George was methodical. He unpacked the grocery bag, item by item, and stacked the wares on the table. The cappuccino, the green beans, the mineral water, and everything else. It looked OK. His eyes darted back and forth running inventory on the products he was about to put away. He always performed this check, comparing his shopping list with the receipt and with the wares, to ascertain the sterling symmetry of his trip to the supermarket. That's when it struck him. A lady's head mingled among the items he'd purchased. It had eyes, a nose, supple red lips, and the pupils were trained right on him, tracking him as he paced nervously up and down the before the table. This threw his entire ordered system out the window. Wherever did the head come from? Once again he compared his documentation with the actual items. The paprika, the apricot jam, the milk, and everything else belonged. But not the head. No matter how he crunched the numbers, the head was always left over. He was in a state of immense agitation at the breakdown of his meticulousness, as he spied the suggestion of delicate, skin-colored fingers wiggling around below the head's chin. He let out a sudden shriek, jumping slightly in the air. He'd heard about ladyfingers, those sweet, finger-sized sponge cakes you served with coffee. He had selected a pastry to go with the cappuccino. Might they have been ladyfingers? He hurriedly packed his shopping into the cupboard. The head was relegated to the refrigerator, behind a melon, face turned inwards, away from the door. He did not want to see the eyes staring at him when he searched for a snack. George returned to the supermarket to post a notice on their bulletin board about a missing head. But he never went shopping there again.

Story #264

Special announcement: Sorry to take so long selecting the winners for June and July. There were so many story contributions in June, I decided to select two names (at random): Alix (again!) and Ariel. For July the winner is Jamie Dawn! Prize is one of my b+w prints in paper or digital form. I'll write to the respective winners tomorrow, but now it's late and I'm going to bed. Good night.

Alice, nymphal in size and litheness, was candy for connoisseurs of the lean. During her Sunday stroll in the park a dapper, doll-sized Teddy Bear darted across her path and into a clump of trees, bobbing left and right past slanting trunks.

"I'm bait!" his voice drifted back to her. She took off after him, hoping to catch and cuddle him. Her pursuit brought her into a dense sameness of shadowy green where she no longer saw any motion. She wandered along for a while, unsure in which direction the Teddy had vanished, until she came upon a clearing. In the clearing was a tree, and around the tree was dancing the Teddy, apparently waiting to be caught. "He's all mine!" she thought as she dashed under the hanging foliage, towards the hopping and skipping bundle of fluff.

"Eat me," said a cookie dangling seductively from one of the branches above her.

"Go ahead," said the Teddy, looking up at her, "It's a cookie tree." The aroma of freshly baked cookies drifted down to her nose. She took the cookie and began nibbling at it with increasing excitement. It was still warm!

"Why, these cookies are exquisite!" she exclaimed, enraptured by the taste.

"Thank you," said the tree. Meanwhile the Teddy bided his time, leaning against the tree trunk, glancing at his pocket watch.

"Eat me," said another cookie. And another. An entire chorus. The more cookies she ate, the fatter she got, until finally the tree was out of cookies.

"Dear me, I'm going to need new clothes," she said to herself, perceiving that her old blouse and skirt had burst into tatters under the stress of her new ampleness.

"You came to just the right place," the Teddy tossed in, "I'm a designer, specializing in costumes for fairy tales. But business has been bad of late. No more fairy tales." He shrugged and handed her his calling card, which she turned over in her chubby hands, studying the sleek, stylized lettering on the small rectangle: "Fashions of Theodore - Have Cookie - Will Crumble."

Story #263

Note from Indeterminacy: Isn't this the worst story I've posted yet? I feel I have to apologize for it. ;-)

I wanted to double dedicate this to Alix in Wunderland and to Alice in Wonderland or Not but it doesn't make sense to dedicate a story about an overweight Alice to an Alice and an Alix who appear in my fantasies as the slender nymphs of the before cookie Alice. (OK, I'll do it tentatively - but if there's any offense, let me know and I'll take it back).

All your stories will be reposted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com and tonight I will announce all the winners of the June and July contributions.

Erotian women were rumored to possess extraordinary beauty, but no one from the outside world had ever seen one of their faces. The tiny republic with ancient roots lay hidden in the Arabian peninsula, owing to an incredible labyrinth of coincidental sand dunes so elaborate that anyone venturing unawares towards the kingdom must surely have perished. The walled city was accidentally discovered by archaeologists excavating a series of antique statues in the region.

When King Asudem opened his land to tourism, men flocked over the border in droves to see the heralded beauties Erotia had to offer. But the King issued a decree that no woman of the Erotian lands should ever show her face to a non-Erotian. Feet were OK, legs and shoulders were also on the white list, even the midsection with its delicate navel and incurving lines. But not the head. It was a fair compromise, especially on the Erotian beaches, plus the King distracted the tourists with other sites of interests, the Museum of Sculptured Art, for example, where guests marveled at ancient relics of past millennia.

Regarding the quest for beauty, most visitors went home happy with the memory of smooth legs and huggable waists presented by the native females. It had been a stroke of genius of the Information Minister, spreading those rumors. No one would have come had they known the women were all descendants of Medusa.

Story #262

Note from Indeterminacy: Tomorrow I'll post a storyless photo for one and all to write their own stories to. For now, how about visiting Michael at blogin_idiot.blogspot.com who does the same thing on Fridays.

Suzanne was lying in her bathtub when they came, the alien soap beings from outer space. They smashed through the front door with tremendous force, those beings of solid, rock-hard, sun-baked soap. She put on a towel, while running out to see what had happened, saw them spreading out through the entire house. Stationed at windows. Blocking the doors. There was no way to get past them. Though small, the rectangular cakes of lye were a formidable group in centurial magnitude. "We take your planet house by house," they told her as they closed in, forcing her back into the bathroom. "This is house one," she heard continued. They rushed her, but she was able to slam and bolt the door in time. It held for as long as a bubble in a grease vat. With a collective whomp they splintered a hole through the door and in they streamed. She backed away until finally she was in the bathtub again, in a daze as they filled the room. When she looked out, the tub was surrounded by the ivory-white animate objects, cold, soapy countenances staring at her: "So this is human being," they said, "so this is girl." Initially the smooth marble sides of the tub seemed unscalable to them, but they swarmed and forced some of their number higher until their lathery mouths became visible over the rim. The first ones up pulled with them a towel for the rest to climb. Suzanne tensed. One by one they plopped into the water, were on her, trying to subdue her. She felt the slippery things touching her skin, all over her, sliding around in wild circles. It felt good, though she knew this might well be her last feeling. The soap beings reacted swiftly with the water. Suds formed, more and more, covering her. It felt so relaxing. Was this how one succumbed to them, as to a sweet poison bearing a final, pleasant sleep without dreams? She closed her eyes, brought her hands to her side and waited for the end. As the last bar of soap had completely dissolved, a still solitude prevailed. Suzanne was as surprised as the soap creatures must have been, considering they came from a planet with six suns and absolutely no water.

Story #261

I have no choice but to dedicate this to Little Bar of Soap.

It was like this, you see -- What? -- For the deposition? -- OK, my name is Matthew Lovings and I work as the security guard at the Young Fashions Boutique. That's how I first met her. She didn't have a head like other mannequins, but I believed in her. There was something special about the way she modeled those t-shirts. -- What it was? The body language, I suppose. She just seemed so inviting the way she stood there, arms hanging by her side and all. After noticing her, I started going to her during my daily lunch break. I'd sweep aside that stack of t-shirts at her feet, sit down, and work through my lunch box. -- No, I never heard her talking to me. She's shy like that, being headless and all, but I started reading to her, inspirational works, something to build her up, like "The Little Engine that Could" or Dale Carnegie. She's a great listener. -- Yes, I'm sorry, I'll get to the point. -- Yes! Of course I know how to use a gun. -- Why I didn't? When the gangsters rushed into the store I sensed instinctively that she needed me. Those guns pointing and those voices shouting not to move terrified her. The emotions inside her were tearing her apart, and without a head to think it all through she started trembling on that platform and wobbling from side to side. I had to go to her. To calm her down. Those gangsters told nobody to move. They would have harmed her. I don't remember much more. I guess that's where you must have found me, on the floor with her, embracing her tightly, whispering words to her I can't recall now. So, what did the doctor say? Are they going to let me go home soon? -- I see. But it's awfully decent of you to put her in the same room with me. We need each other.

