= TWILIGHT WORLD - Volume 4 Issue 2 (March 16th 1996) =======================


 You  can do anything with this magazine as long as it  remains  intact.  All 
stories  in  it  are fiction.  No actual persons are designated  by  name  or 
character and similarity is coincidental.
 This  magazine  is  for free - get it as cheaply as  possible.  It  is  also 
uncensored - ban any sites/servers/people that hinder freedom of speech.
 Please refer to the end of this file for further information.


= LIST OF CONTENTS ==========================================================


 EDITORIAL
 by Richard Karsmakers

 IGNATIUS
 by Stefan Posthuma

 YOU PEOPLE
 by P.J. Jason

 AN EVENING AT HOME
 by Roy Stead

 OH YEAH III - THE THIRD ENCOUNTER (AND OF A CLOSE KIND)
 by Stefan Posthuma and Richard Karsmakers

 PHALCUS PHALANGOIDES
 by M. Manwaring

 TUPPERWARE PARTY
 by Mark Oliver


= EDITORIAL =================================================================
 by Richard Karsmakers


 Another nicely jam-packed issue of "Twilight World" is ready to be  devoured 
by you.  A larger variety of authors is featured once more,  this time, which 
is  a  development  I  applaude with all my heart.  I'd  once  more  like  to 
emphasise that,  if you have a nice story lying around somewhere, you're more 
then  welcome to send it to me so that it may be included in a next issue  of 
this magazine.  Please realise that the reason that so many of my own stories 
are published in "Twilight World" is not because I want to be the number  one 
contributor but because,  simply, you out there don't write enough to fill it 
otherwise.  I  would not mind if this situation changed so  "Twilight  World" 
would  offer a bigger variety of fiction from different parts of  the  world, 
different people, different viewpoints, different imaginations.
 So  put your fingers to the word processor and don't shirk  submitting  your 
tales for inclusion in the multifariousness that is "Twilight World".

 Please spread the word, and the file, and have fun reading!


 Richard Karsmakers
 (Editor)


= IGNATIUS ==================================================================
 by Stefan Posthuma - sposthuma@graymatter.on.ca

 Dedicated  to John Kennedy Toole.  He created the most  brilliant  character 
ever.  This  is only a feeble attempt to approach the amazing personality  of 
Ignatius J. Reilly (book: "A Confederacy of Dunces" by J.K. Toole).


 "BLASPHEMY!!"  Ignatius yelled at the skinny young man standing in front  of 
him.
 "How dare you inflict your hideous views on me! Go on and assault some other 
innocent bystander. Leave me alone before I have you seized and lashed."
 "But I only want to inform you about our view on life,"  sputtered the young 
man who was dressed in a robe and had a bald, shining head.
 "Why  have you chosen me to spill forth your obcene and primitive  religious 
babble?  Has your obscure sect chosen me as a victim?  Am I to be slaughtered 
in  front  of  a blood-stainded altar to satisfy some  ridiculous  deity  you 
worship? Get out of my way, I have pressing matters to attend to."
 Ignatius  pushed the young man aside and headed down the station  hall.  The 
young  man  sighed  and tried to get another traveller to  buy  some  of  the 
pamphlets he was carrying. The purpose of these was not exactly clear to him, 
but he liked the fact that he finally had something to do.  It had taken  him 
quite a while though to remember all the things he had to say to people.
 Ignatius already regretted the fact that he had entered this station.  Myrna 
had thrown him out of her flat and told him to go stay with her friend for  a 
while. Since he didn't have enough money for a taxi, he had to take a tube to 
the place. His valve made a strange movement when he saw the masses of people 
assembled on the platform.
 The foul wind coming from the tunnel told him that a train was  approaching. 
The  mass  of  people started moving towards the edge  of  the  platform  and 
Ignatius tried to manoeuvre his bulk safely towards a vacant seat attached to 
the wall.  But the train thundered into the station and he got swept away  by 
the crowd.
 "Oh  my  God!" Ignatius yelled, "I will lose my delicate  balance  soon!  My 
physique is not prepared for such wild motions."
 Some  people gave him irrated looks.  Then he spotted some open train  doors 
and changed course towards them. He heaved himself into the train and noticed 
to  his horror that there were no more empty seats.  The doors closed with  a 
whirring sound and the train set itself in motion rather abruptly.
 Ignatius  was  not prepared for this and lost his balance.  His  arms  waved 
wildly,  in search of something to hold on to,  but failed to grasp  anything 
steady.  He  did  however,  knock the hat off an old ladies' head  before  he 
dramatically collapsed on the floor.
 "Oh my God!  I've been paralysed!" bellowed Ignatius as he lay on the floor. 
His  valve  closed with a snap and his left paw landed on a soft  and  sticky 
piece of chewing gum that was on the floor.
 Some people started laughing, and in the back of the car, a subway attendant 
started making his way through the carriage to see what was going on.
 "Don't  sit there and mock my misfortune.  I've probably crushed some  vital 
organs  and will spend the rest of my existence in a hospital  bed.  Somebody 
help me before I fall into a state of shock! I need urgent medical attention. 
Somebody signal for help!"
 "All'ight pal, why don't you get up and stop yellin'," the attendant said to 
Ignatius.
 "Who  are  you?  Are  you qualified to perform first aid?  I  refuse  to  be 
crippled by some incompetent quack. Now stop stalling and help me up."
 Ignatius extended his left paw, forming a rubbery band between the floor and 
himself. The attendant pulled a face and took a step back.
 "What are you doing, you fool? Don't you see I am in severe distress?"
 "You got gum allover yaself man," the attendant commented.
 Ignatius noticed the pink mass on his hand now and turned pale.
 "Disgusting!" cried Ignatius and slowly pulled himself up.
 "Which  brainless  ruminant  has dropped this revolting  piece  of  chemical 
tartar?"  Ignatius  hollered  while  holding  his hand  in  the  air  like  a 
prosecutor would display the murder weapon.
 "You?" he yelled at a spotty girl whose mouth was rhythmically moving.
 "Hey fatso,  I ain't dropping no gum in no subway.  My momma won't let me," 
she replied between chews.
 "OK  mister,  why don't you get that stuff off ya hand and keep  calm,"  the 
attentand  ventured.  He had always been told to try and keep people calm  in 
situations like these.
 "Don't  interrupt me while I am interrogating this juvenile  jezebel.  She's 
the cause of this outrage..."
 "Hey!  Ain't nobody callin' me a jezebel!",  the girl said and got  up.  She 
kicked  Ignatius  in  the  knee and headed for the doors  as  the  train  was 
approaching another station.
 "Seize her!" Ignatius cried.  He was getting very excited now,  his head was 
turning red and the white spots were forming on his hands again.
 "She assaulted me in public!  Somebody apprehend that teenage  barbarian!  I 
will be maimed for life!"
 The  train entered the station and grinded to a halt.  Again,  the  momentum 
surprised Ignatius and he crashed into the attendant,  who was not built  for 
this kind of onslaught; the two of them went reeling through the carriage.
 They were stopped by a post,  and the attendant quickly escaped through  the 
opening doors.  Ignatius was left,  panting and wheezing, leaning against the 
post.
 "What  more  do you have up you sleeve,  Fortuna,  you  vicious  trollop  of 
destiny,"  Ignatius  mumbled as he sat down heavily on two  empty  seats.  He 
looked  out of the window and saw a billboard on the tunnel wall of  a  young 
girl dressed in a bikini,  advertising some sort of sun-tan oil. His blue and 
yellow  eyes  closed to shut out this demoralising display of  decadence  and 
revolt.
 "Prostitutes," he mumbled as he slipped away into a state of slumber.

 Written  somewhere  between  March and November of  1990.  Couple  of  words 
properised March 3rd 1996.


= YOU PEOPLE ================================================================
 by P.J. Jason - pkjason@eworld.com


 Smoke trailed from door jambs and rooftops,  blotting out the sun;  and  the 
brightest  thing on the street was a paramedic in white overalls with  a  red 
cross on his back like a bull's eye.  He wrapped a bandage around the head of 
an old black woman, weeping on the curb as a stretcher was slid into the back 
of a police van.
 Rumors  spread through the hood.  "They cracked that boy's head  wide  open. 
Them white cops." The cops said the victim took out a knife and lunged at the 
police woman. "L.A.P.D., cops, all of em,  in bed with that Mark Fuhrman."
 Three days of looting and violence passed quickly.
 Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lucce held hands and slowly dragged a squeaky shopping  cart 
over the blood stained street.  Now Mr. Lucce's greatest fear was that one of 
them would slip, break a hip and end up in the hospital for the holidays. But 
when Mrs.  Lucce saw Mr. Jenkins and his son outside their grocery store, she 
smiled at her husband as she always did.  The Jenkins were sunk low in  their 
lawn chairs, shotguns balanced on their kneecaps.
 "Now what you folks doin' out in this mess?" said Mr. Jenkins.
 "Ya  want,  I could run up some bread," said Jenkins  junior,  offering  Mr. 
Lucce a chair.
 "No thanks," said Mr. Lucce. "Better you hold down the fort."
 "Helluva night," said Mr.  Jenkins,  shaking his head as if it all were  his 
terrible burden. "But people in Los Angeles sick of these doings."
 "But people gotta eat,  don't they?" said Mrs.  Lucce.  "And all the  stores 
burned and closed out."
 "Yes, we gotta eat," added the husband.
 He  swore  he could still smell the proscuitto and provolone in  the  rotten 
floor boards of Jenkins' store.  Only now the floor was   tiled.  And he  was 
warned  by  Mrs.  Lucce:"Don't  mention it."   These  people  overcame  their 
circumstances.  They might take it the wrong way.  It's just that  Mr.  Lucce 
lived on the Boulevard so long,  he remembered when Jenkins' Deli was Fiori's 
Bakery.  And why shouldn't he remember?  Even with his eyesight  failing,  he 
could  still see the faded signs along this,  his   boyhood  street:  Dante's 
Cafe,  Laccio's  Drugs,  Alonzo's Paper Company-- all the Italians that  once 
lived in South Central.
 "Yup,  that's the truth. People gotta eat." said Jenkins junior, pulling Mr. 
Lucce's  shopping cart into the  store just as a fire engine  clanged  around 
the corner.
 "But I don't get it," Mr. Jenkins said. "The burning and looting.  They even 
hit on the brothers last night. Now me and my boy are standing guard. They're 
haters out there."
 "They hate our skin, you mean," said Mr. Lucce.
 Mr. Jenkins seemed busy sweeping glass away from his broken windows.
 "So,  why don't you let my boy run up something?" said Mr. Jenkins. "Really, 
you people shouldn't be out on a day like this."
 "You know  my husband," said Mrs. Lucce, winking. "It's something to do with 
floor boards and provolone."
 "You mean he's still smelling my place?" said Mr.  Jenkins. "But them  folks 
are long gone.  Mr.  Lucce,  please,  please... don't go sniffing around here 
like you did the other day. Gives people the wrong idea."
 "And people gotta eat," said Mrs. Lucce, her voice bubbly.
 Just then,  Mr.  Hurley came into the store,  his thumbs covered with  soot. 
Mrs. Lucce was laughing as she helped Jenkins junior fill a sack with flour.
 "Good mornin', y'all."
 "Good mornin' yourself," said Mr.  Jenkins. "When is all this nonsense gonna 
end? It's ruinin' business."
 "And good morning to you," said Mr. Lucce. "I guess it's good we live in the 
same building? Don't you think, Mr. Hurley? They're burning out the others."
 "I suppose," said Mr.  Hurley.  "But I didn't expect to see you people.  But 
yeah, long as I'm super--"
 "But some people are burning out their own," said Mr. Jenkins.
 "Well,  not me anyway.  Not yet," said Mr. Hurley. "Boiler's gonna need some 
fixin' though... Could be cold tonight."
 "That's  what you said last time," said Jenkins junior.  "These  poor  folks 
came in here lookin' for canned food."
 "Yeah," said Mr. Lucce. He was standing next to the son who was hacking away 
at a frozen chicken. "Lots of old people in the building nearly went solid in 
the cold. Why don't you just get a new boiler?"
 Mrs.  Lucce  gave her husband a sideways look.  He should've  known  better, 
pressuring people like Mr.  Hurley whose difficulties probably began on  some 
plantation-- ages ago.
 "How about a new boiler?" said Mr. Jenkins.
 Mr. Hurley picked up his grocery bag. "A new boiler?"
 Smoke  filled the little store as the front door slammed  shut.  Mr.  Hurley 
didn't wave good-bye.
 "Such a nice man," said Mrs. Lucce.
 "Will  that be all?" said Jenkins junior dragging the shopping cart  to  the 
cash register.
 "Maybe you folks better stock up.  With this mess, you never know," said Mr. 
Jenkins adding up the items. "Put it on the bill, as usual?"
 "You're too kind," said Mrs. Lucce, opening her purse. "But we've imposed on 
you people for too long." She handed over the last few dollars of the week.
 "Besides," said Mr. Lucce. "It's the first of the month. The check should be
in the mail."
 "Hell, if you need anything...just let us know," said Junior.
 On the way home,  Mrs.  Lucce chattered. "The Jenkins are  nice people." Mr. 
Lucce nodded mechanically.  He held open the graffiti splattered door for the 
mailman, Mr. Dupee. But before Mrs. Lucce could drag the cart into the lobby, 
Mr. Dupee gave her a helping hand.
 "First of the month," said Mr. Lucce, anxiously.
 Mr.  Dupee  dug in his bag.  "Actually," he said.  "With all the  craziness, 
there's been a delay."
 "It's that bad?" asked Mrs. Lucce.
 Mr.  Dupee locked the boxes and looked at the old creatures.  "It's  getting 
worse," he said. "It's going to snow."
 "Snow!?  In Los Angeles," said Mr. Lucce. Everyone seemed shocked as  a lone 
snowflake blew against the lobby door,  scorched charcoal black.  "Maybe I'll 
take the dogs to the park."
 "We don't have a dog," said Mrs. Lucce.

