That Eve of All Saints, Halloween, was the worst time of the year for George. It was then that he was reminded of just how alone he was, nothing but bones without that magical element that translates will into motion. He was forced to sit propped in his little stone niche in the wall, watching impassively as the living strolled by. No one decorated any pumpkins with him. No one invited him to the costume balls. And saddest of all, no one offered to have him along on their trick or treating romps. That was bitter. They'd whisk on by, winsome witches, ghastly ghosts and gruesome ghouls, eating the candy they'd collected, and tossing the empty wrappers straight into his rib cage. How awful and cruel life had been. How awful and cruel was death.

Story #301

Happy Halloween everyone!

Original Post:
It's Halloween, and time for some Halloween stories. As always, I ask my visitors to contribute their instant or not-so-instant stories, and I will follow up with mine on Monday. Now I'm going to go and watch my Dark Shadows dvds and get in the mood. Also, have a look at Lula's poem, if you need some mood-setting help.

For those of you stopping by here the first time, I post story-photo combinations on Monday through Friday, and on weekends turn the storywriting over to the visitors. All story contributions are reposted later at indeterminacies.blogspot.com along with a link to the contributor.

What was I going to do? My story was already late. If I didn't write one soon, my readers would be disappointed, perhaps even abandon me for more interesting bloggers, and I don't know if I could ever come to terms with that happening. That's why I decided to consult that little known bureaucracy, the Ministry of Imagination. They're there to help, or they say they are. From outside the architecture looks elegant, yes, even inviting. Inside, my footsteps echoed eerily in the empty, impersonal halls, causing my unease to build. Finally I came to a heavy wooden door. It opened by itself. Inside the antechamber it was awful! It was crowded with characters sitting or milling about, empty stares and blank expressions on invisible faces. They looked like stereotypes out of a b-movie or dime novel that never get life breathed into them. They murmured clichés under their breath, and the collective sound of it would have been bad enough, if not for the laconic female voice droning from the speakers, calling out random numbers every few seconds. Numbers that no one apparently held, for none of the stereotypes reacted. I took a slip of paper from the take-a-number machine. It bore the digits 00. The haggard, unshaven schematization of a drunkard swooped in close to me, too close, and smelling of cheap liquor. He began a high-pitched, screechy laugh. "Every one draws zero!" he declared between phrases of the horrid sound.

I couldn't stay in that room. I would suffocate. I quickly scrawled the letter N in front of the double null and added two exclamation points - "NOO!!" it now read - then crumbled it up and threw it onto the floor - my protest to bureaucracy. I exited the anteroom through the same door I entered yet found myself standing not in the hall from whence I had arrived, but in the office of a ministry official. It was the Chief Imaginator. He appeared indifferent at seeing me. Except for the bored "state-your-business" glance he cast in my direction, he seemed hardly to notice me at all.

"I have to know about my application!" I exclaimed, aware that I must have sounded a little too apprehensive, too desperate. That could ruin my chances. I tried again calmly: "I applied for an idea two days ago but haven't yet received an inspiration."

"How do you intend to use this idea?" the Imaginator inquired while stifling a yawn.

"A story. I want to write a story, a special story. A masterpiece, perhaps. The world needs more masterpieces."

"The world needs more masterpieces," he repeated copying my intonation, but only to taunt me. It didn't sound as if he agreed. "From you?" he added rhetorically, after an effectful pause. The Imaginator drew a folder from a tower of documents on his desk, thumbed silently through the papers, then spread the entire sheaf out flat for me to see.

"Why, they're all blank!" I told him, so shocked I even forgot what I'd come for.

"Regrettably, I must disappoint you," the Imaginator stated with a subtle smirk, "but as you can see, we're all out of ideas. They've all been used up. I couldn't even tell you what color they were. Good day."

"But you have to help me!" I implored, leaning forward over the top of his desk, "I have no idea what I'm going to do otherwise." The futility of what I'd said dawned on me like the sun going down. He was waiting for me to leave.

"Here," the Imaginator said, moving suddenly to retrieve something from his desk, which he then tossed into my hands, "have a light bulb."

Story #300

The 300th story is the hardest to write, and I don't think it's turning out the way it should. So I want to sleep on it. I can at least direct you to a cool site I found yesterday making lots of wicked points: http://deadguylives.blogspot.com. Have a look!

