New Toulouse

Friends and Neighbors of New Toulouse—

Thank you for the support you have given me in my previous elections and in my office. I genuinely appreciate this support, and I look forward to enjoying this support in the future.

New Toulouse is a wonderful place. You make New Toulouse a wonderful place, and I want to continue being your Senator Mayor, to keep making New Toulouse a wonderful place.

I have a serious opponent this election cycle, and I’m not talking about our friend Jack Mondieu. Our fair city is under attack by the forces of evil in the Citizens’ League, and they want to change everything we know and love about our city.

You know these people—they’re dry, humorless, and stuck up! They probably have something wrong with their digestion, I don’t know. They just waltz on into our city, spouting unrealistic platitudes about “honest government” and “conscience.” Hell, that idiot wouldn’t know Conscience if she left her Gloryville crib and bit him on the buttock!
You know where to find sympathetic government in New Toulouse. It’s in City Hall, and as long as I’m in office, it always will be. Remember after the hurricane when those poor widows lost their homes? Who suspended their rent payments until they could rebuild? You did! Well, I did, but I used your money.

Do you remember when poor little Soto had to run around all dressed up, like a butterfly in a cage? Who figured out how to get her a nudity permit so she could be free and we could enjoy her beautiful assets? Well, I did that one, without any help!

Who dug the old Rooster out of the swamp and restored him to his cocky place of glory in the Square? Well, Niki and Fran, actually, but they work for me, so I’m taking credit. Hell, the other guy would probably rather have a stiff-necked old man on that pedestal.

And as for Mr. Teufelsdröckh’s letter:

Who decided not to sterilize the Bayou of Zombies? That was me. It’s not their fault that people decided to build homes over that old graveyard. And they didn’t choose to be Zombies, they just ended up that way. We need to let them shamble, because they are our ancestors!

Who keeps municipal assistance out of the Bayou? Me again. I keep the revenuers out of there too, along with the other agents who want to shut down drinking and gambling and bootlegging, too. We’re talking jobs for our friends and neighbors here, this is important stuff.

Our city is not dry and colorless. We are living, eating, drinking, breathing, sinning friends and neighbors here, and we know how to live without the help of any desiccated old prunes telling us how to run our city.

I would like your vote this election day. Send me back to City Hall, and I’ll keep New Toulouse the fun place that you and your neighbors love.

—Henri Godenot

Dear Editor,

I normally disregard what passes for news in this rag, but I must respond to the fearful, calumnious, and cowardly dreck recently printed under the name of a “concerned neighbor.” Calling folks who have eyes to see and ears to hear “bad” is probably normal and polite talk in the pearl-polishing parlors of the New Toulouse elite, but it’s attitudes as such that have the average citizen pining for change.

Please explain to me how it’s bad to want to raise your children in the bayou without fearing zombies (many of whom I suspect ain’t even native to Louisiana) sucking their brains clean out? Please explain to me why bayou dwellers and lower class citizens in the city are the last to see any municipal assistance when the waters rise? I guess all of that vaunted “calm guidance” is for folks who can afford to be guided.

To address the personal slander against Mr. Mains, as my Daddy (and his Daddy before him) used to say: that dog won’t hunt. Mr. Mains is honest to a fault; his only mistake was to get himself involved in that devil-black insurance business in the first place. Now, of course Mr. Mains’ valiant attempt to clean up a dirty company would disturb the likes of Mr. Godenot and his boot-licking cronies—discouraging honest behavior is the only consistent party plank of the Regular Alliance.

In sum, all this hogwash about the current mayor being good people from a “fine family” makes me wonder if “concerned neighbor” might not be the mayor’s mamma. To be fair, if I was kin to a man this inept and crooked I’d be concerned too.

It seems plain as day that “Monsieur” Godenot ain’t good enough and that’s why we need a fellow like Richard Mains to make what’s crooked straight. I’d appeal to the plain folks of New Toulouse to vote their conscience and true interests. It’s the only way to assure we purge ourselves of the zombies in the Bayou and City Hall.

Sincerely,

Diogenes F. Teufelsdröckh
La Vie Bayou #4
New Toulouse, USA

Bayou Bashers
On an otherwise quiet Monday afternoon in New Toulouse Bayou, a Parish officer making the rounds got quite an eyeful. Four day trippers visiting the bayou were found fornicating in the homes of two different absent inhabitants. The diligent officer blushed when recounting the incident, stating that one violator may have even been a vampire.

Wolf Calls
Gallery owner Ulva Gloom reported the howling of a wolf the last two nights in New Toulouse. “The sound is unmistakable and even calming,” Miss Gloom stated. “Until I realized there was no zoo nearby.” Anyone with any information should call the police immediately.