                                    *****

 It howled all night;  and snow drifts banked over the hoods of cars.  clouds 
of steam rose from the hot ash smoldering under the ice covered streets. Mrs. 
Lucce  stuffed newspaper and towels into the cracks of  her  windowsills;  an 
icicle hung from the ceiling pipes.  Mr.  Lucce fell asleep in an arm  chair, 
his feet propped on a pillow in front of the kitchen stove.
 This  was totally nuts.  Snow in California.  Mrs.  Lucce kept  dialing  the 
weather channel. But the line was always busy.
 Then  the snow stopped and the sun was well above the  smoky  rooftops,  the 
mercury pinned to its bulb.   Mrs. Lucce woke, fell asleep, shivered and woke 
again.  She  was on the floor under a woolen blanket.  Mr.  Lucce's head  was 
thrown back, his mouth wide open, eyes closed.
 "Danny? Danny?"
 The oven went out during the night and Mr. Lucce's blanket slipped off. Mrs. 
Lucce rubbed her husband's face until the pink came back.
 "Damn boiler again!" he said.
 "No lights, and no gas," Mrs. Lucce added. "Maybe the whole city is down?"
 "No, it's them, I tell you. The gangstas."
 "What are you trying to say"
 "Oh, right. I forgot. Their circumstances, of course." 
 "It's because of our skin... you're saying?"
 Mr.  Lucce opened the refrigerator.  The light was out. The milk was bad and 
the eggs had burst.  "People gotta eat?" His false teeth clacked. "My denture 
glue? I can't even boil water."
 "Danny,  stop  thinking  about your stomach.  You can't shut  me  out.  It's 
because of our skin, you think."
 "No,  everyone  and  everybody,  they're  just  wonderful.  And  delightful. 
Delightful and wonderful."
 "Don't be stupid, you, I'll show you."
 She picked up the telephone:
 "Mr.  Jenkins.  Thank God. Our boiler, our oven, everything's out. Could you 
have your son bring some hot coffee, and fresh bread?"
 There was static at the other end.
 "Mr. Jenkins?"
 "I'm sorry. It's crazy, busy down here."
 There was more static.
 "Excuse me? Hello? Are you there?"
 "Sorry--"
 "Hello? Hello? Anyone there?"
 "Hello,  Mrs. Lucce. I'm sorry. Dad's busy, but if you can wait, I'll run up 
as soon as I can."
 "Oh, you will? How wonderful."
 "What now?" asked Mr. Lucce.
 "They're busy, but Junior will come up as soon as he can."
 "Busy?"
 Mr.  Lucce  looked  out the window and saw a policeman turn  the  corner  by 
Jenkins'  store.  His footprints were the first and only ones in the  freshly 
fallen snow. "Busy, huh. Funny how snow sticks."
 "What's the snow got to do with it?"
 "If  they're  so damn busy,  why aren't there more  footprints  outside  the 
store? Look out the window...."
 "No,  I won't.  I won't look.  I'm sick of your suspicions. You've ruined my 
life."
 "My  suspicions.  Maria,  what do you think the looting and burning are  all 
about--you?"
 "That has nothing to do with it."
 "Right,  I never heard you people this and that in Jenkins' store  today.  I 
imagined it, like a lot of things."
 "Oh  you're  just  trying to get even because Jenkins won't  let  you  sniff 
around the place..."
 "Right,  that's another thing.  Whose side are you on anyway?  You just want 
them to think I'm a good for nothing."
 "Now you don't trust me either."
 "No, it's them."
 "Know what I think.  We're going to end up in an early grave if we don't  do 
something."
 "What?"
 "Remember my sister?"
 "She got involved with that  crazy Russian, didn't she?"
 "Right,  she  and her husband hired that writer to live with them for a  few 
months.  He wrote a story about them. Remember? So they could see themselves, 
they could see what was killing them."
 "So, what are you saying. You want a Chekhov to come to South Central?"
 "No,  I don't think he's right for us. But what if we could get one of those 
black writers,  you know,  someone who knows his way around,  we could  know, 
once and for all, how they see us..."
 "Look,  you know what?  At this point, I don't care what you do. I'm hungry, 
it's cold and I have to eat...It's not funny anymore. Where's Junior?"
 Mr.  Lucce looked back to the window in despair, but his wife got the yellow 
pages...She remembered a book she saw in the library. The Ways of White Folks 
or  something  like  that.  Surely   whoever wrote  that  would  know  a  few 
things...and  she  was  surprised  to find his number  listed  along  with  a 
Chekhov's and a few other writers who had taken out a full page ad.  And  she 
was even more surprised when he agreed to do it, gladly, promptly.
 "It's done." Mrs.  Lucce primped the pillows of her arm chair.  She put on a 
wool  house dress and bright lipstick;  and she insisted her husband  wear  a 
heavy sweater, like a hair shirt, under his  suit.
 "But didn't you overlook a small detail," said Mr.  Lucce. "How much is this 
gonna cost? We don't have a pot to piss in."
 "It'll work out," said Mrs.  Lucce.  "Don't worry.  Just get ready. He'll be 
here...now hurry."
 When someone knocked on the door,  Mr.  Lucce hoped to find Junior and food. 
Instead, it was the writer fellow, a hat pulled over one corner of his eye, a 
cigarette  dangling  from his lips.  He looked more like a detective  than  a 
writer...and he smoked throughout his visit.  Mrs.  Lucce remembered that her 
sister's  writer actually  spit blood into a handkerchief.
 "You  shouldn't  smoke so much," she said to her writer.  "It'll  tear  your 
insides."
 "I'm sorry," he said,  squashing his cigarette into the ash tray.   "This is 
Southern California. How can it be so cold?" He put his hat back on his head.
 "Lately, everything is upside down," said Mrs. Lucce.
 "Actually," said Mr.  Lucce.  "My wife lives in a fantasy world.  That's why 
you're  here.  All this has nothing to do with our skin.  Isn't  that  right, 
dear?"
 "She explained it all...on the phone," said their black writer,  opening his 
notebook. "Are others in the building without heat?"
 "Well,  we  don't really know our neighbors.  I mean,  in  the  hall,  we're 
friendly,  it's not that we have differences.  And Mr.  Hurley, the super, is 
delightful."
 "Right, the boiler's broken, there's no gas. Delightful and wonderful."
 "The gas is out?" said the writer. "That's odd. I was only a few blocks from 
here, and--"
 "Case closed," said Mr. Lucce.
 "Now one second," said the writer.  "I made it clear to your wife. There are 
two types of stories. The commercial one which contains the traditional hero. 
And then there's the other one,  which abandons the hero and villain in favor 
of the social problem. Without making the characters social types, of course. 
And did you explain the agreement to your husband?"
 It  was clear enough,  Mrs.  Lucce thought.  Given they couldn't  pay   this 
writer,  he  only wanted exclusive rights to their story.  There might  be  a 
movie  in  the  old people,  given they were the last white family  in  South 
Central.  Something like the last of the Mohicans.  It had a romantic ring to 
it.  And  one other thing:  The writer insisted on complete access  to  every 
facet, every detail, of the Lucce household--no matter how personal.
 He  read old love letters sent to Mrs.  Lucce from Sicily during  World  War 
11. He examined old IRS forms, and some 8th grade report cards. ("Mr. Lucce," 
one teacher wrote, "comes to school as often as Santa Claus.")
 The  writer even asked questions about their sex life,  and showed them  ink 
blots.  Then he  found a rotten potato on a black ribbon hanging in a closet. 
Mr.  and Mrs.  Lucce looked at one another conspiratorially. It was something 
Danny's  mother  brought from the old country.  The idea  was:  Spit  on  the 
potato,  put it in your closet;  when it dried,  so did someone's soul,  your 
enemy.   The  writer  had a hunch that the black ribbon  might be  a  telling 
detail.
 But  he was too exhausted (and frozen) to pressure the old folks.  He  left, 
promising  to  get  the story to them by  the  day's  end.  But  first,  he'd 
interview  neighbors;  and he promised to deliver their message  to  Jenkins: 
Send food!
 "What now?" asked Mr. Lucce, closing the door. 
 Mrs.  Lucce  looked out of the window as  their writer turned the corner  by 
Jenkins' store. There was still hardly a footprint in the hardening snow.
 "I better go down  myself," she said,  "even if I slip and break a hip." The 
husband agreed to watch her from the window.
 Mrs.  Lucce  dragged her shopping cart down the  long  hallway.  Funny,  she 
thought,  the  lights were on.  Still she hurried,  afraid the Jenkins  might 
close for the day;  so she left her cart at the top of the stairs,  too heavy 
to carry down in a rush.
 "Am I glad to see you."
 Surprised,  Mr.  Dupee looked up the stairwell at the cart.  Then he  turned 
back to the mail boxes filled with green checks, checks which he stuffed into 
his mail bag.
 "You're  surprised?" said the mailman.  "But I thought you people  would  be 
under the covers, staying warm?"
 "We will, but first we need a little money. We gotta eat, but the gas is out 
and the heat is off."
 "That's what you people think about?"
 "That's a funny way to put it, isn't it?" said Mrs. Lucce. 
 "You sure crack me up."
 Mr.  Dupee  locked  the  boxes and was knee deep in  snow  when  Mrs.  Lucce 
realized: The check! "You forgot the check!"
 "There's a delay," he said, without turning around.
 Mrs.  Lucce climbed back up the steps.  Then she got a whiff of cooking  fat 
and  she  heard what was bacon crackling in a frying pan,  and a  steam  pipe 
hissed behind a neighbor's door.
 "Danny?" She found her husband hacking away at some frozen milk,  sucking on 
the ice chips.
 "Where's the shopping cart," he blurted. "The food?"
 "The  cart?  Jesus,  I left it by the steps,  but when I came back,  it  was 
gone."
 "Gone? You mean stolen?"
 "I don't get it.  I heard someone cooking,  I swear, and the hall lights are 
on  and  I think there's steam in this building and checks for  everyone  but 
us."
 "What am I, an idiot?" Mr. Lucce grabbed the phone. "This time, I'm catching 
them." He put down the phone.
 "It's dead," he said "They cut the line. What are they doing to us?"
 Mr. Lucce looked under the kitchen sink.
 "What  are you doing?" said Mrs.  Lucce,  pulling a brown envelope from  her 
coat pocket.
 "No, what are you doing?" said Mr. Lucce pulling out a tool box.         
 "It's something our writer sent with the mailman."
 "I see. He got our number pretty damn fast, huh?"
 Mr.  Lucce  grabbed  a crowbar and got on a ladder.  Then he banged  on  the 
pipes,  knocking the icicles from the ceiling.  Mrs.  Lucce took out a short, 
but neatly typed manuscript.
 "Shhhh, would you stop. I'm trying to read"
 Mr. Lucce kept banging--clang, clang, clang
 "Listen, would you listen to this!?"
 "Why should I? The bastards."  He hit the pipes again. "People have to eat," 
he  cried.  "Don't they know?" He swung  his crowbar  with all his  strength. 
Then his ladder slipped.  He fell and his teeth were knocked loose and into a 
corner of the room, with a hard slap, like a hockey puck.
 Mrs. Lucce was busy reading:

 They  were  the  types who went in for black  people--Danny  and  Maria--the 
Lucces.  Maybe they tried too hard to make friends,  dark friends,  and  they 
suspected...