Story #260

"No! I can't let you through here," the shadow of a border agent shouted to the lady with the rouge scarf and dark tunic drawn around bare skin. Borders formed where the brushstrokes of the oil painting ended, scarlet barricades, flanked by shadowy guards one dared not defy. She ran the blind, panicked run known to recur in nightmares, deep into the sanguine darkness, weaving past shadows that felt like presences, but vanishing when touched. And stood again at a border. The same one or maybe a different place, as all were identical. "This border is closed!" the guard declared emotionlessly, twirling an extended umbrella. "The exit, I must find the exit," she told herself in desperation, and sensed that it was hidden in the center of the city, among the multitude of unlabeled buildings. She covered her eyes with one hand, extended the other before her, then bolted off in an unknown direction. Harsh whispers showered down upon her, growing louder the closer she came to the door, wanting to confuse and disorient her, to make her forget. They did not want her leaving. She dashed through unlighted streets, looking inwards to see, stumbling finally upon the hidden destination as the whispers reached a crescendo. With one last surge of adrenalin she leaped through the vacant door frame into the room with the red sofa and the painting she had poured hours of her fantasy and imagination into. She sloped onto the cushioned softness and closed her eyes in sleep. Refreshed by the transitory interlude of an instant, she sat up in wakefulness to a scene unchanged, swimming constant on the threshold between the real and the irreal. Still lingering in her memory was the nuanced knowledge of how to complete her masterpiece. Orange. More orange.

Story #259

Madame Bonair, great grandmother of the gypsies, wandered around her apartment berating her dearly departed spouse. There was no escape for him, not even in death. The idea! Thinking he could simply pass away and spend the rest of eternity haunting a strip bar or hovering around street corners, peering down women's tops. If he was going to see any skin in the afterlife, it would be hers, or her name wasn't Madame Bonair, which it was. So that settled it. The poor disembodied spirit had to accompany his sharp-tongued wife everywhere, even to the tedious séances she held. If only some visitors from beyond would pop in to hang out with him. But that never happened. Her spiritist sittings were such a sham it made his protoplasmic blood boil, all the while wishing vehemently that he could evaporate. He observed his wife at the hocus pocus, the crystal ball she stroked so mysteriously, seeing nothing but a distortion of her own gnarly reflection; and that annoying, nasally-pitched voice spewing forth in her phony trance, the same voice that had nagged him all those years of his life and past his deceasement. Enough was enough! It made him so furious he'd lift up the table and hurl it across the room. But even in death he couldn't win. All that he achieved was a generous tip for Madame Bonair and an increase in her reputation as a mistress of mysticism.

Story #258

Thanks everyone for your story contributions for this photo, all reposted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com.

Stella and Starla paused and posed for the shoplifting camera. They had nothing to hide. They'd just come from the men's department, an innovative idea the store was trying out, where women could pick out a man most to their liking, complete with booths for quick kisses and sample layaways. The conditions were competitive: no money down, heterosexuality guarantee and if you applied for the store's credit card, twenty percent less fat. After trying nearly all the men on the racks, they wandered off to the ladies trinkets department. Not that they weren't satisfied with the men. These were girls who knew just what they wanted when they entered a shop, and never allowed themselves to be seduced by all the flashy offers one usually encountered while shopping. Stella selected a scarf and Starla took a cute headband. They planned on returning to the store next weekend, though they hadn't yet decided what it was they would buy. "I think I'll get a tie for my boyfriend," Stella speculated. "Oh yeah, me too," echoed Starla, "that's as good as anything."

