Congenital skull cracker

intermittent humming of hard drive resembles

distant ship in fog, but 

clanking buoy's peal

replaced by

cadence of Her breathing

silence brings too many 

default noisemaking issue

squeaky-high tones chords

sounds of ear

listening to itself

sounds that speaking apparatus

having been damaged abused

afflict surrounding tissue

pressure on canals chinks

astigmatisms of perception

or it was born fused on one side

upper and lower yapper

no option to rest disengage

on any day after

congenital skull cracker

 

 

by Tom

Ilyn on Shab Near St. Dick

Shab's mouth is splayed, consuming the environment as they go

Like the former rider of Shab, Ilyn's hands are missing. 

His spine is scrambled, his stomach distended, face swollen, ears like a bat.

2:22 2/2/22

 

Please don't do that, scar tissue

please don't do that, scar tissue

don't be the weed chokes his host

that's what free radicals are for

i want you to do the opposite of

arming up, favoring one side, 

drama queen, sky-falling chicken

it's ok to relax now, even to 

give in, stop resisting, live

knowing that you saved a life

by Braino

Body capacitance

you can see from hand mixing hamburger

that even dead flesh wants to stay together

throughout their existential disaster and

beyond, cattle wanting at a cellular 

level, same as drinking from the same 

pond, to bevel individuality, 

to fill the tank with commonality,

a temple of identicality that tempers

diasporic fears of wasting anger

at exploitation murder and dispersion

when everybody has a different version

of neutrality, destruction and creation

the ties that bind the stories of a nation

by Peg

Cruel facts of longevity

just sitting here, thinking about what i'd

like to share with a world of strangers

all of us floating, untethered by space or time

perhaps just that i hope your

landing place is kind if there is one

or that any endlessness refreshes itself regularly

 

when just floating one hopes to be in a 

company of well wishers if not wishes

coming true in a constant strumming

we must realize and gird our instruments

seek out the good luck and opportunity

already waiting in our personal associations

Dr. Donna Thong

"Recredentialing imminent."

Today's dog walk

you have so much you have to sort through what you don't want

possibilities are stacked in spilling-over boxes

each moment an opportunity to move forward

 

trapped in a mind a body that doesn't want can't won't do

sealed in brick and snowed in at the dead end of a 

street in a tiny imitation of urban settlement dishevelment

you need legs even to get the laundry accomplished

how to break out of the disuse overuse injury cycle

mix your targets among the physical virtual geographic

a hungry mind that prefers to eat sleep

a jaded palate that doubts and postpones

a vehicle loathe to cross emotional landmarks

by Donna

Today's dog walk

now she's an anchor on the leash

while i jog in place

low brown cloud layer but bright

long pees with the shoulder hunch

boys look at us

through the grainy snow mist

 

 

by Donna

Tripping

telling about a time when i was a

man fully loaded

is really sideways disrespect for the 

kind of stud i am now

one stem into reminiscing could also

draw a stream of horror at the

hungry animal its disregard 

for self-regard estate planning

this life wasn't yet a paradigm only

anti-paradigmatic yet

organized enough to fool a boy into

thinking he had time

my boot tracks in the snow are like

the bodies each a new step into the

cold delight of warm palm islands

we were an intimate crew

i have my colossal straddle over those

old-timey train towns and worn goat

paths in the gardens of other capitals

lonesome memories

now i am tripping off to glory

on the heels of my dad and mother and 

so many countrymen

so that the past may keep being fed

 

by Ilyn

 

Template

once your personality begins to blossom

you become more annoying

although you may see your

religion in all that you survey

that doesn't mean that 

religion must be affixed to everything

what is a handout

a handout must include public 

education, welfare, corporate

subsidies christmas and birthday gifts

litter to those who would

eat it

or honor honor that comes with no

religious affiliation or

indoctrination except for the belief

that government can run parallel and

not entwined with religion

though the law may have 

come from religion religion

is not the law

and the more you sing His praise

the more this becomes a scowly 

silent car

with passengers who'd just as soon

plug their ears with silence

mood agents conscious managers

want the poor to be less so

not that learning and learning to believe are the same 

not that they birth and suffer more

which is a religious notion

put forth and then abandoned by

religion religion when it was

all we had or when it was the 

government government that was 

the stick to the holy carrot

either of which can be fashioned with a

phallus but is it

godless is it godless if it's 

not religious

or what if it got started by

religion religion supposedly 

inspired by God a god who

is inerrant which must mean he

chooses the winners winners 

glorious for better or worse but

glory glory 

for better in the long run

for example would God choose an

idea that's religious over a

good idea that's inspired 

by religion and what man who's not a 

savage

is not inspired by at least one

religion and would not conduct himself

with a preinstalled moral compass instead of a

do-it-yourself one

or at least by his lower impulses which he's

going to know are the opposite of his

religion-inspired conscience

but there's a conscience without religion

way back way out there or maybe

closer than i'd like to think

a conscience born of stove touching

lingering physical pain

ecstatic sensory experience

recognizing flesh wounds pleasure

and extrapolating that to emotions like

loss bewilderment hilarity

a conscience that is and becomes a 

god by fashioning a god out of

conscience conscience that wants to use

the knowledge that led to conscience

as a templative more than contemplative

religion religion that frees and constricts

and annoys others and

steps on the rake of its purpose and

spirals into meta-perversions and

degrades conscriptively by way of 

murderers rapists

deprives minorities by ommission

grifters slavers exploiters

all the same sins sins that predate religion

religion so lonely so powerful destructive

gods that grant freedom only by dying

and quite probably not even then

 

 

by Ilyn

"Short by Illinois standards."

I could have been lidderly all the way into the next hexagon by now

apart from the especially remarkable moments their days kept unrolling easily and within the scope of relative safety

they moved on from one another's disasters grew to accept or tune out any resulting disfigurements

there was some pressure from the many many feet that still could be yet to drop

but this was a familiar and traditional pressure against which generations had developed mechanisms

their story was to live under new pressures develop new mechanisms or 

survive to tell of their sufferings

for example those ones who'd fallen through The Crack 

learned to live in their bodies but in our reality

but they had to come together in a circle

and talk about their putative worlds

they turned out to be places where suffering had a different definition but one that they could hardly remember

Periodical Insight

Vol IX.7.78

Today's dog walk

i'll try not to rhyme eye and sky, but

here's the situation: there are vibrations

there are lightning flickers but also high

wind cloud smears malfunctioning

xmas bulbs against houses and a double

ocular migraine. depending on which

way i look, various fields are pulsing

another creepy but not physically un-

pleasant day in a strand of sometimes

horrifying serendipities weatherwise

which lifts you neckways off of the

plain hard sand of quotidian worries

that you'd normally be depending on

natural phenomena to free you from

by Jan

Duddle-dee duh/ duddle DEE-dah

when i can't think

to the music 

better to sink 

what do you say?

then we can be

in the same groove

bobbing away

in the venue

letting it take

up all the room

then we can feel

at our leisure

when i can't see

to the future

better to be

in the future

then we can find

what there is here

and we will know

what to leave here

and we can think

to the music 

better to sink

what do you say?

