SHIP'S LOG:

Microwave Explosion

Larry Fantasio 9/23/2024 11:33pm

"It seemed like we were in Amarillo forEVER," said the @Queen of the Hudson. She was trying to get comfortable in the pilot's seat but just kept on talking.

"Well we got out of there in a hurry," I said.

"Can we stay in a proper hotel one of these nights? I want a bath."

The shower in the Microwave Explosion was pretty nice, actually. See-through floor.

"Not tonight, dearie," Black Hermione said. Her wooden head was set up on the dash. "Tonight we're CAMPING."

The Queen of the Hudson rolled her eyes. "I'll take my bunk in the ship over sleeping on the ground, thank you," she said.

"Oh, it's glamping, don't you worry," chittered Black Hermione through her wooden teeth. "There, up ahead, see those bumps?"

"Yes?" I answered.

"Old volcanos," Hermione said. "Just go nestle us in amongst them and we'll wait till dark."

Queen of the Hudson 6/2/2024 11:53pm

"Rose!" called Black Hermione. Larry had appeared in this flower-salad bar, and taken Black Hermione's head from his purse.

She continued. "It's been awhile, Rose. How are you doing?"

The enormous naked yellow woman sitting on the mountain of wild flowers turned slowly, as if she was drugged.

"Black Hermione? Is that you? I don't understand."

"Well I'm not quite myself. I'm just a download into this clackity clack wooden dummy head," Black Hermione said.

The enormous naked yellow woman looked confused.

"Oh? Well, I haven't been doing so well," she said. "Age does catch up with us all, eventually. I don't get out much these days. I can barely leave my bed. But the nurses are nice."

"Those ain't nurses at all, you dindle headed twit!" screeched Black Hermione. "Those are your JAILORS! They've got you all penned up!"

"Penned?" Rose -- the enormous naked yellow woman -- seemed to look around the florescent lit banquet room, and then back down at the huge pile of wildflowers she was sitting in. "Well, there really isn't the room there used to be, here in... in...."

"Amarillo!" Black Hermione screeched. "Amari-yee-yo!" again, but in a Spanish pronunciation. "ONEIDA!" Then she said some other words I couldn't understand, but they got Rose to wake up a little.

"Aw, Hermione. Do you remember the fun we used to have? Running along the river... in the hills..."

"I sure do, Rose. But you need to get out more. You want to take a little trip?"

"Oh I don't have that kind of energy anymore. Not like back in the old days."

"Why don't we just take a little step outside, get some fresh air?" Black Hermione said.

"She's NAKED" @Larry Fantasio stage whispered to Black Hermione. "And too big for the Queen and I to carry."

"Yes," said Rose. "Yes I'd like that. But, oh I don't think I'd like the sun to see me like this. I've gotten so old... and I've gained some weight..."

"QUEENIE!" Black Hermione hissed. "Grab that bus bin. The clean one."

Back against the wall were a few plastic bins the busboys used to clear tables.

"Alright Rose, you'll be just fine. You remember when we used to run together? You remember what that was like?"

"Just our heads bobbing in the breeze..." said Rose, seeming like she was about to fall asleep.

Black Hermione seemed to be saying a lot of things under her breath. Not curses, but some repeated phrases, over and over again. Then, quickly, she whispered to me.

"Take that bin over to her. Hold it up to her face."

"She's not going to be sick is she?"

"DO IT!"

I walked over, knee deep in the pile of yellow wildflowers, and held the bus tray up to Rose's face.

Suddenly, Black Hermione's wooden eyes rolled back into her wooden ventriloquist doll head, and sure enough rose started to vomit. Vomit out flowers. Streams and streams of yellow wildflowers, just like this wacko salad bar was already filled with. But springtime too. And summer breezes. And butterflies and bees.

"HOLD TIGHT!" cried Black Hermione. "DON'T DROP IT!"

I couldn't see a thing through the shower of wildflowers and summertime that was pouring over me, but I held tight to the bus tray over my head. It wasn't getting any heavier.

And then it was done. The torrent of flowers had stopped. In fact, the flowers were gone--not only all the flowers Rose had just barfed out, but all the flowers that had filled this salad bar when I came in. The salad bar was empty. Not even plugged in. Nothing but sticky high chairs and booster seats and grody carpet.

"Did you get it?" asked Black Hermione.

I looked in the bus tray. Inside it was an old dried up seed head. Maybe a sunflower.

"You take that and keep it safe," Hermione said. "Now it's time to dine and dash."

Larry Fantasio 2/10/2024 11:56pm

The Queen had been at the salad bar for a long time.

"That's quite a salad she must be building," I said.

Black Herminone cackled from inside my bag. "Well maybe we best go check on her," she said.

I hiked the big purse over my shoulder and gave the waiter a nod just to let her know I wasn't planning on dining and dashing. She didn't look like she'd care either way.

