Be sure the meat is thoroughly cooked. It will soon be the end. In cold liver fat. Uncomfortable music. Dim expectations. Quickly shifting settings treat the eye.
A wife in secret. A maiden tested. Our love is cooked. Three knocks announce seduction. Onions, nettles, roots or clover and oats. Where sails the boat of our keenest affections? Splicing and combining the lonesome in preordained cells. Restless, disinterested, tired. A vessel with no way to go. Shutting the world out to make believe. Mistaking identity. Maturity an embarrassment. A mask for carnival, a carnival mask for life. Cracked. Blood oven of a dark moon. Black speck against the rising sun. Kaleidoscopic generation of sound. Observing the world by cloistered carriage. Lightly creeping up to the spider's lair. A communal space wherein resides a corpse.
An orb of blood slashes the web, drawing in streams of butterflies, and their several colours envelop the sphere. They bring their own music from within; it resonates through the thin walls of their hearts; a whistle that enchants and draws us in: pulsing with the wax and wane of blood spell; dutifully recorded. Cocooned.
What's not revealed is imagined and what is witnessed is concealed by the silent observer; his body a cushion for pin-pricks of desire: emitting flames of blue light that dance and occasionally touch suggestively, as flowers in a favoured, but unfettered, breeze. Naked.
Spirit possessed. Unsurmounted remnants of an abandoned past; remuneration that seems no reward. Evading easy access. Dispersals in an insectoidal swirl. A glistening dragon ascending, heavenbound, to be regenerated, away from the island of its birth.
Enter the elders, with gifts of obeisance: licquor and tobacco. They lay these down then coil in foetal silence to die, as their bodies are painted red by an ancient mother. Thus are they prepared to be taken back into the womb.
They slide indifferently into the blood drenched mire, sinking to the toll of discordant bells, striking midnight as their bodies shudder and discharge, and hearts start to beat as they disgorge showers of blood which, airborne, turn to swarms of wasps, and as they hit the ground, to grass, freshly mown.
Light pours from their mouths, their eyes, nostrils and ears, as from solar flares. Within their skulls their eyes slowly melt away; their bodies sprawled across the endless expanse of lawn.
The elders return and decorate each of them with panther spots. They pass a metal ring around the neck of a woman and fasten a clump of heather to the head of a man. Her legs are parted; his penis is studded with thorns.
She is dressed in fine clothes. A hole is burnt into his skull above one ear, into which smoke is blown. She lets out a sigh. He groans contentedly. The elders cover their eyes to keep them from witnessing this "primal act". She plays a fish-shaped flute then sheaths his penis with it and blood flows. He puffs himself up, a bird uncertain as to whether it might fight or fly, attracting a cloud of butterflies to his body.
A hill rises before him. Blackout. He forces himself to climb it but doesn't manage to get very far before he slides back down. He tries again, as the woman endeavours to find a way into his skin via the flute. Beautiful things can happen by chance. I don't value the compulsion to make them happen again, and again (and again).
Fire and light are re-kindled from this union.
She enters him completely. Only the skin remains. They rise into the air, steady as a rocket. I love as much as the next person but no longer "invest in love".
The elders uncover their eyes, gather up what remains, and plant a sign: FOR SALE.
A large, dark blue automobile drives onto the site. A group of six or seven year olds steps out. They disrobe and roll in the patches of blood, smearing it onto their bodies, then begin to burrow, unearthing a giant chequered board, with cells sufficiently large for them to stand in. They jump down into the black ones and step from one to another, always avoiding the ones that are white.
Through small connecting hatches in the corner shadows, which they have to crouch to unlatch and crawl through, the boys find barbed flutes, and with these they cover their penises. They subsequently bleed. In a moment they are gone.
The girls press miniature binoculars to their eyes and through these send beams of blue light into the sky, as the air becomes colder.