[loop]

 

 

 

by Peg

Bothsidesism

to the poor or persons in the past i suppose 

i live the luxury of a most debauched king

while to my peers i seem a pitiable thing

 

the afflicted find fault in my astonishing 

complaints; the threadbare really seem 

to care about the level of my waste

prejudice, from the right and from the

left, from every gender camp and 

disinformation factory, theme, caste

 

 

by Jan Jansdaad 

(Jan's dad)

Snub

you don't know if you'll live throughout the night 

and you're watching a rom-com? you can deduce

that all prospects are tongue in non-literal cheek

or that your level of acceptance is very high

or that it's depression giving up disassociating

and probably not production values, star power

a sudden insistence on minding the moment?

a pain strip that overlaps takes on is informed by

the stack of strips below it, a translucent 

suspension of anecdotes, quips, romans a clef,

bulleted lists, self-pranks legends memoir

and these legs can take you from sofa to desk

and a desk can take and make havoc with an arm

and an arm is all it takes to stop an action or

refuse the sorts of service lacking which could 

mean the end of a long but very young evening

it's that you're tired and afeared of a rapacious

environment which can be slowed cannot be

slowed by inaction but can be snubbed as one

would snub an earnest lover with no worldly

blame apart from the ancient code she arrived

with, no more agency than gravity and water

 

by Reptily

345

decaying cedar lodge in eastern prussia

clump snow dropping from high branches

crystal blue sky

trying not to boil it down into an unfair 

and ugly blob or not even trying just

not doing that you know?

presents from four-score christmases

choke the closets and litter the plank floors

they're real planks that they'd cut from the

surrounding woods and made floors of them.

 

they were watching a season of Star Trek in

which the flow of the plot kept getting 

stopped dead when each character had to 

turn to the other and affirm their goodness

there's also a lake and silently dipping mallard 

groupings, legit choppiness or gently rolling

in the moon, natural waters that are filtered 

and stocked, ballooned over; still nature was

winning here, fungus by mouse by respect

by time no not by time. in the same

measure of time there can be renovation.

by age no not by age each age is just a 

fashion. there is only movement, only 

action, else there would be preservation.

by Reptily

Unangry

they say never go into a situation angry or you'll lose

but if your spirit is angry all you'll do is suppress your

anger and not be unangry

that's how breaking the rules becomes a spiritual

pursuit especially if you have to pay off your

transgressions

and if not are you humbled by

rue?

the day after a full moon i felt and discarded emotions

rocked the bottom of the steering wheel

snuck nicotine vapes near a hospital's elevator banks 

found the only saturday medical supply outlet

marveled at aisles of crisp alarming packages

how family characters rise to an emergency 

in direct proportion to the value of the afflicted

or sink in unison if there's even only 

one who can't hold her shit

 

by Donna

Dog pees on rug

in one full-moon day:

ran out of my vape pen

with an hour and a half to go before the

tow truck

who said i couldn't ride with him because

he'd brought his girlfriend

the stepfather says:

pull it up right from the middle

give me a snuggie

and the woman with the broken hip says:

home healthcare workers

what for?

and the jury says: 

let him go

and half the people realize

all we need is lies

dog pees on rug

wound porn

there was a four-foot tube going from my nostril to my small intestine, and i pulled it out, twice, once while vomiting. 

i figured out how to work some of the blinking, sucking, beeping machinery, and when i'd had enough, i switched it off. 

i took the loudly ticking clock down from its high place on the wall and removed its battery. 

i signed a waiver of liability so that i could be allowed to sit up in bed.

i told them i wanted ativan, and a full milligram, not a child's dose. 

i allowed a young male nurse to wrap me with a vinyl leash and walk me up and down the corridor. 

i became conscious well into a narrative with a daisy miller-like subplot. 

there in trinidad and tobago, i gave her one more chance to choose between the hipster boyfriend and the security of her father.

i drifted in the streets after they made their choice and moved inland, toward the volcano. 

i evaded pickpockets and thugs in a dark terrain of campfires, our shadows splaying against the outer city walls.

i got a ride in a jeep full of local teenagers speaking tagalog.

i cooked a pork shoulder in an aluminum pan at an outdoor community kitchen.

i slept in a flophouse full of mattresses in wall alcoves and flashlights and men.

i met the girl who was going to solve the problem of the tracking wires embedded in everyone's eyeglasses or canes. 

i was desperate to find an overall solution, but i could only wander from situation to situation. 

by Donna

Repast

watching her dance plays

all their muscle keys

her inner commands

can freeze them in place

but she can't reach me

the pitch of my jib

bends off her song

and won't let me on

my breathing, long and

unobstructedly

tacks the vanished spell

only when she's gone

only when alone

can i read her lips

free from the bleeping

moment's disorder

wings sweep on the floor

panic and truth merge

is this not my drug

or not me at all

 

on stolen spirits

please the vacant skull

take time and hurl it

with your polished shoe

 

realization

is after it's through

what's not caught is true

so what have you done? 

by Reptily

Skeleton parade

i can feel the life 

coming back in

and it's terrifying

as a skeleton

while before my 

past wrongs paraded

before my eyes

now more are on the way

i don't set time

but i did invent it

so to steal it

from the chill of night

 

but the warm of day

is tending light

must i still pay

for not living right?

 

 

 

by Reptily

Smoke crazy

She keeps going out to smoke this

in to smoke that

like breathing except the opposite

she smoke crazy smoke crazy

She went to college and all that

end up like this

in mutually exclusive states

we trial dating while mating

Half the day she's in pain from 

electrolysis

she gets that but not how her 

soul might fit, soul might fit

Lady in the main, second is a

man for this, a man 

much more than any other gender

that's one for you, one

 

she smoke crazy

we trial dating

oh she a lady

and he a man

[repeat]

by Donna

Lyric for electric organ, fog machine, and choir

Look, i'm touching my scalp, right near the brain

it's an expression of painful humility, vulnerability

 

as i read the prognosis my heart was 

thumping with surprise [begin drum]

 

to do it and feel it at the same time

the answer was always why

 

when it could have been a 

fun time, fun time [begin organ]

 

free, and free is what they hate us for

fire, it's what our lives are given for

we: have no regrets for living on

fire, it's what our lives are given for

free, and free is what they hate us for

we: have no regrets for living on...[fade]

 

Donna Thong

"My name is cool because it's a command."

Any single lover

it's only 11:30
but my night is over
and it won't be getting better

reminds me of the time
i made out with a man
who turned seedy and spent

i'd like time to
be there to make you
want to get to more time

by no means will i

give in willingly to sleep

it must win me over

 

nor will any single lover

dictate my ups and downs

or cause me troubles

 

 

 

by Donna

can't go back/ have to go back

can't go back/ have to go back

still beat up/ they're on task

boat that spins/ must join in

 

out of doors is a hot griddle

other persons burn too hotly

i can diffuse their iterations

 

from within these walls and

tunnels/ can't stay here/ can't

leave, reaching way beyond 

 

my fingertips what i can feel

is read only/ listening trying 

to jaw the words correctly

 

i want to stay here forever/

this is not at all what i want

too hot/ stay in/ want not

Dr. Donna Thong

Center for Therapeutic Re-credentialing

Rm 409

Television leaked into the vacuum of my inactivity

Hunched over an ancient glory hole in one of their urban sub-baserock ant tunnels, pressing my eye very close, I could see a television. Its sounds and light began to leak day by day into the vacuum of my inactivity. 

 

I can feel my emotions getting on the roller coaster provided and off the one that's in my head and pretty soon, one is just a template for the other, but which is which?

by Reptily

Moral Crimes

The poor make truer friends

or lack of means starts trends

that beg the path of more security

in that the opposite of debt is money.

The rich are fickle and strategic

needing all the more to shirk the tragic

prone to see the emptiness in bounty

but always find the energy to count it.

 

Being in the middle you're suspicious

Poverty becomes your real subconscious

you notice tiny fluctuations

and the moral crimes of rich and poorer nations.