 
 Contributor's Note:  P.J.  Jason's stories have appeared in African  Voices, 
Fiction International,  ACM (Another Chicago Magazine) ,  River  Styx,  Black 
River Review, Wascana Review, Blue Penny Qaurterly, and Private Arts.


= AN EVENING AT HOME ========================================================
 by Roy Stead


 Doctor Gloucester sat in his room, reading a novel by Marcel Proust. It is a 
very good novel, thought the good doctor, with not too many long words in it. 
Idly,  Gloucester thumbed the edge of a page,  as though about to turn to the 
next one.  Then his thumb,  sweat stained and tarnished by newsprint,  paused 
perceptively on the cusp of page-turning.  The doctor hesitated a  moment.  A 
bead  of perspiration rolled from the side of his  forehead,  threatening  to 
wander along his nose then drip, slowly onto the page - as if to see what all 
the fuss was about - but it,  too,  halted awhile to watch the doctor in  his 
deliberations.
  Firmly,  Doctor Gloucester slammed "A La Recherche de Temps Perdu"  closed, 
but not before the moist bead, its mind made up at the last, had had a chance 
to  zip  down onto the page,  providing a single greasy  bookmark  to  remind 
Gloucester where he had got to in the novel.
 Doctor  Gloucester  glanced  about him,  and paused  awhile  once  more,  in 
contemplation of what he saw.  A War! he thought, A Bore. Such a bore is war, 
a sore bore,  yet not so torn as an apple corn. Which lies, forlorn as though 
drawn upon a paper.  Drawn,  as they were,  to the window,  the doctor's eyes 
took in the exterior scene.
 A carriage went by. Another followed it.
 Something wrong here,  thought Gloucester,  Something definitely wrong.  But 
what? But what?
 *No horse!* the thought screamed out,  but none heard it as none were  there 
to hear.  *No horse!* it cried again, but louder this time. Again, none heard 
its wail - but more clearly this time.
 The  doctor's eyes rose up,  maintaining their position on his face as it  - 
too - was raised.  This last was caused,  as 'twere,  by the movement of  the 
good doctor's head,  which responded in characteristic fashion to a change in 
the angle at which his neck was held. So it goes.
 A cloud drifted by,  as clouds have been known to do,  as the doctor  stared 
from his window. A tendril of cloud caressed another cloud, pulling from it - 
gently,  oh  so  gently - a wisp of likewise  cloudy  material.  A  swirl,  a 
whirlpool in the skies, then gone, and only cloud remained.
 The doctor stared.
 A  crick,  a cricket,  a cricket neck caused Doctor Gloucester to turn  away 
momentarily  from the cloudy landscape,  and his eye alighted upon a  picture 
beside his desk.  The picture showed a herd of sheep,  a flock of cows and  a 
shepherd's crook. Around the crook was draped a cobweb, fine as cobweb in the 
early  morning light.  The doctor raised his arm,  and thereby his  hand,  to 
stroke the web, which broke.
 A  strand  of cobweb fell,  slowly,  drifting to the floor of  the  doctor's 
study.  He watched it swirl,  a whirlpool in the air,  then land and come  to 
rest upon the bare floorboards which cushioned Doctor Gloucester's feet  from 
the bare air beneath.
 *Oh shit*, thought the doctor.
 A creak,  a crack,  a racket. A cracket of sound disturbed the good doctor's 
contemplation of the webby fibres,  and caused him to turn to the  door.  The 
door was opening,  slowly,  its hinges shrieking as a hundred knife-wounds of 
rust buried themselves to the hilt in their vulnerable metal bodies. A chink, 
a chunk, a clank of light shone through, outlining three sides of the door as 
it swung wider, wider, and wider still, in answer to the hingey cries.
 Oh shit, thought the doctor.
 The door now open, a figure emerged, and entered the room with a tray in one 
hand  and a knife in the other.  "Who's there?" cried the doctor,  his  voice 
betraying the terror he felt in his heart at the sound of the door,  and  the 
clank of the light, and the screams of the hinge, "Who's there?"
 And  a voice, soft and low, whispered across that room, "'Tis eye."
 The doctor stood up,  the better to walk,  and crossed 'cross the  room,  he 
crissed crassly crossed 'cross that room,  to greet with his voice the bearer 
of tray and of knife - which the reader has yet to learn more of.  The doctor 
addressed  that strange apparition with words from his throat,  ushered  soft 
from  his mouth,  though hoarsened by sounds uttered early in  panic  'gainst 
that very shape, "Who is 'I'?"
 "'Tis I,  kindly doctor,  who bringeth thy supper for you to partake of  now 
daylight has finished."
 The doctor spun round,  with a complex manouver, and glared at the window to 
see  the last streaks of the daylight descending like icicles melting  beyond 
the horizon and sighed, like a river, in pain at the passing of a friend.
 'Who is 'I'?" he repeated, since last time he uttered those words he had got 
no reply from the figure,  bearing knife and a tray which it claimed was  his 
supper.  That figure whose entrance had startled the doctor and caused him to 
miss the moment of passing of day. "Who is 'eye'?"
 The person who stood,  a-framed in the doorway,  looked on to the doctor and 
noticed his face,  and noted his expression,  and formed her opinion of  what 
the  poor  doctor had done all that evening,  and looked for  the  book,  the 
sweat-stain-ed novel,  by Marcel Proust,  which the doctor was  reading,  and 
said to the doctor, "I'm Mary."
 The doctor was shocked. Oh shit, thought the doctor.
 Mary  stalked  forward,  she storked t'ward the table,  deposited  tray  and 
placed there the knife,  which she had been carrying,  onto the  tray. Placed 
she it. Mary turned now to Gloucester, and stared at his face, expressions of 
pity  vieing  for place on her features with shades of expressions  of  anger 
that Gloucester had noticed the clouds once again.
 Oh shit, thought the doctor.
 The table groaned lightly.
 Oh shit, thought the doctor.
 Then,  Mary walked to the doorway, and turned to the doctor, "Goodnight," as 
the door was closed from the outside,  leaving doctor alone with the tray and 
the  table.  And the knife.  The window was open.  Doctor Gloucester left  it 
open,  reached  for  the knife then stabbed his hand downwards to  capture  a 
cockroach  that  crawled  'cross the table t'ward the  tray  which  bore  his 
supper. Gloucester raised the cover and unveiled his meal.
 Oh shit, thought the doctor.

                                                       (c) 6/4/1991 Roy Stead


= OH YEAH III - THE THIRD ENCOUNTER (AND OF A CLOSE KIND) ===================
 by Stefan Posthuma and Richard Karsmakers


 "Oh, come on, relax."
 Cronos Warchild wanted to retort,  "That's easy for you to say,  chum, *you* 
haven't  got a suction device hanging in your mouth and a piece  of  drilling 
equipment  homing in on your molars," instead of  which,  however,  he  heard 
himself uttering something like, "Hmmmm hmmpff dribble ow sshidd."
 Why was it a universal property of dentists to try and start a  conversation 
with  someone of whom the vital bits of his speech production apparatus  were 
temporarily invalidized?
 He hated his annual checkup, which is why this was his first one. He already 
regretted  not  having  regularly undergone them,  for now  his  dentist  had 
started  to actually physically drool when Warchild had opened his  mouth  to 
display the oral disarray that had prompted the visit in the first place.  He 
could have sworn there were Thanatopian Credit signs in the man's eyes before 
they  were quickly blinked away.  The man had looked familiar in a  way  many 
dentists tend to.  Cronos was quite sure he had met the man before - he  just 
couldn't remember, no matter how hard he tried.
 "Ssssjjjggrrrrrr," the suction device intoned.
 Warchild  decided  he didn't like the drill,  and the sedative  stings  even 
less.
 "Now  this may hurt a little," a positively gorgeous assistant  had  shushed 
when  the  revealing of small syringes had caused frenzied fear to  creep  on 
Cronos' face.
 It is said that the pain limit can be relocated to a rather more  favourable 
position  in  the presence of female beauty.  This is a lie.  On top  of  the 
discomfort of two pairs of hands working their ways in his orifice he  merely 
felt an additional feeling not unlike cramp elsewhere.
 Now what had the dentist whispered to that absurdly pretty girl just  before 
that?  Warchild had not forgotten his hearing aid this time,  as a matter  of 
fact he had even had new batteries installed.  Dura-something - he had  liked 
the rabbit commercial. Now what was it again?

 "Better give him something extra.  He's a big dude. A regular dose might not 
work, and there's plenty of work to be done."
 The Thanatopian Credits had been in the man's eyes again, just for a while.

 Cronos felt them turning him around.  And around again.  They swivelled  the 
dentist chair a bit.  A drill homed in on his eye. He wanted to cry but found 
it  impossible  because  of an excess amount of  tools  lodged  somewhere.  A 
mirror,  previously  located  on a wall at a  sufficient  distance,  suddenly 
started to move around the room.  At just a few instants after the mirror had 
started  moving,  Warchild's  personal  tiny universe folded  in  on  itself, 
collapsing into a tiny speck of blackness at the end of which there wasn't  a 
spotlight.

 "Oh, come on, relax."
 He had little other choice.  Four boys had tied him to a pillar and the only 
thing  his  current  position allowed was plenty of  relaxing,  be  it  in  a 
vertical position.  He tried to move a foot but gave up when it turned out to 
be  of no avail.  He blinked an eye.  Even that was hard,  what with all  the 
make-up that was clumsily painted on it.
 Now all he had to do was wait.  Wait until the boys had decided to leave him 
be,  and  then  wait until school opened again after the  holidays  and  some 
stunned janitor would find him.

 "I know something funny," one of the boys had whispered to him.  He had come 
to life there and then. None of the really popular guys in his class had ever 
found him worthy of confidential information.  Nobody had whispered  anything 
in his ear. He wished it had been a girl, but for now a boy would have to do. 
Male to male bonding it was called,  he thought.  Anyway,  it was better than 
nothing.
 He had waited breathlessly until the confidential revelation would follow.
  It had caught him totally unawares when it had turned out to  be,  "Me  and 
Tony  and  Jack here are going to tie you to that pillar overthere  and  then 
paint you with girl's make-up."

 He had been lucky.  They hadn't used reinforced tungsten scarfs to tie  him. 
With  any luck,  halfway through the holidays he would have wrenched  himself 
loose and then try to stumble home.
 He wondered if there were any school buses driving in the middle of  summer. 
No,  probably not.  He'd have to walk the way home.  But he'd been worse  off 
before.  He didn't know exactly when that had been - his memory refused quite 
desperately to let the event escape from its psychological hiding place - but 
he was fairly sure it was true.  Anyway, what was 80 miles to a healthy young 
lad?

 A  stinging  pain invaded his consciousness.  He thought  he  heard  someone 
shouting angrily,  "I told you he needed more.  Give him another shot!" There 
was a pause.  "What do you mean,  'where'?  Anywhere will do. As long as it's 
lots."

 He  saw a familiar face.  It made him feel more comfortable,  but as if  the 
emotion  had to be punished the face changed into that of  Jack,  then  Tony, 
then that of Merle with its familiar already retreating hairline. He tried to 
blink them away but they wouldn't.  He tried to reach out but his hands  went 
through the images, touching nothing.
 Then,  suddenly,  there was his father.  He was holding a knife and fork and 
looking rather too hungry.  The image was hit on the head by someone else. He 
wanted  to see who this kind benefactor was,  but somehow  everything  stayed 
hazy.

 "Oops," someone said. A girl's voice expressed wonder somewhere on the other 
side.  "Perhaps  you  shouldn't  exactly have given him *that*  much  of  the 
stuff."  A girl started to sob uncontrollably.  "And certainly not  *there*." 
The sobbing increased.
 There  was a dramatic pause.  If thinking processes could ever  make  sound, 
this was deafening.
 The girl was padded on the back in consolation.  Then a man said, "Perhaps I 
have a solution."

