Josh: Time Out, Part Deux

Okay, I feel like we're heading for some new territory here, so before we lose track I want to do another recap. For my previous recap of events, click here (if Yoshida can self-reference himself with a link, you better believe I'm going to). If anyone wants to chime in and clarify or point out inaccuracies, please keep it to yourself because my post and I are perfect in every way like beautiful rainbows.

-Sometime in the past, a small group of people made bargains with someone known as the Magician. After they made their deals, they...hrm , I don't want to say they don't age, because they do, but they age very, very slowly. They also are granted specific boons like control over centipedes (Hollis) or wolves (Taras), along with who knows what else. When they die they are reborn somehow at a later point. If they displease the Magician they lose their abilities, and if they really piss him off he can drive them insane. I've read that post from my uncle/great-great-great-great grandfather Leopold six times now, and I swear he actually goes mad as he's writing it.

-The Magician is going to end the world somehow, and soon, or at least Taras seemed to think so.

-The Magician is going to restart the world somehow, but it will be mostly the same, like time is caught in a loop- again, according to what I can glean fromTaras.

Question: the Magician gives his little circle of fiends eternal life and various gifts, so what do they give him exactly?

-Oh, and another thing the Magician's pals get are the smiling zombie people (I'm naming them "Smilers", mostly because I'm not as creative as I look). People are turned into Smilers when they find out how the Magician does his tricks? I think.

-Gah! I just thought of something. In Mary's post about our visit to the Hollis Nursing Home she said that the centipedes were running between Hollis' legs in a figure eight. I don't think they were. She saw a figure eight, but I saw the symbol for infinity.

Remembering one of my ex-girlfriends fondness for tarot and crystals and all that jive (it took me months to scrub the patchouli-stink out of my carpets) this came to mind. Check out the symbol above his head:

Maybe it means something, probably it means nothing, but Mary wants us to share the weird stuff that comes to mind as we go along, and this to me = weird stuff.

-Going back and reading Leopold's post for the seventh time, he writes:

"...he will perform a trick. He will use the charms, his knife, a rabbit and his own blood, though his body contains no blood any longer, if it ever did. It is quite probably too late to stop the charms, but the knife and his blood may yet be within your grasp. Keep them separate..."

The "his body contains no blood" line might come in handy later. If we see someone we think is the Magician, I think we should cut them. Seriously. Even if it's a pinprick it might be enough to tell. If they bleed then we'll know they're not the Magician and we start apologizing like crazy. If he doesn't bleed, then... well, then we've got a whole new set of problems to worry about, but at least we'll know.

-Is it wrong that I wanted to invite Taras to join us even after he went medieval on Ricky Tate? That's wrong, right?

-First Mrs. Walentowicz, now Nhlakanipho Mabuza. Does there have to be a new name I can't spell or pronounce every time we learn anything?

-I guess that's it, though I would like to point out that I used far fewer parenthesis in this recap than the last one. I suppose Mary will take credit for it as her good influence on me, but I think we all know I just took the gibberish I normally would have put in parenthesis and gave them their own bullet points.

Time in.