Joe Essid directs the Writing Center at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. He is a Richmond native who attended the University of Virginia and earned a Master's and PhD at Indiana University. His research interests include technology in the classroom and Southern literary humor. His academic writing has appeared in Computers and Humanities, The Writing Lab Newsletter, and anthologies about technology and writing. He is a contributor to Style Weekly and has appeared in Eighty One and RVA. Ignatius Onomatopoeia is the "avatar" who represents Joe in the game-world Second Life. Ignatius will be wandering the virtual terrain of Second Life while his creator writes here about what may be either "the next big thing" for the Internet or the latest darling of the cyber-hip... the reader can decide.
E-mail contact: jessid@mac.com | Web address: writing2.richmond.edu/jessid

by Pappy Enoch, Gest-Riter
Lokashun: Cave o’ Doom Spooky House

Well, gentul reedurs, it am awlways the trickstur hoo wins agin’ the person hoo likes killin’ maimin’ n’ beatin’ the stuffin’ out o’ udder folks.

Corn-sider whut dun jist happened tu mah orful sistur, Jezzy-bell (hoo am that second sort o’ person), She kum intu this-hear fake wirld aimin’ tu kill mee o’ git a large pile o’ Linden dollars.  It were becuz she dun time in the slammer, back in Ol’ Virginny fo’ runnin’ mah still, when the law-dawgs decided tu visit Enoch Holler aftur I got sucked intu Secund Life.

Fo’ I while I give that gal the slip.  Then, I got rite tuckered out a-runnin’ n’ hidin’ n’ pree-tendin’ tu be a grissly bar o’ evun a (rite purty, if sum’whut big-boned) gal.

So I dun telled Jezz that we’d settul matters in the fake-wirld way: we’d go tu the CAVE O’ DOOM Funhouse.

Then we’d have a rip-snortin’ hellbilly battle-royale! Tu Shiners enturs that-thar cave, wun kums back out!

Cave o’ Doom am full o’ munsters, ghosts, n’ stuff which kin kill yu in lots o’ nasty ways.  Pefect fo’ a slap-down by ol’ Pap!

Yu kin find out whut dun happened tu that po’ gal….but I are a-gonna give yu a hint: It won’t purty!  Them-thar fotos I took am tu horry-bull tu run in this blob. 

It wur like wun o’ them-thar munster picture-shows: think “tabul saw, lectric chair, drowed in blood, n’ stuk on’ meat-hooks.”  Yukky-poo! But wun good thang ‘bout the fake wirld (well, tu good thangs):

WUN) The blood won’t real-lookin’ (it were mo’ Tom n’ Jerry cartoon then it were a Sam Peckerpaw movie)

TU) Jezz won’t hurt, ‘cept fo’ her pride (which are corn-siderabull).

So git ovur tu mah Holler on the Web n’ take a gander!

NOW SHEE OWES PAP MUNNY!  Whee-hoo! Don’t mess wif no Enoch Holler trickstur, even if’n yu am blood-kinfolks!

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