 

 

 

by Reptily

Sincere Little Face

i was at least gonna 

log in an

leave some pathetic

message to no one

but then i remembered

ye are already damn 

complete in Him

and my song carries on...

i got my grrl with her

little sincere sleeping face an

glowing red nails 

from the rag weed an the

 

biting flies she's ad-

mittedly an animal but ya

could eat her up like a

cannibal and every little

 

move that she makes

is worth a second take cuz

she sleeps by my side an

poses for greeting cards an

 

deals out the faces make a

grown man cry like it's

his own baby child looking

up and smiling missing a

 

tooth but pushing

through the discomfort so she

can be there for you an be

there for you there for you oh

 

CHORUS

my child's got me got my

eye got my face got my

eye got my taste my child's

got me got me in her embrace

my child my child my child

REPEAT

by Hoolie

Peg's Failed/Anachronistic Do's and Don'ts for Petty Transgressions

• Just hold the item(s) in your hand and walk out the door with it/them, purposeful but unhurried. Then if stopped, say, "Wow, I guess I spaced out. I want to buy this/these, but I also wanted to compare the price over at [name of other store at mall]."
• If you must flame while in a hooptie, keep hands well below the dash.
• If you are trying to get back more shiny coins, choose a teller who seems to be flirting with you.
• If you have a lighter in your pocket, and there's another one on the table, use the one on the table, and then put it in your pocket. You now have two lighters.
•  Get the shiny coins up front, but make sure his purse is close by in case he wants to add items or go off menu.
  
• Press a dab of his pre-cum between your thumb and forefinger. If it's tacky, use a condom. If it's stringy, you're good!

Take these to switch up sleep type

story-verbal sleep

itching-layered

many-roomed structure

places on maps

view from grave

view from above

view from a passing conveyance

figures beckoning

bent coupling

generic horror

deeply unasleep

torque of somnolents

conscious paralysis

tandem breathing

ever sinking

scary clear

content bemusement

seeking moments

stranded in time

able yet not able

about the bed

night shrouded

stark light black curtains

sweet avoidance

stolen

form of eating

brain stuff

closest listening

despite discomfort

ring of saturn

bobble head

I thought it was all over and then woke up to a whole other day

Yes, I used to contemptualize everything

like the bitter, curmudgeonly professors at

the beginning of my career. They filled the

smoking lounge with grievances and

plotting, derisive cackling in their blur of

fear. But for some the failure has been a 

tenderizer, the corrosive beating toward a

climax of surrender. Is what I'm hearing.

by Peg

Murder grinder

My face was smeared across all the killings

one of them

killed when he'd temporarily forget how to type

innocence stuck in back corners presented as 

stupidity, passion

a mocking deadly innocence put mildly

nature predating pre-forgiveness

unchanging through ages of moral fashion

 

But when they think of murder they see me

I believe I have to tickle them with it

They feel they need to get all into it

I am this free-channel boatman

skimming along

living my life with all these dead along

keeping my eye on what can change

not what's done.

by Ted

The better form of sight

i like to hang myself by the ankles

over the River Plaque, and swing

and watch the sky rock up and back

 

where nature's harsh incense rises 

from tiny clouds with dark edges

fertility independent of relationships

processes do better without light

blindness is the better form of sight

among internal organs is the eye

by Ilyn

"Short for Illinois"

Crappy lighter

births could no longer quell my pregnancy

too many selves were building inside me

i can no longer be always in delivery

 

so i bought this crappy lighter to keep me lit all night

i stand vigil for the principal inseminator

like a lover i will greet him and then end his life

 

 

 

by Peg

rally

Devotees prepare their villages for the master's arrival, readying the alms and gift bandages. They will drape his cart and his dog with wide loops of marigold heads and tiny copper bells strung together with yak thread. They sit in the sun among the striking shadows of the columns in the dusty main commons with their baskets of wool and wide combs and wheels stringing the marigold heads and singing about Ilyn. 

 

our master rallies through our hearts and towns

always seems to think he's never been

pledging to remember us forever

lord ilyn is a part of nature now

he comes in the spitting rain or gloom of spring

he grips our fingers like a newborn child

 

he comes along on a static summer noon

laughs at our familiar terms of address

drinks our autumn vine from the same 

 

bloody cup and passes it around

until we feel again eternal kinship

some will follow all the way to Mthyuh

This, here

The shiv will put you into a nightmare you can wake up from as opposed to no-shiv, which you can never wake up from.

I'm on no-shiv. 

I'm sorry. 

Don't sweat it. I was born that way. 

Is that what you were. Born. 

Yeah my mom

I know. Her name is Jan Jansdaad. 

Was. But you're right, we're all Jans.

I wish I knew more exactly how I came to be. The mode of arrival, that is, not conception. 

Whether you came out of a lab dish or a lightning bolt 

I am still coming from there

Either way you are this, here.

Turning back

The last rings of sun, with the moon surrendering backward on its rocker: it's a scary light in which to lose your dog. Only the tiny desert vichos can hear Ilyn whistling for Shab. 

Showing up unapologetically late, Shab seems happy to back the cart right up to Ilyn's charred and bloody heap near the decomposed granite pit he's crawled out of. 

Shab gets a kinky cord of hemp wrapped in his teeth and pulls, and the door on the back of the cart falls off. 

Ilyn then has to figure out how to get into the cart with the least amount of pain. After all, he is not a martyr. 

A quiet darkness surrounds the pair except for just beneath Shab's hooded forehead, where his eyes are lending just enough red light to see the flecks of cement dust in the air. They would turn all the way back around to the sun again before they'd even find their trail.

Paroxysms of sincerity

Jan Jansdaad is driving along and thinking what if I lost this hooptie. What if anything happened to it at all. We'd be on our way to the next lower rung of economic class hell... 

Wait a minute. I'm back. All the while La Chama must have been leading me towards a hole to The Crack. She knew I'd have to return, at least for a moment, just to see. I see I've been to pharmsupply-- I've got a live bag of hopinaskippina. I'm headed home, for whomever I find there. But what about my daughter-- will she take my place? I just wish we could be all together and safe with descent health insurance. 

Then there is a prick near the dew claw. Lloyd? You're drawing my blood. 

Not at all, Mrs. Jansdaad. I'm just cuddling here next to you while you nap. 

Jan? 

I know, Mom. He's from pharmsupply just like daddy said. 

Now wait just a minute, ladies. 

You're only here to steal our genes and spy.

Oh I'd say it's been quite a lot more than that. I can take you back. Get you reformatted. You'll be an in-between type, like La Chama. Small enough to fit in human structures. Strong enough to

To power one of your slave K's with my brain, as your slave. 

It's not like that anymore. We're finding new ways to

To use our natural bodily processes for the greater appetite. Our suffering is inconsequential. 

Ok, you know what, you guys? I am getting really sick and tired of walking around with a completely open heart to each of you as persons, and you know I kind of feel like that Begging Rajah, with so much, so much to give, and... no hands. You just scheme to cover up or push your strong identities. What about my purpose? Who am I?

Both Mrs. Jansdaad and Lloyd avert their eyes and tighten their lips. One concept they can agree on is the adorability of Jan and her paroxysms of sincerity.

The Begging Rajah

You say that Ilyn is Shab's "new" master. Who is the old one? 

You might have noticed that on Shab's back is an empty saddle made of the finest mantua. It was the seat of the Giving Rajah who became the Begging Rajah but is now the Perpetually Sobbing Rajah. He was so giving of his riches that he even tried to feed gems carved as lady bugs to a living monster poinsettia, which of course bit off his hands. For a while, the raja tried begging from the back of his formerly proud and now ashamed dog, Shab, but it was no use. Shab's eyes only began to glow red with the shame of his master's indiscretion. 

Finally the begging rajah was able to give up begging and live here in this place of death and peace and learned to take on sorrow as his only sustenance. If you look over there in the shadow near the gate, you can see him holding himself up in his grief and sobbing against the stones, having just seen Shab wander off once more with the cart and the redundant saddle. 