The Z Word
More zombies have been spotted at the bayou. Bayou residents are advised to carry a blunt object and to remember to aim for the head.

Arrested
A man wearing a large hat was arrested down by the docks for selling counterfeit rubber ducks and harrassing passers-by.

Not Just for Kids

Gamaliel’s Vintage Toys & Dolls
French Market, New Toulouse

You may know Mr. Gamaliel as the person who cracked the radio code and who, together with his wife Arijah Ankh Khalid-Zyn, operates Ravenwood Arts & Curios on Shotgun Row. He can be seen around town in various elaborate costumes. Now he has a new venture: a toy shop in the French Market district. Since was giving away free popcorn, naturally I had to take a look.

Why open a toy store in New Toulouse? He and his wife recently made a wooden doll for a little girl who visited Ravenwood. “I’ve done a lot of things in my life,” said Gamaliel. “Some good, some bad, and some … well, we’re not gonna go there. But it felt good making that doll—to know that someone will enjoy the hard work put into it. It also reminded me of my dad. When I was little, he carved me a wooden toy boat. It was probably the best gift I ever got from my old man, who lathed fine furniture by hand. So in a way, it was like living that all over again.”

Gamaliel has in stock a fine selection of handmade jigsaw puzzles with pictures of local scenery. He also sells toy planes and is giving away a special New Toulouse version as a gift. “It’s made of a really thin, lightweight strip of wood. The propeller is wound tightly by a flexible band that makes the propeller move, so when you toss it, it flies like the real thing. On my travels I met one of the Schweizer brothers, who was exhibiting a glider prototype. This is the best I could replicate it, but I figured I’d make it look like a biplane.”

Click here for more of this story!

New Toulouse got a very strange visit on Monday that has left residents scratching their heads (and possibly anything else they can reach). Ms. Sister Butta, a cousin of private investigator Trolley Trollop, was doing some housekeeping at the TNT Detective Agency when an individual showed up and claimed to be the infamous Tunnel Man, who Ms. Trollop says is responsible for the fates of several missing young women.

The visitor says he’s one of the good guys. “He claims he was sent by Scotland Yard to teach Trolley a lesson,” Ms. Butta said. “He was very curt with me.”

The individual claiming to be Tunnel Man then stormed out of the detective agency and headed down the street. A startled Ms. Butta managed to get this photo of him with a zoom lens.

His progress down the street attracted a small crowd—most of whom watched from their windows and called their neighbors on the phone. The individual went on to say that he was not a murderer and that Ms. Trollop’s confidential informant “Deep Tonsils” had framed him. “Have you found any bodies?” he asked. “No. And you won’t.” He maintained that he was in town on official business for Scotland Yard, but he refused to say more on that topic. He did, however, have quite a bit to say about Ms. Trollop’s suitability as a private investigator.

“It is impossible for a woman to be a detective,” he asserted. “They should stay home and have babies.”

He was interrupted in this rant by Ms. Liza Veliz, who (being a ghost already) wasn’t afraid of him, regardless of whom he claimed to be. She gave the so-called Tunnel Man a banana. He gratefully finished it before telling anyone within earshot that women should “stick to their knitting” and leave the detecting to men.

He said he was going to go retrieve his mining equipment because Ms. Trollop was “too stupid” to find it. Still not sure if this was a prankster or a murderer, or just a mouthy monkey, a couple of residents attempted to phone the police but got no immediate answer. Someone helpfully suggested that this so-called Tunnel Man should look for Ms. Trollop in the bayou, near Swamp Manor, but left out the part about it being an area infested with zombies. The visitor took off in that direction.

Witnesses to the incident are still debating its significance; for one thing, a misogynistic monkey bears little resemblance to the tale told by Ms. Trollop of a suave British gentleman who smelled of lavender and lured away attractive young girls to be his brides. Some residents of the city and bayou don’t believe there is such a person, and they say there are more mundane explanations for missing young ladies.

“I can’t believe they have all just run off. It’s not logical,” said Ms. Butta, citing heartbroken relatives who hope for their daughters and nieces to return. “But I guess anything is possible here.”

In the meantime, Ms. Trollop told a neighbor that she’d received a letter that smelled of lavender but she hadn’t opened it yet. Some residents have taken up a search—whether for an actual Tunnel Man or a depraved attention-seeker capitalizing on the infamy of a local legend, no one is quite sure. Even Ms. Maggie Hawksby’s goat, Trollbait, went wading through the bayou, looking for clues.

So far, the searches have turned up nothing—no Tunnel Man, no mysterious visitor, and no bodies of missing women or zombie victims. 

If a zombie ate a monkey brain, I asked police chief Pazzo Pestana, would it get a hairball? He answered, “Only if the zombie were a cat while it was alive.”