This was where they came to her, those fantasy friends she lured out of her imagination. A 50 mile drive from the crowd and concrete-metal of the city brought her to her place where sky and horizon lulled her to dream. A man from Venus met her there once and swept her away in blue arms to Saturn for a night of gyrations on the ever-spinning rings. Once, in a summer shower, a cloud creature dropped down out of the heavens, to wrap himself around her, engulfing her in a fog of total sensation. Another time a tree man sauntered along, dragging his roots behind him, and invited her to climb all over him. She fell asleep, cradled gently in his soft branches. There were grass gnomes that grew up to her size, and lanky-limbed colossi folding down to meet her. They were fun, all of her fantastical trysts. Now she heard footsteps in the meadow behind. She turned and saw a man, masculine aesthetic the twin of her ideal. He smiled and she beaconed. She wondered vaguely, as his kiss began, "Is this one reality?"

Story #299

I'm just not going to have time to put up a reasonable story today :-( Please forgive me. I'll be back tomorrow. Life has been just a little too hectic.

It was boring at the bottom of the sea so when Chris Crab spied the deep sea diver offering card lessons he raised both claws and snapped them excitedly. Chris Crab and Diver Dan return to shore, where a small card table awaited propped in the sand, the deck already shuffled and ready to deal. For practical reasons they decided against Poker, when it turned out that Chris could never hold more than five cards at once. They'd drop down and drift away in the sea water lapping the shore. That wasn't regulation. They decided finally on Black Jack, and despite the crab's apparent denseness in grasping the rules he could at least grasp the cards. What laughs they had as Chris mistook the Nine of Spades for the Jack of Clubs! Of course Diver Dan wasn't doing this for his health. He knew there were sunken treasures out there, and what better way to get them than duping unsuspecting sea creatures in a friendly game of cards. But the waves did not flow as Diver Dan expected. With a click of the claws, Chris Crab cleaned him out. Diver Dan lost several thousand dollars, the deed to his houseboat, and his waterproof watch. Chris had had lessons before. The sailors of the downed treasure ship, lonely for a mascot, christened him Crabby Card Shark and taught him all their tricks.

Story #298

Thanks for all the stories! They have been reposted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com!

Lula gave online kissing lessons. And it didn't cost much either. Just one bus token per lesson. The traffic to Lula's blog increased exponentially. Soon you could enter words like kiss, pretty, and bus token in Google and Lula was number one. Everyone lived happily ever after. The boys, because of the great kisses. Lula, because she didn't really have to kiss them. They just pressed their lips to the monitor, while she looked back at them saying, "Is that the best you can do?" And the bus drivers lived happily ever after because the buses were no longer so crowded.

Story #297

Note from Indeterminacy: This post is dedicated to the very lovely Lula, who asks the question "Am I Worth A Bus Token?" How many bus tokens am I bid for a kiss from Lula?

P.S. Lula's photo post is a sly response to Story #296 (page down or click here).

Come, gather round my picture. Let me tell you a story. You're attracted to me, aren't you? The seconds go by and you're still studying my features and imagining the body hidden from sight. You little devils! You don't have to admit to anything. It will be our personal secret. But I wanted to tell you a story. A story of the destiny of one who found my photo in the vast labyrythal synapses of the Internet. He looked into my static eyes - yes - I know I'm a digital photo and that my eyes and all the rest of me are static, unchanging. I can live with that. If I am not evolving, at least everything around me is. And that is fascinating. When the collective pixels of my gaze met the searching eyes of my finder, something happened to him. It would be a cliché to say he fell in love with me at first sight, but he seems to be the clichéd type, and that's exactly what his passions forced upon him. Before that moment ended he stood up, began pacing nervously up and down his room, then pushed against the door and stepped into the world in search of me. He boarded a bus, gambling that the increased mobility would necessarily assist our paths in intersecting. It won't. Maybe it will? But first his face will have grown gaunt and haggard from this tedious turning from face to face, wherever he encounters the features of a girl, a hope ending each time in disappointment. His eyes are darting about right now from side to side desperate for the brief respite of someone potentially me. Where he is? He's already drifted further from his point of origin than he could ever hope to recover in a week's journey by the same buses. That's really it - the story, I mean. It will end eventually in some tragedy, when his money runs out, when his credit cards cease to function, when he no longer remembers who he is. I can already see clouds of panic forming in his eyes at this very moment. How do I know that when I'm here with you? He printed me out on a scrap of paper, and looks at me when no one else is around.

Story #296

Again I have to say I'm sorry, because I don't have anything I feel is good enough to post today. But I would like to share a few links with you like last week. First off, just now I found some photos which turned out to be sketches, aesthetically rendered fantasy drawings. They were labelled with the Web address www.ellione.it. Perhaps finding this place was a coincidence, perhaps synchronicity. I went there to look around and found linked at the page photography, cute artwork, even a few small films. The site(s) are in Italian and English. Tip: There are some very pretty girls waiting under "Noches de Verano"

I may not have a story to post today, but someone else did. This is at the blog "Life Inspires" which I mentioned last week. Sylphdine's story "The Dread" really surprised me and I recommend it to all of you. It's something like Kafka meets Ionesco. Wow.

