EthicalDative

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/12/02/what-we-know-about-astrids-predicament/)

There was no continuing aspect to the rapture. It did not unfold — it was never folded. It simply was, was over, and that was that. Few in the Posse of Matrons had witnessed a Ministering to the Lamb. The ritual capitalized on the low-hanging fruit of Texas cologne: its capacity to make the recipient embrace death, indeed copulate with it, smile on lips, song echoing in stopped heart.

Astrid bint Wanda had pre-boarded her bier and was starting her climb to glory. All muscle activity was largely shut down. She still managed to blow bubbly kisses to blushing boys seen only by her, and to talk a blue streak, although her lips didn’t move to the words. The verbal activity registered only as a rocky mountain range of excited light on the monitors.

Lavendar Larchmont was at the controls, flanked by her sombre Posse cohort. She keyed and knobbed tenderly, dealing as she was with a Matron of the first order who also foreshadowed the penultimate end of a telling. She mastered a ripple of emotion as she dialed Astrid toward the threshold, minding closely the gradient of ecstasy. Lavendar wanted to give her senior colleague the longest death-glide possible before the coup de jet intercepted the brain’s last flare, held in reserve for the ultimate emergency, inducing a what-the-fuck instant even in deep metempsychosis, and the élan vital ran out of road. Lavendar would never have thought her first duty as newly invested Brilliant Maximx of the Posse of Matrons would be to gas her predecessor. It was a complex honor.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/11/18/between-two-lions-passant-guardant-gules/)

What triggered the aspersion of Texas cologne at the Lunation Gala? Siddhartha Huff’s twitch fit or Claw Hammer’s nerve storm? No matter. What was clear was that the affective threshold monitor had functioned with prim efficiency; revelers had slumped in their tracks when the ATM’s silent alarm was tripped.

Quick thinking saved Sidd’s hash; he gassed his own self in the hermetic chamber, setting afloat an alternative factuality wherein his adoptee had waylaid him in a fiendish identity heist. The Executive Committee absolved Sidd of complicity in the escapade (justice ever favors the favored). Officious tenders stretchered woozy celebrants away to their family compounds to convalesce bemusedly in the afterglow of their Lone Star comas. The ding — fka “Claw Hammer” — was harvested and stored at Central Organics to put paid to the matter.

But what to do with Astrid bint Wanda? “Annunziata, this is a goddamn travesty,” Philemon D’Avenant grunted. His foreshortened view of the supine hierophant was dominated by the soles of her feet. It looked as if a genie hoist on orgy porridge was doing pop-a-wheelies in Astrid’s thorax. “Phil, watch your language!” his wife admonished smoothly. Only her light-blue eyes betrayed alarm; the manses of potency were massively dropped and cammed by surveillance apparatchiks. “Shocking breach,” she added, making sure her reproach registered clearly on the devices.

Annunziata knew a stinky rumor made the rounds of canapé circuits in cosseted enclaves. Its gist was that Astrid had connived in her own conniption by nipping the naughty gas on an all but daily basis — a habit stoked by lack of discipline and moral rectitude. As usual, trash talk twittered extempore from inner sancta walked the plank into lunacy lagoons. The simple truth was more devastating.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/11/11/argent-on-a-bend-azure/)

“Claw?” Siddhartha Huff ejaculated interrogatively to his unpeopled hermetic chamber. On his screen he could see Claw’s pancake cracking as if he were modeling the facial contortion he solicited from the Posse of Matrons.

Claw’s first words after the permission incantation had been, “Now say cheese!” With a slightly panicked tone he followed with, “Grin like fucking hyenas, excellencies.” Goddamn it, he was improvising!

A hush enveloped the palatial hall; every eye was on the figure in brocade doublet, a dead ringer for the sanctified Shootist, aiming the antique device at the worthies of the ball. Astrid’s thunderstruck visage was self-explanatory.

Sidd had no idea where Claw had dredged up this gibberish — what the hell was “cheese”? Had Claw’s ardor to carry off his Sidd-simulation led him to stray from the script? And with a scrap of ancient jargon gleaned, perhaps, from his exposure to archival footage of primitive “photography” rites? The etiology of the ominous breach of protocol hardly mattered now.

Sidd watched numbly as Claw raised the Polaroid and snapped. Simultaneously, a uniformed dais attendant seized his arm as if by reflex. Sidd twitched violently as the audio after-image of Claw’s expletives lingered in his earbuds.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/10/31/quest-to-quell-the-demotic/)

Dominic Sixtus Venable Regulus bin Pugh-Fuchs, Fourteenth Montmorency, inaugurated the Lunation Gala. A zillion needles of light shafted the fête. Gentlepersons in radiant attire milled among eureka palms. Tables bulged with platters of candied fungi, trayed chalices of inebriant. Couples, triples, quadruples coalesced and dispersed in recombinant chat groups.

The Posse of Matrons, stars of the night, beamed on the dais, bussing well-wishers, miming vanity rituals with period kit, gesturing reciprocation to gallant toasts flung from across the vast hall. They lolled by rank on Watteau-inspired settees draped with 3D-printed shot silks: Astrid bint Wanda, Brilliant Emeritus; Lavendar Larchmont, Brilliant; Dido Harding, Brilliant; Topeka Toombs, Medallion; Jocasta Montmorency, Medallion; Lambent Pym, Pippa Trelawney, Talulah Pierpont, Worth Arbuthnot, Legends. (Annunziata D’Avenant, Legend, had accompanied Philemon to the Riviera, so could not be present for the shot.)

In exquisite disguise Claw Hammer perambulated, dispensing languid body language and genial nods. From a hermetic chamber Siddhartha Huff monitored his doppelgänger on myriad screens. Sidd had drilled his minion in the sequence to be played out: When Astrid brandishes the Escutcheon, a third fanfare will sound. A hush will ensue. Stand on the mark. Intone the spiel. Aim the ancient device. Click it. Bow to the Posse. Fade gracefully to shadow as the crescendo of huzzahs engulfs the dais.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved