"The men there," they say, "are from Mars and the women are from Venus, okay?" Meanwhile, divorces and breakups sky-racketed their way up, the stairway. That's over there though, not here, I'm sure. Or is it the other way around the shore to show us more? Now, go. Get away from here before the coming in of the "Sisters" kinds. No, wait a minute, not until you hear about this mankind.

Shad found himself again caught up in a crack. He was to be found caught up again in a similar situation to that. It seems to be becoming a thing happening all too much, and too often to him. He wanted that woman so very badly, but the other woman wanted him too and was making it known to all of them gladly. She was not leaving anything up to mere chances and you.

So, because of the urgency, he had to hurry, to get to a place that intersects Cornwall and Surrey. Yeah! In your face, it's still sort of blurry, but don't worry, don't go rushing it, no need over here for the powdered curry, oh sheet, hear this. Now, here's the story, listen to it while you eat the dory fish eeh.

While Sharone was there busily soaking up his attention. The other women in the room were busily acting out the sideshow on the ascension. Hertha nodded on insight and received Tamara's insightful whispered wisdom along with the garment she had carefully folded and given. Handed off to her, in her thoughtful and melodious humming heaven, as it occurred.

She knew how it was going to end with those two; the two of them could be nothing more than just friends who are just the normal ones like me and you. Just like always, she wasn't holding back on the reminders. The anecdotes that were used to support her theories from all those days behind hers. They were insightful bits and pieces of information, advice, and instructions as to what they all needed to do there and therein, that night. To ensure the proper outcome. The one that's right, fair, and best for all concerned there, that's right. Their next moves were precisely crafted - "Why, but, but, why?"

"They needed to get a grip on the situation fast kid, that's why." To keep their heads screwed on the right, you know, because. As you already know, somebody has got to keep their head on while everywhere else everyone else seems to be losing theirs slowly, yes, that slow, Leigh, "right?"

"Right."

And you know, they knew, they all knew very well that that "somebody" around those parts was Tamara.

"That's who?"

"Yes."

Tamara was that somebody in and around those parts it would seem, even to him. At that particular moment, no better person could have been found for the task than Tamara on the home end, not in your dreams. Yes, those other women were there but acting disinterested and indifferent.

As Tandy grew more upset though, her inner thoughts and disgust began to show. Her well-trained hands were briskly turning out, flagging out, and then folding up the garments to dispel the excess heat. Along with her hard-hand swiping to render them smooth and neat. Those acts, too, were becoming, likewise, increasingly more precise. True. Almost perfect, almost like fried rice. "Look! Isn't it nice?"

"Yes, it is nice when done right, but..."

Everything is sharp and crisp now until one can cut and shave Grandpa's silvery beard under his brow. With the razor-sharp edges of the fabric that is, the folded fabrics, that's how. No, not with the machete, not the sow, none of that, just this, and even more so.

It could surely cut through the tension in the room, the laundry room, but it did not, nothing did. Shadow was in the meantime, shaking, visibly, at the knees evenly, and aching. Unlike how it was waiting to be going along the road with Steven, he wasn't going to be leaving. At least not yet. Not before he gets what he's out there to get. Whatever confidence he once had in his ability to maintain his composure in all situations though, was, (as of this point,) a withered thing, limp and hanging nearly dead on the vine near the bough, we think.

He'd met his match, somehow, and what was he supposed to do about that? Blow-wow! He couldn't quite see. There were other women there too. After all, this is their domain to go do what they often do, or to come to call and get me through. It's a place where they go to do the things that they are prone over there to be doing among you, like, a laundromat and all. But these six had a vested interest in all this. Had was to dictate and direct the outcome of the matter at hand, in practice, seemingly.

Whatever the motive, really. Be it personally or protectively, the interest was there effectively. Ava had scampered just like a frightened mouse out of the room. Large, the fluffy grey cat must have loomed. She was seen quitting the steamy place just as steaming mad as the sizzling steamy wet pad. But as for Tseshie, see what she sees? Look, Tseshie would have made a more dignified and leisurely departure out the door. Dragging her reluctant feet under her some more. You know, dragging them along under her plumb and fine swaying frame.

Waiting for someone with a noble name, like Tamara, for instance, Hertha, or any of the others. She was slow-walking and waiting for them to pitch in and hurt her just a little bit further, often. Her friends, even. Or for anyone else who'd be found interested enough to come and rescue her from her reluctant departure leaving, to go outback, through the fast door. To call her back and apologize, in fact, for spoiling their laundry day meet-up and chit-chats, not very nice doing that, no.

For stirring things up when and where they had no business stirring anything, not even that one, for him, and upsetting her while doing so. But that never happened, that apology never came. Though she was walking slowly, dragging her feet heels-and-toe, Leigh, waiting for it probably. Nothing was going to be the same from that moment on though, she knew it darn well. They all knew it too and could tell, but then. What in Cekko heaven's name was Shadow supposed to do about those two when next they were to meet up again, over stew?

Shad couldn't help but notice; theirs were the two sternest faces in those places. There, in a sea of other disapprovingly stern and thinning feminine brows, for as short a while as it had been, look at them. Wow! As for Tamara and the other woman, Hertha. They, those two was who were left with the task of seeing to the well-being of their bossy friend, Sharone. From there on and on the way home to get homely and telephoning the dome man while at home with you and me, no? Yes.

Those two add more heat to the old bones though. His bones, even. At least one of them did, as it was told to me and the kids. As for Shad, though inexperienced he might have been in such earthly things to have, he knew enough to know that trouble was brewing. Those were two innately opposite types of women to him. he loved and wanted both of them. "Nothing but trouble can come from this," he knew it, suited him just fine. Screw it.

But how did the Shadow man come to fall so hard upon this? How did he get here, behind this pint of beer? Oh, hiss. Let's go back to where it was said to have all gotten started, back to a bed chamber somewhere over there in Cekkoland on the star grid. Shad plunked himself down rather heavily on the sleeping sack in the sleep chamber, as much as he's able to tell us and remember.

He then heaved his left leg up and out of the sandals. Cross-hitched the left ankle atop his right knee. Then brushed the sole of his foot with his right hand quickly like me. Back, forth, and then back again a couple of times with sharp, purposeful strokes. He then turned his attention to similarly doing the other leg.

Then proceed to administer the same tender treatment as before, before he would have been a goner, I beg... He leaned to one side behind the door. After pulling the feet up onto the sleeping place some more, he pulled the covering cloth up and over his head and face and was almost instantaneously out of it, fast asleep, in your face. The beginning of thousands of years of sleep and slumbering he didn't foresee, let alone plan for behind the sorcerer's door key.

When next the shadow man woke up. He was in the other realm of another World Cup and wondering, what in the name of Cekkolords had hit him. Not to worry though, Shad, you'll have all of the time in the world that you may need to have. Your world, the one back home even, but also the new ones. New to you, but only because you had just arrived here, and there too. But as a "just comer coming to her on the Newlands," but new anyway, anyhow.

In all of the schemes of Cekko things, even the moo-cow, and fatted cock chickens. You will have plenty of time. All of the time you may need in fact, to figure it all out and to relax. King Liam and his son though, Bauctnumboulei, the little kid on the go, Bey. They both need you to be strong and to see this through, okay? But! "What kind of people do things like that?" Shad wondered out louder and reacted sometime later when he was a little bit waker.

"What sort of mind would have conceived such a thing?" he wondered from within, again. To have sent a man away, a warrior even. Sent him out on a mission without the benefit of his tried, tested, and proven weapon, yes. But then again. Smokey did send his son out on the road masked as a hopping toad, burdened down heavily to carry the load and all of that code. So there, it could have been someone like him, beware. Someone like that Smokey being might have been behind the happening. But not necessarily him.

The last time, though, that Shadow man would have known how anything really, really goes. Or when he was to have felt like a soldier, a real Cekko soldier, and a warrior. Or even like a real Cekko-type of a man and not a carry-over. It was on the last night of the last meeting. He had his weapon there in his hand to greet him. He had it all day long, as was the custom, he was all ready to slay what at first, he thought was an intruding one. But he must have been wrong, had been up and working for way too long, yeah, probably that one.

Because Shad was quick on the draw, sword in hand and ready to send it to Taw. The intruder to be sent for a stint in a stack pile of straw, on some other strand. Or get sent down to the repair shop, like, damn. The scrap heap of long times to lay him on, or in the assimilation chamber where he'd once stained her, underarm. Or maybe he could just go all the way and toss him away and further on, like, unto the other scrap heaps for body parts he'd become. But he was really, really beat, could hardly even stand up firmly on his feet.

It didn't take very long for him to pass it all off as a sleep log-on. Too much time away from the sheets back home, brought on by a lack of rest and meat. The overexposure to the sleeplessness of the long meeting week. In the next Cekko minute or two, he was out of it. Out of the kit and fast asleep like you, still here talking sheet. But we still need to find out what he's talking about, so, can somebody please tell me? Did he go through the chamber? The A-chamber, did he go through there to get him out of there and on the way? He can't seem to remember how it had happened on that day, on the first occasion to get away, but. He would have wondered.

He had no real idea, none whatsoever. But if he was a gambling man, which he's certainly not. He's not like I am but if he should have been asked to place a bet and go set it on that, it would have been biased towards the girls carrying him out, in a similar style as they'll soon be carrying Beahon and Angela in against the shouts, to become a goner. You just hang on around here and wait for the start of those other happenings, coming around the very next corner. You'll see, but you didn't hear it from me, alright?

"Alright."

He's not sure of that either, one way or the other. He just knew that he would have gone to bed. To bed down in his very own regular bed in his very own regular bed chamber on one very tired, yet tiring night and was to find himself woken up however much time later on. In a faraway land with a job to perform, then be gone. But, "gone" he was from that very moment on. Well, until he was to be manhandled again and brought back home to relax and to sit down with him, eventually. Literally, but not completely.

"Sit down servant."

His job is far from done.

"Sit down nuh servant, relax."

"You know I can't sit down, no pops."

"Sit on it. Whatever 'it' is. Just sit." ((Too darned unruly you are)) Note: ((Thought bubble)) of the king is what it is. Come on into the car, with the kids.



This story is told from a Carib-Jamericanadian perspective, with a twisted comedic edge. Presented (sometimes) in richly blended language mix of, nonsense talk, sensational spelling, double entendre, and Jamaican patois inserted here and there throughout, as may be found fitting. Yeah man, a Jamaica yaad mi cum fram. Sorry, I meant to say, I'm Jamaican-born and bred, okay? Yes, wordplay is the order of the day around here. Please join us again tomorrow for more.