Plants in flower are revealed, as are wings and spectral twinklings. Sweat floods down their bodies. The blue light and sweat combine to draw the boys back and each joins the nearest girl, who grasps his flute, but the bond is not strong enough and the boys pull away and club together at a space removed, where they pool their blood.
They make their way up the hill, slashing down the tangle of creepers and vines that now covers it; scattering clouds of insects and butterflies, as the girls follow their progress through the binoculars. But they see something quite different. They see wild cats with sleek black hair. These swoop back down the hill and carry the girls off between their jaws. The boys run back and gather up the flutes, which the girls have let fall.
With fortified purpose they jump back into the construct and again progress from cell to cell. As they make their way the outer walls, the floor and doors open like flowers and reveal themselves. They are the panthers and they drop the girls from between their rabid jaws as they growl ferociously and are perceived to be closing in on the children. This forces them to regroup, and each clings to the nearest, but then they break away and embrace their favourite.
As each pair is formed a bubble of amniotic fluid encases them, as though it were a protective barrier. But the girls try to take the flutes back from the boys and the interior of the capsules fills with blood. In this way the vessels consume them. Each is replaced by a blood red head, suspended in the air, spinning on the oblique. The panthers snap their jaws at these but do not manage to sink in their teeth. The heads rise above them and one by one they sink into the corners, dejected.
A light rain of blood falls now and the boys pull themselves from the skins of the panthers. They head back up the hill in search of the girls who they find in a wondrous garden, nursing white swans.
Each of the girls quickly conceals something (a bloody bone?) by burying it, and then breaks into a cold, feverish sweat. They approach the nearest boy and push a comb into his hair, but press so hard that the boys' heads split open, with an outpouring of his most putrescent imaginings, accompanied by a fetid stench.
The girls now paint the images spawned from the boys minds onto the cell tomb walls from their collected blood: depictions of themselves in congress with the swans, and as they paint, sure enough, the swans move in, but fights ensue between the birds as they attempt to approach who they will, rather than the one who has chosen them, so the girls intervene and, kissing their eyes, sends each into the night sky, into which they rise steadily, as though drawn by the light from the stars.
As the girls retreat and scatter blood runs down the walls and seeps into the earth.
An infant appears and runs from the tomb womb to a secluded garden, where he lies beside a pool ringed with willows.
Now a bishop rises from the matrix and approaches the boy whilst a knight rides around the pool to meet him. The bishop draws a gun from beneath his cassock and holds it to the head of the sleeping boy whilst the knight calls out his name. The boy wakes and blushes as he realises he is naked, and the bishop's bullet misses its mark on account of his trembling. The swans arc across the sky, blazing midday suns. The bishop ducks, perceiving them to be meteors, and spews streams of foul smelling liquid, then presses the barrel of the gun to his own temple, but a sudden hail storm arrests his hand.
The boy snatches the gun from him as they are forced by the torrent through the thickening mist and exit at a place of ruins. Here there is a hut built from debris, inside which the children are busy putting things in order, but they are warded from entering by the redness of the interior and the childrens' bodies. However, the boy rushes in and heads straight for a bowl at the centre which is filled with an assortment of invertebrates, which he offers to the men, but which they do not want, whilst the boy swallows them down voraciously, as one intoxicated, then proceeds to offer the gun to the knight, then the bishop, all the while making it obvious that he intends for them to use it on him, though each in his turn refuses.
A sand viper coils before his feet, hissing, with tongue lashing, but he talks to it gently and calms it down, at which each of the girls punches him once on the back and his body takes on the same ochre hue as the other children. He plucks a cigar from the table, lights it in the fire and steps out into the rain. He wanders through the wreckage and along the coast, disoriented, until he stumbles across the tomb grid, which has now filled with tide water, where the body of a woman floats purposefully to the surface to greet him, her lifeless gaze fixed upon him, her eyes flashing coldly.
She lowers her head and spews gold onto the sand at his feet, where it turns to a heap of ochre red dust. The boy grabs her by the scruff of the neck and drags her away from the sea onto a long straight road, along which he proceeds, with the woman in tow, as it once again starts to rain.
His passage is suddenly blocked by a rock that falls from the sky. He rolls this forward, drops her into the depression, and lets the rock fall back into place, but he is instantly wracked by fever and the colour drains from his body as the earth swallows him whole, leaving a large, circular, red ochre stain, which slowly turns russet as a bruise on a cherry and starts to rot away, whilst the rain becomes increasingly frustrating and a portentous gloom descends.
An eyeless eagle settles upon the stain and claws at the now blackened earth, opening a channel that would seem to offer some means of escape from this oppressive world, although a band of blood red that rings the interior hints at the dangers of venturing deeper, and from the depths a pair of threatening eyes gleams. A tiger's roar is heard and the sense is strong that one more step inward would provoke an attack from whatever lurks inside.
A tiger rushes out, but is tethered by the neck with the blood red band, and an unseen force tugs it back inside, as a group of trolls emerges and forms a ring.
Whilst their attire is surprisingly elegant their skin is strange and translucent, and exposure to the air causes it to blister. They hurriedly commence rubbing ointment upon each other as their skins take on an ochre red hue and start to peel, releasing an unblighted double, which leaves the festering form to die away as it disappears into the distance.
A truck pulls up. From it leaps a brightly dressed man, who hops from foot to foot, crashing together a pair of battered cymbals, and this noise draws the tiger back out of the hole, lusting for blood. But the troll doubles are returning and the beast seems more concerned with preventing them from re-entering the hole, which it does by consuming what remains of their old bodies, and this indeed slows them down, although an explosion to the side compels them to head in that direction and investigate the new hole.
From this appears a man who would appear to be king of the elves, and seems ready to speak:
"Some episodes are coming out from ant-roads after stretching the night comb, then sleeping-life."
At this his subjects start to appear from the hole and set fire to whatever around them will burn. But the trolls seem ready to launch an attack. So the elves sneak into the troll hole while the trolls sneak into theirs. But as they each approach the hole they have chosen to enter their feet start to lift from the ground and they gradually disappear as they float, leaving great uncertainty as to whether they might have entered or not, until their shadows sink inside.
The cat would pounce upon these ghosts and shadows, but they are too many, too fleeting. The frantic tramping unearths an ornate bird-charm, with red and blue beads and pink fringes. Beneath this a pool of seeping waters slowly rises and we are tugged beneath the surface.
We emerge from a pool of blood. This is the moat surrounding a tall tower, and we are quickly plucked from it, as though with a net. We are carried into the tower itself, to meet with the shadows of the elves.
They behave in a curiously seductive manner. Meanwhile, they cocoon us with elfin strands. Once wrapped, we are overwhelmed by a feverish heat. The shadows start to ornament our hair. Steam evaporates from the tops of our heads as we overheat. The mist, however, clears, and the room is filled with light that appears to emanate from filaments woven into our hair.
Once finished, they gesture for us to leave. We bound away with elfin leaps. We would like to impress our benefactors. Gaily, we spring from a tall window, down into the moat and away, across the thicket.
A crowd has gathered. Some are chopping at the trees and constructing, whilst others are collecting sap. They build barricades against the massive creatures on the other side. But over we go, sending startled birds into the sky.
We are instantly assailed by wild creatures. However, we feel that if we were to act like them we might passify them, and away they run, as we glide onto an escalator that guides us into the centre of things.
As we escalate we are showered down upon, and from within the streams of water glimmers of snakes appear to guide us.
We follow, and are met by two masked men who take us to a hole in the ground, where lies the king of the trolls, who seems at peace, even happy. My feelings vacillate between love and hate.
