Welcome…
to Treats of Writing. Here at Treats, we’ve just polished off two short serials: Fill the Dark with Silence, and Bus Number 19. You can find both in the Short Story Index.
We will now resume serving In Different Color. This fairy tale series treat of Mr. Grey, a word machine operator and violinist. The story follows Mr. Grey on vacation, as he travels wine-dark meadows, bubbling seas, and the deep land of dreams.
Last season we served twenty-eight dinner courses. This season? More. New flavors too: flying windmills, bottomless wells, giant water strider bugs.
Feel free to go back and sample any dish which strikes your fancy from The Menu. Or, see below for the recap.
Last Season Recap*:
*Not at all inspired by blockbuster fantasy from 2001
Eyeless Witch: (speaking partly in Gobbledygook)
(I amar prestar aen.) The season is changing.
(Han matho ne nen.) I feel it in the water.
(Han mathon ned cae.) I feel it in the earth.
(A han noston ned gwilith.) I read it in the title.
Much that once was is at hand, for The Menu exists to remember it.
It began with The Notice of Not Existing. The notice arrived at the desk of Mr. Grey, Senior Pencil Pusher, meekest and greyest of all beings. He carried it down a balloon elevator, to the Parchment Mining department of the Starharbor Regional Justice Center. On his return, he was ambushed in The Cubicle Hedge by a girl named Jodee Coats, who above all desired a travel visa. For with this visa she could at last break through the Starharbor Odormoat. But Mr. Grey refused to help, and Jodee escaped illegally. Deeply troubled on The Dragon Tram ride home, Mr. Grey caught the eye of a stoop dweller, who convinced Mr. Grey to give him the nuts-and-bolts, shiny pebbles, and novelty spoon in Mr. Grey’s purse.
All of Mr. Grey’s spending treasure.
Alone, Mr. Grey returned to his cell within the Workers’ Prison, but found himself bored stiff. A last invitation from Mr. Grey’s friends enticed him to a roach-filled tavern, and in the very midst of a Hootenanny, he met a girl named Honeydew. Interest was there, but the call of Starharbor pencil-pushery could not be denied. It was the next day, while sitting in Jack York’s Office, that Jack York, his boss, told Mr. Grey to take a vacation.
Mr. Grey, an irreformable homebody of his native Starharbor, was perturbed. He passed a day at a Park Walk, where he steered a steam swan with Honeydew, until a noble named Neon Sylveste ruined the mood. And Honeydew also had work to do at the local Wheelhouse. She parted from Mr. Grey, to his disappointment.
And Mr. Grey later purchased an ill reading at the Fortune Auctions. The Wind brought cloud words. The cloud words brought jelly rain. And while stamping his own visa in the Tockwork Crags, Mr. Grey met again with Neon Sylveste. Until, when the crags closed, Neon showed his false friendship.
Mr. Grey spoke again with Honeydew, when they hid from giant waves on A Day at the Beach. But then she left him. A despondent Mr. Grey returned to the city. Meanwhile five hundred epochs of malcontented souls had brooded in Starharbor, and on Mr. Grey’s journey home that day, they struck. The mob ensnared Mr. Grey into weaving The Anchor Shawl. Mr. Grey ran from an eventual explosion at a factory, carrying this new garment, and the city pencil pusher perceived his time had come. He returned to The Wheelhouse where Honeydew worked, but there Honeydew told him something that Mr. Grey did not expect. She would hobnob with him on the most unlikely condition imaginable: that Honeydew herself, who had always desired to go on vacation, accompany Mr. Grey when he boarded The Marble Train.
For the time will soon come when Mr. Grey will shape the fortunes of a very small number of people.
‘The Marble Box - Appetizer’ premiers on Sunday, March 24.