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Photos courtesy of Ms. Sister Butta, Ms. Liza Veliz, and Ms. Maggie Hawksby.

Jane Moreaux keeps all four eyes on New Toulouse.

The zombies at the Undead Wildlife Park in New Toulouse Bayou are extremely aggressive. You land at a bridge, and then you’d better take out your gun or run to the shelter and get one—because at this park, you are the endangered species.

Mr. Owly and I went there for an adventure this evening, and we surely had one. First we heard growling, and then we were dead. BOM. Just like that. They bite like mosquitos.

We killed a few of them till we got tired of it and stood really close to the shelter, teasing them instead. With a whiskey in my hand. Relaxing. Which was fun. Their growling sounds extremely disappointed when they can’t reach you to bite.

These zombies killed off my romantic feeling for poor zombie Jason. It suddenly lost its charm. It’s more fun to kill and tease. It must be the feeling they give me of being in a dance palace. Too much attention can do that.

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The Ghost of Liza Veliz fell in love with New Toulouse at first sight and established an existence in an old voodoo shack in the bayou. She publishes books, some of which can be found at her reading cafe at the French Market.

Miss Maggie Hawksby strongly cautions residents to heed the warning on their toulousite meteorite specimens.

Miss Hawksby, of New Toulouse, watered her display specimen of toulousite.

The specimen came from a chunk of the main mass of the meteorite that Miss Liza Veliz found on October 26. Miss Veliz was doing her civic duty, energetically searching for the new weird glowing mushrooms, when she literally tripped over the huge meteorite. She sent it to the Bureau of Scientific Inquiry and collected a cash reward. The BSI is convinced that the meteorite is the one reported here in early October. The BSI has been giving trophy specimens of the meteorite as a bounty for collecting the glowing mushrooms that have been popping up all over Bayou. Each specimen has an attractive little plaque saying, “Toulousite: A Nickel-Iron Meteorite, whose fall was observed in the Community of New Toulouse. A thank-you gift from the Bureau of Scientific Inquiry (Keep this sample dry).”

Miss Hawksby, being of a curious mind, undertook her own science experiment. She wanted to answer that ageless question that has plagued mankind since rocks first fell from the sky: “I wonder what what would happen if I watered my meteorite?”

Miss Hawksby knew she had a problem when the mushroom that began growing burst through the ceiling of Mr. Elwood Dowd’s home in New Toulouse Bayou, where she conducted her experiment. She tried cutting it down, but it grew faster than she could cut it back. As it grew, she says, it became strangely warm, even hot. When it began to break through the walls and roof, she called for help.

“Frankly, and I hope he doesn’t read this, but the mayor does not have much of a sense of humor,” Miss Hawksby said. “He yelled at me, kind of rudely, ‘Oh, no, not again! I am not going to fix the house, Miss Hawksby! This is not my problem!’ Fortunately, he also yelled for Mr. Pestana.”

Miss Hawksby thought it would be a good idea to summon the kraken, but Mayor Godenot reportedly said, “You want my sea monster, capable of tossing an entire ship, to eat your radioactive and possibly hallucinogenic fungus? No way. Besides, krakens don’t exist.”

But Pazzo Pestana, said Miss Hawksby, was “cool as a cucumber,” suggesting that zombies could take care of the situation. “So I sprinkled that mushroom with graveyard dust, and Pazzo lured a zombie in. Henri wanted to smear the mushroom with brains, but that was dumb. Where would you get that many human brains at short notice?”

According to Miss Hawksby, the graveyard dust attracted numerous zombies, who ate away at the huge mushroom. “Big chunks were falling off and sprouting new mushrooms, and the zombies were swarming over those, too.” The mushroom, she says, continued warming up until it caught fire. Fortunately the house was too damp to attract the blaze.

Today there is no evidence of this incident. The roof of Mr. Dowd’s house appears to have been patched recently, and Mr. Dowd is away on business. Mayor Godenot reportedly contacted the Bureau of Scientific Inquiry, advising them to varnish all future meteorite samples to keep them dry, but this reporter was unable to confirm this.

“Chalk one up for science,” said Miss Hawksby. “At least we know why you shouldn’t water the meteorites. But those glowing mushrooms were pretty neat. I wonder why the mushroom collection instructions said not to put more than twenty of them in a bucket.”

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Gigi Lapin resides in New Toulouse Bayou with her pet crawfish, Jimbo.

Something mysterious is going on in New Toulouse. There is a rat invasion!

They seems to be everywhere. I saw dead rats in a bucket at the Green-Eyed Fairy. Then there was a live one feeding on the grain at the French Market, and when I visited Shotgun Row Blues Cafe I saw one in Mirri’s kitchen, happily eating a big loaf of nice bread.