One of the men draws out a small, testicle shaped pouch and takes from it a pinch of tobacco, which he drops into the troll king's hand, where it becomes a coiling red snake, as a ring of elves with torches closes in. My escorts remove their masks. One cracks a whip. But the elves leap onto their shoulders and heads, as they ride into the air, turning 90° as they go, so that the elves are sitting cross-legged upon them, and streams of blood and urine flow from between their legs, coiling away in serpentine strands as they hit the ground.
They brush each other's hair. One pulls out a whistle and blows, though no sound is heard. Inanimate objects spring suddenly to life. Chicken shacks, clogs, pebbles, eggs. The wild cat of our soul leaps at them, but whether to play or to destroy, it is impossible to say, though our hand is gently stayed, with a vague consciousness of reprimand. The inanimate objects are taboo. They leap into the blood pool. We leap in after them: to attack, to aid or follow? We are without motive.
Emerging on the cracked surface of a time-honoured lava flow we discover that an egg is pursuing us, although when we see it it falls from the air into a small nest of straw, as though freshly laid. It cracks open and from it unfurls The Plan, which shows us a way to escape from this labyrinth. It is so complex we are reduced to tears, though I suspect the plan is false; how could anyone have devised such a thing? If word of inside got out those responsible would be punished, and for this reason I suspect that the escape route has subsequently been mythologised, and that if we followed this plan we would lend credence to the ruse, whilst remaining ignorant of whose interests we are serving.
A green flash acts as a signal for us to commence, and an opening door unfurls a jungle of blue. As we pass through the door we start to visualize what might be beyond so that we may not be shocked by it
Seven panthers prowl as we hang by our feet from the canopy above them. Blood trails down our bodies from our genitals and to a pool on the ground. But the real threat comes from non-organic objects. The panthers and all other living creatures are likewise threatened by such things. A man enters the scene and leads one cat away. A surveillance team then walks in, followed by a group of gunmen who take down the remaining animals. Then comes a group of officers who fine the gunmen and string them up, whilst the blood from the panthers runs into the pool already formed and from it rises a giant snake to swallow the men whole, followed by swarms of birds that quickly stitch together the canopy of branches and leaves above our heads, but living gloves start to climb down the trunks of the trees. They grab the guns and open fire upon the men, who remain trapped in this woven prison, whilst the cameramen move in, followed by the analysts and the traders.
The money begins to trickle in, then shower, from the nests above into the open palmed gloves, and onto the ground, where it flows through the rows of assembly lines, followed by trails of fire, as one by one the workers are beaten with wooden paddles.
This image fades, leaving us with the shadows of the remaining panthers. Although we are free to continue on our way we are now coated in blood, to which feathers, seeds and leaves are stuck, but nonetheless feel invigorated.
Night descends and all falls into silence, typical of the hour before dawn. We feel trepidation. Everything has its shadow, it's double identity. Nausea asserts itself. We wait beneath the canopy of silence, hardly daring to make a sound, when the forest explodes in a mass of flames and the door slams shut again, excluding us; leaving us to wonder if what we saw was a portrayal of our reality or an external interpretation, constructed for our amusement. Is this contradiction the point? Can we ever believe what we are told without accepting that we are being manipulated? There is a less palatable other in all things, and vice versa.
Blue light forces its way from behind the door, producing a wide corona which augments the atmosphere of this club, where the rich and fabulous are sumptuously attired. I push my way through the dancing bodies, punctuated by beams of light. They are all boys and cry like newborns, from time to time thrusting their penises into muddied palms. An acrid gas seeps from behind the door and the tears start to flood, whilst the boys slowly collapse to pools on the floor.
As the gas starts to clear a pygmy people emerge. They walk upright, but they're stinking. They squat, and each deposits a steaming egg then ambles away. The floor is covered with the damp footprints of the departed, which in turn burst into flames, and from these there rises an indistinct figure, slowly metamorphosising into one at the prime of youth, beneath whose skin writhe young women of an equal vitality, though his mind remains featureless.
