We're Only in It for the Money

    Suzanne stared across the panwidth at Edwina, harrowed momentarily by artless disapprobations swarming portboard through substance.  Suzanne blinked forty-nine times in rapid succession, awaiting sufficient arrows for sense collection.  Listing, then strideful, Suzanne susanned suzeward susanly.  Edwina had not anticipated this and ceased her bluff.

    “Suzanne!  Wait.” 

    “What do you propose?”

    “I’ve been nothing but polite here.  There’s no need for that.”

    “No, you haven’t.”

    “You’re being unreasonable.  I’ve said nothing out of line whatsoever.”

    “Two men argue.  One man swears like a sailor, but not once at the other man.  The second man speaks evenly, like a politician.  The first man becomes angry at the ludicrous – though ostensibly polite – argument made by the second man.  The second man draws a side arm and shoots the first man dead.”

    The seconds dogpiled languidly and Suzanne’s frontal lobe searched frantically for switches to try, throwing here and there, in a desperate attempt to minimize cell loss, but unfortunately resulting in a series of strange ticks and jerks in her body instead.  Millions of synaptic jumps later, Edwina blinked twice and spoke.

    “And then what happened?”

    “Two men argue.  The first man complains, quite politely, that the second man is stepping on his shoe.  The second man, infuriated, claims shoes don’t exist.  The first man attempts to point out that not only is he wearing shoes, but so is the second man himself.  The second man looks down.  He removes his shoes and shouts, ‘shoes shoes, sing the blues!  These are tonfa, you retard’.  The first man tries to walk away when the he is struck in the head with the second man’s shoes.”

    “What are tonfa?”

    Suzanne’s simmer intensified as she open her mouth to speak, but before the words could leave her mouth Chapwood integrated before the two women’s eyes, boiling onion in his fist.

    The process took a mild dogpile, during which Suzanne and Edwina pontificated windward.  Chapwood’s moments, locked in digital reduction, seemed alternately coherent and bemusing.  Clarities cornered quickly and then retreated like thieves.  Grasping along, lost in the small, lost in the great, lost in both, neither unveiling at proper times and Chapwood’s fractures sustaining.

    Methodically shaking cobwebs and assimilating as best he could to the newest of new situations, Chapwood spoke.  “Chapwood I am.  Here I do not know and from where I just discovered, so yanked I was to begin anew.”

    “Shoes shoes, sing the blues,” said Edwina.

    “Don’t mind my friend, her husband beats her and it’s inculcated far too much sanity,” apologized Suzanne.

    Chapwood leisurely blinked twelve times, then spoke, “what year is it?”

    “Much better.  Edwina can help you with that.”

    “Time doesn’t exist,” insisted Edwina.

    “Hippie!”  Suzanne turned susanly towards Chapwood.  “I’m sorry about that.  But to answer your question, we are current.”

    Chapwood patted his pockets.  “I’m out of darts I’m afraid.”

    “Just as well,” Suzanne said, “fewer darts means more omega threes.”

    “Though with ever diminishing returns I’m afraid,” she added and sighed.

    “Poison!”  Edwina was jumping and yawping carnivorously.  “Poison!  Take it back, you’ll kill us all.”

    Chapwood surveyed the room for a four-body flop, breathed deeply, and smiled.  “Here,” he thought, “here I may gain ground.”