"Salad bar?" I asked.

"No thank you," said the waiter.

I followed the sign down a carpeted hall, past an empty banquet room. Sticky high chairs lined the walls, booster seats, the occasional zoom broom.

"The salad bar was near the front, when we came in," I whispered to Black Hermione.

"It's the SPECIAL salad bar," she said, then started cackling again.

I turned the corner to find The Queen of the Hudson standing before mountain of flowers. And on that mountain of flowers sat a huge, fat, naked woman with golden hair and yellow skin.

"Is this some kind of hippie wedding?" I asked Hermione.

"Oh you bet it is," she said. "For one damn old hippie!"

Queen of the Hudson 10/15/2023 11:08pm

I had room for about two bites of my clam chowder.

"Don't we get a salad with this?" I asked. I was looking at Larry but my question was for Black Hermione, who, being a talking wooden ventriloquist dummy's head, was hidden inside Larry's man-purse.

"You bet you do, sweetie," came Black Herminone's muffled voice. "I told you they had specials!"

"The clam chowder is the special," I told her back. "It means a dish served only on a certain day, or has a lowered price on a certain day. The salad bar's just... always there."

"We'll it's SPECIAL, sweetie. Take my word for it. Why don't you go and try it out? It's all you can eat!"

"This clam chowder's pretty good," Larry said.

The clam chowder was NOT very good. Larry's standards were obviously low when it came to clam chowder. The salad bar looked reasonable on the way in -- I mean, aside from the pickled three bean salad, or the cottage cheee/lime jello mold -- just some cucumbers and carrot sticks and lettuce would suit me fine.... maybe some cherry tomatoes...

But now, that salad bar was gone. The salad bar before me was filled with flowers. Yellow flowers. Prairie Broomweed and Snakeweed, Chocolate Daisy, Smooth Beggartick, Engelmann's Daisy, Curlycup Gumweed. As the Witch Queen of the Hudson, I had to know my plants.

There a busboy was refilling a big bowl with Woolly Paperflower.

"Is this the special?" I asked.

The bus boy looked at me in a terrified way and ran off.

Larry Fantasio 7/14/2023 11:56pm

I'd certainly seen better salad bars.

"Panhandler's has specials," Black Hermione's wooden head said from inside my man-purse.

What they lacked in fresh microgreens was made up for by the range of more classic ingredients. Beets, garbanzos, a tuna niçoise. But what were these specials?

"WAITER!" Black Hermione screeched from her bag. The @Queen of the Hudson shuddered.

The waiter wasn't a man. And dressed in nothing more official than a Panhandler's brand apron.

Black Hermionie twitched in her bag. The Queen took the cue.

"What are your specials today?" asked the Queen.

"Same as every Friday. Clam chowder, fish and chips, fish sticks, fish fillet, fish sauce, fish gravy, fish soup."

"And can you tell me where you source your fish?" asked the Queen. "Here, in Amarillo?"

The wait person was perplexed.

"Clam chowder," Black Hermione said in a stage whisper. "In a bread bowl."

"Clam chowder, all around!" I said. "In bread bowls."

Queen of the Hudson 3/27/2023 11:44pm

"You know it's all the little yellow flowers why they call it Amarillo," I told Larry as we taxied in over the aerodrome.

"That's a common misconception," said Larry, in his increasingly annoying know-it-all voice. "It's the yellow dirt around the lake that makes the flowers yellow."

"It's clear neither of you know a thing," said Black Hermione, whose wooden head now sat up on the dashboard above the controls. "What do you think turned all that dirt yellow in the first place?"

Larry didn't seem to know the answer to that one.

Airship control gave us a designation for a mooring tower and Larry brought us in and we kissed the tower without a hitch.

"You know they've got the cheapest helium here. They pipe it right in from Bush Dome so there's practically no middle man. Time to get topped off and fill the reserve tanks," Larry said.

"You can set that up with the airmaster on our way out. We've got a dinner date," Black Hermione said.

"Can we get something a little lighter for dinner?" I asked. "I'm still full from that burger in Wichita."

"You bet, dearie," Black Hermione said. "You wouldn't believe the salad bar at this place I know. Larry, get us a cab."

Larry Fantasio 12/21/2022 11:58pm

Wichita. The Airship Capital of the World.

We found a diner with adequate mooring at the confluence of the Big and Little Arkansas Rivers.

"It's like the reed-covered lodge, by the little-water place!" said the Queen, delighted.

"It's a quonset hut," I replied.

But the food was good. Odd flat hamburgers with fried edges. Excellent pickles. We sat outside at a picnic table.

"Mmmph mmmph mm mmph mmph mmmph" went the suitcase.

I opened it up a crack.

