Better Than Dead

 

 

1. Let me thread you a story…(1-12)
2. Howdy, folks. I know it’s been a long time since you’ve heard from me—and I’m not a’tall sure anyone has a mind to listen to an old country narrator like me any more—but sometimes a person has to be tellin’ stories, even if they’s talkin’ to themselves.
3. Truth is, I fell into a pit of despair over the way of things in the larger world, and the state of things in Portalville itself. All the stories in the world, no matter how sarcastic, didn’t seem to make a lick of sense to anyone so I figured, why bother?
4. The other problem is when you’re a confabulator and things happenin’ in the real world is more confabulous than what a storyteller could come up with and still be believed, it does somewhat take the gunpowder outten your musket.
5. Still, like I said, I got that need to tell stories whether anyone believes ‘em or not. Like that time President Turps joined forces with Portalville’s former mayor and minor god of chaos, Belial Covfefe. Covfefe got voted out of office here in Portalville fair and square—
6. once townsfolk got wise to his evil ways—but he kept screamin’ that the whole thing was rigged even as he packed his bags and left in a huff. Turns out, he became one of them political consultants on President Turps’ re-election committee.
7. Said he’d learned from his mistakes here in Portalville and if President Turps wanted to be re-elected he, Covfefe, would show him the way. Before you knew it, the president had him a revolvin’ set of heads on his shoulders.
8. Whenever anyone called him out as a liar to his face, which nervy journalists and late-night TV show hosts sometimes had the balls to do, he’d swivel another head around and that one would get all riled & declare, “I never said any such thing. These are all just fake truths.”
9. All’s he had to do was keep track of which head told which lie & switch to a new head that had no part in the lyin’. Trouble was, you can only fit so many heads on one pair of shoulders and the president told so many lies he soon ran out of heads to do his denying for him.
10. So the president started sproutin’ little bitty heads out his rear end—but that wasn’t telegenic. Folks didn’t want to see footage of that process. For a time the news was filled with shots of the back of the president’s drawers with these tiny muffled voices comin’ out.
11. Had to shove them microphones so close to his pants that people finally said, “Enough!” ‘Course, they’s always folks what believe anything the president tells ‘em without regard to common sense. Even if it is comin’ out his rear end.
12. You can read the entire sage (so far) of Portalville at https://pjthompson.dreamwidth.org/1672524.html

1. Let me thread you a story… (1-16)
2. Sam Hotchkiss is the caretaker down to Shady Groves Cemetery. Sam says as how he likes his job, walking through the quiet and peace,
3. making sure the residents are happy. Most enjoy the peace as much as Sam. Any that don’t tend not to stay in Shady Groves.
4. They get up and wander ‘round town and sometimes have to be dealt with by Madame Nimby and her son Rupert.
5. Others just wander the streets taking in the sights, seeing what old friends and family are up to.
6. Wanderin’ gets old after awhile—and takes a passel of energy. When they dissipate enough of that restless mojo they go back
7. to Shady Groves and their sod beds, wrap their grass blankets back around themselves, and rest eternal.
8. Sam takes particular care of the children there. He feels bad they got cut off so young and didn’t have a chance to live long and prosper.
9. He likes to leave marbles by their graves so they can have a game now and then. Used to leave stuffed animals, too,
10. but they tended to get soggy when it rained and the kids didn’t care for ‘em much after that.
11. Electronic games don’t work for similar reasons. ‘Sides, it’s difficult for the kids to maintain corporeal fingers long enough to swipe and tap.
12. They do enjoy a nice game of hide n’ seek, sometimes with Sam, sometimes with each other.
13. Ain’t rightly fair when they play with Sam, though. If he gets too close to finding them, they can just go invisible.
14. That trick don’t work with each other—spirits can always see other spirits—but Sam is a mere mortal, after all.
15. Them kids laugh and laugh when Sam seeks and seeks and never finds. “Play fair, you kids!” he’ll call out to them.
16. But mostly he’s laughing when he says it. Can’t blame kids for having a good time.