Passion of Ilyn

With La Chama off to help Mrs. Jansdaad find herself, Jan and Lloyd find themselves wandering across the stained plaza the morning after Night of Shiv Days. There are two kinds of stains between the cobblestones: the blood of zealots, and the purplish marks left by the shiv left by the K's. Some flekes have scraped it up and made shiny coins selling it; others go on to sell their stories of being scarred by it. 

Lloyd and Jan enter a random alley which becomes an artery that leads them out of the town center and into the Graveyard of Gay Guys. They buy some sausages of vicho and tubes of vine from a vendor and rest against an ancient tree. 

Soon, there is a groaning squeak, and then a thud. And then again, and again. Uninterrupted in their chewing, they watch a dog and an open cart pass into their line of sight, headed for the far stone gate leading out to the countryside. 

It's Shab, says Jan matter of factly, with her new sense of knowledge. That cart he's pulling is thought to have been constructed before the invention of the wheel. It's rotors are hewn square, so they buck upward at the corners and lurch forward coming down on the straight parts. Shab seems to pull it effortlessly, his feet barely touching the ground, if at all. He'll wander in that wasteland until he sees Ilyn surfacing through the rocky scrabble. Dogs think anything that moves must be alive, and if it's alive it must be food or a savior, and that's how he finds Ilyn every time. Shab finds Ilyn and then pulls him along in the cart, which, in all its heaving and jangling, is the only rest that his master will get until the next ascent, the same ascent, to Karihr-Kesh. 

It's reassuring in a way, says Lloyd. Ilyn seems to suck up a lot of the pain around here. Is that what he's for? 

It might be an unintended effect of his passion, answers Jan.

Mthyuh, Tray of Ashes

Ilyn sprints past his single-file train of devotees on the jagged trail up chank to Karihr-Kesh, the sacred springed platform jutting out over Mthyuh's hot mouth. 

Standing at the edge of the Kesh, Ilyn drops his robes and bells and marigold garlands until he is strikingly naked and white-grey because of the scars. His skin is scars upon scars from head to feet. Only the brilliant red hair can break through the gnarled scar surfaces and stand out against the blackened rock faces. 

His hair and cement-white bottoms of his feet are all the eye can see until he seems to be consumed in the black crustiness of the lava below. The devotees crack rocks together and blow into stone pipes and sing.

Charnel nest

A charnel nest sometimes grows around the entire top of a chank as fresh bones are added, wet. They dry while lashed to the rest of the structure with the sinews of the worshipers' bodies from which they came.

Off course

They've chosen an open volcanic meadow in which to relax and reflect: a topless Chamatilly on a jet-black carpet woven by the Virgins; and Jan on her elbows, matching flaps of her wing tissue loudly snapping and billowing above like castle flags.

 

You see Jan in our culture we say that life is not only ours to feel and act as we see fit, but also to be custodians of the franchise. Duty, honor, sure, come into play. But I prefer to see the responsibility as owed to a future self, one who might suffer needlessly without my sustained devotion. Don't keep track of time, but keep feeding the Mthyuh every day. She is life just as we all are life. 

 

I miss my husband.

And you should surely go to him as soon as you have come to terms with the risks that will mean for the both of you. There, I am like a tethered freak who dances for rice. There, Mthyuh Protection Society have become complicit with Pharmsupply to round up our sisters to dissect and disperse and corruption. You'll always be watching your back. So go there, as soon as you have allowed for the possibility that your brain will be splayed open in an incubator and that your body will be thrashed by trees and slammed into chanksides, that Remote Tissue Decisioning will turn you into a great big toy for all the teenage sons of all the ministers in High Chank. 

I can try Hopinaskipinna. Or I'll make a nest for Jan and me and bring him whatever he needs. 

Of course you can. Of course you would. Or all of it will veer off course. 

Sixty times I circled

sixty times i circled

casualties mounting

watched from every angle

my sisters' teeth were flashing

in blood and spittle

history was attacking

virgins stood on balconies

sharing the dread

of my own abilities

by Jan

Stonecakes

I saw them getting very near, just over the Graveyard of Gay Guys, and decide to either turn sharply downward or circle the plaza. 

The first one to dive hesitated then dropped her shiv egg in the second tureen. 

She turned sharply upward as the splash skidded across the first row of rubber and umbrellas. The crowd did little more than gasp. There was a drunken catcall from among the sidewalk tables set up behind the bars set out from the sidewalk and the shops. "Shills!"

Soon there were so many K's circling the plaza that it looked like a solid wall of scale and pynco-fur was undulating in place. 

Another K dove for the second pool, and the splash was slightly different, enough to send a tiny dot of molten matter onto the bare forearm of a tourist in a parti-colored hat. At first she shrieked, but realizing her fortune, laughed just as loudly, then shrieked and sobbed, than laughed, maniacally, again and again as the spec burned more deeply into her flesh. It would only turn out to be a tiny chunk of coal.

The next K knocked over the first bowl with its dew claw and sent a mob of worshipers scrambling for higher ground. 

The sight of it drove some of the K's mad, and they began to swoop at the fleke pilgrims on the broken tureen scaffolding, themselves out of their minds with religious fervor. 

Eat me first! Eat me first, I say! screamed a man in a suit from the highest point of the wreckage. A very skinny K dove right at him, scooping him up in her jaws like a rabbit and hurling him high into the air before catching him behind her with her feet, impaling him with six of her eight back claws. She took a lap around the plaza, squeezing her toes and splurting the crowd with blood from her prize before before soaring off to a nest, presumably. 

I can't yet produce a shiv egg, so I kept circling high above the rest, thinking of Jan and his stonecakes.

 

 

 

by Jan

Hummed and mumbled while coasting

should i be fighting or giving up

do i resist or let this place sink in

am i sinking in place or flying

i have the apparatus in place to

placate my past desires with new

playmates, but it's all so gray

my marital ties, it may turn out

are strong enough for any fire

make me want to stay the same

by Jan

Night of Shiv Days

Some of them are just hoping for the best. 

Chama is looking out at the sunset behind the Mthyuh Town Hall Plaza, crowded shoulder-to shoulder with rubber-wearing, umbrella-holding flekes. The tureens are full to brimming over, the broth coming to a simmer. 

They show up thinking maybe their lives will change or they will have a really good time or they will end up doing scar tours at shiv temples for cash or dead in pieces in a filthy charnel nest. Since there's no time, the only way you can move forward is to shove action in a direction. 

Jan and Lloyd are Chamatilly's guests. They have all the upper chambers of Mthyuh Town Hall. There are shiv boxes and vine and small snacks of fruits and vichos. 

I told your mother, Jan, that I would look after you and Lloyd. She's trying to figure out her destiny, you know?

I do know because lately all I can see is her face when I close my eyes. It is painfully expressive. 

They're coming. Lloyd can see the tiny K-shaped figures in stack formation from a starting point somewhere in the sun. There's not yet any thumping of their tymbal apparatus, but already their lung music of high, tinny strings and echoey vocals is reaching the crowd.

As the sky darkens, it is a silent crowd-- no roaring, cheering, or chants. In their black garb, they sound more like a vigil. The beasts are growing bigger as they draw near. La Chama, Jan, and Lloyd are standing at ancient glory holes carved into the stone walls to safely view the event. 

Jan might have been a little miffed to miss a chance to turn heads in a crowd, but tonight she felt her full voyeuristic morbo bubble to her surfaces. 

Virgins of La Mthyuh

La Chama selects saves six virgins from Mthyuh's mouth until they change, and they are then set free. 

The virgins are sequestered into six stone chambers and develop tymbal structures between their thumbs and forefingers. They communicate only through the common mirror and by the clacking sounds when they are asleep. Some compare it to the sound of woodpeckers. 