P.S. How about stopping by Lula's brand new blog called "Growing up Lula". She just left a sweet comment at my last story, which is how I found out about her. I think her first post is great.

Hal was surprised to see the girl next to him showing her tongue. "Yes," he thought to himself, "girls' tongues are very useful." "Excuse me," he imagined saying to her, "I brought some letters with me to mail. Could I trouble you to lick the stamps for me?" And the quick lilt in her voice answering "Sure!" He thought of the aural art of operas, and the tones of an aria shaped by a woman's tongue. How delightful those trills are to the ears. Invite her home! To close my eyes and dream while she marvels at my stamp collection... I could lay a bowl of microwaved milk before her on the table, and she would incline her head to it, lapping up the warm white liquid with the short, swift motions of a cat. Or to take her by the hand, lead her along with me to that unpleasant biddy who meets all smiles with lips frozen in frown. "There she is. That's the woman. Now! Stick out your tongue at her!" And afterwards, as a reward, share with her an ice cream cone bursting with scoops of lemon-vanilla. The thrill of our tongues accidentally brushing! But then his thoughts were the once still waters of a pond in the aftermath of a meteor slammed into its center. His hands shook and his mouth began to foam as he collapsed in an epileptic trance of oral fantasy. The therapy for curing tongue fetishes had not yet reached perfection.

Story #295

Bill had a strange dream, bursts of red and yellow light flashing all around him. When he awoke he was a mushroom in a pleasant patch of soil, near a tree and a running brook. Two lady mushrooms sprang up beside him, beginning a conversation.

"You can be very proud," they told him in unison.

"But why? But what?" he answered, naturally disorientated by the transformation.

"You're bright and brilliant and happy birthday," their voices came, almost a song.

"It's my birthday," he repeated slowly, to see if it might mean anything to him.

"You've just joined us in the Bohemian forest." Their voices again, reciting, as a classroom of children might with one voice tell their teacher, "One plus one is two."

"I've always wanted to have a Slavic soul."

"And now you're part of the collective."

"I'll have ideas! I'll be inspired!"

"If you don't and you aren't, we'll assist!"

He closed his eyes and mused. Under the congenial auspices of the femmes a la fungi he felt inspired. He had ideas. Fairy tales flashed before him. Bouncing and spinning notions swirled into imagery unimagined in his usual trains of thought. Ideas couldn't rush in fast enough before other ideas pounced upon them, merging into a new, ever-evolving inspiration.

"Eureka!" he cried in a sort of mental orgasm of aesthetic certainty. The girl mushrooms applauded. The idea, the forest, and his existence as a Slavic mushroom were the thoughts immortalized in his mind as the Czech mycologist harvested him for his fungi stew, over which he was certain to dream up some great new work of art.

Story #294

All contributions have been reposted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com.

Original post: This will be the big mushrom madness weekend, and is of course dedicated to one of my most faithful visitors, Mushroom. So let's all write some great stories for this picture! I'll post mine on Monday.

Merv the mechanic had recurring hallucinations, but he lived with the condition because his visions depicted a beauty of tender age, flitting and dancing about. He labored his years repairing motors that had lost their youth, glancing up with middle-aged eyes to breath a glimpse of his transient companion. She assisted him often, guiding his hand to a tool he might need to loosen some rusting piece of metal. Sometimes, even, his eyes followed her instead of his work, but his masterful hands performed on their own, without visual direction. Screwdrivers, clamps, hammers and wrenches were pleasant to hold in the presence of her grease-stained allures. And when she joined him during lunch break on the back seat of a car he felt oh so youthful again. Merv returned home each night to his corpulent spouse, his blood afire for her undesirability. His passioned inclination to satisfy her never waned, and her responding smile was the same smile she had given him in the years of her girlhood, once again the twin of his daily vision.

Story #293

Due to time constraints this week I'll have to skip posting a story today. It always makes me feel guilty when I don't post a story, because I know there are so many of you who stop by regularly. Today I don't feel as guilty because I found three new blogs I'd like to share with you.

Blog 1: AriaFritta - Immagini (sur)reali da qui e da altrove
It's in Italian and English and features some wonderful abstract-surrealistic photography, with descriptions in the aforementioned languages. I do so love what they're doing. There's lots of creativity going on there.