I also noticed that the donkey Poofer at the Spanish Stable is hiding in her stall these days. Perhaps she is afraid of rats? She was looking at me in a strange way when I went to visit her. I got the feeling she was trying to tell me something about rats.

This is getting pretty scary. They are all around. At Cinema Mise-en-scene I found one at the popcorn machine! And at the Carson Gallery there is one at the telephone. Maybe it is waiting for a call? Or could it be their commander of communication?

Someone call the cats! Harley’s Hotel has rats in the kitchen! And at the Thirsty Sheep there was one on a plate on the table outside and one indoors … but they have sheep standing on the bar, drinking beer and burping too. So maybe it’s part of the culture?

I don’t think the reading rat I found at la Maison DuBois is a part of that old family’s culture, though. It sat on a pile of books. It was the first time I have ever met an intellectual rat.

Well, they are quite cute. The one on the step at Galerie Wikifoo was, anyway, and so was the one I discovered next to me, hiding in my skirt, at la Maison Rouge de Cadeaux et de Spiritueux when I was sitting, thinking about all this, on the little bench inside.

I have found a “blackmail box” outside the door of the Tarantula Arms. “Please pay L$1 for the stamp before sending an anonymous mail,” it told me when I clicked the SEND button. A friend tested it, and her anonymous message appeared in green letters in the main chat before me.

If blackmail is a part of socializing here in New Toulouse, there might be some message in all these rats everywhere.

My mind turns to thoughts about the possibility of using the blackmail box as a way to secretly send love messages. I wonder if zombies receive messages sent to them.

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The Ghost of Liza Veliz fell in love with New Toulouse at first sight and established an existence in an old voodoo shack in the bayou. She publishes books, some of which can be found at her reading cafe at the French Market.

It seems the zombies got a boost of extra self-confidence during the last hurricane.They have left their restricted area! I see them sneak around really close to where the skeleton is in the pond right next to Swamp Manor.

Perhaps the hurricane killed the little humility they might have had achieved after all these years of shooting at them.

Maybe it is that Jason realizes he needs to come nearer to minimize my fading of interest, since he always poofs when I respond to his bite-cuddle. I noticed he had dressed up a bit tonight.

Yeah … I am on a first-name basis with a zombie.

Silky, the little beautiful kitten that visits me in the bayou, is not too thrilled. She does not like zombies.

But me, I think I’ve got zombie guardians now.

Somehow, though, I hope Miss Petunia the alligator decide to stay at Swamp Manor. I do not trust zombies. Even if I find them rather cute when they cuddle-bite me, I am pretty sure they just want to suck my brain.

Still, a little ghostly girl can dream.

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The Ghost of Liza Veliz fell in love with New Toulouse at first sight and established an existence in an old voodoo shack in the bayou. She publishes books, some of which can be found at her reading cafe at the French Market.

Darkest of night with the moon shining bright, there was a set going strong: a set of zombies. And they looked hungry.

My original mission was to find the headquarters of a secret society in the bayou, but the road outside the trolley station was thick with ambling death; a change of plan was required. The foul stench of rotting flesh filling my nostrils made that much clear. Nervously, I retreated inside the trolley station to ponder my next move.

Zombies are not uncommon in New Toulouse Bayou, but such a large number of them has not been seen in many years. Zombies, once living people now turned to animated dead, search for live flesh to eat. Anything with a soul is on the menu, so running away from them only delays the inevitable: you have to kill the creatures because they just keep coming.

Now I understood why free shotguns were being distributed at the Mamou trolley station: the city government was responding to the zombie problem. I picked up a shotgun, loaded both barrels, and looked outside.

Shooting was part of my plan that night, but I had expected to be doing it at the secret society’s shooting gallery that offered prizes for high scores. A tip-off had led me to a cleverly concealed note at the Bayou-side ferry dock. But the note didn’t say anything about zombies. No matter, I thought, affirming my resolve to do my civic duty. The city-issued shotgun felt good in my warm, living hands.

Peering past the station door, I saw no zombies, so I took a seat on a wooden bench outside. Now my trap was baited. Soon enough, the dreaded prey shambled out of the darkness and headed straight toward me.

He, or she, never knew what hit ’em.

After that zombie fell motionless to the ground I followed more clues to the secret location of the Shooters and Liars clubhouse, looking over my back for uninvited companions as I searched.

It wasn’t long before I found the lodge and the shooting gallery, and what a beauty it was, built by skilled workers who take pride in what they do. They even give you an official rifle to use, which was quite welcome because I needed my city-issued shotgun for other targets.

Seek and ye shall find, citizen, just as I did. The clues are out there. But beware of zombies still lurking along the clue trail. Good luck.

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Habana Jazz is a resident of New Toulouse and calls his mother every week.