Vermicultural hymns echo through the artificial canyons of the cemetery for hot guys. Big stud mourners weep in the shadows of concrete tree proxies.
Slapping naked thighs with wet hands, the guys in the office fear no bruises!
Bald bird cream dripping from the rafters makes the place seem like a motel where a surgeon goes to decieve himself.
The clay abbot is eating with the help of fishermen's offspring who have been trained to gently operate his jaws and massage his throat to allow for the efficient passage of fish flesh and pasted herbs to the steaming vat of his belly. The food is good enough for the abbot but the wine, sullied by beetle larvae and their excrement, will be put out for the stable folk.
Boiled in tin pots, the abbot's drink shall instead be the spinal fluid of the fishermen themselves, harvested by the abbot's mistresses in their black gauze hoods and capes. By the time of the feast, these gorgeous skanks have retired to their richly appointed bedchambers to enter a catatonic state, dreaming of the fish who now swim free of fear.
Using the ash of burned citrus peels, we create a thick slurry, the main ingredient in our day-masks. Once my slurry is mixed with pigment and urine, I form it into a vaguely porcine visage. Peter presses a fat thumb into its forehead, and places it into his cob kiln. I do the same for him; I still consider his elegant vespid creation to be the finest mask I've seen.
Down below the wanking hut and the grease pit, Peter and I, the pig and the wasp, fetch the bookbinder's laundry. We hide brass letters in her pockets, letters she will arrange and rearrange to find the words to the incantation.
One day, months or even years hence, she will have finally come to the final configuration. She will print and recite the incantation and we will sleep, our stolen masks melted for ink.
Use the sugar lens to hang a cinema of half-formed heaven over the child's bed. You provide an education in this way, your simple gift. The only one you have to give.
This is a denial of hope and a viable path to an economy agreeable to all. It is grand. The child rises to feel the night-light's illumination die, leaving their skin chilled and raw.
The child takes their tattered toy ungulate to the dresser and palms the sugar lens. They sneak out the window and climb the ivy-laden trellis up to the roof. Holding the lens to their eye, they dissolve in the starlight.
Crisply gentle utopians form cogent theories of dignity. Honored to perform in the ceremony of romance, they hold the golden antidote in their belt flasks. After an interference of sophistication and elegance, these homely folks evacuate their vibration bladders and soon grow drowsy.
Dozens of comfortable teletherapy experts feel the fingers of their filthy clients pressing into their pillowy cheeks, bringing them to the verge of physical arousal. Hidden tablets of lust suppressors in their gums, tongued from their moist enclosures, prove quite effective when chewed.
Nattily attired wrestling managers shred soy wafers while they use telekinesis to sort glassy cubes into multiple receptacles. Their thoughts are chaste and do not drift to lurid visions of bog standard fucking and frenzied oral.
Father moves his injured body from the upturned wagon to the video barn. A horse in woven trousers listens to a collection of alt-rock hits on compact disc, an obsolete medium which nevertheless acquits itself admirably. The horse is suitably entertained, flashing a dog-eat-dog sly smile at father as he lumbers to the legless sofa in the sunken leisure pit and reclines, groaning.
The mute offspring arrive next, satchels of ground glass and spices at their hips. Then oldest of the offspring mists father's flesh with a dilute vinegar solution and the rest dust him with the glass and spices, each reciting their stanza of the Dreamwords. As father's flesh absorbs their gifts, his friend the horse loses himself in a moment of deep contemplation over the frankly nonsensical lyrical content of the song he is listening to.
The wan sun provides inadequate illumination. The arms of two people on the concrete levee extend until the hands at their ends meet. These, in turn, enmesh and squeeze. The people intently hold each other's gaze, whispering secrets.
The machinery cools in the rust meadow below as the dead demon's body rolls down a steep incline, coming to a rest at a pile of emptied food receptacles. Somewhere, a lost telephone warbles a plea for attention, unanswered.
The observer leans out of the greased funnel as best they can, the exertion forcing out an involuntary spurt of saliva which pools on the ground, inviting a crust of ash and other powders. Until the inverted flesh producer arrives, this is as close as they can come, failing to read distant lips, inventing secrets no one can share.