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"See that, Franklin?" said Eleanor Roosevelt. "That’s O’Brien." Franklin observed a line of stars on the eastern horizon. There were four.

"Oops, sorry." Eleanor nodded at her new constellation, O’Brien, and the fourth star blinked out.

Daphne Longhandle's Last Flight

Elizabeth Profitt Pease has grown through all and past most of the stages of life as demonstrated by an illustration in The Essential Shakespeare, her high school text, and she is wondering what will be next.

A well-plotted project, a nine-patch variation, is defying her. The furrow between her eyes appears and disappears like a flashing caution light, the only outward sign of a quilt gone wrong, a quilt ungratefully turned against its maker.

The Ninepatch Variation

"I shall wear purple." Libby Pease touches the framed poem that hangs on her kitchen wall. Libby could have memorized the verse, but prefers to be surprised by it.

"All the damned thing says is that when you’re old people expect you to be aligned a mite off center..." says the 400-year-old Algonquian spirit-priest who regularly joins her for morning tea.

The Red Sneaker Zones

Lord Zorgon's breath reminded Gearbox of the last time her dad had the septic pumped. "Would you like a breath mint?" she asked.

"I should see the dentist more often, I know," said Lord Zorgon. "Destiny rolled your number, kid. So sue me." Tentacles flailed. There was a chilling Clack! as his fangs snapped shut.

Facelift

Errol Flynn suspected the studio had kept him stuffed with hormones and cloned organs for the last seventy-five years all for this one last remake. How many Kims had it been?

Damned Kipling. Flynn wondered if camels gave him hemorrhoids, too.

A Pass on the Tabouli

There was a dead man in the yard this morning. I checked in my wallet for my latest picture of the front yard. I have a collection of yard pictures that goes back for years but I usually carry only one photo at a time.

No, he was a new arrival. I called Sheila. Sheila is my ex-wife.

Dead Man in the Yard