 "Mother?"
 In  reply  he heard not the expected gentle sound of her voice  he  so  much 
longed  to  hear,  but  a  cold wheezy windy  sortof  breezy  sound  that  he 
considered  void of all emotions.  When he opened his eyes he heaved  a  deep 
sigh upon discovering himself in a situation encountered rather too often for 
any one lifetime:  Stranded on an unknown planet without any clothes on. This 
time, as opposed to all previous times, there was a faint sense of relief; he 
felt  confident  his American Express Travellers Cheques were  still  in  the 
pocket where they belonged.
 Only the pocket was probably somewhere altogether far away.
 He  could even muster the enthusiasm to utter a heartfelt moan,  or  even  a 
curse.  Life had its strange little twists and turns,  but why was he  always 
the one to get the wrong end of its twisted stick? He was getting sick of it.
 He  erected himself.  A good thing was that there wasn't anybody  around  to 
arrest  him for indecent exposure,  but the bad thing was this also meant  he 
couldn't  rob  anyone off their clothes.  His body was trained to  block  out 
cold,  but the rather minute size of a certain bit of his anatomy betrayed it 
more  than adequately.  It destroyed his sense of dignity and on top of  that 
quite literally nullified his manly pride.
 His  head  didn't feel like the proverbial half-peeled  orange  with  squash 
balls  bouncing  to  and fro in it - all things considering  he  felt  pretty 
excellent,  actually.  It seemed to prove that last night had not involved  a 
battering or alcohol consumption.  Only the matter involving bodily  coverage 
would have to be resolved soon.  Hiding from sight his private parts rendered 
one hand useless, something that could prove quite a disadvantage should this 
turn out to be yet another dog-eat-dog world.
 He observed his surroundings. Things were looking up. His Travellers Cheques 
were  most  likely  still in his pocket,  he  didn't  have  a  brainsplitting 
headache *and* he hadn't been dumped in some  desolate,  filthy,  scum-ridden 
back  alley.  He found himself looking at two eyes frozen wide  open,  partly 
hidden  by the snow that had fallen on what seemed a mound of  rubbish  quite 
literally in the middle of nowhere.
 A metallic sound became apparent to the inner workings of his hearing aid, a 
little  world  on  its own filled with electronic parts and  sticky  bits  of 
cerumen.  Cronos  had often wondered about it but never quite understood  its 
workings at all. Anyway, that was not important.
 What was important,  at least at this time,  was that the device revealed to 
the mercenary annex hired gun a kind of slow repeated laughter that seemed to 
emanate from somewhere in the suspicious-looking mound.
 With  his  free  hand he wiped some snow off the top of the  mound  and  was 
momentarily startled by the sight of some rather more unsightly parts of  the 
frozen corpse, its toothless mouth twisted in a dying scream of agony. In its 
hand the corpse was clutching a small device which Cronos momentarily mistook 
for a Gargantuan Organ Disruptor pointed at what he desparately tried to hide 
with  his other hand.  After fighting down the waves of nausea that ran  from 
his  groin  via his spine to his brain,  he pried the device loose  from  the 
frozen fingers and inspected it in more close detail.
 "Ha Ha Ha," the device droned.
 Cronos squinted his eyes to be able to read the fine print on the bottom  of 
the device.
 "Cyrius  Cybernetics  Laughing Gas Dispenser with  Pro-Logic  Audio-Feedback 
Unit," it read.
 Warchild stifled a giggle and pocketed the thing,  after which he cursed and 
picked it up again.  It was then that he noticed the small nozzle on the  top 
with  a  even  smaller button next to it.  Even he  knew  that  buttons  were 
supposed  to be pressed - unless they were labeled 'self-destruct' in  bright 
red capitals - so he planted a meaty thumb on the thing.
  A faint hissing sound followed by a funny smell tickled  Cronos'  olfactory 
senses  after which he suddenly realized the absurdity of his  situation  and 
decided to have a good laugh at himself.  In fact,  he knew that this one had 
to be a real holler, a tear-jerker of monumental proportions.
 He started laughing.

 "It is a Class E ice planet,  sir, average temperature -20 degrees celcius," 
the  android said,  "Lifeform readings negative,  and no  Federation  records 
present in any of the databases."
 "Very well,  Mr.  Data,  perform another scan when we pass the system,"  the 
captain instructed.

 Snow  twirled  around the vague shape that was kneeling on  a  small  mound, 
clutching  its  belly  while  convulsing  heavily  with  what  seemed  to  be 
uncontrollable laughter.  Loud wails of it erupted from its mouth,  and tears 
formed  glistening  trails  of frozen ice crystals down the  face  of  Cronos 
Warchild, naked, freezing cold, alone in the middle of nowhere, and laughing.

 "I  won't stop," the voice said,  reassuring.  It was the voice of one  with 
infinite time, one with no desire other than to continue what was being done.
 Warchild tried hard,  but failed vigorously.  He was finding it difficult to 
breathe, his entire body writhing and aching as yet another powerful boost of 
laughter coarsed up and down his body. He was beginning to laugh the laugh of 
the insane, the piping high semi-roar of girls, whatever, but nothing vaguely 
male or heroic or mercenary-ish.
 "I assure you I won't stop," the voice repeated.  Its owner seemed to  enjoy 
doing  whatever it was doing,  which was moving a feather up and down one  of 
Warchild's  bare  soles,  his victim tied down entirely  and  immovably  with 
boyscout knots.  There were some bystanders,  laughing for entirely different 
reasons.
 Cronos' reaction was void of anything but laughter. He would have laughed at 
the crucifixion of Christ, hollered in the face of Ashtaroth, smilingly given 
the finger to Cthulhu and hooted at Armageddon itself.  There was no stopping 
it.  *They*  had  found his weak spot.  For three years he had  succeeded  in 
hiding it most cleverly from his tutors and fellow students, but somehow they 
had found out about it.

 The dragon moved closer to him.  He tried to evade its mighty claws and  its 
reeking,  fiery breath,  but the animal would not relent. He took a few steps 
back, suddenly finding himself up against a wall.
 If dragons could grin inanely, this one would have. It waited until it could 
close in on its victim. There was nowhere for the culprit to go. Supper time!
 "Feed me!" the dragon said in some inexplicable language of its own.  It had 
loved that film. "Supper time!"
 Quite suddenly a light struck the intended victim.  The dragon was bound  to 
have a weak spot.  All creatures great and small had weak spots.  He had  one 
himself,  and if the dragon had it too he was saved for sure. From his pocket 
the victim - none other than a Knight of the Round Table - took a  quill.  He 
would probably no longer be able to write with it a letter to his loved  one, 
but at least he would remain alive to buy another one.
  Nobody can stand tickling.  Not under the soles of their feet.  He  doubted 
whether Atilla,  Hitler,  Napoleon or Caligula would have had such success in 
their  conquests had they not known boots and had been forced to walk  across 
short grass.
 Triumphantly he extended the quill. The dragon wondered.
 Warchild had been most rudely interrupted from his dreams of valiance by  an 
odd feeling. A fellow student looked him right in the face, guffawing. It was 
Merle.  He  had  hated Merle for a long time but,  in the way this  tends  to 
happen  to  many persons you don't like - including the person  you  ritually 
exchange  addresses  with  when on holiday -  both their  careers  had  quite 
spontaneously unfolded in a similar way. Fate was like gravity - it sucked.
 "Now  we know your weak spot,  Charwild," an almost demonic voice had  said, 
"Next time try not to talk in your sleep!"

 The  android  gave his scanner displays a typical puzzled  look  and  turned 
around to face his captain.
 "Captain, the scanners seem to be picking up signs of a humanoid lifeform on 
the planet surface."
 "But I thought you said there weren't any lifeforms on the planet."
 "Its lifesigns are weak, sir, they only just showed up on the scans."
 "Additional information?"
 "Hard  to  tell,  sir,  the  intense snow  storms  and  other  atmospherical 
circumstances  make it hard to be more precise.  The conditions do allow  for 
use of the transporter, however."

 To relieve the tension, Cronos let go of another shrieking gale of hard core 
laughter. It was beginning to hurt. He doubted if he would ever again be able 
to hiccup without a pungent ache stabbing through most of his abdomen.
 "I am quite happy to continue indefinitely," the voice confided in him.
 Warchild  didn't doubt it for a second.  Assistants at the  Proximity  Sigma 
Mercenary Academy were famous for few things but their relentless stamina was 
one of them.  He made a mental note,  between a few violent  convulsions,  to 
teach Merle a lesson when - *if* - he ever got out of this predicament.
 A part of his brain frantically signalled him to faint.  He hated  fainting. 
Girls faint, men didn't. He was brought up with traditional values. But, then 
again,  perhaps  this time it wasn't such  a daft idea  anyway.  Perhaps  the 
tickling would stop.
 *Oh, mommy, why wouldn't the tickling stop?*
 Almost blotted out completely by Warchild's laughter,  a voice  said,  "That 
will be quite enough."
 The world came in focus again,  and the echoes of his own laughter wore  off 
as  quickly  as the violent feather-induced itch under  his  left  sole.  The 
assistant jumped to attention.
 "Sir!"
 "At ease,  sergeant," the man said.  It was a decorated soldier,  wearing  a 
rather fancy uniform that betrayed a high rank.  Warchild had never been good 
at  learning ranks,  but he reckoned this guy was pretty high up the  fascist 
ladder.        He        connected        the       face        with        a 
name...salmon...haddock...carp...*Trautman*,  that's it,  Colonel Trautman, a 
man  almost his father,  the main Academy's supervisor and director of  daily 
affairs,  probably  the  only individual convinced  that,  deep  down,  cadet 
Warchild had things going for him.

 Cronos  looked  up  through a haze of tears when  some  people  materialized 
beside him and the snow-covered mound.  There was a weird sound.  He couldn't 
make out any details, nor even the actual amount of individuals that suddenly 
considered it necessary to be present.
 "It's  life,  sir,  but not as we know it," the android said.  He looked  at 
Warchild  quizzically.  His yellow eyes scanned the mercenary.  Had  he  been 
capable  of human emotions,  he would have experienced something  not  unlike 
pity.
 "You wouldn't believe the things *I* see," another man emphasized,  a  black 
guy  with a permanent infrared vision device attached to his  head,  "just  a 
large blue shape with a tiny red sort of *worm* in the procreational area."
 A  woman  giggled girlishly and took out her tricorder.  It  uttered  a  few 
beeping  sounds and then became utterly quiet.  Apart from telling  her  that 
there  were the faintest traces of an alien gas present,  its  display  read, 
"DEAD."
 "To our standards he isn't even alive, Geordi," she concluded.
 "But he's moving," Geordi said.
 "Death  and  mobility aren't necessarily mutually  exclusive,"  the  android 
remarked,  "for  example,  it is a well known fact the Muier  Shipbiter,  the 
large  flightless  tracking bird of Altitude Pleiadis,  travels back  to  its 
place of birth by means of involuntary post-mortem muscle convulsions induced 
by electrical patterns emanating from the brain decomposition process."
 The android uttered a meaningful pause for dramatic impact,  totally failing 
to sense the fact that all people present thought he was a  smart-arse,  then 
added,  "The largest recorded distance covered by this wholly unique means of 
vertebrate propulsion is 67.62 earth miles."
 "What do you think of this, Commander Riker?" the woman inquired, indicating 
Warchild.
 Cronos  deemed that instant perfect to demonstrate once more the  extent  of 
movement  his apparently dead body was capable of.  Another fit  of  laughter 
shuddered his being.
 "Well,  Dr Crusher," the Commander replied, a man who had so far observed in 
silence, "perhaps it's some kind of hibernating species."
 "Hibernating  and laughing at the same time?" a Klingon intoned.  He  wasn't 
amused and was nervously fingering his phaser.  In Klingon society you didn't 
laugh in the presence of others.  As a matter of fact he found this  humanoid 
blatantly  insulting,  dead or not.  Back home he would not  have  restrained 
himself.
 "Riker  to  Enterprise,"  the Commander said after hitting  himself  on  the 
chest.
 "Go ahead,  Number One," a voice came from nowhere. It was the kind of voice 
you would attach a bald head to.
 "We  found a life form here that may be in need of medical aid," Dr  Crusher 
said, ignoring the Klingon's snort.
 There was a pause.
 "OK," the voice out of nowhere spoke.
 "Six to beam up," the Commander said.
 There was a strange light effect,  as if in some cheap SciFi series,  and an 
equally strange sound.  Once that had ceased,  the only sound was that of the 
wind, breezy kindof windy.
 In the middle of nowhere there was a mound next to which lay a partly snowed 
in  Cyrius Cybernetics Laughing Gas Dispenser with  Pro-Logic  Audio-Feedback 
Unit, but it was beyond the corpse to be able to laugh about it.