The women prepare to emerge, so we avert our gaze, and as they exit they join in tentative song. They turn about and surely start to become aware; they turn their heads, listening. Each adopts a sequence of positions from Sins of the Imaginary Doge's Animals then runs away and hides. Darkness descends, illuminated by a sole candle, but hope is retained in the voice of a child singing nonsense:
"I creep from your house
And say nothing at all
About those who have been there
And those who are gone
For you are not like me
You know, Mrs. Claw
You are not like me
You're more like the person
I met at the door
And I know that that
Was not you, Mrs. Claw
Because you are you, Mrs. Claw
You are you, but not them"
"The men dance on watches
From sticky rock vermin
Whilst lobsters display
The heart of their dance
And kangaroo women
Slide from the wild
Minds of sadness".
As dawn breaks and scurrying mice scatter this way and that in their hundreds. Wherever they stop, falter or turn a bright poppy springs from the ground.
The young boy runs down the hill, lays an object on the ground then quickly runs away.
It is a "vagina dentata", which flips over and starts to forage through the grass, consuming whatever is in its path. It is a viscous serpent that invites as it repels.
Our hero, Stylus Alias, steps forward, grabs the beast in both hands and twists its neck s u r r e n d e r i s n o t a n o p t i o n Saddened, he embarks upon a dirt track, through the unsettling courtesy of a wind.
Journeying by craft over water and land. Measuring intuition against learning. Listening. Appraising and questioning the beauty of the objects that surround.
A red moon rises and from it uncoils a red snake that drops to the ground and flows toward us. Stylus Alias grasps it and inspects its alien proportions, which makes him jolly. He refuses to live his life through people who "dare to". He is diverted by no illusions. Blindfolded. He is guided by a strange bird. Together they dance. But despite his joy he longs to be free once more.
He sneaks away through the night but as a moonlight shadow the creature pursues him, intending to penetrate his body for good, but it is a struggle for both of them. He reddens and deliriously smears himself with plant salves and resins. He falls back and from his bowels emerges a white foetus:
"Progress doesn't exist. It is the eradication of those who are happier and freer than us. We need to pursue the bitter course and they're an embarrassment because they remind us how ridiculous we've become."
Suddenly a storm blows up. A thick darkness envelopes and conceals him. He rises and walks through the endless passages of night, not knowing which way to turn.
Seven tiny lights rise in the air at a distance, or so it seems. He likewise starts to rise, as though he was ascending a slope. He is no longer controller of his motion, although by obstinately facing the current he feels he may be able to influence its pull.
In this way he arrives at a great and seemingly impenetrable wall, above which rises a many headed serpent, whose belly swells and starts to split, puffing out a huge, blue-grey cloud of smoke, which, once cleared, reveals a locked box, but no key. Gingerly, he takes it into his arms and waits for a sign to continue. He looks around, hoping to see something that would remind him how he should advance. The box starts to spin as he realises no external sign will come. In his turn he starts to spin, at which the box starts to slow down and stops, as blood leaks from the seams and drips to the ground, where it seeps deep into the earth.
The sides of the box fall back to reveal a delicate frame in which gems like glittering stars circulate. Their movement appears to be governed by instinct rather than by law, and as they conjoin they flare up and a single droplet falls to the ground, cooling the others as they move aside and re-combine, and from this conjunction of elements there also emerge tiny human figures which remind Stylus of himself, although their features are blurred.
They start to rave and some attempt to kill each other with their bare hands, whilst others tug at the frame to escape, and fall towards the ground, but sprout wings, like those of cranes, and fly away in pairs.
He claps ferociously, in order to scatter them and bring them down, but when they land they jump up and run around, gathering sticks and twigs, with which they start to construct a tower, so that they can get back to the top of the wall and to the cube.
Whilst some build the others play on lutes, flutes and cymbals and set off firecrackers.
Snow starts to fall and Stylus's interest fades.
