white field is a black circle with a simple white thought balloon at its center.
In bold text (no caps) wrapped around the black circle: ms brave qu'est que c'est ms brave she knows this. The thought balloon's interior text reads (all-caps, distorted and bunched up tight, it's stacked 2 over 1): DAMN YOU RONCO
Pages 2 and 3: A spread with a long black line that runs across the bottom of both open white pages. The first page is empty with the exception of the line while the second page has a series of interlinked horizontally oriented black rectangles with rounded corners. They'll be stylized word balloons that should have varied line weight. Sitting on top of them is the following naked red text dripping from the bottom justification (all caps) CHAPLAIN /AMERICA /THE MIGHTY /MECHA /SCHISM (tall blue, no outline, all caps, well formed, vertical character ). The overall effect of the text should be a bloody red and blue pulpit on a simple stylish ground (see the proper notes where there's a small sketch on two square yellow post-its)
We’ll look and look. It’ll be as though we’re sitting in the back seat of the bus. It’s spring time and Canada is cold after seeing the Twelfth Night. Across the aisle from us is a know of older girls. They’re quietly talking about sex, where and how. We’re reading Howard Pyle. We’re talking about Gary Gygax and the stuff Def Leppard does. It’s better than we can even imagine.
Here's a Scene 1: the lab is a long room with high tables that are for teaching and for experiments with light and sound. There is plenty of science to be seen scattered around the room, there's glassware, Bunsen burners, and a couple of periodic tables. In the front of the room is the teachers station with the blackboard behind it. On one side of the room is a line of windows, they're all grey, framed in with cool steel. There's music playing, It was the heat of the moment/ Telling me what my heart meant/ The heat of the moment showed in your eyes.
"Your errand wears you poorly," Ronco turns around. He closes the green door and Ms Brave's cousin, Teeny make's a dry sound in her throat. It's as if she's just swallowed an entire shingle and it rattles all the way down.
"It can't see but I can," Ronco says to her. "It's an extra-ordinary-nodule." He then spells it out for her, "an, ex, oh, en. But we just say zone. Ms Brave was there, that's why it's blue now."
"You can't be here, Ronco. Not now. You have to go. If you walk in she's only going to cry more." Teeny's carpet is bushy and abstract. There are rabbit ears in front of a hot wet wall. Ronco gets distracted by butterfly stickers that are behind the chair. "She's not herself," Teeny tells him. "She's been like this for days. What did you do?"
"What if I just sit and wait on the porch. Just like this, would this be okay..."
"I hope you brought some big dice with you," Teeny spits at Ronco's feet. Splat, the wet gob smacks his flat sneaker.
Children meet their first lines with crayons but they don’t do anything to determine geometry without the help of their teacher’s map. “Yes, I'm Peter Lipscomb but she'll always call me, Ronco. Still, I solemnly swear that I'm going to be the laziest damned geneticist ever. Friends say, Peter, settle down. But that's not really a thing I do, is it? No, the real things is, is there going to be takeout from the China-Snack up the street. That's as real as it gets!"
Pages 6 and 7: (This is going to sound a little familiar but bear with me, I'm certain it's brilliant) Anyway, after another splash page there's another long black line that runs across the bottom of 2 open white pages. The first is empty with the exception of the line while the second page has a series of interlinked horizontally oriented black rectangles with rounded corners. They'll be stylized word balloons that should have varied line weight. Sitting on top of them is the following naked red text dripping from the bottom justification (all caps) CHAPLAIN /AMERICA /THE MIGHTY /MECHA /SCHISM (tall blue, no outline, all caps, well formed, vertical character ). The overall effect of the text, bloody red and blue pulpit on a simple ground (see the proper notes. I've included a sketch)
Some of the following pages will resemble this: My heart is racing. It's like I'll never catch up with it. My eyes are tight seams but I can still see fuzzy dreams of bright paisley dancing behind my lids. I wish I could be more quiet but it wouldn't matter, "Hey, are you there Ronco..."