Story #257

Everyone came to the party to touch Atoma. She lay on the bricks and they touched her. One by one. Tingling sensations zapped into her brain like dots and dashes of a telegraph signifying sensual words; the words metamorphosing into a male and female figure of electrical current. They mingled in the gray matter inside her skull, did dances, slung themselves around, twirling on the magnetic perpetuity of their attraction and repulsion, neither force winning out in the end. "Touch me harder!" she cried, and the boys all came to clench fingers around her extended limbs, to induce the feeling through her nerves and into those centers of ecstasy hidden from the outside eye. A smile of pleasure formed on her lips as mental cyclones whirled into each other inside her, yin and yang uniting in a flash of lightning that shot the sensation back through synapses, out of the threshold of thought, surging along myelin to extremities, waves of galvanic voltage discharging into the hands clasping her so severely... The physics professor looked up from his lectern to see the entire class panting heavily. This always happened when he read the chapter on nuclear fusion.

Story #256

Apart from the scene's sensualities, the sight of three playful girls, lips enclosing around the strawberries, tongues fondling the redness while the assisting suction of indrawn breath convinced the fleshy fruit to release the fullness of its juices to mingle in the mouths, there was also something horrific about it. The boys at the party, of course, felt wildness rising in their blood at the oral-erotic sight of it. Captain Phrang, on the other hand, shuddered while watching his men die by such devourment. An hour earlier they had all cheered with euphoric glee as their cantaloupe-like space vessel swooped in over the strawberry patch. They saw row after row of their kind, lined in the traditional parallel lines signifying welcome in their green watermelon world. They landed in a garden, their cantaloupe blending splendidly with the abounding floral colors. Through the wide patio window of the nearby structure they located the bowl of their fellow beings. Captain Phrang sent his three ripest men to make contact. They had commenced mingling in the bowl of strawberries, when one by one, the huge voluptuously-lipped creatures began plucking them from the coliseum-like container. He winced with each enclosure of lips around one of his men. Pacing nervously up and down his cantaloupe craft he wondered how in the world he would ever explain this to their wives.

Story #255

Harvey clicked the send button, dissolving his e-mail into a flux of electrical impulses that zapped through the hubs connecting the World Wide Web with God knows what. But he really wanted those love pills. Seconds later the doorbell rang.

"I'm the Spam Fairy," the girl at the door said, but she didn't smile and gaily wave her wand about like those fairys he'd seen in Disney movies. She looked at him with those big, consternated eyes of hers and waited for him to tell her what he wanted.

"Is something wrong?" Harvey asked her, sensing that this was his big chance, showing sympathy to a fairy, maybe even doing her a good deed. No telling how she might repay him. She might even be willing to grant some especially personal wishes.

Tears welled in her eyes, "It's so awful in our world," she cried, "Streets paved with college degrees, mortgage money raining from the skies, hailstorms of little blue pills." She leaned her head on his shoulder while her shoulders bobbed up and down accompanying her stifled sobs. "And the diet supplements, the cheap real estate everywhere..."

She looked up again and he saw the tears running down her cheeks, "And those pick-up bars filled with girls yearning for Christian dates. They're so shameless! We're working round the clock, sending e-mails trying to find someone to take all these abominations off our hands."

Harvey looked into her eyes and stated with all the sincerity he could muster, "I wish I could help you."

"Do you, really?" she asked him, eyes sparkling with magic. Harvey nodded. The Spam Fairy waved her wand. The next thing Harvey knew he was in a room filled with PCs, and at each PC was huddled some wretched person, moving a mouse and typing in e-mails with shaky fingers. A burly sumo wrestler with sweaty muscles and a whip strolled gaily about the room, randomly lashing the stooped figures. "Type faster! Get that spam out! Longer! Harder! All night long! You!" he bellowed grabbing Harvey by the arm and accelerating him into a hard, empty seat. "What do you think this is? Disneyland?!? Get to work!"

Story #254

Thanks for contributing your stories. They have been reposted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com.