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.
You can read about us from the beginning at: http://bit.ly/2k1j8B7

1. Let me thread you a story…(1-30)
2. Mayor Begay has been in office for some time now. We like the job he does and the way he cares for all the people of Portalville.
3. Weren’t always that way. We had us a mayor before who caused nothing but hard feelings and chaos. Mayor Covfefe.
4. As I’ve said before, folks in Portalville are generally accepting of everybody, but even good folks get scared sometimes.
5. If you’ve got an unscrupulous sumbich who likes chaos and playing on people’s fears it’s sometimes hard to break through the stramash,
6. and get people thinking sensibly once more. Mayor Covfefe was one of those sorts. Took over the City Council with his pack of yes men,
7. forcing agendas on the town nobody really liked but were too scared to oppose. Nobody trusted anybody else, see, and figured everyone
8. was out to get them, so no one wanted to listen to what others said without starting a yelling match.
9. So much screaming in the extremes when most folks just wanted to negotiate some peace that the City Council ground to a halt.
10. Weren’t no business getting done, or only what business lined the pockets of Mayor Covfefe and his cronies.
11. They tried to shred every principle we held dear here in Portalville, violating city by-laws like confetti.
12. Pretty soon folks was yelling at each other over every tiny thing that came along and forming parties of folk yelling in the same key.
13. We had us the Portalville League of Lawyers threatening to file suit over anyone who didn’t agree with them.
14. Fortunately, they mostly couldn’t agree with each other so their suits went nowhere or were easily dismissed by Judge Mathead.
15. Then we had us the Portalville League of Opposition. They didn’t really have a point of view except that they were in opposition…
16. to everyone else in town. “What are you opposing?” people would ask. “What have you got?” they’d answer.
17. The Portalville League of Witches got so fed up they put reversal spells on half the town. So many folks walked around
18. with heads on backwards they didn’t know if they was coming or going & got a much closer look at bodily functions than they ever wanted.
19. Finally, Sherman Begay, the town shoemaker, had enough. He formed the Portalville League of the Beleaguered to try to reassert sense.
20. Bar-Bar Shumay was one of the first to join, followed by Madame Mosibelle Nimby and her son Rupert.
21. They held giant clear-seeing resistance rallies where everyone who showed up got the scales lifted from their eyes.
22. Pretty soon, folks saw that Mayor Covfefe was a minor god of chaos, although no god of chaos is ever truly minor.
23. His magic had scared folks into going against their better nature, against what they knew was right.
24. (Then again, some folks ain’t got better natures and think right is only what is right for them. Even the most powerful magic
25. can’t do nothing to heal that kind of perversion. What’s required to fight them folks is a really big stick.)
26. Fear is a great motivator, but I got to believe love is, too. Once Sherman Begay, & Bar-Bar, & the Nimbys broke through the shouting,
27. let people see the truth, most folks came around. They realized that loving your neighbor wasn’t just a passel of pretty-sounding words.
28. It’s a way forward, a commitment to doing what’s right for the whole community.
29. Folks decided that they’d rather live in harmony than have their own way in every tiny thing. Compromise became a holy tenet.
30. Come next election, Mayor Covfefe lost by a landslide. And that’s how the new mayor, Sherman Begay the shoemaker, saved our souls.

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

1. Let me thread you a story… (1-17)
2. Portalville has been on summer vacation. Yep, that’s right, the whole danged town. We needed a break from our day-to-day reality.
3. So we hired us a whole mess of buses and drove them through the portal after which Portalville is named.
4. We came out in another plain of existence, somewhere folks could all agree about things and where no one felt better than anyone else.
5. Clearly, not any place on this earth.
6. Now, Portalville is a pretty friendly place under normal circumstances and we mostly get along with each other right nice.
7. But sometimes it all gets a bit much, especially when outside agitators come to town and demand we take sides in their outside arguments.
8. It gets wearying, and if you add into that the tendency of most folks in town towards summer seasonal affective disorder…
9. Well, like I said, time for a break. So, Mayor Begay ordered up those buses. We had the dire wolves manning the barricades on Route 40,
10. let the Rock tribe seal up the passes through the Imogen Mountains, and told Dennis the Toll Troll to shut down the Wynotte Bridge—
11. although the mayor told him he still wasn’t allowed to eat anyone who tried to cross. We sure hope he kept his word there.
12. With the town sealed off from the world and our minds at ease about invasion, we took to the portal and had us a fine time.
13. ‘Course, vacation always has to end sometime. The kids had to get back to school, the maintenance crews had to get back to work.
14. And running away from problems never does any good in the long run. Not while you’re a living, breathing human being.
15. Ain’t none of us dead yet, and while you’re drawing air into your lungs you need to be part of the world. Or you ain’t really living.
16. So yep, we’re back. We’re still breathing. For now, anyway. All I can truly say for sure is that we’re back for today.
17. But then, today is all you ever have, ain’t it?