"Quiet, can you hear that," I answer her. I've been waiting too. Maybe I have been, who know? I don't, my eyes are closed and I'm trying to be listen.
"Duck, Duck, it's goose," Ms Brave shouts over the sound of the orchid thingy.
"Hardy Har Har, so funny I forgot to laugh," I open my eyes again and see her tongue is sticking out at me.
"Funny like your face, Ronco," She yells. I try to twist around so I can face her. She sort of blurts out, "It's doing it again..."
"What color now...," I shout. "What's it saying, Ms Brave?"
"School colors, same as before," she answers. "What is that thing anyway, yah..."
"I wish I knew," He looks tired and maybe scared. But Ronco's trying to put a brave face on it, "But it doesn't hurt anymore."
The whole workshop reeks of gasoline and dry metal shavings. It's full of shadows and kabuki shapes that spread out across the greasy walls. There's a stutter, it's like a loud ratcheting noise from the orchid's corolla as it turns on it's fine spindle. Then there's the flashing ray teeth from up under the bulb. It blinks and the whole shop seems to spasm like a fury of cartoon puppets.
A sudden series of shocks rip across the pitted concrete. We watch helplessly as a barrel filled with glowing gloop-boorgle topples into growing the pit between our tables. "I take it all back Ronco," Ms Brave yells, "I’m not ever going to kiss you."
"That's so, Ms Brave of you. It's really nuptial, counter-nuptial don't you think..."
"Yeah, you're all court and no ball, Ronco..."
"Ball, ball, ball," he yells back at her.
There's another even louder noise, but it's different. It's more wound up. It sounds a little bit like there's a horn in Bay 2 and it's shouting over and over again. It sounds like slapstick that's gotten turned up, way to loud. It's like we're listening to the neighbor's horse being un-balled, endlessly.
Then there's a bad joke in all-caps. It starts out, "WHAT THE FUCK RONCO?"
"You're better at this stoned, Ms Brave."
"You're still not helping," Ms Brave huffs at Ronco and the XON, his eerie pulsing sack is purple now. Ms Brave twists herself around, She flexes her shoulders left then right on her table. The webbing has some give to it but it doesn't slacken, not enough and the buckles are out of reach.
"Maybe we can burn it..."
"Wait, maybe I've got a lighter here in my pocket," Ms Brave tries reaching into her pocket.
"Well, it's fireproof for sure then," Ronco says, laughing at their predicament.
"C'mon, you're Mister Science-Head. Do something."
"I'm praying really hard, how's that..."
"Great, my parents are approving all over the place."
Then there’s this, it's Scene 2: The nurse's office is a tight squeeze. The room's been separated into a waiting area and a slightly larger examination room. The waiting area is filled with a salvaged desk and the 3 white plastic stacking chairs that sit across from it. The examination room has a raised examination bed and a single door cabinet that's about 6 feet high. There are no pictures or posters on walls in the nurse's office but there's lite FM playing. Air Supply and the tang of PineSol wrestle with the dust in the dry nap of the flat carpet. On the door there's a handwritten note that's punctuated with a smiley face. The note says, Back Soon.
Ronco is sprawled on a smallish white chair. He's passed out. Three other chairs are tumbled over beside him. Ms Brave stands by anxiously. She's waiting, waiting, waiting. Ms Brave, doesn't want to repeat the dangers of being wicked, of letting herself be trapped behind the stereotype of some march hen. She's not a Colgate cocktail that's been mixed up with clam juice or something nearly as cool and fuzzy as what's been found under basement sofa. "No Ronco, I'm going to suggest that we stick to our plan, we need to stay the course!"
The XON pulses, Ronco sits up from the long table. "I agree, I think that might be best for both of. Do you know anyone that can help us."
Ms Brave sits down again, "I don't know. My friends aren't going to help us. They're, well they don't care. Look at me, I'm covered. I need to go home and change."