After weeks of coaxing diplomatic enough to bring peace to the Middle East, if it had not been so selfishly applied, she still said no. It was the third glass of whiskey and soda, smuggled into her like sugar candy in a pack of birth control pills, that finally bared the camel's back, if the soft, revealed skin of a woman could ever remind anyone of a camel. He danced around her with the camera trying to capture breasts owning contours he had so often admired stretching the cotton tops she wore. But her top-heavy torso dragged her into a graceful spin, perpetually stumbling against something, hiding all the fleshiness he had hoped to immortalize digitally. If ever he did get an open shot at her the result was so blurred as to frustrate even a minute examination of the enlargement. All this gyroscopic rotation in pursuit of exposed breasts magnified the effects of whiskey and soda in the photographer's system. He became dizzy, wobbled in directions his feet wouldn't take him, and finally stumbled flat onto the floor, where he fell asleep. The girl caught herself on the door, pressed up close, adoring the feel of gentle wood on her tender skin and the sensation of blood circulating in whirlpools of excitement. She took up the camera, undressed her unconscious host, and continued to fill the camera's memory with male positions of appealing delicacy. As a souvenir for her photographer she left one picture of herself.

Story #253

Bruce was the only man in the world who understood women, a quality that made him quite popular among men, not to mention women. Mondays and Tuesdays he graciously set aside from his grueling routine of lovemaking to advise other men in the complex intricacies of getting along with their female: when to kiss, when to listen, when to immediately remove oneself to the safety of a barricaded basement. He knew it all. The grateful men did anything for his advice. They shined the shoes off his feet. They ironed his pants for him. They carried him around on his suavely-surfaced seduction sofa, while Bruce himself indicated the direction with a quick twist of the thumb. He should never have allowed the delegation from MAMAS (the Macho Man Society) into his house. When he gave the signal to put him down they dumped him from the sofa and slammed the weighty piece of furniture right down on top of him. Bruce wasn't good for business.

Story #252

They set up the virgin sacrifice in the car port. The willing volunteer poised herself on the swing, ready to release herself to the gravity that would draw her into the salivating mouth of the beast before her. In these, her last moments, her life flashed before her. She saw the sweet boy in grade school who had held hands with her, that first awkward kiss with an unacquainted brother of a friend, the first tingling of tongue against tongue. She relived the first dance in which stiffening manhood pressed against her in all its titillating mystery. Breathless moments vaulted visually before her, heart beating fast, spurred on by forbidden sensation. She became vaguely aware that the images flashing were new, yet unlived. She lay with a dark-eyed boy, embraced him passionately, feeling her innocence slip into blissful oblivion. Then her vision cleared. Her orientation found her on the swing, ready to surrender to the gravitational forces that would draw her mercilessly into the quivering mouth of the waiting beast. But the beast sensed a change which disagreed with him violently. It shuddered, throbbing from pale to red to violet, finally popping into a cloud of nothingness, like a soap-bubble condom playfully inflated past its bearable tension. The girl arced back and forth on the swing, ever higher, enjoying the summer breeze against her cheeks.

Story #251

Clara blew into the bottle giving life to a cosmos. This made her a Goddess. The miniscule beings in their new existence began worshipping her. They swam in their fluid waters singing hymns to her beauty and imagining how it must be to see her perfectly before them, to be nestled in the sacred softness of her skin. She was so large to her creations that even the unfathomed thought of perceiving her overwhelmed their senses into imbalance. They would splash about in disequilibrium until her tranquility steadied the waters. In the end they had no real concept of who she was or what she was, yet they unconditionally longed to enter her heaven. For Clara was a thirsty Goddess. It wasn't long before she raised the bottle for another sip, drawing scores of her minions back into their origin, to be digested by the holy juices and to flow in the blessed blood. This was part of the eternal cycle of life.

Story #250

Orca: There he goes, diving into the pool again.
Orco: What a show off! Evolving from a beach ball into a human.
Orca: Your brain's a beach ball if you believe that evolution nonsense. Everyone knows the Great White Whale created us by breathing dust into our inflatable forms.
Orco: Sure, but still, there he is, coming and going as he pleases. And all we do is float aimlessly in the water.
Orca: But it's a great life, isn't it?
Orco: I don't know. Sometimes I'd just like to swim across the pool to the other side, to be in the sun. Or sometimes, if the sun is hot, I'd like to swim into the shade. But we can't move!
Orca: There's more to life than just moving around.
Orco: Well, I wish he'd stop moving.
Orca: Basically, he's nothing more than a bacterial conglomerate. If they'd only put a little more chlorine in the water, he'd go back to being a beach ball.