Their solemn attendants are the Vikkies, who are mostly trans-women but also cisgender performance artists. The Vikkies are permanently named according to the most glamorous World capital or other point of interest adjacent to their chapter. Present International Chair: Vikki Madrid. 

warning: emotion

Pinging sounds of much hammering of metal on stone. 

Central Mthyuh Chank, the turnaround cleared of all traffic.  

Shiv tureens are the size of swimming pools, a little smaller than K nests. Raised on blocks just above eye level,the three festival bowls are being filled with a locally sourced vegetative broth. Below, there are thickly stacked coal and flammables. 

Jan and Lloyd are strolling like tourists, but wobblier, having to take in not just a change of existential dimension but also an unfamiliar region and ways. 

LLOYD: This is all freaking me out. I don't know if I can handle it. 

JAN: It's Shiv Days. But it's real is all. It's not a myth here. 

LLOYD: No. I mean everything.

JAN: Maybe we'll go home, or maybe it'll be better here. You better buck up. It's all an amazing adventure, and it's our lives. 

LLOYD: Ok. 

Every storefront has been scaffolded out past the sidewalk and barred like a jail to allow for jumping in and out of danger.

I get it that we share cultural and historic roots with these people but it's hard for me to imagine actually fitting in and being accepted.

The ancient totalitarian clock tower chimes random hours. Some say there is an algorithm.

How do you know all of this?

She's my mother, and she's developing hyper-archetypal knowledge. I read her facial expressions, but very deeply to the point of pure language, which is actually more accurate than any tongue.

This is to document, for you, the life you're missing from

and then there's the guy across the street

between me to the east and Jan on the corner there

like he's ushering his bitches through a man canyon

he turns all purple round about sunset

the nice wife and their scary female pit

are never permitted to get a word in

by Jan

"Until you come back, alls I can do is keep track."

rings of ilyn

The young men follow the fleke slaves this way and that along the switchback trails leading up to Karir Kesh at the mouth of la Mthyuh, and their climb is made lighter remembering Ilyn's strange song. 

 

Say

Of Ilyn there are four rings

red and yellow, black and white

a very scratched fake ruby 

a brass spoon ring

ring of ash

and then the white ring

 

Sing

one of these days i'll 

seek forgiveness and 

i'll get forgiven and 

deserve forgiveness 

at the same time

Say

For each beautiful ring

Ilyn's road is harder

For these thankless trinkets

He's risking everything

Sing

i'm headed for disaster

won't you come right after

my head is full of laughter

let's climb a little faster

Say

when he gets to the the top the

red ring seems to light his hair

yellow saffron is all he wears

mood as black as Mthyuh's belly

he becomes a flaming canon ball

Mrs. Jansdaad and La Chama Speak Using the Mind Only

Well. Here we are. 

Yes. Honestly I don't know what to do.

Thank you for your honesty. It's that this doesn't happen. I've never met sticky progeny. How did you get through The Crack. 

I didn't do anything. Maybe Braino was tracking me. 

That's likely due to how we share some Braino, sister. 

I met Peg. 

And now me. It's herstoric. 

What is the meaning of my life?

You'll have plenty of time to figure it out if you play your cards right. 

I like sitting and writing poetry at my kitchen table. 

Well, you're a monster now. 

Manias

i learned to fish, to ice fish for you

in case the markets would close down

how to harvest vichos of the forest

now these fruits are disdained

my sheaths and projectiles ridiculous

and I might as well be drunken

 

I try to rise again, with fuel

for your heaters for your engines

you say better become a technician

most of all I long to have you home

making space for your new ideas

and leaving all my manias alone

 

by Jan

"for Jan"

Auspicious moment

There are no bats in this story. 

Well you sure look like one! [Other young men giggle or twitch their hands.]

Go on. Feed the flower, child. 

He doesn't wanna do it! [The young man stands up. There are no longer feet on the coffee table.] Give me that coin! 

The young man, a solid bio-engineering grad school candidate, tries to get up from the filthy sofa, but he is knocked back down as if by a sonic boom.

Suddenly, there is disco. 

Reptily's hackles rise atop her head to full height, translucent like tough, thin slabs of bacon shocked with blue.

The faces of Jan's daughter Jan and her boyfriend Lloyd can be seen peeking through the outside window to the chamber of the Mthyuh First House. Behind them, the ankles and three-clawed feet of Mrs. Jansdaad have stopped, steaming in the dust, and the music, except for the highest and most soulful of the voices, has faded completely. 

The young men may or may not not have believed in the Monster Poinsettia, but they all know what a K looks, sounds and smells like, even from miles away. Now there is one that appears to be waiting patiently outside their door. 

Take me, Chama. I am your slave. I pray that Mthyuh eats me first.

One by one, the young men fall to their knees around the Spanish-revival coffee table, repeating the chant, holding tight to the rings of black wrought iron letting their tears, snot, and drool rest on its glass top now instead of their shoes. 

Soon the five young men can be seen obediently following the Chama's five fleke slaves up into the jungle and this way and that in a line along the switchback trail that crosses the hill to Mthyuh Chank. The one on the end has been tasked with carrying the poinsettia, which he holds at arms length and with great exertion as far away as he can from his face. 

Greetings of welcome my travelers, fresh through The Crack. Welcome to Mthyuh First House. Your moment of arrival couldn't have been more auspicious. I would invite you in, but... [Chama steps further outside, cranes her neck back and blinks awkwardly to parse Mrs. Jansdaad's hideous face from a blinding sky of bright, silvery clouds.]

Early Spring Interactions with Neighbors are Painful and Sweet

Since Jan's been gone, new Jans have moved in next door. They are hesitant to let their kids come near me, as they should be, when our backyard activities intersect, as they do and will. I think at first they regretted that I'm a single man with no wife to watch me and no kids to play with their kids. I tried to gain their trust with greetings, offers, and small concessions so that they'd at least relax and appreciate me as a good neighbor. They did leave a key with me when they went off to Dubbaberah Chank for six weeks. The kids have noticeably grown since they left, and I've just told their mother so. Now I find they'll be moving to Dubbaberah soon.

The neighbors in back have exposed a vile and disrespectful streak. Am I a magnet for sociopaths? Never again will I enter into a dispute with a non-property-owner girlfriend of a property-owner neighbor. Always speak with the property owner about property issues. Typically, a young female Jan will make up for her feelings of insecurity about not being on any legal license or deed by entering into property disputes on behalf of the romantic partner, a sort of second-best to an engagement ring. I don't know what a male non-owner romantic partner would do in that situation because I have not encountered it. 

The other next-door neighbors are flekes, and they give life to our dead end on the park. It's impossible to tell who lives there and who's just visiting, who's related to whom, where this dog or that dog went and how he got replaced by another backyard dog. The father died. I'd seen him with his head in his hands on his front stoop one day, the day after his front window had been busted out with a rock. 

All my life I looked at the other end of our street as the bad part, and now I've brought all of that here, he says, wiping his face.

I haven't noticed anything else, was my answer. 

Yesterday I ran into the new owner, the ex-wife, as I was coming back with Lala from a walk. Her dogs were barking at my dog, whom I'd just let off her leash, through the fence. 

What's all the commotion out here, boys? She shouts coming out the back screen door. 

Lala is just showing everyone who's boss around here, I explained. 

Oh, dog stuff, she concluded, going back inside. 

Yeah! Haha, I replied.

Red flag

her home has a sign says no hate here

but i see her in her back yard

looking around for watchers

and rolling a log across the property marker

The seedy part

Five students at High Chank U who went to the same high school together are sitting around on filthy sofas. 

Common chamber rules Mthyuh First House put your damn feet on the damn furniture. 

