The Story so far.........

She answered the door and saw a burly campus policeman on her porch. "I'm sorry ma'am," he said, "but another student has come down with spinal menengitis and the dormitories need to be evacuated. Did you know Stuart Anderson?"

Aria was saddened by this information. She hadn't known Stuart very well, but she had American History 101 with him. She had thought him really cute and was hoping at some point to know him better. But apparently, that wouldn't be possible now.

"What is your name, ma'am?" asked the policeman.

"Aria...Aria Featherstone," she replied, still shocked at the news that someone her age could drop dead so suddenly.

"And Ms. Featherstone, did you have any classes with Stuart Anderson?"

"Uh, yeah," Aria replied. "American History 101."

"Well miss, you're going to need to go to the clinic right away and have yourself tested, because anyone who came into contact with the deceased needs to do that. I know it's a pretty rare condition, and I'm sorry, but it's regulation. Oh, and you'd better pack a duffel bag when you go, because after you're done at the clinic, the campus will be evacuated."

Aria thanked the officer, shut the door, and went upstairs to pack her duffel bag....

joe le petomane, however, had other plans for aria, plans he had hatched in the dense darkness of his vengeful mind. she thought she'd seen the back of him two years earlier, but, to coin a phrase, he was the baddest of pennies and he was about to drop in on her new life......

Luckily, inspired by T.V.'s "Alias', Aria had been taking a self-defense class in karate. Aria sensed more than felt Joe's evil presence, and without even turning around, back-kicked. She whirled, ready to take shot #2, however, this was not necessary, as Joe lay on the ground unconcious.

"Drat!", said Aria, examining her hand, "How did I break a fingernail?"...

Dismissing the minor inconvenience (her roommate, after all, was majoring as a nail technician) Aria looked at her watch. "Dammit, I'd better get down to the clinic." She hurriedly threw some items into her duffel bag, and headed off.

After submitting to a barrage of tests at the college health clinic, Aria sat in the waiting room, anxiously anticipating the verdict. Would she, too, have the illness which killed her classmate, Stuart?

The doctor entered. "Aria Featherstone?"

"Yes?"

"Well, the results are back. You don't have spinal meningitis, however..."

"Yes?" Aria asked breathlessly.

"I'm so sorry, Ms Featherstone. But our tests indicate you have... Dutch Elm disease."

Aria slumped into the waiting room chair. So much to deal with in one day. Not only had she burnt her hand and broken a nail but her daliances in the campus grounds had been found out.........
'Erm.....how did I get that?' she asked nervously biting her lip.
'Well it is rather rare....anyway whats with the hairdo?'
Aria realized that everyone was staring quizzically at her. In all the rush she'd forgotten her hair was only half straightened.
'Oh...it's part of my condition'she spluttered. Then he noticed the burn. 'Come into my office. Now.'
She thought she was prepared for anything, but not what he was about to reveal...........

it wasn't the length of it that made her furrow her brow, nor the strange shape at the end, no, it was cuteness of it. she'd never seen the like.

"don't worry", said doctor bush, "i'm not going to use this on you. this was a present from my sister in law last christmas. you didn't think......", he smiled, "you did didn't you?", and with that he tucked the comedy stethoscope away in his drawer.....

In the doctor's office sat an ancient Chinese man, with a long, long beard. He was dressed in simple but brightly colored robes, silk shoes, and a large gold medallion around his neck. In his hands, he held a velvet bag with a gold drawstring cord.

"Ms. Featherstone," began the doctor, "This is Mr. Ling. Could you please show Mr. Ling the burn on your arm?"

Aria extended her arm. Mr. Ling's eyes widened, and the color drained from his face. He opened the velvet bag and drew out a long, yellowed parchment, rolled in a scroll. He handed it to Aria. He opened his mouth to speak, and in a high shaky voice, he uttered the few words he knew in English.

"Scar. Prophecy. Take."

The doctor looked at Aria with his mouth open. "It's happening," he whispered. "Mr. Ling comes from a very old order, one from before the dawn of history itself. They predicted a handsome boy fallen by a rare disease, and the appearance of a girl with a certain mark on her arm...a girl upon whose shoulders the fate of the world would come to rest." Mr. Ling nodded.

"You must take this scroll to this address," said the doctor, as he scribbled something down on a paper and handed it to Aria. "They will know how to advise you, for I cannot translate the scroll."

Aria looked at the address hastily scribbled on the piece of paper...

1060 West Addison, Chicago read the paper. That had a familiar ring to it... but why?

Is that where she could find the rare disease? And what could be rarer than Dutch Elm in a human??

Aria pondered these questions, as she headed at the door, duffel bag swung resolutely over her shoulder...

....inexplicably sneezing out a pine needle.

Aria made her way to the subway station, where she knew she could find a Red Line train. While she was waiting, she noticed a street musician on the platform, who insisted on tossing his head (and sweat!) in every direction as he wiggled his hips in four different directions.

Aria tossed some coins into the musician's guitar case -- she never could resist. At the end of the song, the musician looked at her and grinned. "Thanks! My name's Rhett... do you have any requests?" he asked.

Aria smiled back sweetly (as she melted inside.) Hey, is that a gold tooth that the boy god singer has... she wondered to herself...

"Uh, yes..." she stammered, "Do you know "Hey Hey Holy Mackeral"? I think that this may be the key to finding 1060 West Addison."

The uptight, serious crowd at the Tori Amos show, almost all of whom had gigantic chips on their shoulders and who were utterly incapable of smiling and all wore Squidward T-shirts, had just booed poor Rhett offstage. So, having nothing to do until the tour bus left and feeling a little insecure, he had decided to prove to himself that "he still had it" and performed in the train station for whomever would listen.

As the singer finished, amid a throng of dazed and smiling young women, he sported a cheesy dimpled grin and said, "thanks, yall!"

He definitely still had it.

She had Terrible Vision, but she got on the train, nonetheless - southbound from Loyola - hoping for an intelligble announcement of the Addison stop.
She simply had to find out who could translate the writing on the scroll.
AB, BB, ERA, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, SLG, W-L%, OBP, AVE - what could it all mean?

"Ali Baba, Baby Boy...", that propably wasn't it

All that she could work out was that 2B and 3B were grades of pencils, soft and ideal for sketching.

She gazed at Rhett, jamming away as if it was for his life itself, she couldn't help but be moved by him. But the sweat thing.....

The train pulled slowly out of the station and she hung her head in anguish, only to spot that the burn on her arm had somehow changed shape.............

"ha, tenerife" shrieked the gap-toothed old crone sitting next to aria, puffing enthusiastically on her pipe and blowing smoke into each of the far corners of the carriage.

"i beg your....", aria coughed, then spluttered a bit. composing herself she contined, "i beg your pardon?"

"tenerife. tenerife me dear". the crone waved her pipe in the direction of the burn. "your scab, it bears a remarkable resemblance to the island of tenerife. tatoo gone wrong is it? supposed to remind you of happier times was it?"

tenerife. happier times. aria's mind raced back to the summer before and the holiday she had tried to forget.......

...but now the refrain "don't mess with a missionary man" was circling around her brain like a spastic B 52.

Many miles away, something crawled through the slime, at the bottom of a dark Scottish lake.

But this is the red line, after all, and
Another working day has ended, with
Only the rush hour hell to face.
And the smoke is pissing her off, cuz it's the last thing she needs here - everyone packed like lemmings into these shiny metal boxes.
"I mean," she thinks to herself, "This is a G.D. nonsmoking TRAIN! Thank god I'm the next stop."

And she admits to herself, the thought of Tenerife calms her - the sea, ahhh, the sea. Latin men, ahhh, Latin men.

As she steps off the train at Addison, she sees a poster of Sammy Sosa, and mouths to herself
"Si, si."

She sure was "Livin' La Vida Loca" today, Aria mused...

As she stepped off the carriage absent mindedly rubbing her island shaed scar one paticular latino man stood out. Her mood changed. Before this mystery began she had enjoyed a holiday with a few girlfriends. You know the sort. Sun, sea sex.....

They were toying with the idea of travelling around europe when there studies finished and the trip was meant to be a chance to plan. Then Enricho appeared.

Aria felt a flush rise to her cheeks. She remembered his resilience in catching her attention, his dark complexion, his full beckoning mouth and those eyes......who could resist?

He sang in one of the local clubs and every night he cast some crazy spell over her.
She had no choice that evening, it was if he had cast some crazy spell over her. It started with a chat about her tennis skills and ended up with him following her into the ladies toilets of all places to seduce her over the sinks. She remembers hitting her head on the taps and setting off the handryer and getting a bar of olay soap stuck to her new dress.

She thought she recognised him from somewhere and he muttered something about his father Julio before everything went dark.

The next thing she knew she was in a bed in some unknown apartment. He was there breathing heavily beside her. She sat up rubbing her bruised forhead, grabbed her things which were scattered over the floor and made a run for it.

As she left, in the distance she heard the words....'You can run you can hide but you can't escape my love'.

Maybe that was truly the beginning of all this she wondered. What did happen that night? No time to ponder on the moment. She was here. This was the house..........

...The House of the Rising Sun.

But how ON EARTH had she ended up here?

Well, it was New Orleans after all.....she supposed it could be possible...

She timidly rang the bell. It was barely seconds before it opened.
'At last you're here!' said the brightly made up elderly lady. She was dressed in a black and red corset and a matching feather boa dressed her neck which sagged, showing all of her 80 plus years. Under her arm she held a baby vietnamese pot bellied pig which was squirming like it's life depended on it.

What the....?

She smiled at Arial. 'You're not the girl you think you are....no no'.........

"A plea from the heart, please don't be mean to me," Aria countered.
She wasn't sure how many more Neil Finn-style witty retorts she had in her, so she tried appealing to the old lady's better nature. With what she hoped was a winsome pleading look on her face, Aria continued, "I've had about all the shocks I can cope with for one day... what's with the pig, anyway?"

