I’m basically James Bond
October 30th, 2008 by Jenny Crimp; no comments
My family, Kris, and probably Alex and Rebecca managed to get tickets to the 2010 winter olympics in Vancouver. We are in an indoor arena that looks remarkably like Sylvester Middle School’s gym. There is no real seating because the bleachers are all folded up, and we must back up against the wall so as not to get hit by the athletes warming up. We are going to watch several events at once, which probably includes figure skating ,curling, and basketball. The whole thing is very disorganized, just asking for disaster.
I decide to go get some snacks from a vendor, and when I go to pay, I realize that I only have Canadian currency- but wait, that’s actually good because we’re in Canada! The change I get though, is not Canadian, it is in my own currency, (I am from a tiny remote country in Asia that no one knows about.) To give me five dollars in change, the vendor ripped off a quarter of a twenty dollar bill, which is totally legit.
As I make my way back to my family I realize that I’ve been discovered, since I’m a spy and no one is supposed to know where I am from. I am supposed to be keeping an eye on the assassins stationed throughout the arena, but the vendor has just given me away.
Now the high speed foot chase begins, at least ten armed assailants come out of the crowd after me, and I must run away because for some reason I’m completely unarmed. I manage to lose most of them in the crowd, and knock one or two unconscious with a karate kick to the head, and when another comes after me with an iron pipe in the parking garage I manage to steal it from him and run away (I didn’t feel like really injuring him, I suppose). I throw the pipe out the window as I climb out and up the fire escape. There is only one attacker left, the boss, and I know he’s not far behind.
My head is spinning from the never-ending chase and attacks, I just want to go home to my family. I duck in and out of rooms in the hotel attached to the parking garage, until finally I lose the boss and find my husband and two year old son in one of the rooms. My son thinks of me as “daddy” and my husband as “mommy”, because, even though we’re both secret agents, my husband is much more maternal than I am. We are so tired, so we all change into pajamas and climb into bed. It’s so nice to fall asleep with my family, but of course I sense the enemy approaching, and must leap out of bed before he finds us, and lure him back to the parking garage for the final battle. We begin a violent fight that I know could go on forever, because neither of us will ever run out of energy because I’m really just asleep.
I don’t even know.
October 10th, 2008 by Jenny Crimp; one comment
I am in a hurry to get up the Ave, because I am going to visit Kris. He has just moved in to a new place, which is located on the third or fourth floor of a building, but it is only accessible by climbing up the fire escape. The fire escape is semi-enclosed, more like a multi-leveled play structure or tree house, and there are multiple people living in it. This is not strange at all. On the way down I run into one of Kris’ room mates, or former room mate, and I tell her I am looking for Kris. She begins to tell me something unrelated that is of little importance. Kris comes part way down the fire escape to meet me. We climb the rest of the way into the apartment. This is the first time I’ve seen it, and it’s quite fancy and spacious, with nice views from its floor-to-ceiling windows. It is dark and wintery outside. Kris goes behind the bar to retrieve something, I greet the new cats and small color-changing dog. Someone’s father is there, and I ask him about what his child is up to, but it turns out he is not that person’s father, and he asks me a question I probably shouldn’t answer honestly.
We have to leave because some oppressive force has become aware of some holes in the universe we’ve been using to move about from one dimension to another. We have to go protect our people. Oddly, we still feel residual happiness and confidence from our world; we don’t feel as terrified and threatened as you would expect. This may be because we are now very small and have the power to become invisible as we wish- I think we may be rabbits and the oppressive force in the other dimension is a pack of highly intelligent, vicious dogs. We slip back and forth between worlds easily because we are so small and know where the holes are located. The holes are actually cuts, made with a knife, and I think of trying to ziplock them closed behind us, though that isn’t very likely to work. It’s regrettable that we won’t have access to both worlds anymore, but it’s too dangerous to leave them open.
My Mother’s Wedding
October 9th, 2008 by Jenny Crimp; no comments
Several friends and I are hanging out on a boardwalk with a huge roller rink/dance floor in the center. I really want to go join the dance party going on in the middle, but out of everyone present, including Rebecca and Rod, Nate is extremely timid and lacking in positive social exposure. I decide this has to change, and pull him out onto the dance floor. Soon another girl joins us, who may be a friend of a friend of Nate’s or a complete stranger. They dance together and get really into it just as the entire dance floor empties out. Though they are the only ones left, they still make requests to the DJ and dance by themselves. Rebecca and I briefly debate if we should tell them they look silly, but quickly decide that they are having too much fun to care. Besides, I am late for my mother’s wedding, which is way over on the Peninsula.