 The Klingon escorted Cronos to the bridge.  By now the mercenary annex hired 
gun had totally recovered from his icy ordeal. He was comfortably warm again, 
neatly  dressed  in  crisp clothes and feeling  decidedly  less  giggly  than 
before.  He  was  a  bit  disoriented though -  the  last  thing  he  clearly 
remembered was lying in a dentist's chair and being severelyy sedated. Now he 
was  walking  beside  a taciturn Klingon on what seemed to  be  a  Federation 
starship.
 They reached the bridge. A door opened automatically, they went through, and 
the  door  closed behind them.  It was the kind of door  Cronos  expected  to 
drone, "Thank you for making a simple door happy," but it didn't.
 They went inside, where he was lead to a balding middle aged man, and a very 
familiar-looking balding middle aged man at that.  Several bells rung as  the 
recollections  took  a  solid shape inside the  vast  emptiness  that  formed 
Cronos' mind.
 "Merle!" he yelled.
 "Er...How  do  you  know my real name?" the captain  hushed  to  Cronos,  an 
embarrassed and perplexed look on his face.
 The  android swiveled in this chair.  "I checked this  individual's  genetic 
patterns to the old Federation Colonies DNA databases and found a 99.8% match 
on  Ambulor  Eight  where  he has spent a prolonged amount  of  time  in  the 
hospital for the Very Very Splattered.  Despite appearances, he's human - one 
Cronos Jehannum Warchild."
 "Captain,  I  sense utmost confusion and a violent sense of revenge in  this 
man," a dark-haired woman with huge black eyes counselled agitatedly.
 The   Klingon   immediately  drew  a  phaser   and   started   forward,   an 
unprofessionally eager look on his face.
 Cronos launched himself at his nemesis, intending to reduce him to a mass of 
quivering  flesh.  He was stopped rather painfully by a phaser blast  from  a 
grinning Klingon.  It slammed him up against a panel. A few lights blinked, a 
few beeps beeped.
 "Incidentally," Mr Data added, unperturbed, "according to these records this 
hospital is supposed to be run by a nurse who looks like an identical twin of 
Gloria Estefan."
 Unfortunately  for the couple of thousand people aboard  the  starship,  the 
phaser  shot had hurled Cronos Warchild against a large red button  with  the 
text  "PLEASE BE SO KIND SO AS NOT TO PRESS THIS BUTTON,  FOR IT  WILL  SELF-
DESTRUCT THE SHIP".
 Perhaps Cronos Warchild had finally taught Merle his lesson.  Unfortunately, 
however,  there were hundreds of people attending the same class, one of them 
being Cronos himself who was too unconscious to alter anything.
 A siren threw in a few wailing words.

 "THIS WAS NOT IN THE SCRIPT," a voice boomed.
 A hushed silence fell over the bridge.
 Cronos scratched his head as he sat up and looked around himself.
 "I  WILL  NOT ALLOW IT," the voice continued.  A huge face appeared  on  the 
viewscreen.
 "Mr. Roddenbery!" the crew exclaimed in exalted chorus.
 A gaffer walked up to the large red button,  irritated,  and pushed it  once 
more. The siren ceased its incessant wailing.
 "SCOTTY, BEAM THIS MAN OUT OF HERE," the mysterious voice now commanded.
 "Excuse me, Mr. Roddenbery," the android began, "but there is no record of a 
Scotty,   Mr  Scott  or  anybody  with  the  first  name  Scott  aboard   the 
Enterprise..."
 "Shut up, Data," the captain snapped.
 "Mr O'Brien, beam this...this...Neanderthal out of here," he added.
 "Aye, sir," the transporter chief responded, "which coordinates?"
 "Anywhere will do," the captain said,  suppressing an evil grin,  "basically 
any random planet. As long as it's far away from here."
 "Aye,  sir,"  O'Brien  said.  Finally  a command that  left  room  for  some 
creativity.

 Cronos found himself standing on a grassy plain, a shimmering sun hanging in 
the sky.  It was silent, eerily silent almost, and as usual he was completely 
baffled,  utterly confused and most muddled for a very long time. Thoughts of 
Merle drifted through his mind but he didn't know exactly why or how.
 Before he had a chance to completely recover,  though, another bizarre thing 
started  happening.  Small  mounds of earth began to appear all  around  him, 
muddy hands extending from some of them.  Soon,  earth-smeared heads  started 
popping up everywhere.  Some time later Cronos found himself surrounded by  a 
large  group of extremely soiled men and women.  They were all  quite  naked, 
although  most details of their features were in some way covered by mud  and 
bits of fungi. They had all crawled from their own individual little holes in 
the  earth and were now eying each other vibrantly,  the tension in  the  air 
building  up  around a now totally dumbfounded Cronos who had  absolutely  no 
idea  what was going on.  He had never been anywhere where people sortof  pop 
out of the ground where you stand.
 Warchild stammered something.
 "Daa...baaaa..."
 This  seemed  to trigger the strange group because at that moment  they  all 
started  fondling  other  muddy individuals and engaging in  acts  of  rather 
explicit  sexual  nature.  These  were explicit enough  for  Cronos  to  turn 
slightly red around the cheeks. For the first time since his waking up on the 
ice  planet  did he realize that he in fact did himself have a  sexual  organ 
located in the lower abdominal area.
 He wandered around aimlessly for a while,  making sure not to step on any of 
the writhing bodies around him, trying to make sense of it all. After a while 
he found a solitary woman lying on the ground,  naked and covered in  streaks 
of dirt,  her forms exposed to a befuddled Cronos who never really knew  what 
to do in this kind of situation.  He sat down next to her and decided to find 
out what was going on.
 "From what hole are you, handsome?", the woman asked huskily.
 "Errr...well...", Cronos didn't really know what to say. He never before had 
his home planet Sucatraps referred to as a hole.
 For a brief instant visions flickered across the insides of his eyes.  There 
was  the  utterly  enticing Klarine Appledoor.  After  two  moments  she  was 
squashed  by  the rather less slim form of Penelope  Sunflower,  his  almost-
betrothed.  And,  of course,  there was half a nanosecond worth of  Loucynda, 
enough to see the sturdy and rather rusty locks around the chastity belt were 
resisting  time  bravely.  He always had that when he was  around  women.  He 
either  started  acting  like  a total git or  simply  shut  up  and  entered 
recollection mode.
 His lack of words,  however,  merely seemed to flatter the woman,  encourage 
her.  Maybe she was an expert at body language, or maybe the rapidly shifting 
folds  in  the  crotch area of Cronos' trousers told her all  she  needed  to 
known.  She  peeled a piece of dry mud off a breast.  Cronos had no idea  the 
removal  of  sand crust could be this provoking.  A few of his  inner  glands 
started to excrete their produce.
 "What is all this?" Warchild asked.
 "Isn't it obvious?" the woman responded rhetorically.
 "No."
 "This  is the moment we've all waited for," the woman said.  Her  eyes  went 
into a musing distant-gaze mode when she told a story involving the burial of 
41  infants in the rich and nurturing soils of the Mother Planet where  their 
collective  minds  would dream about Unabridled Sexual Nirvana for  17  years 
until finally the Exhumation Phase of their Life Cycle would come upon  them. 
She  revealed to him the Doctrine of the Nine Utterly Holy Phases  -  Cloacal 
Birth,  the Burying of Infant Eggs,  Life in Entombment for Seventeen  Years, 
the Unearthing, the Shedding of the Sands, the Mating (a.k.a. Passionate Time 
of Ultimate Bliss),  the Smoking of the Cigarette and then, after a short but 
exciting  Life,  the Revelation of the Truth in Death.  A  pretty  fulfilling 
life, so she assured him.
 To  Cronos  she appeared to be human,  but she was talking  about  eggs  and 
cloacas  - and what was this thing with the cigarette?  He was about  to  ask 
when she grabbed him in her arms.  The two of them looking like the covers of 
cheap love novels, only this time the male held by the female.
 "O noble hunk," she whispered wetly in his ear, "be my Sacred Partner in the 
Ritual of Ultimate Joining!"
 He thought about it for a while,  but not for long. The woman peeled another 
piece  of half-dried mud off her anatomy.  This time it revealed part of  her 
right buttock.  Warchild hadn't realised half a square inch of buttock  could 
look in any way alluringly. Well, he concluded, this particular piece did.
  The  woman,  her  lips  moist  with desire  and  her  eyes  undressing  him 
unceremoniously,  now interpreted Cronos' muteness as reluctance.  She had to 
fight for him.  Perhaps he was playing hard to get.  She liked that in a man. 
It's  never any fun if they throw themselves at you.  She liked getting  "no" 
for an answer. They always meant "yes" anyway.
 "I have four sexual organs,  you know," she revealed,  "and that's not  even 
including the cloaca." She turned around a bit and showed a few of them.
 By now Warchild got the general idea. In fact, the part of his body that had 
been shrivelled hopelessly during his ice planet experience was now  claiming 
most of his blood and sending waves of unclean thoughts through his mind.
 Perhaps a blood vessel in his brain sprung,  or an adrenalin gland went into 
Warp 9 mode. Things went strange.
 "Videodrome!",  he yelled, tore his T-shirt off his body and jumped onto the 
ecstatic woman.  That is to say he aimed to hurl his body at her but  somehow 
it  failed  to  hit its target and impacted a  rather  unforgiving  piece  of 
bedrock.  Debbie Harry vanished off his mind and was replaced by a  screaming 
pain racing through his nervous system.  Yet a certain part of him was poised 
for  serious  action and the sudden impulse of the cold and gritty  rock  was 
enough to cause a rather intense climax of the most pinnacle kind.  A blurred 
vision of tissues and washing machines came to his mind,  but it was  quickly 
replaced by a detailed vision of microwave ovens and food blenders.
 It was orgasmic,  fatamorganic,  spirallomatic and truly  mind-evaporatingly 
huge.  The  Dingo stared at him with yellow eyes,  and a brightly lit  church 
from  Vienna appeared before him.  Kiss the guitar,  feel the Fields  of  the 
Nephilim.  Someone's got to suffer.  Pain looks great on other people, that's 
what they're for.  He was sick of all the people,  the angels getting on  his 
nerves.  Sweet  dreams,  his soul screamed.  He cannot live,  he cannot  die, 
Sumerland is where he wanted to go.  It was the depth of his soul made  real. 
Afraid of waking up,  he stayed deep down in the lands of forever...call it a 
day. What a bastard of a blinking cursor staring at him. Sleep...forever...
 Last  thing  he  remembered was a rather cute Tiger Quoll  looking  at  him, 
wondering what he was doing.  He didn't know where the little animal had come 
from,  and actually didn't even realize it was one.  He decided to give in to 
what his body wanted him to do.
 With  an  erection that would have made any London Knight proud and  a  girl 
next to him that was ready'n'willing to go to the end and have him mount  her 
in each of her many bodily openings, he fainted.

 The  thing most prominently present in his mind was the face  of  Merle.  Or 
Picard,  or  whatever  he called himself now.  It morphed to and fro  into  a 
hungry  face  of  his father.  In the back of his mind he  heard  his  mother 
pleading with the man, but there was no stopping him.

 His father was whetting a stainless steel kitchen knife of huge proportions, 
eyeing him rather unfatherly.
 "It has to go!" the man bellowed.
 Cronos tried to hide behind his mother but his father shoved the frail woman 
aside and advanced on him with a grin of very demoniacal proportions.
 "Come here boy," his father whispered satanically, "it might not even hurt."
 "Drahcir!" his mother uttered, "please be careful!"

 Cronos had hated the idea of circumcision ever since.

 "OoooOoooOiooooOooooOiiiioOOoOOoOoooOO..."
 Cronos felt a tiny tongue licking his face.
 "OOOoooOooOoiiiioOOOiiOooooOOOooiiiioOOO..."
 He opened his eyes and was confronted with the rather cute Tiger Quoll  that 
seemed to like him rather a lot.
 "OOoooOooOOoiiiiooOOooOOOOooooOOooo..."
 The strange sound seemed to arise from one end of a long pipe.  Attached  to 
the  other end was a strange looking man with scruffy black  hair,  his  body 
covered  only with a primitive loincloth and multi-coloured paint.  The  pipe 
seemed to be some kind of bush-native instrument.
 Cronos sat up straight and uttered an inquiring, "Huh?"
 The Quoll,  disappointed,  began licking its own genitals instead.  The  man 
removed the pipe from his mouth and started to speak with a heavy accent.
 "Hey man, whatya doing 'ere?"
 Cronos looked around him and noticed several empty holes.  A few of them had 
been filled up again and covered.
 "Dunno, actually. Where is everybody?" he asked.
 "They  buggered  off to bury the eggs and then...well...let's just  say  I'm 
'ere to clean up the mess," the man said.
 "Mess?" Warchild wanted to know.
 The  man said nothing,  merely pointing in another direction.  Cronos'  head 
swivelled - without as much as a heroic "swoosh" - and beheld a pile of  dead 
people he had missed so far. It would have been nice for this story if he had 
recognized  the  girl with whom he had had the near-hit  experience,  but  he 
didn't.  There were just lots of legs and arms,  some totally worn out bodies 
and  asinine grins on a lot of faces,  some still with smouldering  cigarette 
butts dangling in them.  A breeze took the smell of death and Saigon  Brothel 
Backrooms to him.
 Disgusted,  if  only because he hadn't been part of the events necessary  to 
produce the distinctive scent, he looked away.