Blog 2: Life Inspires - Impressions on the Way to Nowhere
This is a brand new blog I found at Blog Advance, and it promises to be good. It's written by a Sylphidine who lives among us, observing us as we travel from point A to point B, in the busses and trains. Little vignettes out of complete lives. I'm eagerly looking forward to the next story, and wonder if I will be the observed one, as I ride the train to and from work each morning.

Blog 3: Stems of a Coffee Stained Canvas
Last but no way least: This blog paid me the compliment of linking to me, which is how I found it. And what I found was a world of counterculture cool, photography, painting, drawings, poetry and poetic prose that weave a web. There are strokes of eroticism living here and there in the archives, and lots of feeling, not always pretty, but honest emotions.

Maeva and Myrna raced to the 50 cent store for a pleasant afternoon romp, looking for trinkets to make themselves pretty. The Caribbean happy music playing over the speakers and the smiles of the friendly Jamaican at the register accompanied their romp through the shop. They rhythmed right past the usual fashion trash, hair pins and plastic jewels, and freestyled over to the kitchen selection. "But kitchens are for girls!" balked Maeva to Myrna who slyly raved "Ah, but kitchens are for grrrls!" Now the grrrl-minds grooved. They giggled at visions of night-long dances wrapped in aluminum foil and dish cloth headbands, and whistled out loud at the whim of tie-dyed aprons and unadorned backs. "Wouldn't we be delicious?" they seemed to wink at each other as devious ideas directed their fingers from item to item of conventional utensils that might be applied towards fun. They left in glee with pots on their heads. "I'm General Maeva of the grrrl army," Maeva saluted to Myrna, while Myrna licked her lips at the thought of how lethal a pot could be if needed. At home they modeled their new acquisitions and prepared to meet the boys. "Don't forget your spatula!" Myrna exclaimed, licking that half-smile again.

Story #292

Arnold's abode was haunted by a specter. She was a pretty one, too. As he puttered about his dwelling his eyes glimpsed flashes of attraction she seemed to present for his benefit - the tender outline of a hand, a bare shoulder, or the tempting impressions of loosely-covered breasts. Despite the visual suggestions, the entirety of her form remained shrouded in delightful mystery. He lay for her, feigning sleep in an unlit corner of his rooms, hoping she might hover in range of his touch, and - in the right moment - be drawn upon him. It never came to pass. And would he boldly charge the silhouette she presented him, he found an intangible nothingness where she had ineffably stood. Day and night she obsessed his imagination. He tried to meet her eyes, but obtained not even this slightest of satisfactions. It was as though she saw right through him. That in itself should not have surprised him, had his awareness encompassed the detail that he was the spirit, and she the flesh. True, she sensed a presence, but that was where it ended. No one ever told her about the old man who had lived in the apartment before her, and died of loneliness.

Story #291

Tina Dupuy (one of the funniest ladies in the world) contributed this photo. Thanks Tina!

The new reality sitcom was one of those brilliant ideas Tina thought up in her sleep. She dangled dozens of miniature Webcams from a fleet of helium-filed balloons that followed her around wherever she went. She brought her boyfriend Brian along as a living laugh track so that the comically-challenged would know when to laugh. Her dog Clyde played straight man, though he was quite a sit-up comedian in his private life. He sometimes disappeared for days on end, doing shows at pounds and other benefits, and occasionally rescuing cats trapped in trees, just like his hero Lassi would have done. Apart from being funny, the show had everything that an artfully lived real life could offer: drama, love, poignancy and great sex. It won dozens of Emmys, which Clyde invariably buried in Tina's back yard. The series was cancelled 11 seasons into its run, after global warming popped all the balloons. That's 77 in dog years.

Story #290

Thanks to everyone who contributed stories. They will be reposted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com. (I'm two months behind in selecting the monthly prizes - sorry. Will do that shortly). Incidentally, time picked up again. Just had to wind my watch.

Original post:
In case you haven't followed my last posts, time has been slowing down steadily at my side of the blog since sometime last week. Post showed up later and later, although to me it seemed like they were on time. According to my watch it just turned Saturday, so I decided to post the photo for the weekend story. However my calculations show that it should be Sunday at this time. Something strange has definitely transpired with the space-time continuum. It could be the Indeterminacy Nebula Tom & Icy mentioned in their comment. Or maybe it's that curse Mr. Bananas over at Pansifiles put on me. At this point I'd even believe that the ghost of Ambrose Bierce is involved.

P.S. For more story fun, go visit Michael at Ripple Me This and participate in the Friday Photo Fun.