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

(1/27) Let me thread you a story…(1/27)
(2/27) Portalville was prid near shut down to outsiders in the days leading up to and after the 4th of July.
(3/27) We had our annual parade, featuring the Alouette High marching band, a float for Miss Firecracker, & Zombie Drill Team, like always.
(4/27) But visitors to Portalville had trouble getting here. There’s plenty ways to Portalville. You can go through the Imogen Mountains,
(5/27) east of town, and then on through the Rokoko Valley. And there’s Route 40 which passes north-south through town.
(6/27) But the main way most outsiders get here is from the west, over the Wynotte Bridge on the Wynotte River.
(7/27) Folks approaching Portalville from the bridge might notice a strange structure nestled under the eastern end of the bridge.
(8/27) It looks kind of like a condo clinging there. The impression only gets stronger once they get close because it is, in fact, a condo.
(9/27) It connects via a staircase to the toll booth right above. And it’s where Dennis the Toll Troll lives.
(10/27) People might not think he’s a troll. He usually dresses in a red plaid flannel shirt (summer and winter), black gabardine trousers,
(11/27) with a “Portaville Toll Authority” baseball cap. ‘Course, he is ten feet tall with two lower jaw tusks curlin’ over his lip.
(12/27) And he also has a tendency to take the fifth of Hiram Walker whiskey out of his back pocket to take a slug while collecting tolls.
(13/27) Generally, though, Dennis is peaceable. He collects the tolls, pockets half, and to the best of our knowledge never eats anyone.
(14/27) Wasn’t always so. Wynotte wasn’t always a toll bridge. Dennis freelanced. If someone came across the bridge when he was peckish,
(15/27) that person might not be heard from again. The town had to do something. A mob with torches formed, but Dennis is a powerful troll,
(16/27) not only strong as a whole army, but with mesmerizing magic. The mob didn’t have much luck. Dennis had a full belly, though.
(17/27) We didn’t have Sheriff Limonada back then or she might have defused the situation. As it was, Mayor Begay had to negotiate.
(18/27) The town finally agreed to let Dennis collect tolls officially on the bridge, half of which he could keep, half for the town,
(19/27) but under no circumstances was he to eat people. He didn’t like that. “I’m a humanitarian,” he protested. “I only eat humans.”
(20/27) So the town agreed to supply Dennis with a steady stream of hogs & cattle if he’d agree to let people alone. No more mobs would
(21/27) trouble him. He reluctantly agreed since the mobs were a nuisance & not having to hunt & fight was a perq.
(22/27) We even built him the condo to sweeten the deal. AC, a chef’s kitchen with an island & granite countertops, & a killer master bath.
(23/27) Things were good for a long time. But Dennis had him a backslide this week. Far as we know he didn’t kill and eat anyone, but he told
(24/27) the sheriff that the human-eating jones was so strong he decided to close the bridge rather than risk it having his way with him.
(25/27) She said he belched a meaty belch at her, excused himself, & said, “I sure would miss my AC if you had to force me to move.”
(26/27) The bridge is open again and outsiders are moving over it unmolested. Dennis seems to be calm and happy again.
(27/27) We’ve received no missing persons reports. So far.

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

1. Let me Thread you a story…(1-18)
2. We’re just a little town. Don’t go in much for big and showy, but we had us a fella once who liked to write his name everywhere in town.
3. Wasn’t a building or a fence or a bench or a sidewalk safe from his red spray can. “Huge, Huge, Huge” it said everywhere.
4. Natty Knowles spent all his time scrubbing it off things & the town shelled out so much money for it they finally confronted Freddy Huge.
5. Said they were going to make him pay all the expenses. At first, Freddy tried to blame one of the Syrian refugee families in town.
6. But everyone knew Ahmed Shah was a hard-working man who just wanted to raise his family in a safe, peaceful place.
7. And his wife, Halimah, was busy raising their two boys, Idris and Harun, 4 and 3, respectively.
8. Besides, she was eight months pregnant at the time with their daughter, Bilqis, and everyone knew she couldn’t be doing it.
9. Besides, Minnie Halverson, head of the Beale Street Neighborhood Watch was on stakeout one night and saw what happened.
10. Freddy would never dirty his own hands with anything like real work, but his Russian accountant, Ivan Drago, was up for the job.
11. Minnie literally caught him red-handed as the spray paint leaked back over his fingers some.
12. Faced with this evidence and a huge bill from the city, Freddy and Ivan declared bankruptcy.
13. They snuck out of town one night and folks hear tell they set up shop in New Jersey where waste management is a…big industry.
14. Sad to say they left the shareholders at Huge Waste Management holding the bag, and people lost badly needed jobs.
15. Like I’ve said before, we take care of our own in this town. Mayor Begay formed a city waste management firm.
16. The shareholders were happy to buy into that, folks kept their jobs, and we saw no more red spray paint around town.
17. Meanwhile, Freddy and his Russian contact are growing wealthy. Hear tell they’ve opened a university for the waste management business.
18. Naturally, it’s called Huge Waste University.