 Reality  isn't  half as real as you think it is,  and just  when  you  think 
you've come to grips with it everything changes.  In books all things  happen 
in  neat patterns where great minds have thought out excellent plots  to  let 
their characters experience the most exciting of exploits.  Cronos  Warchild, 
mercenary annex hired gun, was about to have something happen to him that was 
of no relevance to his current situation whatsoever. Which is half the fun of 
writing, sometimes, though not necessarily of reading.

 Somewhere deep within the reaches of space a cell twisted and turned. It was 
a  warped cell,  deadly in its own disctinctive and very weird  way.  Without 
apparent  reason it decided to pick out a random life form in the  multiverse 
and hit it on the head.

 "They surely went out with a bang, didn't they?" Cronos asked.
 The  man  nodded  and  started  playing  'Advance  Australia  Fair'  on  his 
instrument.
 "OOOoooOooOoiiiioOOOiiOooooOOOooiiiioOOO..."
 Cronos was not a very smart man. We know that, because it has been mentioned 
countless times. Nonetheless he had a strange innate sense of tact, which now 
told him the man had no further use for him. He'd better make himself scarse.

 Somewhere  deep  within the reaches of space,  though  now  infinitely  much 
closer,  there  was something that *had* a use for him.  Though it,  and  he, 
didn't quite know yet,  at least not consciously. It hurled itself at an ever 
increasing  speed toward a squarely built form,  even though neither was  yet 
visible to the other.

 What to do now? The huge pile of smiling corpses wasn't a likely partner for 
jest or conversation, not even a friendly fight.

 Infinity is all relative, just a matter of perspective.

 What  sounded  like  the loudest explosion conceivable to the  ears  of  the 
rotating  cell  -  had  it  had  them  -  was  virtually  and  quite  totally 
indistinguishable from utter silence to the Mercenary Annex Hired Gun. Within 
the instant of collision, however, profound changes occurred in both of them.
 The cell suddenly found itself in a void we know as Cronos' brain. It wasn't 
the best place to be in,  but at least it was confined whilst still  allowing 
room for plenty of motion.  At least it was *safe*,  and *they* wouldn't know 
where to find it. Hopefully.
 Cronos suddenly found his cranial contents doubled.  Whereas previously  his 
brain had been almost solely dedicated to movement, a few incoherent thoughts 
and  the production of apparently sentient speech,  its newly acquired  extra 
capacity was entirely paranormal.
 Cronos had never known paranormality was a bacterial disease flung on you by 
a  discontent  universe,  and he probably never would.  What matters  to  the 
current discourse, however, is that this was exactly what had happened.
  Warchild looked at the man that had almost finished playing the  Australian 
National Anthem.  Instead of a man, however, his mind saw a boy. A frightened 
boy that looked around it in panic.
 It shouted.
 "*No, father!*"
 The man looked at Cronos. Had his multi-coloured paint fainted, perhaps, and 
was the stranger looking intently at that?
 "*No!*"
 "Leave that boy alone!" Cronos bellowed. He meant business.
 The man looked around him.  He saw no boy to leave alone.  The stranger  was 
surely acting irrational.
 Then  the boy was gone,  just like that.  Warchild walked up to the man  and 
shook  him  at  what,  for lack of a better word,  were  the  lapels  of  his 
loincloth.
 "What  have  you done,  insane man?!" he shouted.  His  eyes  looked  around 
rapidly, "where is the boy?"
 "Wuh...wuh...wuh...what boy?" the man stuttered.
  Warchild suddenly looked at the right ear of the man,  or perhaps  somewhat 
beyond.  He cocked his head.  He could have sworn he heard some music. It was 
peaceful music,  with flute and soft synthesizer. His mind told him, not with 
words but equally effectively, "Gandalf. Gandalf's 'Fantasia'."
 "Fuck off,  idiot!" the man said,  recognizing the wild look in Cronos' eyes 
gone all soft.
 Warchild sat down.
 "'He'  tells  me not to use those words," Cronos said with the  patient  and 
infinitely peaceful voice of a religious nut.
 "Who?" the man said, irritated, "the boy?"
 "No...no..." Cronos responded, dreamily, "'he' told me."
 The  man  displayed an "Oh no,  it's Jehovah's witnesses"  look.  He  patted 
Warchild on the shoulder.
 "He's  a good boy," he said,  soothingly,  with his other hand swinging  the 
Aboriginal instrument. It was made of wood lovingly fondled and spoken to for 
countless generations. He hoped it would survive the intented maltreatment.
 There was a skull-jarring 'thud'. A cell was hurled off back into space.
 "Oh  no,  now  they will be after me again?" Cronos wondered  fleetingly  as 
unconsciousness once more embraced him.
 "*Genuine fake watches!*"
 The exclamation had a difficult time reaching Warchild's awareness.
 "*Genuine fake watches!*"
 He  opened  his eyes.  He had expected to be on a totally  different  planet 
without any clothes on and, indeed, he wasn't. Life isn't like that. However, 
seeing  as a city seemed to have been erected about him,  he reckoned he  had 
been out for a while.  He stared almost directly into the empty eyesockets of 
a few grinning corpses, butt-ends stuck between perpetually grinning skeletal 
teeth blowing softly in the wind.  Now he thought he could recognize the girl 
whom his near-hit relationship had been based on. She had lost quite a bit of 
weight since he'd last seen her.
 Why  had  the  builders left the pile of corpses in  their  city?  Had  they 
considered it an artefact of sorts? Why had they left him? Was he an artefact 
too?
 "*Genuine fake watches!*"
 Warchild  tried to move but found that he couldn't.  He frantically  scanned 
his memory for explanations.  Was he paralyzed?  Cast in  concrete?  Rendered 
motionless by some arcane wizard's spell?
 In  reality everything can be much more simple.  He was dead.  At  least  he 
showed all the signs of it.
 "*Genuine fake watches!*"
 The voice was a lot louder now.  It just repeated relentlessly. Cronos tried 
to  crane  his neck but couldn't.  Instead he craned his eyes as much  as  he 
could  and  saw the type of guy you would expect to pop up  at  spectacularly 
gory accidents in the street, selling sausages.
 "*Genuine fake watches!*"
 "Hey,"  Cronos tried to whisper,  but nothing passed his lips.  He tried  to 
shout but that proved of no avail either. Nobody heeded him, and there was no 
way he could cause people to.
 He was beginning to feel just as genuinely uncomfortable as the watches were 
fake.

 "Genuine fake crowns!"
 The man turned around to look at the mercenary annex hired gun.
 "Definitely genuinely fake!" he cried, eyeing Cronos rather more closely.
 "I don't understand," a voice said,  and there was a female voice that  said 
something in the background.  Cronos blinked his eye a few times.  The  watch 
salesman grew blurry.

 There was a distinct smell. The kind of smell you always try to prevent your 
dentist  from  smelling  but that instead the man himself  breathes  up  your 
nostrils when examing your orifice in the most minute detail, every agonizing 
minute it takes.
 "He  appears to be coming to," the girl now said,  "good thing you did  with 
the water and the feather."
 "Forget  that,"  a man's voice said,  "or we'll get sued  until  we're  both 
cross-eyed. C'mon, give me that sucker."
 Cronos  blinked  his eyes again.  He was quite sure someone had just  put  a 
suction  device  in his mouth.  Instinctively he waited  for  the  inevitable 
conversation to develop.
 His sight was adjusting to the light.  The first silhouette it saw was  that 
of the ravishingly gorgeous dentist's assistance.  What a silhouette!  It was 
actually the first time in his life he had woken up with that kind of view.
 "Ha," the dentist said,  sounding happy, "it seems we are waking up? Have we 
had a nice nap?"
 Cronos  wanted to say,  "Actually,  no,  I had a bit of a nightmare where  I 
sortof  got  dumped on planets by the likes of you,  where I  had  an  almost 
perfect  encounter with someone of a different and highly  compatible  gender 
but somehow everything went wrong. I don't know how much time I spent in your 
damn chair with half your sucker collection dangling in my mouth,  but if you 
think I'm going to pay for this you've got another thing coming.  And I  hate 
the  way  you're talking to me as if I'm some half-arse  imbecile.  I  would, 
however,  like  to  have  a go at dating your  positively  lovely  assistant, 
though, if you don't mind."
 He tried hard,  especially with the last bit,  but all that came out,  as he 
looked at the almost totally bald head of the dentist whose face he now quite 
suddenly remembered, was, "Hmmmm hmmpff dribble ow sshidd!"

 Original  written from the last week of May up to June 23rd 1994,  with  the 
bulk of it done on June 4th and 5th.  A change/addition or two made in  March 
1996.


= PHALCUS PHALANGOIDES ======================================================
 by M. Manwaring


