And then there will as sure as love be weeping 7

The animals come out of hiding and follow. I have something I must tell them, but dare I? Truth or Art? That they are simply hollow fabrications, into which I have attempted to pump life, but now the path is flanked by applauding spectators and the commotion is too great for me to indulge in such contemplation. I instead affect the manner of a pantomime artiste. I am the puffed up king, and in this guise I guide my entourage into a large, square room, the front wall and ceiling of which have been removed. At the centre of this space there is a tree laden with the rarest fruit.
   The animals, I now notice, have lost interest and returned, in their various ways, to the places from which they came.
    I therefore approach the tree alone, but to my surprise it rapidly withers and dies, and from the mulch that remains flow two thin tributaries, at the apex of which is revealed a solitary acorn. This opens as a floral vagina. I am afraid.
   A hatchway opens in the ground and from within there rises a grinding noise, as of some horrendous machine. I allow myself a long moment of deep reflection. Then, with a sudden and unassailable terror, I turn and flee. I feel that I have thus been immunised in some way. I disappear, yet I retain my physical shape.
   I stop to appreciate the beauty of the artificial paradise that surrounds me. The sun, the moon, the stars, however, start to become indistinguishable from each other, as the qualities that distinguish them start to melt away and they dissolve into a shimmering mist which, to my mind, appears in some ways sacred. Through this mist I maybe see a distant place of anguish, lit, it would seem, by flashes of lightning; the vestiges of memories concealed.
   I can make out a train of corpses on carts with, at their head, a wagon filled with gold. A priest approaches the pile of gold. He loudly pronounces a single word, "Stay", with a roar so penetrating that the golden bars are striated by the force of the sound, forming golden teats which he tugs on with delight, the fingers of one hand teasing out powdered bone, whilst those of the other draw blood.
   He lets his arms drop to his sides as he observes an oppressive silence, while the discharge of the teats is stolen away by an invisible hand, as though they had been torn from a picture of the land upon which they had fallen.
   What we see now is a man chained up within a dingy cell. A girl in black oversees his torment. In a dreamy way she tugs at a piece of string that opens and closes a trapdoor above their heads. They crane their necks to see through it and watch the aerobatics in the sky: a passing Zeppelin; an astronaut, dipping and diving through low clouds; a machine that floats through the air, and upon which stuffed birds perch and twitter, the overall sense of which scene is distorted by the aimless meandering of sponges.
   A gift descends from the heavens, in the shape of a heavy rain of blood. The girl and the chained man tremble with desire, though each holds aloof from the other.
   He recovers more quickly than her from his spasms and makes a lunge for her frock, where he locates the key and, unfastening his chains, darts through the door through which she had entered and makes his escape on horseback, while she crosses the floor and exits through the opposite door.
   In the room she now enters is a boy around seven years of age. In his hand he clutches a snake he has just caught. The girl grips his penis though the material of his trousers. Here is the source of magic. Songbirds alight to either side of them as she draws out his penis and milks from it a stream of blood, which the birds fly to and sip. He stares straight ahead, as though he were staring into the void, and as the flow of blood is depleted so does he diminish until he is no more than a point, a full stop, at which he disappears. The full stop is now the final point of a letter that lies upon the floor. The girl stoops and lifts the letter. She leaves.
   I feel dizzy and nauseous. I shiver from cold. My stomach is gripped by a violent peristalsis. I ejaculate through my mouth. As the pale droplets hit the floor they burst into light before they die.
   I drop the book and it falls open, revealing that there are whole pages that have been removed and others from which extracts have been cut.