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

1. Let me Thread you a story…(1-24)
2. Rikiki Rocks, just outside town in the Rokoko Valley, is a special place.
3. The stones there have all kinds of fantastical shapes. There’s Old Man Mammoth, a massive piece of elephantine-shaped granite.
4. And Donut Rock, a modern name for a big circular thing with a hole in the middle. Local tradition says if a woman wishes to conceive,
5. she should pass through the hole in that rock under the light of the full moon. That’s why it’s also known as Mother Rock.
6. There’s many another fanciful shape with fanciful traditions, and I could spend days describing them all. Maybe I will someday.
7. But one thing to know about Rikiki Rocks is that sometime in the way back when somebody carved pictographs on ‘em.
8. These pictures show warriors, hunters, shamans, prey animals and such like. Some have red ochre added to the grooves.
9. Folks do say as how these rocks are sacred to the local Kintache Indians. Yaku Ravenwing, the Kintache story shaman, agrees.
10. Yaku’s legal name is Arturo, but nobody ever calls him that. Yaku means “blue tongue” in Kintache and he really can talk a blue streak.
11. One time when he was storytelling at a Kintache powwow, some folks swore they saw blue flames sprouting from his mouth.
12. Like any good narrator, Yaku swears his stories are mostly true so when he says Rikiki Rocks are not to be messed with, people listen.
13. No one in Portalville would ever desecrate them, but we do get the occasional drive-by tourist that can’t help themselves.
14. Yaku tells about two such good ol’ boys driving through from Talladega on their way to California.
15. They took a rest break at Daisy Mae’s Snack-a-Round out on Route 40. She had a picture of Rikiki Rocks behind the bar.
16. These boys asked about ‘em and Daisy Mae all innocently said how proud people were of ’em in these parts.
17. Well, you know, the devil is in some folks, and that ain’t no lie, no matter what else may be a story, no matter what else you believe.
18. These boys got a notion to go out to those rocks and add their names to ‘em. Stopped by Pedergreen’s Hardware for spray paint & chisels.
19. Way Yaku tells it, when they got to the rocks weren’t another human around ‘cept the hunters, shamans & warriors on the pictographs.
20. Guess they didn’t notice the sasquatch taking a rest beside The Bigtoes, some Rikikis shaped like 5 giant toes sticking out of the sand.
21. Sasquatch don’t usually get involved in human affairs, but those rocks is sacred to them, too. Yaku says Sasquatch took care of things.
22. Sheriff Limonada found the boys’ car abandoned near the Rikikis but didn’t never find a trace of them boys.
23. So I asked Yaku how he knew the sasquatch took care of them boys if nobody else was around?
24. He just grinned his big ol’ grin. “Sasquatch told me, of course.” Weren’t but a trace of blue flame & smoke on his lips when he said it.

 

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

 

1. Let me Thread you a story…(1-16)
2. We got us some spooky properties here in town, left over from the days of the Great Spirit Invasion of ’07.
3. Spirits poured into town from all over through a rip in the Space-Time Continuum, taking up residence in homes and businesses.
4. Madame Nimby, town exorcist, & her son Rupert sewed up the rip with existential thread and that kept new ghosts from coming through.
5. But they were so busy exorcising the ones already here they couldn’t keep up. It took a deal of time for things to settle down.
6. Most ghosts was just lost souls sucked through the rip by accident and easily persuaded to move on to a higher place.
7. Some, though, were stubborn & not inclined to persuasion. Folks who had those spirits in their homes & businesses had a tough choice.
8. Either move out or learn to live with haints. Some businesses made deals with the ghosts to stay quiet during business hours.
9. Likewise, some residents made similar deals, asking that the hauntings stop after everyone had gone to bed.
10. Still others just couldn’t live with the ruckus, or the spirits refused to cooperate. But we take care of our own.
11. The town banded together to build new homes & businesses for those forced out. That left about a dozen spooky abandoned buildings.
12. Madame & Rupert laid down salt & warding spells ‘round those places. Kept the bad spirits from wandering.
13. Nowadays our biggest problem is out-of-towner ghost hunters pestering us to do investigations (cuz we got us a ghosty reputation).
14. Some of these are sincere folks just wanting to understand the nature of the universe & we towners got no problem with them.
15. Others seem to see ghost hunting as entertainment. I don’t hold with people who use the lost souls of the dead that way.
16. But ain’t no spells for exorcising dilettantes. More’s the pity.

