Excerpt: Ponce and the Pauper

Gutts, J. (1977). Ponce and the pauper.
Heritageville: Orville (out of print).

[W]alking down the dark, sketchy street, Ian noticed Elise was no longer by his side.
  G–d damn.

  He turned around and saw her off the footpath reaching into her purse. Facing her stood a shifty man in tattered clothes, staring at the purse like a vulture.
  Slowly, but with purpose, Ian walked up to them with his eyes firmly affixed on the rotter and came to stand facing him without a blink.
  Elise dropped some coins in the sod’s cupped hands, but Ian’s stare-down was enough to have the man back off and wander back into the darkness.

  “What the hell do you think you were doing?”
  “He said he needed change.”
  “Do you know where we are?”
  “What?!”
  “This is Ponce. After dark.”
  “He said he needed change.”
  “This isn’t Woodlawn Avenue where you can hand out a tuppence to kindly pensioners. People are mugged, stabbed and raped here. Often. You cannot afford to be ignorant about putting yourself in danger.”
  “But—”
  “Shut up. There’s no argument.”

  In silence they made their way to the Concourse.
  From the corner of her eyes Elise peered at him with her nose in the air, waiting.

  Without turning his head, Ian muttered, “For such a smart girl, you don’t even have the common sense to be contrite...”

“Il Furioso”

Stratum XXVII exercise (reconstruction)

“Character Assassin”

Classic City Arcade 1014

P.B. Array pummeling the riffraff at Mack’s... Sarge enjoying a weekend with the old lady away… JZ painting the windows pink… Lovely Lola listening to the whistling… Mr Dutch noticing the leaves changing...

Hva er Vardøger prøver å si?

In this scenario, we make sight of a person we know as “Smith,” from some distance. He may be half a block down, or perhaps across the street. Now Smith isn’t someone we would encounter often, even if we were to repeat the very same footsteps every day. Smith is barely an acquaintance — a friend of a friend, perhaps. We might run into him once, maybe twice in a decade, even in our medium-sized city.
   But as we near Smith and he comes into better focus, we notice he looks less and less like the “Smith” we know with every step. As we catch up and pass the gentleman we realise we’ve mistaken him for someone else, and that he bears little resemblance to our “Smith.”
   It is then that we turn a blind corner and run into who, but the very same Smith of whom we were given some sort of Fortean “advance notice.”
   What are the odds of this happening? More than once, as it has?
   It appears that “Fake Smith” was a premonition given to us in the form of a fading Doppelgänger — a “preview” of the real Smith.
   Again, odds are stacked against this happening more than once in any given person’s lifetime. If it is not an omen bestowed from the beyond, could it be some latent form of “psychic radar” yet undeveloped in the recesses of the mind of current-day homo sapiens?

The Conk, She Weeps

Inonotus dryadeus

Wedgwood Refreshment

An early stratum refreshment common from Sheffield to Avon, quenching the thirst of cavorting youngsters in the summer sun.
  Was the added sugar necessary for youth motivation?
  Probably not — the naturally adventurous spirit was not yet quashed at that time.
  The child’s innate vigour is more important than the beverage he grasps in his hand.