The tower rises quickly under the little ones' skilful hands as the lower tiers are buried under snow. Shafts of laughter bursting violently from the cold white banks and the scaffolding sways and says, refusing to stay upright, as the sky starts to swarm with small helicopters, which let down rope ladders for them to clamber up and make their escape. They are swiftly carried away, leaving only silence.
Stylus is enveloped by a luminescent mist, light jade in colour, although this gradually disperses, presenting an image that he is regaining consciousness, or even emerging from a dream.
Giant shadows reveal themselves as giant fingers on a giant hand, reaching out to grasp him. He feels an urge to defecate, as though that might dispel them, but the hands pass right through him, as shadows are inclined to do.
Unburdened, he feels infinitely lighter and starts to ascend the ramp into the stars.
He chances upon a golden shaft, fixed to the plane, but when he touches it it bursts into shimmering light, which dazzles as it expires, splashing against the invisible ramp, and flowing away as milken rivulets.
At this juncture he starts to shed his skin. But the being that emerges is quite alien in appearance, of undetermined sex, its skin stained pale and sable with a dark violet splash across its pelvic region. This creature has wings and its face is concealed by a beard (although this may in fact be false). I relish the ambiguity of childhood over the hypocrisy of adults. But now one can clearly see that this is a disguise, as is the garish violet phallus as it rises, which fact the scent of menstrual blood tends to confirm.
The creature starts to spin, emitting an increasingly powerful rasping noise. Scores of children arrive, attracted by the sound, and attempt to climb onto its back and shoulders. They flutter their eyelashes and the light breeze they create gently lifts the creature's wings, at which they bludgeon it, slash its stomach and draw out its guts.
They lay the alien down and while some wash its feet the others adorn its hair with flowers.
As they do this the snow melts away and the sun beats strong, then thunder, then lightning, and rain swiftly falls.
From the belly of the beast two robots emerge. The children quickly turn heel and flee, as though fearing they may in some way be contaminated.
A circling vulture comes to ground and commences pecking at the robots' feet, until a toe has been detached from each of them, and these it conceals in the entrails of the corpse, where it also lays an egg, before returning for another toe, and so on, until the robots' toes and fingers have all been removed. The vulture then jumps into the carcass and grips the innards tight with its talons, presenting an awesome attitude, as though it would be prepared to defend its treasure with its life.
But this posture is short lived, as the bird soars into the sky and tears away so quickly that in next to no time it has attained light speed and disappears from view.
A transporter arrives and in this the damaged robots are speedily ambulanced away. BUT! A question hangs in the air, as three beautiful sisters arrive on the scene: is this all a dream?
The girls are playing. Spinning and dancing in an overtly sexual fashion, cramming their mouths with whatever they can find that is edible, and as they do this they seem to become increasingly real.
The air begins to hum and tremble, as though our world was being shaken apart, and as a fast-fading memory, a lie, this world dissolves. The nice people, the cowards, over-compensate their failings.
We are on a gravel path on a hot, bright, most radiant summer's day, and are headed towards a fabulous lake. But memory seeks to impose itself upon our view, with greater force when the mind is clear than when this intervention is intended. Mindlessly, we travel through our memories, with no thought for when they might end.
Shadows and slight forms flit across the garden space; yet it would seem a permanent barrier had been set in place. A drop-down menu appears, confirming that we are before a screen obscured. From the menu we select Forest House. We wash away our smell to cultivate discrimination. With apprehension, we enter the house, which is infused with a sparkling, bluish light, that is dense enough to prevent us from seeing the walls and windows. Snakes weave in and out of the light, disappearing then reappearing; first red, then green, then yellow, then blue, then orange, then violet. Through this swirling mist we are returned to the first page. This time it is up-to-date, improved, but lacking an engine of volition, as though the rules it seeks to promote obscure the character it attempts to hide (much like a killer who would seek to hide his true nature by repeating "though shall not kill". A fancy costume, if you will, reducing to the "summary" word darkness, Love.