"That's where we'll find us a better tin full of soft foods and a better list that's good for everybody. That's where the ink will pool and page will dip, waiting for us to purse our lips and to blow. Let's go, let's look at the course of this evolving and drunken tango of stained ostrich plumes and shadowy veils. Let's see into the future of fraud with it's cavalcade of bang bang jokes, farting sows ears and sad faced bunco goblins scraping along behind a stuffed sack of leggy pig meat."
Ms Brave snarls, "What are you, drunk or something?"
"I'm sorry, there's always going to be some singing from behind the bar. I can't hold it back. I can't hold what I've already got and I can't always cry until I've cried some more, sometimes and maybe more again. Ms Brave, your smile is neither wide nor is it kind. No, it's sunk below the table, underneath this glass of mine."
The outer door opens. Ronco stops talking suddenly. He looks at Ms Brave and signals for her to, shush. He whispers, "I don't know if it was such a good Idea coming here."
"What, I was going to leave you on the floor of the lab?"
Ronco's XON turns hot pink suddenly, "This is what here and down the street is going to be like when all of the vegetables our go away. Behind our backs, the bulbous shadow that's being cast from a slick lunch meat style maiden of wistful prayer and hurky-jurky sorry-say-so's. Here's to the new ballad of action that's being served up piping inside of a cup of lonesome tea for any wistful Mary or Sue with her long list of remember whens to come."
Here's when the Parking lot is important: I hide my wadded up clothes behind a scrappy shrub. But first I make sure to pull out my wallet and the slip of paper that I took from Ronco in the nurse's office. My purse and scarf have disappeared. The nurse must have them. Passing under the window I can hear a burst of happy claps. I stop, frozen until someone says, "Let's get ice cream now." Then I hear Larry, he's laughing out loud so I relax and exhale a little bit. With Major Bruce out of the picture the whole learning curve is a little less steep here at school. The bell might be brass still but we know they keep it in a box with all the incomplete board games.
"Fennel, you have Ms. Fennel. That's just cherrybomb-rad."
"Right..."
"Gah!"
The Coupe de Ville I'm hiding behind is really listening to some VanHalen and that's really really sweet. I make a quick jag left then sprint out from between a dirty Volkswagen and a brown Pinto. My gown keeps getting caught on shit. The cotton fabric cinches up under my elbows. The ties are mostly undone now. My knee is banged up from falling out of the window. I need to wrap it in something, get some ice on it. Blood is running down my ankle. My converse are getting squishy. They're making fart noises as I get along.
"Wait, this menthol..."
"Sure right, you asked..."
Someone with spiky hair is yelling at me from across the parking lot, for god's sake, no. There's a girl in a baggy sweater and she starts to scream. Then out of the blue she trips over her gym bag. The loud VanHalen stops with a screech, "Have you seen Junior’s grades?"
Mr. Business-In-Front turns around. He drops his hand-radio suddenly and jumps up twisting comically. It's like he’s only now trying this for the first time. Mr. Party-In-The-Rear lands with a bounce and a shuffle. His knees bend, "Gah, I hate this shit."
"It's, In brightest day, then in blackest night... not the other way dummy."
The Coupes back plate is covered up with a torn Hershey box and some electrical tape. I squat down until I see that it's side door is open a crack. I poke my head up over the pinto's hood and see Mr. Business-In-Front is looking around again. His weevil eyes poke at the cars and the bobbing heads around him.
"shit shit shit, narco!"
"Ah-Mandy, your silver tongue... What rhymes with Polo?"
"Seriously... Put that away."
Chaplain America leans his long frame out the side door with a dramatic swoosh. I open the slip of paper that Ronco gave me. I check it one last time. I can hear him telling me, It's the way that Alfred wrote the oath. I repeat the words as evenly as possible to the man sprawling across the front seat of the coupe in front of me. When I'm finished, he pulls out a very long black gun. It clicks mechanically as he pulls the hammer back. The Chaplain's mustache droops beneath his limber eyes. He looks me over and then asks, "You Ms Brave..."