Yeah! [Most of group places their immaculate athletic footwear atop a long, wrought iron, olde-Spanish-mission style coffee table with a precarious glass top.]

Say has anyone seen that guy Ilyn remember?

Ahhhaha. Out of sight, out of mind. 

What a freak that guy was-- with all the rings, right?

Yeah Rings of Ilyn we'd sing.

And the teeth necklace. He drilled holes when they extracted his teeth. 

When I think of what we did to that pervert. 

Don't you feel sorry for him though.

Totally, you think I'm a dick?

That's why you do shit like we did to a guy it's to wake them the fuck up. 

Wow brother you are caring truly now. 

ENTER Reptily and a potted plant. Four slaves follow in line behind her and take positions against the circumference of the chamber. 

Shit that looks like La Chama. 

No it's her bitch self Reptily. [Whispering] Her hackles are up. 

Yes it's me. I am Reptily. You are strong. You'll be among my proud slaves. You will have many wives, and your children will feed our Mthyuh. This is the Mthyuh First House? 

Ya but we are just staying here while we are in school. 

Tell me this. Who believes in the Monster Poinsettia. 

Hah it's a myth. 

I don't know-- I saw a guy once and

Fine. Your friend says it's a myth. I'll tell you what. If he wants to prove to me that this flower in this pot is not the Monster Poinsettia, then I, too, am a myth, and he will not be my slave. 

He's not really my friend, he's...

What do you say. Come here. 

I

Do it. Just do this. She's right. We should just kick her ass. There's no real Chama. 

The young man stands and walks around the coffee table close enough to smell Reptily. 

Don't swoon now. Be a man. Have you got a shiny coin?

Most of the young men check their pockets for shiny coins just in case.

Now give it as alms to the flower. Right there into the seedy part. Go on. It's only a myth. 

 

 

Fresh box

Reptily's slaves bring her a fresh box of shiv, bow, and remain hunched over as they leave the chamber. She opens the box and smiles, leaning all the way down to the floor from her seat. 

 

They bring it in this stoned and gilded box, a heavy safe that can keep its contents sound for a thousand WD. As if. I don't save enough for later. I eat shiv daily as if it were the last day of my life. And that too is ironic, for I fear I will never die. 

Chama, there are flekes nearby, calls a fleke slave. 

Ah, I could slay, rob, or traffic them. What a bore. Maybe they need help. 

Within The Crack

Lloyd... It seems like the only time when you are not verbal is during sexual activity, in which case I wouldn't actually mind. 

Mrs. Jansdaad farts. 

When they wake up, they are going through The Crack.

When Jan's daughter Jan looks up, she can see Lloyd's foot only. But that foot, shod and pant cuffed, is all that she can see anywhere besides herself.

Both Lloyd and Jan feel the peristaltic waves, inside themselves and all around them; they can watch the undulations against their clothing and feel it on their faces and the backs of their legs.

Jan hears a voice.

Oh really? Well you didn't even go to high school-- it was more like low school. 

Lloyd?

Oh my god Jan can you hear me

Yes. Very funny.

I think we're going through The Crack now.

Uh-huh, baby. You're the brilliant one.

The Crack is home to a billion holes

They say The Crack is home to a billion holes. Pilgrims, daredevils, and lost hikers alike will never be able to predict when and where they will come out. 

The Community College of Cement's entire Chang K. Chang Chank campus is dark except for a few pools of security lighting-- and the strong yellow bug lamp which illuminates the Crack Door Event area. Jan's mom Jan Jansdaad's steaming underwing fat flap is all that's keeping Jan and Lloyd from falling hundreds of feet into the parking lot below. 

Jan lands as close as she can to the bug light, which is there for the air conditioning unit attached to the bookstore next to temporary mobile classrooms B-D. Most campus employees, students and visitors walk around the air conditioning unit instead of trying to duck under it, which could cause them to end up in sudden Crack-related peristaltic shock (SCRPS), and besides now being invisible, their associates quickly begin to forget they ever existed. In this respect, SCRPS can affect an entire community from one instance only.

Lloyd is trying to keep up with Jan and her mom. As the odd group rushes across the moonlit baseball fields, plumes of white chalk dust spray from below Mrs. Jansdaad's three-clawed feet. And then they have crossed a short span of black top, and then they have reached The Crack. 

They might sound a little like disco when they're running, but when they stop there's nothing but funk, says Lloyd.

Downward motility

become an animal during wartime, there's maybe a way back;

going feral during a peace assures that battle will be your path.

by Ilyn

"Sermons" frag. 18

Dire Cricket

Lloyd has been awake for a just few moments without moving from the tangle of sleeping bags a Scouts of Mthyuh brigade had donated to the clothing drive bin that the beast had lifted from its cement moorings and dumped here in its cliff nest. 

He fears that if he moves he will lose the beautiful light scent of jasmine? Monster poinsettia? It's very early in spring yet, and how would flowers grow this high up against a rock? He even imagines he can  follow light, pensive plucking on a mandolin. 

Then young Jan, sweet Jan, is walking toward him in gentle rays of light, with the massive and hideous silhouette of her mother resting behind her against the moon and clouds. The beast's subsiding breaths after flight create the lilting music as her lungs contract with a melodic metal popping perhaps more similar to a steel guitar.

In this new place, with his confidence dashed for once, Lloyd sees Jan's daughter Jan anew. He is prostrate and broken; she represents a future, a woman who can change his life for once, powerful in a sleeveless chintz chrysanthemum-print frock, even while barefoot and picking her way toward him through the soft debris.

He waits until she has climbed up beside him in the heap of torn, shiny viscose lining, fluffy polyfill and plastic zippers, her red-dark face only inches from his own. 

How

Shush. [She places a finger across his lips.] Just listen. And breathe. 

He draws in another chestful of her cologne, which is Dire Cricket, by Pharmsupply.

I'm here to take you away. It's... you know that's my mother, right? 

Lloyd nods, slack-mouthed.

Well she never wanted to hurt you. Only that you'd understand. To stop being such a shit.

Lloyd stares up into Jan's shadowed eyes, at the impossible sparkling there. 

She wants... and it's not really up for discussion, you know? She wants to take us through The Crack.

Back at APSNIPE

As the sun begins to lower behind the peak of Chang K. Chang Chank, Jan senses an awakening in the Injured Entity bay next door. They are separated on that side by several feet of ancient volcanic rock, through which a ceremonial glory hole had been drilled and through which they now whisper with the backs of their tongues, as only female K's can do. 

If we speak with our minds they can track it. 

I know. 

Are you ok? 

I will be. Flekke attack. Asshole. 

You are an inspiration not to kill. 

What do you mean. 

I mean you could have killed the flekke. 

Well he may become my son-in-law, so...

Ah right. I have kids too. 

Wait are you

Yes, tiny baby. I am that old. You can call me

Peg. You are litterly painted in shiv temples. They sing a song about you. She 

Had three kids when she went with the winds. I know. 

I don't know what to say. 

We live forever I guess. 

 

How are you sleeping?

a generosity of thoughts and feelings overflows me

and to you that shit is just a horror show

i know i'm not a fleshy projector for a 3d screen

i'm only the one who has to watch you go

 

 

 

by Jan

"For Jan"

filter tearing

 

The argument for bioaerosol surveillance

K farts are so voluminous and dense that they can leave streaks in the sky that are barely distinguishable from wispy purplish clouds in a sunset. They are potent enough and in a way that can make mammals lose consciousness momentarily or even slip into a light coma. 

It is through the implementation of one such bioaerosol release that Jan is able to resecure her cliff nest by disabling Lloyd Bentbridge long enough to confiscate his weaponry, hurl it into the void, and get him locked into a leafy, teepee-like structure before he wakes. 