 It's  said that Daddy-Long-Legs have the most lethal venom of  all  spiders, 
but  they're  not deadly to man because their fangs are too  weak  to  pierce 
human skin. My mother told me that my aunt was found dead from a spider bite, 
and  the  only  spider they found in the vicinity  was  an  innocuous-looking 
Daddy-Long-Legs.  Consequently  my  mother purged our house of  all  possible 
offenders  -  mashing,  spraying or stomping on  all  potential  eight-legged 
culprits. To this day I don't know if the spider was to blame.
 Forgive me,  I digress.  For me,  time is a particularly finite resource and 
speed  is  crucial.  The point I am trying to make is  that  this  apparently 
harmless  spider  was  accused of murder and summarily put to  death  due  to 
circumstantial evidence. Like myself.
 I say that because I,  too, am to be executed for crimes I didn't commit. My 
name  is John Harcourt - perhaps you've read about me in  the  newspaper,  or 
seen the shamefully biased reports of me on television.  Until two months ago 
I was an anonymous school teacher,  unmarried,  approaching middle-age (as my 
increasing gut and decreasing hair will testify),  living in a modest flat in 
an equally modest suburb of this city.  That was until I met Frank,  bought a 
bed, and watched helplessly as my life destroyed itself around me.
 Life as a teacher isn't - wasn't - too bad,  really.  It's boring,  after so 
many years;  but I played golf once in a while.  My lifestyle,  by its  sheer 
lack  of the interesting or bizarre,  convinced them that I must be  abnormal 
and  therefore guilty of all the things they said I did.  But that's  neither 
here nor there. I'm running out of time, so back to it.
 I  don't have any 'girlfriends' (another piece of evidence used against  me) 
but I sometimes plucked up enough courage to ask a lady out. This was usually 
successful  for one date only - for some reason they never agreed to  go  out 
with me more than once,  which is still a mystery to me.  I'm very quiet, you 
see,  and  perhaps  women don't like that,  and my tiny flat  wasn't  at  all 
glamorous at the best of times. That was, until I met Frank and his bed.
 The bed was completely amazing.  It was larger than king size and really far 
too big for my tiny bedroom,  but at the time it didn't seem to matter.  When 
Frank spoke of it, nothing else mattered - nothing except having that bed. It 
was a four-poster,  draped with pale blue silk which fell gracefully from the 
frame of the top forming a soft canopy.  The mattress was deep and incredibly 
soft,  and Frank told me it was a woman-magnet,  and after all,  Frank  would 
know.  He  owned  a small furniture shop only two blocks from  my  flat,  and 
though  I'd not spoken to him before that day I had often ridden  my  bicycle 
past  the window on my way to school.  He was almost always  there,  a  woman 
draped  on  one  arm  (sometimes one on each) using  his  salesman  smile  to 
convince them to buy his wares.  Frank told me there wasn't anything on earth 
he couldn't sell,  including himself.  On this particular day,  I was  riding 
past when I noticed the bed in the window.  No,  not so much noticed it - was 
entranced by it.  It filled the entire display area with its decadence, and I 
couldn't help but stop and stare at it. I was captivated by the deep warm red 
of the wood,  the way the smooth lines of the carved head-board followed  the 
delicate  curves of the grain.  I had to have it,  and completely  forgetting 
that  I had a classroom full of sixth grade boys waiting for me,  dropped  my 
bike and went into the shop.
 As  I  said,  the bed was far too large for my flat and it  was  monstrously 
expensive as well. However I had a small sum saved for a rainy day and now it 
seemed that I knew why I'd saved the money.  I bought the bed, of course, and 
returned to my flat to eagerly await its delivery.
 Mrs Hughes,  my landlady, was almost speechless when she saw the size of the 
thing I was proposing to put in the flat. After a lengthy struggle amidst the 
cries  of 'don't mark the walls' and 'if you break anything,  you'll have  to 
pay' from Mrs Hughes,  we manoeuvred the bed into the tiny bedroom,  where it 
took up all the available space,  and more.  I had to move my set of  drawers 
and portable TV out into the cramped living room/kitchen area,  but it didn't 
matter.  I had the bed,  and a feeling of triumph completely inappropriate to 
the occasion made all other matters pale into trivialities.
 Even  though it was only ten in the morning,  I couldn't resist the urge  to 
climb  between the cool blue sheets and rest my head on its pillows once  the 
delivery  men  and  Mrs  Hughes had made their exits.  As  I  sank  into  the 
incredibly deep,  soft mattress,  totally naked (my cotton box-print  pyjamas 
uncharacteristically  absent)  my  mind  seemed to cloud  over  and  my  body 
demanded  sleep.  I  gazed up at the billowing canopy of silk  above  me  and 
drifted off.
 I  don't know how to begin to describe the nightmares I suffered that  night 
and for the seemingly endless nights following. I don't often dream of women, 
but in that bed I seemed to dream of nothing else.  My sleep was filled  with 
visions of myself with beautiful,  elegant women.  I'd be having dinner  with 
them,  dancing with them,  and I'd eventually bring them home, to my flat, to 
the  bed.  Then  the dreams changed;  my dream-sight became clouded  and  the 
images distressingly chaotic and confused.  There were flurries of white  and 
blue and red,  and then I'd wake,  drenched in sweat,  exhausted, to find the 
mattress  bare,  the  sheets  and pillowcases  (sometimes  even  the  pillows 
themselves)  missing.  When  this  strange occurrence  first  took  place,  I 
searched  the  flat convinced there had been  an  intruder,  questioning  Mrs 
Hughes  on  the  off-chance that she might have changed the  sheets  while  I 
slept.  Mrs Hughes,  of course,  knew nothing and replied that I was suddenly 
acting very strangely.
 I searched unsuccessfully for the missing bedding,  eventually shrugging  it 
off  as something I must have done while sleep-walking,  although  I'd  never 
suffered from somnambulism before. They would turn up, sooner or later.
 I ran out of bedding after the third or fourth night of this,  and began  to 
borrow from Mrs Hughes, hoping that the missing sheets would somehow turn up. 
They didn't,  and soon I had also used up all of Mrs Hughes' bedding.  Out of 
necessity I bought another supply.  I noticed that the mattress was no longer 
as  comfortable  as  it had first been,  and as I searched  for  a  reason  I 
discovered  a line of stitches on the side of the mattress where it had  been 
repaired  along the length of the bed.  I resolved to see Frank - I'd try  to 
convince  him to take it back and give me a refund.  No,  I said,  it  hadn't 
turned  out  to be a 'woman-magnet',  and I'd not had a single  good  night's 
sleep on it. He soothed me, flashing his salesman smile, assuring me that I'd 
get used to it, sooner or later, and I believed him.  On leaving the store, I 
mentioned (in passing) the missing bedding,  and his salesman smile  faltered 
slightly.  I  assumed  he thought I must have been going a little  barmy  (he 
wasn't the only one) and thought no more of it.
 Two days later I returned to the shop, two days more exhausted and minus two 
more  sets  of linen,  hoping that Frank would simply take the  bed  back.  I 
didn't want my money,  I just wanted the damn thing out of my flat.  I cycled 
up the road,  only to find Frank and his furniture gone.  A 'For Lease'  sign 
hung  over  the  door  and when I enquired,  the agent  claimed  to  have  no 
forwarding address.
 Alone again in my flat,  I stood at the bedroom door and stared at the  bed. 
What could I do?  I couldn't bear the thought of sleeping on it again - every 
morning  I woke exhausted,  every muscle and sinew aching,  some parts of  me 
bruised  and  stiff.  I'd  lost weight and my  usually  neat  appearance  had 
degenerated  to  the point where Mrs Hughes was threatening to evict  me  for 
making the place look disreputable.  Of course the missing linen didn't help, 
and every now and then I caught her giving me strange sideways looks when she 
thought  I wasn't watching.  Once,  she made a cryptic comment about  all  my 
late-night  comings  and goings.  Soon she was complaining  about  the  smell 
coming from my flat as well,  although I can't say I ever noticed anything. I 
didn't understand most of what she said,  and assumed she was trying to  find 
excuses for getting rid of me.
 I stared at the bed for a long time before deciding what to  do.  Eventually 
the solution to my problem came to me.  I left my flat and walked out to  the 
back garden,  where Mrs Hughes' husband kept his tools in a tiny shed. I took 
an axe back to my flat and began to work on the bed.  I'm not a very physical 
person,  and the wood was strong and stubborn,  but after a few minutes I was 
in  a chopping frenzy and in a short time I had reduced the bed to  kindling. 
The  silk made a strangely familiar and satisfying sound as  it  ripped,  and 
after  the  work  was done I sat in the midst of the  rubble,  axe  in  hand, 
surveying  my achievement.  Eventually the thundering in my ears  faded,  and 
above it I heard Mrs Hughes banging on the door, demanding to know what I was 
doing,  making all that racket.  Pleased with myself and eager to show her my 
handiwork,  I let her in and proudly led her into the bedroom.  At first  she 
stared, and then she began to scream.
 They found the sheets buried in the garden.  They were covered in gore, just 
like  the mess they found in my bedroom.  Half the original contents  of  the 
mattress were there,  too,  tufts of filling matted together with blood. They 
took the bodies away,  seven in all,  and then they took me away,  too.  They 
claimed  at the trial that I'd killed them and stuffed them in the  mattress, 
just like my mother claimed the spider had killed her sister.  They said they 
tried to find Frank, but they never managed to, of course. I don't think they 
really tried.
 It's  nearly  time now - I can hear movement down the  corridor.  My  cell's 
quite comfortable.  The mattress isn't quite as thick as the one I'm used to, 
of  course,  but  my sleep is deep and dreamless,  for  which  I'm  thankful. 
There's a Daddy-Long-Legs in here with me, you know. His name is Frank and he 
keeps me company, two condemned souls together. I think I'll take him with me 
and  keep  him in my pocket - I wonder if you can  electrocute  a  spider?  I 
suppose I won't be around to find out,  so that's another mystery. Well, I've 
written it all down,  and it's time to go.  I'm rather looking forward to it, 
as a matter of fact.  The trial was so wearisome,  and waiting for death  has 
taken its toll on me.  When they sit me down I'll be strapped in,  of course, 
and  the priest will lean over and ask me if I have any requests,  any  final 
questions before I go.
 Yes, I'll say. Is it true what they say about Daddy-Long-Legs?


= TUPPERWARE PARTY ==========================================================
 by Mark Oliver - marko@mulberry.com


