[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com. Wipe your feet before entering.]

PIMP MY HOUSE PT. 1

Hello All, Melanie here!

Last week, X discovered the ULTIMATE reason her epic fantasy saga remains unwritten.

I know what you’re going to say, but it wasn’t due to the week she spent laying siege to Miskatonic University.

Nor was it because of the two weeks she and Tryxy jumped around space and time looking for Ursula Le Guin.

We can be certain the time she spent helping Tod Boadkins recover from an acute case of Second Book Syndrome has not contributed to her book writing delay.

No, Writer X discovered that her books aren’t complete because her subconscious speaks German.

In Cradensburg, the owners of the Mysterious Complex remain shrouded in…mystery. They’ve managed to rehabilitate their reputation with the locals using that age old approach: throw money at people.

I wonder how Tod’s recovery is going and whether we’ll learn anything about his second book soon. Who knows? X may at last have some pages for us to read!

Without further ado…

---

Subject: What could go wrong?

Dear Gladys,

When a white cargo van full of renegade gnomes pulled up to my place and asked if I wanted them to “pimp my house” I knew things were going to come together in my writing life.

It wasn’t a gnome van, it was a people van, and it took three gnomes to drive it. One gnome stood on his hands and pumped the pedals, one worked the wheel, and the last one cussed at people. I figured any operation that could be THAT coordinated could pimp MY house!

Now Gladys, you know that I’m a very savvy shopper. You’ve got watch out for these drive by house-pimping operations. You can never be sure the contractor knows what they’re doing. They may SAY their electricians, but next thing you know, you flush your toilet and your plumbing empties through your coffee maker!!

But what you really have to look out for is the PRICE. They’ll quote you 5,000 going in, but then they hold your house hostage until you turn over fifteen grand and a kidney!!!!

So when these gnomes hissed “hey, lady with the pink sombrero!” at me from the driver side window and offered to pimp my house I gave them the screw eye and said, “How much we talking here?” They whispered back and forth to each other (there were about forty of them in the van) and the cussy one came back and looked at me out of the corner of his eye and said, “…One hundred…dollars?”

That’s when I KNEW I had them on the ropes!!!! They must have heard about my reputation for getting a deal and skipped straight to the best price.

“It’s a deal, and not a penny more,” I said. Then I put them straight to work in blowing out the back wall of my house to install a proper bedroom, recording studio, and dance club for Tryxy, a luxury cat gym and spa for #bestkitten, a garden atrium for the malevolent purple leopard statue in the yard, and a writing wing for me and my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins.

No sooner than we shook on it, forty gnomes cascaded out of the van somersaulting and cartwheeling with glee through my front door. Now and again one of them would whisper, “Can you believe it? A whole hundred dollars! She doesn’t even know!” and they’d be shushed angrily by the others.  

Shorty after, they took forty mini sledge hammers to the back wall of my house and now I write you from my bed, soaked with the sideways spring rain, and peaceful with the knowledge that I will soon have my epic fantasy saga FULLY WRITTEN.

I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going. Well it’s going to go a lot worse if I don’t figure out how to get my boyfriend to decide to officially move in with me!!!!

Gladys, I think I have found the secret to my own writing Fountain of Youth!!!!

All these months I’ve never been in the mood to write anything and then my boyfriend comes to stay with me and all of a sudden, ALL I WANT TO DO IS WRITE!!!!! I wrote almost every day this week until this morning.

Do you know what happened this morning, Gladys????? My boyfriend SPOKE. Yes!!! He woke up, looked at me deep in my eyes, and said “tire pressure” and then he fell back asleep. That means he’s getting better, and once he gets better, he’s going to want to go back and live in his own house in Bleakwood and that means I’ll go back to NOT WANTING TO WRITE!!!!!

Not to mention it’s been really nice having him here even if he is catatonic and drooling half the time. When I first bought this house it was because C___ and I were starting our life together and then he had to go and get involved with The Society and get himself mostly killed. Now that my boyfriend, award winning fantasy writer Tod Boadkins has been staying here, I feel like something in my life is much more settled—like cheese.

Hang on, Gladys, I haveto wipe the rainoff my monitor,it’s becominghard tosee.

Okay, I’m back. As you can see, I needed to do something IMMEDIATELY to lure my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins to stay here with ME AND TRYXY!!!!! Then these gnomes came along and what could go wrong????

Tryxy says it’s too good to be true, but if you ask me, it’s all working out perfectly.

Anyhoo, I should go, Gladys. There were some police sirens going by and all the gnomes  scattered like cockroaches. Someone needs to drag them back and whip them into shape!!!! I’m not paying a hundred dollars for them to hide under a rock every time the police go by!!!!!

xox,

X

---

Subject: What’s happening at the Mysterious Complex?????