As she folds her wings across her feet to rest, Jan feels as though she is being watched. It's not long before Lloyd's mother, Lady Brentridge, appears with a fizzling shower of sparks and stands before a gaping, fogged-up hole in the cliff face. 

Their speech is echoey and through the mind only. 

Lady Brentridge: He's my son. How dare you?

Jan: He was trying to own my family. 

Lady Brentridge [after a pause]: He was always trouble. Thank you for not eating him. 

Jan: Now you're making me sick. 

Lady Brentridge: You're sick? Twenty-one years. Think of that!

Lloyd's Off Birth, by Lady Brentridge de Modena

 

It dies and leaves a rock inside you

Never cries or bleeds or says it loves you

Ruins every dream because you

Know it's missing from the boy you love.

Jan: I swallow rocks to help me digest meat. 

Lady Brentridge: Let's focus. What is it that you want?

drip trail down to the river

a harsh ray on a winter day

seems to dissect you trans-

laterally. finally the world 

will have its way

these gusts are sweeping up

your dust. mud pushes in 

the windows and weevils

turn in the flesh

 

now gravity alone owns

all the future dotted lines. 

rushing water under ice 

came from melting

by Jan

Defeated

He caught me with a fence rod

tip-tied with a hand-filed Ginsu

ventral to the funny bone.

So all I could do was drop my

shipload of stonecakes, and flew

like a tumbling letter K

 

to Mthyuh Preservation Society's

Amnesty Pit Stop for New or Injured

Prehistoric Entities

And is that where I am now, yes. APSNIPE. I can tell because you are communicating with me through the mind or body part of one of my species, which I'm sure is a living horror for whomever it is. I see my sentences/ ideas come up on the slab. But you don't realize she is also saying help me I am an enslaved and exploited sister. 

 

All she has to do is spend a few hours a day with her head strapped to a table built for lucid brain surgery. She's just a conduit to you, a three-pronged plug. Sure, some of us fly free with impunity. And I need your help. So please proceed.

 

APSNIPE is located on the site of the first K sighting: a Sears parking lot. The original asphalt is sealed and textured to facilitate landings. Amid a virtual city of scaffolding and tarp, MPS technicians scurry and pause, scurry and pause. 

Hello, I'm Connie? And I'm here for your preen gland checkup.

Lloyd and lady

Feeling tired, Lloyd lays his head down in a gaggle of bras and closes his eyes. 

Lloyd: Now I could be anywhere, in bed. I wish I could wake up. I can't look anymore. God it's a gorgeous view, but far too terrifying. Some perspectives are meant to be set aside only for those who choose them. I could understand if I were a mouse, but come on it's a different level of consciousness. 

Lloyd's mother, Lady Brentridge de Modena Chank, appears in an impressive burst of optics.  

Lady Brentridge: Son why did you take my name. 

Lloyd: Because you have a title, and dad was a... where are you?

Lady Brentridge: I've been waiting all this time for you to reach a certain altitude else I cannot get through the Filter of Loathing. 

Lloyd: So the dead can... Mother?

Lady Brentridge: Yes, love.

Lloyd: Can you save me?

Lady Brentridge: No, darling. 

Lloyd: I

Lady Brentridge: Don't speak. You've got to act fast. As soon as you wake up from this nap, fashion a weapon from the wood in the nest. Look for maybe some scrap metal for a blade. You'll have the element of surprise when she gets back. Good luck, my little lord. 

Oh, and uh, by the way I just wanted you to know that while my intention always was to guide and protect, and to do that with my heart full of love, at the same time, however, I was paying so much attention to my role that, well, I recognize that during some moments I neglected to respond to the nitty-gritty contents of your life in a lucid or humane manner. 

Now when you're ready, go for the eyes first.

Police Station

A gothic doorway beneath crossed brass spears. The keystone is chiseled with a curving notice: POLICE STATION. 

Jan had left the top to her sweater set on the back of her office chair, so she now has a mylar blanket as a shawl. Jan's dad is trying his best to get his voice heard through the ancient glory hole in the stone door of the precinct. 

Mr. Jansdaad: We'd like to report an abduction!

Suddenly, a speaker crackles to life. You don't have to yell, sir we are fully miked now. From what you say, this sounds like a K event, and I'm sure you know we can't and don't investigate or prosecute K events. But we'll send out a hooptie. Mr. Brentridge's estate will be reimbursed for any damage to the cave structure if indeed a K event is confirmed.

Both Jan and her dad sigh deeply and walk quickly in each other's arms across the stone pavement and out of the armored courtyard, back to the bustling lunchtime street. They turn and stand back together against a wall.

Jan: I don't think she'd kill him.

Jan's dad: I hope not, sweetheart. But that's her choice now, isn't it?

All up in the nest

Lloyd is violently shaken awake in time to see the cause of the shaking: the taloned feet, the size of small automobiles, having pushed free from the nest, pointing backward and curling majestically. The feet have  all but disappeared into the distant hazy clouds above the cliff when a tiny K shape comes into focus, soaring purposefully through the mists.

Lloyd: God, no. 

Mrs. Jansdaad has done a brilliant job with her first construction. She has carefully chose the trunks and major branches of young smooth-barked laurel trees, still pale yellow and gummy to the core. There must have been an entire grove of them nearby to create a structure with roughly the same footage, yet more depth, than a large built-in backyard pool. As for the downy padding, she has obviously raided a child's  party and emptied the colorful contents of a plastic ball pit into the bottom layer. On top of that were perhaps the contents of several Mthyuh Preservation Society clothing drive dumpsters. Then packing peanuts, shredded bamboo fencing. 

Law Offices

Door trimmed with a rose trellis. Brass plaque on door: LAW OFFICES

Lloyd Brentridge, Esquire, was always dressed in at least one part of a suit and often had the shirt open to a dark, furry chaos.

Lloyd doesn't actually work for Pharmsupply, and Mr. Jansdaad has already gathered that it is all bullshit when he nevertheless shows up at Law Offices as promised, trembling. 

Mr. Jansdaad: Jan! 

Jan Jansdaad: Daddy!

After a silent moment, Jan explains that she's working for Lloyd now as the receptionist. Also a fact that her dad has already gathered. It is the way she said it that is chilling and familiar. As if under a spell, and not in a good way.

Jan: He will see you now.

Jan's Dad: Thank you honey.

Open the deeper, inner door. Where Lord and Lloyd will either blend or clash.  

Lloyd: Shut the door behind you. 

Jan: I've brought in the records you requested. 

Lloyd: You see your daughter is now under my auspices. 

Jan: Yes.

Lloyd: You probably know I'm not Pharmsupply, that it's all bullshit.

Jan: Yes.

Lloyd: Yet you came anyway. You haven't even taken a seat because I haven't offered you one.

Jan: I

Lloyd: Don't speak. Your wife is turning into a K, isn't she? You don't have to say a word. She missed the second shingles vaccine and she seroconverted. She has to have had a disposition, and I think you know some history on that. Mrs. Jan Jansdaad is not just any old Jan Jansdaad. She had a history before she met you and she has one now. And that history has been as repressed as it is mysteriously irrepressible, like ecriture feminine. A code only a genetic member could translate or inscribe. 

Lloyd starts abruptly, as if he has just heard a hilarious noise behind him.

Lloyd: What is that. What is that Jan. Do you 

Jan: It's disco. 

Lloyd: Don't you think I know what it is? Why? Why, Jan?

The thumping and whirring become louder: Mrs. Jansdaad's now gigantic foot pads and breath become louder: the dreaded disco-like sound of a K on the ground. 

The glass in the window crashes impressively, but all Mrs. Jansdaad can fit through it is the very tips of her beak bones, which she can barely get open wide enough. But she is hungry. 