Story #249

Thanks to Mrs. Weirsdo for contributing a story: see indeterminacies.blogspot.com

Sorry. I'm on vacation now until mid-July. Please page down for my vacation goodbyes.

Jules, Jim and Jonah sat in the living room, four walls, a window, no door. Their words to one another were sparse, though their thoughts ignited at the focal point of Catherine. Jules thumbed through his telephone book finding Catherine on every page, more times than he had ever called her. Jim perused his paper from story to story, each exposing another facet satisfying the obsession: stories of her first kiss, editorial opinions on her beauty, the allure of her face in every advertisement, and her intellect sensed behind every contact announcement, a new woman described each time. Jonah was trying to get her on the television but there was no picture. Usually she was present on every channel, walking avenues, sitting in the park, a book on her lap or a care-free swim in the open bosom of the sea. He shifted his efforts to the radio. Perhaps he would find her singing a chanson, or speaking at a press conference announcing the owner of her heart's affections. And he did find her. He listened as Catherine sang a song of farewell to men, voice fading in and out owing to the widening distance between her and the opposite gender. She had decided for the moment to concentrate her attentions on women. Jules, Jim and Jonah found themselves in one whale of a limbo.

Story #248

Note from Indeterminacy: Thanks go to Sylvain Chuzeville of the band Ex-Magnolia for kind permission to use the photo. Check out their song "On a Shelf," a title which kind of goes well with this story.

VACATION GOODBYES
Ladies and gentleman, I have to announce now that I'm going on vacation for two weeks. This will be the last post until I return. I've also posted a photo at indeterminacies.blogspot.com for all of you to contribute stories to while I'm away, like we've been doing on weekends. I still have to select a winner for June. I'll do that next week and announce it somehow. And don't forget that Michael at blogin_idiot.blogspot.com is doing this story thing every Friday.

I have to apologize to everyone who commented in my guestbook or at one of the stories, because I haven't been able to respond to all your comments yet, and to all my blogging friends, because I haven't been able to keep up with all your blogs as intensively as I've wanted to this past months. I hope to make good on that in the next weeks.

I keep finding these cool sites and want to share some with you. Please do take the time to check them out. I think I've fallen in love with all these ladies:

www.geeekgirl.net
www.moxiegrrrl.com
arterium.blogspot.com
barofsoap.blogspot.com
omnamaste.blogspot.com
seizethenite.blogspot.com
ostrichspeak.blogspot.com
colettesgrave.blogspot.com
livingwellornot.blogspot.com
northerndeath.blogspot.com
atomicvelvetsigh.blogspot.com
fromsunshinetosuicide.blogspot.com
spaces.msn.com/members/unrequestedopinions
(Sorry if I made a mistake and put a guy in here)


Not ladies, but also well worth checking out:

beerhaikudaily.blogspot.com *creative*
fuggettaboutit.blogspot.com *funny*
gimmesomemoney.blogspot.com *original*


And this is my staple of favorites (I'm in love with all these ladies, too, except the ones who are guys, and there it's more of a manly type feeling):

jamiesmindlessblather.blogspot.com
princessdominique.blogspot.com
rambling_chicken.blogspot.com
saddlesorereview.blogspot.com
alixinwunderland.blogspot.com
hauptundneben.blogspot.com
oldtommyboy.blogspot.com
bitterbierce.blogspot.com
thealienguy.blogspot.com
askthedevil.blogspot.com
falafelsex.blogspot.com
pansifiles.blogspot.com
cmarie88.blogspot.com
coveries.blogspot.com
kellykell.blogspot.com
deryke.blogspot.com
sabem.blogspot.com
tinadupuy.com/wp


I know I've forgotten somebody, so please don't have your feelings hurt. I'm throwing this together in a hurry. One more thing. Check out the latest issue of the Practically creative e-zine. I'm in there somewhere.