"Take me around the back. Like you're going to the restroom," said Black Hermione. Well, not actually Black Hermione, but the ventriloquist dummy head that held the downloaded consciousness of Black Hermione. "And finish that Coke! Bring the bottle!"

I tucked the dummy head under my arm and finished my soda.

"Burp."

Around the back of the hut, it was like a small dump. And old tractor, a pile of wooden crates. Busted refrigerator with the door sprung open.

"Köppen CLA!" called Black Hermione. "You tired of this garbage dump yet? I can't believe you're still spending your days here, with everything that's going on."

Slowly, a dust devil took shape in the dirt. It grew to about the size of you or me. Just spinning. Spinning rather... languorously. For a dust devil.

"Awww... Hermione...." it whistled. "You've... changed..."

"Well I'm still kickin!" the head said. I wasn't sure if this was a joke because she had no legs. "But this place is killing you! There ain't hardly no winds left in Wichita!"

"But... it'sssss.... my place...."

"'Where the rivers meet, I will create'... yada yada. But seriously, you're getting decrepit, moping around in all this human junk. You need to take a little road trip with us. See the sights! I promise we'll bring you back and you'll have a whole new outlook."

The dust devil pondered for a moment.

"Hold that bottle out," Hermione whispered to me.

Then she turned and shouted "Köppen CLU!" and the dust devil up and zoomed into my bottle, like a miniature tornado.

"Now plug it!" Hermione hooted. "Stuff your hankie in there!"

And that's what we picked up in Wichita.

Queen of the Hudson 9/28/2022 11:20pm

It was great to be up in the air again.

Larry was a real cool cat getting the Microwave Explosion out of airfield control. He didn't seem to care a wink about the debris and rips and tears and residual diaper smell on our clothes, and the clerk at the desk didn't bat an eye. We went right to the ship and did our pre-flight checks and were on the go in no time.

"Where to next, chief?"

"They're hot on our tail, but we've got to make it to the House of Woo," he said.

"Mmmmmph mmmmph mmmmph," went the suitcase.

"It's fine to let her out now," he said. I opened up the suitcase.

Black Hermione's wooden dummy head turned on her cradle of silks and rolled her eyes.

"You've got to take the old Power Puff Derby route," she said.

"The old Power Puff Derby route?" I asked.

"Omaha, Wichita, Amarillo, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco," Larry said. "It's a bit obvious though, isn't it?"

"We've got friends we can hit up on the way," said Black Hermione. "I can open up doors you people wouldn't believe."

Larry Fantasio 7/16/2022 7:23pm

Yeah well the air wasn't *that* fresh.

"Just wait till we get out of the facility," said the Queen.

We came up out of the tunnel and into a vast warehouse. Two bangs on the back door, then a pause and one more.

"We're good," said the Queen, and the back doors opened.

One workman, apparently human, in a gray jumpsuit. The embroidered name tag said Chuck.

"Back, and to the left. Exit door says Alarm will Sound but ignore it."

"Thanks Chuckles" said the Queen.

"Always a pleasure, Daffy," said Chuckles. "See you around."

We slipped out the back, through the alarmless exit, and into an alley. The sign on the service door across the alley said Omaha Clone Housing Authority.

"Best part is," said the Queen, "we don't even need to call a cab. Airfield is due east. Hardly a mile."

Something still smelled funny.

"You can take the nose off now," said the Queen.

Queen of the Hudson 4/17/2022 10:30pm

"Whatever you do, don't take off the nose."

"But it's REALLY uncomfortable," said Larry. "It's like it's trying to squirm into my nostrils!"

We hit a pothole and bounced around with the big diaper sacks. The truck was dark, but we could see streetlights through the windshield.

"Mmmsmmphr mmm hmmmphr!" went the dummy in the suitcase.

"And leave that shut," I said. "She's just agreeing with me. If you let yourself smell it, you'll go completely insane."

"I can still smell it. Even through the nose. It's like... cotton candy?"

"The human brain isn't equipped to process clown baby shit. Just don't think about it."

"Then isn't it dangerous for them to be transporting it into the city? Stockpiling dangerous chemical weapons?"

"There's a regulatory process. It's got to be disposed of within 72 hours, and only licensed Clown Diaper Disposal agents are allowed to handle it. It's not something they can do in Clown City. All their waste is transported up to the surface. Most of it -- cream pie tins, empty seltzer bottles, old giant shoes -- can go into regular landfill. But licensed CDD agents handle the rough stuff, and so they get a little leeway. Not even other clowns want to search their trucks. And not even clowns are crazy enough to militarize it."

The truck began to slow down.

"Coming to a checkpoint," I said. "Just sit tight. Breathe through your mouth."

The truck slowed down, then sped up again.

"See? They just waved us through. Next, we'll be coming up from under Florence Boulevard. Just keep your nose on and we'll be back in fresh air in no time."