"Stay quiet"

“…It’s been a long time.”

thinkin bout he.

Five universes, each one themed around the five senses.

Shishi backs away, hissing and puffing up.

She had to protect them so they would be okay!

https://linkto.run/p/XMN4P7Q5

“War spits out its violence overhead, and the sandy graveyard swallows it up.”

“Piece it together.”

“I may have been out for hours.”

“There’s logic for everything.”

“I just have to keep it cool, that’s all.”

“Think about it rationally.”

“It’s strictly not funny.”

“I’m responsible for you guys.”

“All of this is just what I’m making up in my mind.”

“You can trust me.”

“It doesn’t make any difference because you’re an illusion.”

“You don’t even exist.”

“I don’t exist any more than you do.”

“There isn’t a thing, not a single thing that’s real.”

“The more you realize it, the more you’ll feel better for it.”

“You’re going to be alright.”

“I think the worst part of it is over.”

“That illusion certainly seems real to him.”

“Odd how the real consorts with the shadows, how the present fuses with the present.”

“Quite a bit of rain for this time of the year.”

“Been in my family for years and years.”

“It’s supposed to be very valuable.”

“If I could spare a dollar, I’d give it to you, believe me.”

“I’m so in debt myself.”

“We’re just around the corner from bankruptcy.”

“You promised me no more handouts.”

“A man can be a failure for only so long, and then it catches up with him.”

“It isn’t just an antique shop where you pick up the pitiful remnants of other people’s failures, it’s a shrine to failure itself.”

“It’s a mausoleum, a burial ground for people’s hopes.”

“We’re not old people, and yet this place is making us old.”

“That hope chest will be opened, and an improbable phantom will try to bedeck the drabness of these people’s failure-laden lives with the gold and precious stones of fulfillment.”

“There’s something unholy about this.”

“We’ve already given away a lot of money.”

“It was my suggestion that you reflect very carefully.”

“I’d be afraid to have you try for fear of the consequences.”

“There are simply normal and understandable outgrowths and conditions that go with any windfall.”

“No matter what you wish for, you must be prepared for the consequences.”

“I wish I were back where it all started.”

“Since we obviously can’t afford a brand new life, suppose we give the old one a paint job or something.”

“A word to the wise now to the garbage collectors of the world, the curio seekers, to the antique buffs, to everyone who would try to coax out a miracle from unlikely places.”

“I’ve been sitting here waiting for you.”

“Where some men leave a mark of their lives as a record of their fragmentary existence on earth, this man leaves a blot –– a dirty, discolored blemish to document a cheap and undistinguished sojourn.”

“In this room is a strange mortal combat between a man and himself.”

“You could get roasted to death, or poisoned by small creatures.”

“I’d like some decent odds for a change.”

“I don’t mind a little shakedown, but it’s just that I’m getting all the hard stuff.”

“That kind of stuff ain’t for me.”

“He’s always giving us trouble.”

“I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“You never did a job like this because you never could do a job like this.”

“That’s how you’re going to get away with it.”

“Why am I scared all the time?”

“You’re not running out on me this time.”

“You ain’t lost your marbles yet and I mean to see that you keep them.”

“Everything you do is everything to me.”

“You think I can keep quiet now while you go out and get us both killed?”

“How come every move I made turned out wrong?”

“Every time I tried to talk to you, you listened to somebody else.”

“She tried to set you straight.”

“I want to live the dreams you dreamed and never had the guts to live.”

“You got nothing but pain inside.”

“I’m going to take your skin off foot by foot.”

“Tell me what’s wrong with that miracle of modern science.”

“Last time I was over here, you kicked your foot through the screen.”

“I have a vivid recollection, thank you.”

“Supposing we stop this moronic small talk and get down to some serious larceny?”

“They don’t work properly because you don’t treat them properly.”

“I assume there’ll be an extra charge for that analysis?”

“Aside from being a rather incompetent clod, you’re a very unreceptive man.”

“I shall file that idiotic question in my memorabilia to be referred to at some future date when I write my memoirs.”

“He’s a bachelor and a recluse with few friends, only devotees and adherents to the cause of tart sophistry.”

“He has no interests save whatever current annoyances he can put his mind to.”

“He has no purpose to his life except the formulation of day-to-day opportunities to vent his wrath on mechanical contrivances of an age he abhors.”

“Did I ever tell you with what degree of distaste I view insubordination?”

“I wish you’d stay for a bit.”

“I’d like very much not to be alone for awhile.”

“I’m desperately tired. I haven’t slept for four nights.”

“The thought of being alone just now is intolerable.”

“Things have been happening, very odd things.”

“For as long as I have lived, I have never been able to operate machines.”

“I am a logical, rational, intelligent man.”

“I’ve been seeing and hearing a collection of mechanical frankenstein monsters whose whole purpose is to destroy me.”

“I think you’re terribly ill and need medical attention.”

“You’re suffering from a bad case of nerves due to lack of sleep and these are nothing more than delusions.”

“In this conspiracy you speak of, this mortal combat between you and the appliances, I hope you lose.”

“You’re not going to intimidate me.”

“How is my favorite, attractive young widow?”

“Their whole existence is dedicated to embarrassing me or irritating me or making my life miserable.”

“I wonder what it was that could have scared him.”

“He succumbed from a heart attack and a set of delusions.”