I am one of the bridesmaids, along with Laura and her friend Michelle. I wear black and they wear white. My mother is wearing a red satin gown and a white shawl. It is extremely cold out, and we are in a hurry to get started, because our permit only gives us a time slot of one hour. The permit turns out to be for the 8 foot-wide space between a nice old chapel and a brick wall. Laura, Michelle and I squeeze our way through the crowd to the front, where my Mother is standing, waiting for my Dad to walk down the aisle. (Just for the record, my mom and dad are still married, never divorced). It’s not that they are renewing their vows, they’re just getting married again. Before we begin, I have to take off several un-matching sweaters that are layered between the clothes I need to be wearing. I end up with one side still stuck in the sweaters and one side completely disentangled from all clothes and freezing. Just then, a police officer pushes his way to the front of the crowd and says, “So before we begin, just so we’re all clear, you guys are registered voters of Kitsap County, right?” My mom tells him that they aren’t, and he tells them that the law will not permit them to get married until they register to vote in Kitsap County. This also includes gaining your Kitsap County citizenship, which requires an application and a three month waiting period. My mom isn’t that angry, but apparently we are still in a hurry because we all jog down the street to the town’s post office, which doubles as the sheriff’s department and has a notary. It is in a trailer home, with wainscoting on the walls.
hang gliding, continued:
October 6th, 2008 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am at a hang glider/pilot training school. A man walks up screaming continuously in monotone. He says something like, “I WAS A NAVY PILOT A LONG TIME AGO AND I USED TO FLY LOTS OF PLANES AND I WE WOULD FLY AROUND FOR HOURS AND HOURS AND I WANT TO FLY A PLANE I WOULD LIKE INSTRUCTION AND TO RENT A PLANE”, as he walks, determined, straight towards the small instructional plane. He is wearing an astronaut suit. As soon as he reaches the plane he starts to take off, and the instructor only barely has time to get in.
For some reason I am clinging to the top of the plane in my hang glider as it takes off. He flies around for a while doing loops, figure-8s, and spirals. The instructor is apologizing the whole time, “I’m sorry, they usually perform better than this!”. At the top of one of the loop-de-loops I finally let go. A woman screams. I have nearly no airspeed, but soon am plummeting towards the ground very fast. I recover from the stall and pull up just in time to feel the ground scrape against my toes, but am too ambitions in my attempt to gain altitude. A gust of wind from behind reduces my airspeed and again I find myself quickly approaching the ground. I don’t have enough room to recover, and fall the 30 feet directly onto the pavement below.
Batman is within us all
October 6th, 2008 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I have acquired what turns out to be a few extremely valuable books at the rotary auction without realizing it. Their worth is brought to my attention to a distant family friend during a party we are having at our Victorian mansion. He tries to buy them for a few dollars, then tries to sexually molest some party guests when that fails. I know I must get the books to our other mansion, across the city, so I dash up to the hang-glider launching pad on our roof. He realizes my intentions and chases me. As I grab a hang glider and hurl myself over the precariously over-hung launching pad into the midnight air, I can see him behind me fumbling with a more complicated flying device.
The glider is unnecessarily long, pitch-black, and shaped like a bat wing. I am almost invisible in the night as long as I stay away from street lights and tall buildings. Behind me, my nemesis has finally figured out how to work his jet-powered hang glider and is quickly gaining on me. As he approaches my glider, he turns around for a second to adjust the jets and loses sight of me. Panicking, he pulls up suddenly to get a wider view of the area. I am invisible clinging to the top of a speeding bus. As I let go my momentum carries me up to the roof of my second mansion. Figuring it out, my nemesis begins his rapid, over-powered descent and the glider explodes a few meters from the landing pad, throwing me against the floor skidding towards the opposite edge of the roof. I catch a railing just in time and slip off the roof so that I am dangling by just a few fingers; the flaming wreckage of the jet-powered glider tumbles off the precipice over my head.
I pull myself up and, brushing off some dust and dirt that had accumulated on my suit-vest, wonder why the roof hadn’t been swept that evening. I step over the charred, shapeless corpse of my adversary and descend into my mansion.