 Charlie had been transformed from one of those nasty buzzing pests,  a black 
garden  fly,  into a charade playing house fly.  Mr.  Black captured the  fly 
after Charlie landed and planted his mandibles into the back of  Mr.  Black's 
hand.
 "Lucky Charlie," Mr. Black said now, "You don't have a worry." Mr. Black had 
put  Charlie into a large Mason jar that his former partner had left  behind. 
He  was careful to poke holes of proper size to allow ventilation  but  still 
prevent  escape.  Charlie  had grown to an obscenely obese fly  and  was  now 
covered with the same dirty black hairs that always seemed to be growing  out 
of Mr. Black's cheeks, chin and nostrils.
 "Here  you  go  Charlie my friend," Mr.  Black said as he  gently  poured  a 
spoonful of cool coffee down through one of the holes in the top of the  lid. 
"Happy birthday to you," he softly sang. "Happy birthday my little girl."
 Mr. Gray set his lunch pail down on the desk and took off his boots. He hung 
up his spring jacket on a nail behind the door and squeezed a look at himself 
in a tiny mirror above the sink.  "Morning," he said to Mr.  Black. "Anything 
exciting happen that I should know about?" Mr.  Gray's wife works as a  nurse 
in a local psychiatric hospital and had always envied the time of report when 
the  night  nurses  bring the day shift up to  speed.  It  seemed  much  more 
exciting than just grunting at each other and he always tried to get anything 
out of his co-worker; challenge was something he lived for.
 "Mrs. Morning is having another Tupperware Party."
 "Oh?"
 "Imagine that, eh?"
 Both men cracked a smile at this familiar exchange.
 "Anyone going to show up this time?" Mr. Gray asked.
 "Oh the usual gang of Tupperware Junkies I suspect."
 "That would be ole Invisible Sam, Jessie Vapour, and Flora Boards?"
 "You  got it,  sir." Mr.  Black picked up his magazines and headed  out  the 
door. "Ooh, some of the tenants called about the slow drainage in their sinks 
and tubs again.  I meant to drop by a few of them and check them out,  but it 
was pretty busy last night."
 "Ya I know," Mr.  Gray smiled and shook his head.  Mr.  Black was famous for 
his insignificant contribution to the maintenance of the building.  He always 
had the office nice and warm,  however,  if not the sweetest smelling,  first 
thing in the morning.
 Charlie  nodded and lapped.  Nodded and lapped.  The Eight  O'clock  coffee, 
sugar and milk would have normally been a great find, but now it was just the 
same  old  same  old.  Even  the cleaning process  no  longer  possessed  the 
cathartic effect that it used to.  Charlie strained his plump body and  tried 
to kick up the wing speed for a little levity.  Lift could not overcome drag, 
and  Charlie's  grapelike fullness bumped softly against  the  inside  glass. 
Despair  and sadness descended upon him and the giant multilobed  eyes  which 
once  served his freedom so well could now only reinforce his captivity in  a 
thousand images of bondage and imprisonment.  Charlie nodded and lapped  some 
more.
 Mr. Black drove his old Pinto to work and parked in his usual spot. His head 
was still pounding from the effects of overindulgence.  His wallet and  hopes 
had once again taken a beating at the hands of the Nevada Ticket and  Scratch 
& Win seductresses. He did however manage to budget ten dollars for a copy of 
AutoTrader and the latest issue of Snatch magazine;  to help the hours go  by 
at the office. "Evening," Mr. Gray said .
 "Oh,  ya."  Mr.  Black sighed and went to the washroom to hide  his  reading 
material until later on when it got quiet. "What's up tonight with you?"
 "Going  home  for  some hot cooking and good  loving,"  Mr.  Gray  said  and 
simultaneously patted his head and rubbed his belly.  "Nothing much happening 
here tonight.
 Mrs.  Morning  got her groceries delivered,  UPS brought her another box  of 
Tupperware  and  residents  on first are still  having  troubles  with  their 
drainage."
 Mr.  Black  grunted  as he slipped his giant key ring  onto  his  handtooled 
monogrammed belt. "Well, have a good shift my friend," Mr. Gray said and left 
whistling down the hall.
 "Will-do. Will-do."
 Mr.  Black  opened  the back window and let in some early  evening  air.  He 
pulled Charlie's bottle out from behind the stack of scrub sponges and placed 
him on the desk. Even though more and more people are smoking Player's Lights 
these days,  Mr. Black stuck with his old standby DuMaurier. He smoked not so 
much  for the flavour,  buzz or habit,  but rather for the simple  excuse  to 
carry  his matches around.  'Don & Marie July 14th,  1982' they said  on  the 
cover.  He  had  had two hundred books made for their wedding then  but  when 
plans collapsed at the eleventh hour,  he was stuck with them.  So he took up 
smoking and carries them wherever he goes.  The gift store owner always looks 
at him a bit strangely when he orders more, but that doesn't bother Mr. Black 
in  the least.  What does bother him was not seeing his daughter.  He  hasn't 
seen  her  since  he and Marie's last big fight,  two  years  ago  this  day; 
Jessica's 13th birthday.
 A long fluorescent tube was burned out in the superintendents  office,  some 
ashtrays were to the point of overflowing in the visitors washroom,  the main 
level  carpeting  needed vacuuming.  "What the hell did he do all  day?"  Mr. 
Black wondered.
 Jessica  and  her mother had kicked him out of the apartment  following  his 
attempt to bring in a couple of his buddies from Eddy's Sports Tavern. One of 
the thirteen year old girls screamed when one drunk grabbed her  rear.  Marie 
threw  a  pop  bottle at the man who in turn threw himself  through  a  wall. 
Police and ambulances were eventually called and when the dust  settled,  two 
men  including Mr.  Black were arrested and all of the girls were  in  tears. 
Jessica  forgave her father the next day,  but Marie refused to allow her  to 
contact him.  A court order was issued to Mr.  Black not to initiate  contact 
and he was placed on suspended sentence for two years.
 "Damn it," Mr.  Black said and headed back to the office after fixing up the 
messes.
 The phone was ringing and his message machine was blinking. "Black here," he 
answered. He was hoping that it would be his daughter.
 "Mr. Black," an elderly voice said, "is that you?"
 "Yes of course. What can I do you for?"
 "I'm  afraid  my toilet has overrun,  Mr.  Black.  I fear I  may  need  your 
services."
 "Which suite are you in please? I'll be right there."
 "I'm having a Tupperware party tonight and this just won't do, you know."
 Mr. Black hung up the phone and grabbed a snake, plunger, mop and bucket. He 
didn't need to hear anymore about suite numbers.  Mrs.  Morning was in  Suite 
109.  Just inside the back door.  "A few more minutes won't spoil it for  the 
guests," he laughed to himself and closed the bathroom door behind him. After 
the  work  he had already done tonight,  he didn't want to wear  himself  out 
without a break first.
 Sarah  Hamilton was seven years old.  She lived with her parents on  a  farm 
outside of Matawa,  Ontario.  Her brothers were all older and worked with her 
father  raking hay,  and feeding the livestock.  Her mother kept  house,  but 
always  found  time  for Sarah between ringing out clothes  or  kneading  the 
bread.  Sarah's mother gave Sarah a large sketch pad with several thin sticks 
of charcoal for her birthday.  Sarah sat outside with her new gift and stared 
wide  eyed at the large maple tree in her back yard.  Her brothers had  built 
and  since abandoned a beautiful tree fort some thirty feet up in  the  lofty 
branches,  safe from dogs, skunks and little sisters. Sarah sat staring up at 
the tree fort and dreamed of living there,  free from the world's noises  and 
busyness.   Free  from  chores,   free  from  school,  free  from  rules  and 
restrictions.  She  would  be as free as the birds and animals  who  are  the 
fort's neighbouring tenants.  And even though she would grow up,  marry, have 
children,  be  widowed,  and  move  into what most would  consider  to  be  a 
claustrophobic  cage  of an apartment,  Sarah Hamilton Morning  would  always 
remember that feeling of freedom that she dreamed of on that summer's day  65 
years ago.
 Mr.  Black entered Mrs.  Morning's apartment pushing his cart full of  tools 
and accessories.
 "Good Evening,  Mrs. Morning," Mr. Black said, "what seems to be the trouble 
tonight?"
 "As you can see my good fellow,  there is a terrible problem with my toilet. 
I'm afraid that it has overfilled the pot and spilled onto my  flooring.  I'm 
having a Tupperware Party tonight and I'd hate for the water to distract."
 "Of course, Mrs. Morning," Mr. Black said and set about clearing up the job. 
A  simple snake down the drain soon cleared the problem for the  time  being. 
While he was mopping up the spillage, an unusual feeling of conversationalism 
overcame  him.  Maybe  it  was  the depression of  losing  contact  with  his 
daughter,  or maybe it was his curiosity that got the better of him after the 
last seven years of hearing about it. What ever the reason, Mr. Black cleared 
his throat and smiled at Mrs. Morning.
 "You sure do have a lot of Tupperware Parties, Mrs. Morning," he said in the 
friendliest tone possible for him. "How have they been going, anyway?"
 Charlie  the fly climbed up the side of his jar and stuck one hairy leg  out 
of a tiny sharp edged air hole.  The wind from the open window rolled  across 
the  top of the jar and the breeze caused the sensitive follicles to  bristle 
with excitement.  It was a far cry from the past of free flying buzz  attacks 
on loose dog's snouts,  but it would have to do now.  Charlie dropped back to 
the  bottom of the jar,  not bothering to walk along the dung  stained  walls 
anymore.
 "Coffee?  Mr.  Black." Mrs. Morning smiled at his question. She had realized 
long  ago  that  she  was something of a  curiosity  amongst  the  staff  and 
residents  alike.  What  with  her  reclusive  lifestyle,  her  once  a  week 
deliveries of groceries,  and the occasional special courier delivery from  a 
certain company specializing in air tight plastic containers .  Mrs.  Morning 
had  often thought about the paradox of the Tupperware  dish;  how  something 
that  creates  a  positively and purely stagnant  environment,  void  of  any 
newness of air or moisture,  no revitalizing stimuli or invigorating elixir - 
how  can  an  environment of critical and  severe  deprivations  foster  such 
amazing freshness in its captive product? It is by it's own cloister, capable 
of  sustaining vitality.  Preservation  though  limitation.  How?  Why?  Mrs. 
Morning loved her Tupperware and everything it had come to represent. And so, 
as  she smiled at Mr.  Black's question regarding her parties,  she  felt  it 
unnecessary to explain it to him in so many words. She handed him his coffee, 
black, and opened up the door to her studio.
 "You  see,  Mr.  Black.  When I throw a Tupperware Party,  this is where  it 
happens."
 Mrs. Morning gestured around the room with her hands in the air. Surrounding 
them  both  on all sides of the small chamber were beautifully  hand  painted 
water  colours.  Images  of  butterflies  on  dandelions,  candy  apples  and 
balloons;   landscapes  of  impossible  waterfalls  crashing  over  rocks  of 
impossible  size  and structure.  Everywhere you  turned,  Mrs.  Morning  had 
displayed her impressions of freedom and freewill.  Pictures lay about of old 
barnyards  and hay mows,  sweet strawberry fields lying upon hilltops in  the 
mist,  finally, one small painting caught the eye of Mr. Black. It was a self 
portrait  of  Mrs.  Morning  as she was when she was  seven  years  old.  She 
appeared  sitting in a giant treefort emanating from within a majestic  maple 
tree.  She was wearing a smile on her face and a straw hat in her  hair.  Mr. 
Black began to cry.
 "So you see,  Mr.  Black," Mrs.  Morning said, " even though I am old and am 
not  visited;  and I live in a tiny place where the toilet leaks,  I  am  not 
fully  here.  Most  evenings  I  am disappeared.  Most evenings  I  am  at  a 
Tupperware Party far away."
 Mr.  Black stared at the small girl in the image. He saw his own little girl 
sitting there too.  He missed her terribly and the tears were coming so  fast 
now that he could no longer focus on the painting.
 "Thank you Mrs. Morning," he managed and tried for the door.
 "No. Thank you. For your time, and for joining me at my party."
 Don Black pulled the phone from its cradle and dialed his daughter's number. 
The two year suspended sentence was nearly over,  and regardless,  he  didn't 
care anymore about bars,  cells or anything else.  He needed to speak to  his 
little girl.  He needed to tell her that he loved her.  He needed to see  her 
again.  The phone began to ring and his heart began to beat again. Soon, very 
soon he would live again.
 Mrs.  Morning tidied up her place after Mr.  Black had left.  He forgot  his 
equipment but she knew he had more important things on his mind right now. It 
was getting late for her,  so she decided to call it a night.  She rinsed out 
her  brushes and packed up her sketch pads.  She gathered up her  many  paint 
cakes  and  placed them all,  protectively and  lovingly,  inside  their  own 
separate Tupperware dish. Safe and sound inside. Just like she was.

                                          Copyright Mark Oliver February 1996

 Mark Oliver lives and writes in Brockville, Ontario. He eats three squares a 
day and never has leftovers.


= THE NEXT ISSUE ============================================================


 The next issue of "Twilight World",  Volume 4 Issue 3, is to be released mid 
May 1996. It will be uploaded to the FTP sites mentioned further down.
 The next issue will feature, probably, the following stories.

 TRACKS
 by Michaela Croe

 OBVIOUSLY INFLUENCED BY THE DEVIL TOO - THE SEVEN GATES OF HELL
 by Richard Karsmakers

 And more, most likely.


= SOME GENERAL REMARKS ======================================================


 DESCRIPTION

 "Twilight World" is an on-line magazine aimed at everybody who is interested 
in any sort of fiction - although it usually tends to concentrate on fantasy-
and science-fiction, often with the odd bit of humour thrown in.
 Its  main source is an Atari ST/TT/Falcon disk magazine by the name  of  "ST 
NEWS" which publishes computer-related articles as well as fiction. "Twilight 
World"  mostly consists of fiction featured in "ST NEWS" so far,  with  added 
stories submitted by "Twilight World" readers.

 SUBMISSIONS

 If you've written some good fiction and you wouldn't mind it being published 
world-wide,  you can mail it to me either electronically or by standard mail. 
At all times do I reserve the right not to publish submissions.  Do note that 
submissions  on disk will have to use the MS-DOS or Atari  ST/TT/Falcon  disk 
format on 3.5" Double-or High-Density floppy disk.  Provided sufficient  IRCs 
are  supplied  (see below),  you will get your disk back with  the  issue  of 
"Twilight World" on it that features your fiction. Electronic submittees will 
get an electronic subscription if so requested.
 At all times, please submit straight ASCII texts without any special control 
codes whatsoever, nor right justify or ASCII characters above 128. Please use 
*asterisks*  to emphasise text if needed,  start each paragraph with  a  one-
space indent,  don't include empty lines between each paragraph, don't use an 
extra space after a period, and use "-" instead of "--" (that's the "Twilight 
World"  house style).  Also remember the difference between  possessives  and 
contractions, only use multiple question marks when absolutely necessary (!!) 
and never use other than one (.) or three (...) periods in sequence.

 COPYRIGHT

 Unless  specified along with the individual stories,  all  "Twilight  World" 
stories are copyrighted by the individual authors but may be spread wholly or 
separately  to  any  place - and indeed into any other  magazine  -  provided 
credit is given both to the original author and "Twilight World".

 CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS

 I prefer electronic correspondence,  but regular stuff (such as  postcards!) 
can  be sent to my regular address.  If you expect a reply please supply  one 
International Reply Coupon (available at your post office), *two* if you live 
outside  Europe.   If  you  want  your  disk(s)  (if  any)  returned,  add  2 
International  Reply  Coupons  per disk (and one extra if  you  live  outside 
Europe).  Correspondence failing these guidelines will be read (and  perused) 
but not replied to.
 The address:

 Richard Karsmakers
 P.O. Box 67
 NL-3500 AB Utrecht
 The Netherlands

 Email r.c.karsmakers@stud.let.ruu.nl
 (This should be valid up to the summer of 1996 at least)

 WHERE TO GET "TWILIGHT WORLD"

 The current list of FTP sites where "Twilight World" may be obtained is:

 Server www.hials.no         (This server specification changed January 1996)
 Directory pub/twilight.world/
 ftp://www.hials.no/pub/twilight.world/

 Server etext.archive.umich.edu
 Directory pub/Zines/Twilight_World/
 ftp://etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Zines/Twilight_World/

 Server ftp.southwind.net
 Directory users/p/python/tworld/
 ftp://ftp.southwind.net/users/p/python/tworld/

 And the following html page can be referred to, too:

 http://arrogant.itc.icl.ie/TwilightWorld/

 The latest three issues can be requested with me personally if you email and 
ask.

 PHILANTROPY

 If  you like "Twilight World",  a spontaneous burst of philantropy aimed  at 
the  postal address mentioned above would be very  much  appreciated!  Please 
send cash only;  any regular currency will do.  Apart from keeping  "Twilight 
World" happily afloat,  it will also help me to keep my head above water as a 
student of the English Teacher's Course at Utrecht University.  If  donations 
reach  sufficient height they will secure the existence of  "Twilight  World" 
after my studies have been concluded.  If not...then all I can do is hope for 
the best.
 Thanks!

 DISCLAIMER

 All authors are responsible for the views they express. Also, The individual 
authors are the ones you should sue in case of copyright infringements!

 OTHER ON-LINE MAGAZINE BLURBS

 INTERTEXT  is an electronically-distributed fiction magazine  which  reaches 
over  a thousand readers on five continents.  It publishes fiction  from  all 
genres, from "mainstream" to Science Fiction, and everywhere in between.
 It  is published in both ASCII and PostScript (laser  printer)  formats.  To 
subscribe,  send mail to jsnell@ocf.berkeley.edu.  Back issues are  available 
via anonymous FTP at network.ucsd.edu.

 ESCENE is a yearly electronic anthology of the Internet's best short fiction 
and authors from existing electronic magazines. It is available via the World 
Wide  Web  and  in ASCII,  PDF and PostScript formats via  anonymous  FTP  at 
ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/eScene/>.  Contact series editor J.  Carlson at email 
address kepi@halcyon.com. The URL is http://www.etext.org/Zines/eScene/.

 EOF