This story can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

1. Let me thread you a story…(1-18)
2. We had us a preacher once named Mike Spike Huckleberry who liked to preach fire and brimstone and “superior” values.
3. He set up church in his house and called it the God’s True Will Church of Everlasting Superiority.
4. Trouble was, this ain’t a fire and brimstone kind of town. At least not in the sense of damning everyone to Hell.
5. But Mike Spike, well, he was one self-righteous sumbich. Not a speck of love in his Gospel, only judgement and damnation.
6. Some folks in this town ate it up with a big spoon cuz some folks love an excuse to feel superior to others.
7. And if they can fool themselves into thinking God is backing their claims to be chosen amongst men, that makes the poison more delicious.
8. For a time it seemed Mike Spike was going to take over the town. Most people didn’t hold with his message, but he shouted real loud.
9. Sometimes those who shout loudest and insist they’re being persecuted if you disagree with them can hold sway.
10. Cuz good-hearted folk just can’t believe that someone will preach about God and still hold evil intention in their heart.
11. It took a deal of cowering and doubt and good folks second-guessing their motives, but the tide finally turned on Mike Spike.
12. Billy Budd Gibbons, he of the All Souls Love Congregation, asked God to show us a sign if we should follow Mike Spike’s ways.
13. People lost count of the lightning strikes after 48 turned Mike Spike’s house into a deep, dark pit of char.
14. Mike’s daughter, Hectorine Huckleberry-Skanklebrass, spokesperson for Mike Spike, missed the deitific barbecue.
15. She was at her own home next door with her husband, Winnie, doing some cowering of her own in the basement.
16. She and Winnie did some considering while they cowered, afraid the Lord might have a postscript for them after finishing with Mike Spike.
17. They left town in an awful hurry. No one much was sorry to see ‘em go.
18. Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile God’s ways to man. Other times it’s as clear as a flash of lightning.

This story can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

1. Let me thread you a story…(1-20)
2. Sheriff Rosa Limonada came to us by way of Texarkana where she worked as a deputy in a little town named Spoot.
3. The sheriff she worked for had nothing but high praise for her. Said she was the crucial factor in solving their La Llorona murder case.
4. She’s fit in well in Portalville and been a fine sheriff to us. She has this special power to quell magic. Mostly, she doesn’t use it.
5. But if somebody is behaving bad magically, the sheriff can hawk up a metaphorical anti-magic spitball and launch it into their face.
6. Do no harm is taken seriously ‘round these parts, and the sheriff enforces it—in the nicest possible way.
7. If some of the young ‘uns get a little too rowdy with their mischief spells on a Saturday night, Sheriff Limonada knows how to calm ‘em.
8. She’s mostly live and let live when it comes to magical working. If you do no harm, you’ll never hear from her.
9. Most folks do as they will and harm none, but once in awhile someone gets out of hand or really full of themselves and needs quelling.
10. Mostly, though, the sheriff uses her powers for the more sinister characters that slip into town.
11. The last one was a skinwalker straight out of Uintah County in Utah. Was bothering folks’ cattle something fierce.
12. Borrowing folks’ faces, too, and walking around like it owned the town. When it took the form of Mayor Begay the sheriff took action.
13. Like a scene from one of them Old West movies, with the skinwalker standing at one end of Main Street, the sheriff at the other.
14. The skinwalker reached out its hand, fit to steal the sheriff’s face or soul, and Sheriff Limonada drew her gun.
15. The skinwalker laughed, a sound like rocks grinding together, cuz skinwalkers can’t be harmed by bullets.
16. But the sheriff marshalled her resources and yelled, “Kapow!” at the thing as she launched her anti-magic.
17. The skinwalker’s laugh turned to a shriek like ice ripping through a steel hull and it disappeared in a fiery ball.
18. Took a helluva lot out of the sheriff, all that energy, but the critter ain’t never been back, so Sheriff Limonada did a real good job.
19. She said it made an interesting change from wrangling drunks and setting up speed traps.
20. All things considered, though, she hopes she doesn’t have to face one again soon.

This story can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.