Because Lloyd Brentridge has his fingers in his ears, Jan's tongue is able to restrain his arms and squeeze around his neck at the same time. 

Mr. Jansdaad [arms outstretched]: Oh, Lord!

Jan and her dad Jan Jansdaad then stand very still as they watch their mother and wife suck Lloyd, their sadistic lover and bully crush, by the neck through the window and then high up into the air in a single, otherworldly burst of power. Father and daughter alone began to look around them there in the breezy office, medical records still floating leaf like to the floor.

Back at Jan's

Jan: You didn't even ask if you could come in. 

Lloyd: We just ate with your parents. I don't have to ask you anymore.

Jan [letting go of his tie]: Lloyd you know I feel very strongly for you but sometimes you scare me a little. 

Lloyd is feeling tired and sits on the sofa. Jan comes back with two beers and joins him.

Jan: I think it hits me in a primeval place when you try and order me around or raise your voice to my dad, but it might be just genes or hormones and not good decisionmaking. 

Lloyd [to the ceiling, as he rests his neck]: What if you didn't have to make any decisions. 

Jan [in a fetal position next to him without touching]: I don't think I would like it at all. [She scoots over and rests her head in Lloyd Brentridge's lap.] But then, that's your choice, isn't it?

 

Guests

Jan and her complicated date Lloyd Brentridge join Jan's parents for stonecakes and vine at the dining room table. Jan sits next to her mother helping to poke through clumps caught in her swollen and keratinous gum line. Mrs. Jansdaad swallows infrequently but with large gulps that are visible in her neck as they go down her throat. 

Lloyd: Mrs. Jansdaad it's lovely to see you recovering. Your husband has done an admirable job at the griddle in your place. 

Mrs. Jansdaad lowers her face in Lloyd's direction, exposing a small parietal eye in her scalp. She stares, unblinking.

Lloyd: May I help you clear the table, Jan?

Mr. Jansdaad, jumping up: Why yes, why... please grab that syrup. 

Lloyd and Mr. Jansdaad find themselves alone in the kitchen. Jan turns around and finds Mr. Brentridge standing there, very close to him. There are just a few inches between them and not much room to maneuver there between the countertop and the fridge. 

Jan: Oh. Sorry Lloyd. Just let me

Lloyd does not move. He is staring into Mr. Jansdaad's eyes. Jan Jansdaad looks back at him without letting out a breath.

Jan: Is there

Lloyd: Shh. I just want one thing. And that's the truth. 

Jan can hear his daughter setting out dessert dishes from the glass cabinet as well as his wife's pebbly cough from the other room.

Lloyd's voice is hushed and stern, and his breath is hot.

Lloyd: That's quite a case of shingles you have going on in there. 

Jan: Yes, it's just-- Pharmsupply wouldn't cover the

Lloyd: Don't say Pharmsupply to me. I work for Pharmsupply. I am their agent in Dubbahberah Chank.

Jan: I'll get you the records. She had a preexisting inclination. But you're dating my

Lloyd takes Jan's wrist and squeezes it tight. Jan loses control of his fingers and drops a vine glass on the floor.

Lloyd: Don't you ever say your daughter's name to me again. Unless you are ready to take her place. 

Jan: She doesn't know anything. Don't worry. She

Lloyd [squeezing Jan's wrist harder, and twisting]: I need samples of her Mrs. Jansdaad's pyncofibers. By tomorrow morning. In my law office. 

Jan [straining]: Yes. I'll get the pyncos. Whatever you want. My daughter is a good person. I won't... I won't say her name. 

Lloyd, tucking in his shirt and stepping back into the dining room: Jan, get in there and help your father would you. With the cleanup. And then we'll go. 

Fireside chat

Jan: The edges of your thoughts are so sharp I just want to grab a file and sand them off. Maybe by our being together

Lord Bentbridge: No, it's not like that-- isn't it more of a woman's function to

Jan: Look the man-woman dichotomy can really be an albatross when you

Lord Bentbridge: I know but you seem to think that this is about you and me, but

Jan: Well this, here, at the moment-- I only see you and me here. 

Lord Bentbridge: Overall I would be going through this in a vacuum I think

Jan: You know better than to think that 

Lord Bentbridge: There was a couple with their two babies on the sidewalk this afternoon when it was so gloomy right before sunset. Wind was howling. Twigs were flying. One of the babies started a weird hooting cry and then the other an identical cry. It created a sort of audio hellscape.

Jan: This is what I mean; you see you

[ENTER MRS. JANSDAAD]

Mrs. Jansdaad: Why Mr. Jansdaad curled up on the rug before the fire. 

Mr. Jansdaad: How you got in here without making the floors creak

Mrs. Jansdaad: Engrossed entertaining another imaginary friend I see.

Mr. Jansdaad: Ha! I thought I might entice you for

Mrs. Jansdaad: If I can get over there without rearranging the furniture

Mr. Jansdaad: How's your tooth.

Mrs. Jansdaad: It's coming out but that's good because I never had a tooth that size before, did I. And the crown is coming down, do you see? Feel here. 

Jan took Jan's hand and pressed it against her forehead, which was slowly regaining it's previous shape.

Mr. Jansdaad: They say you'll be stronger afterward. Because you went through it. 

Jan Jansdaad looked into her husband's eyes blankly, like a reptile.

Daughter of La Chama

Jan arrives home with scales covering 98% of her body, unable to even get the key out of her purse much less use it in the lock. Her fingers were claws.

We should never have mingled with their species. 

She kicks the door by way of knocking, gouging it with her toe claws. For Jan, as he opens the door, the sight of his wife at first presents as deja vous. Then horror, then caring. 

Oh baby look at you please come in... [looks at door] What...?

I should have paid cash for Hopinaskipina. It's not as painful as they say. 

God you look like the Daughter of La Chama. Let me hide my shiny coins!

Heh that's cute Jan. How am I going to make dinner. 

You're so old fashioned. Let me do it for once. 

[Jan sighs and shakes her head, which causes the sounds of knuckles popping.]

The hell

tonight a crust forms around me, a

fluttering, gummy placenta

the muscles are locked from 

pleasure.

last night i was trying to drive a

car on a building ledge

i was steering pretty well

until.

they say never go to sleep afraid

or stay awake either

the body will win you over

the hell. 

by Jan

Lord Bentbridge

Why, Lord Bentbridge? Why have you come at such a late hour. Come now sir, come right in. You're getting wet. 

Lord Bentbridge, with a tip of his hat and apologetic smile, steps across the threshold, adding in so doing a beleaguered flourish of his half-cape. Jansdaad my friend. My presence here is as puzzling to me as it is to you.

I hope it's bad I mean I hope it's not bad news. 

Fear not, only my wife out late again, and I thought why not pop over to Jan's place for some of that excellent sherry, which I suspect he might be enjoying already on his own!

Come Lord, lean on the mantle with me and raise a glass. [They walk over to the mantle, where there are glasses and sherry.]

I say puzzling because

Yes, why do you say puzzling?

Well, let's not be dour. Cheers to you!

Cheers!

Suddenly, the door opens. 

Jan? I'm home with... who's here?

Nobody.

Well you've got your arm up on that mantle like an orator, as if you're entertaining.

Ha! 

[Putting away groceries, yelling from the kitchen.] Say have you heard from Jan?

Jan our daughter?

Who else? Your father is dead darling.

You know how many Jans it could be. 

Well have you heard from her? Pharmsupply won't pay out for shingles.

You mean Hopinaskipina? That's the most annoying commercial. 

She's been hanging around with that sadistic lawyer. You should call. 

Do you mean Lloyd? Lloyd Bentley. 

Yes, he's an esquire.