'The Pig?'
'Yes....that er.....pig'
'Oh, Tammy Baker you mean......she was abandoned, was eating it's owners out of house and home apparently, I'm just showing her a touch of human kindness'
Aria couldn't help thinking that her words sounded familiar....she gazed down at the scar only to see it slowly changing into a map of New Zealand.
'Well are you coming in deary or what?.....you'll be really greatful of the air conditioning I'm tellin' ya.....it's really close tonight'
She was beginning to wish that this crazy dream was over as she stepped into the hallway.........

where she spied the bottle in the corner, it's lush appearance beckoning to her. attached to it's handsome neck was a note. aria bent down, picked it up and read the words that were written there, "drink me"......

Aria nearly sighed with relief. "Drink me". Now THAT she could do, and she didn't need to be asked twice...

(Mind you, she didn't drink anymore - not that she drank any LESS, either...)

She guzzled the entire bottle down, and gave a satisfying belch.

Now she started to feel weird, a little shifty, a little warbly. The colors began to change and gurgle. 'Twas brilling, she thought randomly.

As lucidity began to ebb away, she had a final clear thought....She slapped her palms over the front pocket of her jeans, then over the back pockets.

"****! I forgot my laminated list. I'll need it for this adventure, to be sure!!"

Luckily she still had the scroll with it's strange and mystical code. As her eyes slowly focused she saw the door before her and the silver keypad, beckoning.

She hurriedly typed it, still a bit woozy from the Newcastle Brown Ale. She belched again and the door swung open.

It was Stewart, Stewart from her American History 101, Stewart who was supposed to be.......be dead!

"Stewart! What in the blazes are you doing with my green sequined- trimmed -with -magenta- lame gloves on?"
"um....I thought they would look better on me than on you, so I took them, hey aren't you supposed to be shocked that I'm alive?"
Aria stared at him for a second, then swallowed and said "Oh...yeah, what are doing alive? I thought you were supposed to be dead."
Stewart looked down at his --well Aria's gloves soo sweetly fitted on his alabaster hands. and replied," I was supposed to be dead, but I went through the bright light to meet my god -who's a toadstool by the way- and it said I wasn't supposed to be there for another week so she said I could come back for a week as anything I wanted"
"and you came here? Whaaat-you could be an otter or a weasel or something are you @@#%$^&& high?
"well yeah Aria, they give you some pretty serious drugs fror menengitis you know."
Aria felt really truly sorry for poor Stewart, she's never known him that well, but it was dreadfully apparant that he.......

...had rabies.

Still, Aria reflected, the foaming at the mouth was somehow alluring, in a punk-rocker kind of way...

there was definitely something not quite right about stewart. a faint smell of stewed cauilflower and boiled radish followed him around like a faithful puppy and the arm that he had lost in that street fight with those circus midgets back in '97 seemed to have mysteriously grown back.

he wiped his mouth, then adjusted the beret on his head. his movements were jerky and uncontrolled as he slung his hands deep into the pockets of his raincoat. he turned to aria and from his twisted mouth he camply uttered "oooooh betty"......

The name's Aria......Aria Featherstone, not Betty.

'Welcome to the secret dimension where all fantasies finally come true......you did drink the Brown Ale didn't you?'

'Er....yep' she replied, confused at his constant dribbling as he danced about admiring his newly aquired handwear.

'Good....and you better hope that you weren't followed, people have been searching for this dimension for sooooo long Betty mmmm'

'Aria'

'Whatever......now wheres your laminated list?'

'Oh f*** I knew I needed it for something!' She said frantically ripping at her clothes looking for the hallowed list....

"ooooooooooooooooooh betty" repeated stewart.......

"...Who loves ya, baby?
No laminated list, huh? Well, I guess I'll have to do. Now let's get going, we've got a disappearing cat to see," he finished.

Aria could have sobbed...she was hoping for George Clooney and instead she got a camp impersonator with a fetish for sparkly gloves who foamed at the mouth.

And there it was......the cat. Well Michelle Pfeiffer to be exact, in her pvc suit from the very series of films that her top laminated man seriously bombed in, Batman.

'She insists on disappearing back into the real dimension the hussy......she knows she can't possibly do that, she's on my list! Here! Look!

Aria couldn't help glancing at Stewart's other fantasies on the list as Michelle spat and hissed.........

it was obvious that Michelle had completely misunderstood the words, "Always wear a rubber"...

Then Aria remembered that Michelle a la batman mode was also on her own laminated list and it was in her own interest to persuade the feline temptress to stay.........'Michelle, Michelle MICHELLE!' She pleaded, almost frantically.

The next thing she knew she was being slapped, very very hard.

'Wake up Aria! Wake up! we're supposed to be at the gig by now, I'm not missing Neil for anyone, not even you!'

She opened her eyes. It was.......