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.