From the primordial glow emerges a woman so very perfect—the summation of every ideal—but cannot embrace her deeply enough. Laughter in a teasing air. A complex dance ensues, carefully enacted, as though a false move would spell disaster.
The patterns of the dance become increasingly complex and unfathomable as she moves around a pole, by turns imitating birds, a monkey, a dog and a goat. Swinging her arse and chasing her tail.
Upon a flagstone she sacrifices a number of chickens and a pair of small pigs, although the controversy inherent in this action is somewhat migitigated when she starts to consume the carcasses.
A giant tortoise arrives. She attempts to climb into its mouth but there is a blockage, so she has a look at the other end, from which she backs away, and is pulled to her knees, as by a force from the ground, against which she impels herself to rise, however, with arms lifted in supplication, as the rear end of this giant mechanical deity squeezes out the words: "Between listening, screaming and achievement, the political hours hope to memorize the scratches cured by threatening rules; the empty suns train knowledge to welcome dance. This illustrates the pyramid of love".
Then, with a gesture for her to follow, it embarks on a tour of the area (the planet).
She seems unwilling to tag along, seeing only darkness and despair ahead, unable to trust in the power of her mind. She is uncertain whether she wishes to be either a witness or a perpetrator in this operation. Her mind is a troubled mind she cannot yet dispel. She stumbles around as one blind.
The sun suddenly shines mightily and she reaches out in supplication. Facing the energy body, she marks a line along the ground, using whatever comes to hand, then leaps up, skips across the line, and runs off, without looking back.
Now it is we who are floundering. Do we have anything left to see, to say, to think? where is there now for our enquiries to lead? No-one can control fate or rule the game now, only chance can intervene.
From the rear end of the automata drops a ramp, down which trundles a trolley full of groceries. In my experience, those who confess to having no imagination generally have an abundance, but are incapable of distinguishing it from reality.
From the trolley bursts forth a pooch, tail wagging, tongue lolling, seeking attention. But there is no-one there to minister to its needs. The dog leaps back and away, down into the depths of the machine.
Out leap cheerful and brightly adorned boys and girls who form themselves into chains and commence a complex, joyful, serpentine dance, winding their way around the standing trolley. These are "The Family", freed from institutional restraint. As their dance becomes increasingly provocative the earth starts to seethe as though something forbidden to attempting to rise above it. Dirt and grime clings to the dancers' legs and crawls to their waists. They quickly divest themselves of their clothing and pull objects from the trolley to dance upon them: a toy piano; a pair of long gongs; an old plough; a new one.
Girls and boys now remain resolutely apart. Phallic columns rise from the earth, lifting them high into the sky, to rest upon the spires of a heaven-bound palace. Here they flare as neon lights, bobbing up and down, as the palace doors burst open and out runs a satisfied customer, shopping trolley filled to the brim. The doors snap shut and are flung open again by another shopper, then another. Each, however, is followed by a haunting figure, dressed to scare, and the terrified shoppers each runs away, as the phantom casts their abandoned trolley into a deep well, followed by flaming torches and the fire consumes.
Onto the scene arrives an omnibus, filled to capacity with the scattered shoppers, and this in turn sets the imitation ghosts to flight, for fear of being run down.
They form a ring about the burning well and sit to beat their drums, dowsing their skins with spirits all the while. As through a funnell, a torrential rain cascades, straight down the well, precisely. An orgy thus ensues (an orgy of bargaining power) as from the well erupts a newborn. But down drops a cylindrical cage, trapping the baby within.
A screen materialises inside the cage, as the bars meld to enclose baby with TV. The newborn, whose sex it is not possible to ascertain, tosses a wristwatch from the cage, which smashes when it hits the ground. The adults gather around and stare at the object with guilty horror. They hug each other tightly, their eyes blind with fear. Blood flows freely from their fingertips and congeals as it hits the ground. The infant starts to cry.