Quickly, I sputter, "Ah, and I shall shed my light over dark evil For the dark things cannot stand the light The light of the Green Lantern."
"That's not altogether it, is it Punkin," The Chaplain America waves his gun.
This is some more of that stuff: "Green mittens, then come the morbidly natural shirted molestrons. They're just in time for some magic hands to be laying on, yeah. No one likes my presets anymore but these girls are really rad. They're all lost by the park in the sand, they're all talking. They're sipping lime drink and talking about warm cola and brand name tea. They say, sing little bird, be naked now. They say, cry cry cry too."
"This isn't about sex, it's about you, Teeny. Because we've got us a shit weasel problem, don't we?"
The camera is on the bed between us. Ms Brave is looking away from Teeny. The camera's molded plastic body and aluminum shaft are both a bit cockeyed. There's some glass, some of it's muddy and some of it's been broken.
"Ms Brave got lucky. She gathered what she could. But the rest is still there, in the driveway."Ronco explodes, "Go on, tell him the rest. Tell him what you heard them saying."
Teeny stutters at first, "I'm feeling very so sad that it's probably not so true my big group show with it's super eager curator and its best beer sponsor ever aren't going to be part of the eternal dialogue with culture. Well, I've just discovered this, it's more likely that the damn artists will be having that dialogue instead, without me. So I'm feeling sad-sad and all alone because I don't want to be sad-sad alone anymore now."
"After that I dropped the camera, I didn't know what I was doing. It wasn't far but my knees got scrapped up. The concrete hurt my hands. I ran away as fast as I could. That's when Ms Brave found me."
Chaplain America nods, "The days of grass are numbered by the blades."
And there's just this little bit left from inside the garage: She leaps up from the metal table. She can only swing once but its a very hard swing when she does. Ms Brave's punch connects with the ratcheting iris and it immediately cracks in half like the hard plastic shell that it is. The thing of it shimmies once and then with a creaking tumble, it falls over. After all that it was only another piece of broken science fiction that's being left to bobble and sink in the deepening gloop-boorgle that's below them.
Still, there's no more time, Ronco know's they aren't safe yet. His Xon's pulse quickens. He feels it getting more agitated. Ron grabs Ms Brave by her arm and he points up at the metal and glass door as it starts to descend. They have to get over there as fast as they can. Ms Brave looks at him and she yells, "Fuck!"
Ronco glares back at her but he can't find anything more to add. Instead, he hugs her. The rush of all of his favorite things and the time that they've spent tied to these tables evaporates beneath the intense streaks of her laser like eyes.
Ronco snuffles and then his face gets slack. Both of his ears droop like they're made of thin pink leaves of lettuce. The Xon's gone flat too. The pulsing has stopped and now it's more like an empty whoopie cushion. Ronco tells Ms Brave that he's sorry for everything that's happened. He says, "It'll never happen again. Never, Never, I swear."
"Biblical," This is what he tells her. "It's really really biblical, that's the exact temperature that'll melt the skin right off of your face."
Ms Brave's cousin, Teeny makes another more dry sound, "Is it really powered by the future then?"
"It's a great loop that includes what once was. It's like a giant shoelace made of spun sugar and whatever presupposes all of our regrets, whatever they were," Ronco explains. "Until, the whole thing gets uncoiled over time. Then it just lays there on the cave floor shivering. Once that happens there's no more future left to collapse into. I like to think of it as turtle by absence. But you don't have to worry, Teeny. Ms Brave will fix those Umper-Kunst for good and all before it comes to that."
"That's sure good to know, Ronco. I like painting and those titles can be the trickiest part," Teeny says.
"Mistakes happen, Teeny. No matter how many crayons are being used or what size page is selected. Mistakes are going to happen. They happen even if, ERROR has been misspelled. So let's take this to mean, the engines of myth always start good and gilded, Teeny. We'll help keep 'em that way if we can. No matter how Chaplain America needs to spin it. Chaplain America will help you find your lost title."
"Damn your big adorable hide."
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