Dear Gladys,

Do you have any idea what happened at the Mysterious Complex? I was just driving through town from the nail salon when I saw all the police cars and crime scene tape surrounding the gates of the complex.

I’ve been practicing my neck stretches so I was able to get my head a full six inches out the window as I coasted by and I think I saw a massive tunnel had been carved up through the ground outside the gate. Its so big a hole you could drive a truck through it!!!! Or a cargo van.

A handful of befuddled police officers were standing around peering into the hole in the ground. There was also an irate looking bald gentleman with a beet colored face clutching his head. It seems to me that someone must have dug a tunnel under the gate but who would do such a thing and what do they want with whatever’s in the complex????

I’m betting this investigation goes nowhere because everyone knows the only people who can tunnel through earth like that are gnomes and what would gnomes want with the Mysterious Complex??? Isn’t it a cult or something?

Anyhoo, when I made the third trip around, I also spotted an abandoned white cargo van with the doors hanging off its hinges. Probably has nothing to do with any of this.

I would have taken a fourth trip around but then I noticed Detective Fischer with her ombre hair sipping from her rainbow hued tumbler as she squinted at me. It looked like she was about to flag me over and question me but I stepped on the gas and got away!!!!!

No way anyone is going to think I have anything to do with this!!!! I can’t dig tunnels, Gladys!!!! It would ruin my manicure!!!!

Anyhoo anyhoo, I just got home and you should see the place!!!!! The gnomes have just finished the luxury cat gym and spa and it is loaded with EVERYTHING!!!! Large screen TV, cat masseuse, at least TWO cat de-greasers, a sprawling ten foot carpeted cat tree with shiny dongly things hanging off every ledge, an aromatic mister with a special blend of catnip and lavender oils, and enough sitting boxes to make a human trip every three feet!!!!

This can’t happen fast enough!!!! My boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, is getting better every hour. Just a second ago, I brought him a rain slicker to wear over his pajamas (the gnomes haven’t built our writing wing yet) and he took it and said, “Marmalade.”

If these gnomes don’t hurry up and finish, he could decide he wants to go home!!!! I can’t just ask him to move in with me!!! Why would he choose to stay here with me and Tryxy—well, I can tell why ANYONE would want to move in with Tryxy, but obviously if he is going to move in, he needs to be LURED!!!!

Besides, it just makes sense for him to move in with me and for us to have our own little snuggly writing nest together. If he moves in, then it’ll be very hard for me to forget he exists for months at a time!!!

Hang on, Gladys, Tryxy’s texting me and asking me to come over to his new room.

WOW, GLADYS!!!!! Tryxy’s room is a mansion!!!! It now incorporates a THIRD of the backyard and has a home theatre, a circular water bed, a water fountain shaped like Lil Nas X in a fur diaper, a brown velvet chaise lounge, and an entire wall covered with about fifty-three gilded mirrors.

You’d think Tryxy would be more excited but he looked absolutely frightened. He thought the new wing was going to get him sent back to the Void of Asheput all because the furniture sports a harmless little tag on the back that reads:

PROPERTY OF MANAHEE MOTION PICTURES

PROP DEPARTMENT

 “What if the furniture is stolen?” he asked.

Fortunately, I was able to calm him down when I told him that the gnomes must have purchased the furniture from a flea market or something.

This is all fine. None of it is weird.

Besides, there isn’t a movie studio around her for miles and miles!!!! If there was a movie studio near us, you better believe I would stop writing IMMEDIATELY and start knocking on their door EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. until they turned my books into a movie!!!!!!!

Anyhoo, I should go, Gladys. A UPS truck full of gnomes just showed up and I have to let them in and free the UPS driver who seems to have gotten himself tangled up in a roll of duct tape!!!!! They’d better to get to work on my writing wing, that’s a whole hundred dollars I’m paying them!!

If you find out anything about what happened in town, make sure I’m the first to know!

Pages next week (because now I’m ACTUALLY WRITING!!!!!)

xox,

X

P.S. How do you think I should propose this to my boyfriend?? “Congratulations, you’re moving in with me and Tryxy” or “YOU ARE IN LOVE WITH ME AND WANT TO MOVE IN RIGHT AWAY”??? The second one feels more romantic but the first one feels more winning. EVERYTHING IS FINE, GLADYS!!!!!

HAVE A

SINKING

FEELING

ABOUT THE

FURNITURE,

BUT IF

LOVING

THIS

SOUND

SYSTEM

AND CAT

DEGREASER

IS WRONG

THEN I

DON’T WANT

TO BE

RIGHT.