Black Hearth 1. Manzana Void

Spawned from Sometime, Someplace, the events set forth in this fiction are based wholly on fact.

The seeds I once scattered in Midnight’s womb to this night seek their pleasure with the same moon and devour the darkness with their eyes.
  Because their creator is otherwise engaged, and there are far more of them than he could ever dream of pinning down, they live their lives without shame.

Manzana swiftly enters this conscious dream to introduce herself in tiny fragments: piece by piece she lays herself upon the freshly steeled railway line, whilst I myself arise from the assertion of her unquestionable licence to be: from moment to moment… oh how we grow.

‘All of these situations are therefore raised from empirical reasoning, even if the majority deviate from precise observation and the rest are purely imaginary. My own narrative can be measured by time and naturally forms the greater part of the sequence, whilst other narratives (and how can we ever evade these?) are received from varying quarters and never escape my pen.’

She receives me with a lifeless smile, forcing me to conceal myself, as though I were seeing her for the first time, and know not even her name.

‘Thus we have a literary style which, together with the born aesthete’s sense of colour, presentation and individual flair, has absorbed the public’s respect for quality and its need to retain the intrinsic properties of each part, with the politician’s and the cleric’s skill in the use of sophistry and rhetoric.’

  All artistic ventures require locations although, as you can imagine, such settings are often random, and are not worth a jot!

‘It is from inner worlds that I have garnered the passages for this book; most of which are claimed by Life’s spiritual and emotional realms which, at their peak, are the most exhilarating of all domains. The adventures stimulate raw nerve to the utmost degree and have no call to contend with the contrived and self-proclaimed High Civilization—a pompous flea of a culture masked—that has defined the essence of breeding for some twenty, once teen, centuries.’

  Moonlight stretches exploratory fingers across her body. Fingers as sure as those of jewellers, searching with broad strokes and circumspect probes. They inch across her temples and twine ebonite locks deranged by conflict.
  Wide eyes fix upon the moon.
  Lips stretch far apart: capacious, bitten and swollen. Their blood flows around her chin, melding saliva with the tearful sweat of eyes and brow.
  Her eyes and teeth claw the darkness, searching distant streets and alleys, so that whosoever they might encounter will feel the contact of a dread of which they had been innocent, and never forget the touch of those bestial transports which animate them.
  Rare stars for strays and deserters, gazing within and staring without, engagement and tryst. Can one stand by the old paths of this madness and blindly refuse to see new ways?

I sustain my observation: impenetrably transfixed, silent and alone.

Luminary fingers traverse a body of ages no longer concealed. Her dress, unbuttoned by the impatient and savage claws of darkness, displays a thirst as violent as that of our searching eyes: behind which, a primal urge, wherein those too compulsive to accept invisibility devour a mystery with their taste for clear and unobstructed views.

The moonlight now reaches to caress her breasts, whose perfection, embodied in small, rounded mounds, raises high-peaked nipples to a night still raw from chewing, and continues its search at the swell between her fan-spread thighs, stretched wide for gainful access.
  Her blood there guides its probes about swollen lips. Scarlet tongues that glide from a twin-headed serpent breathe fire where the shell unfurls.

‘For this is a book about fertility, not dearth. It would smash walls with words of hammers, spurn progress with its logos: counter blows to slaughter creatures out of songs. Yet here am I, submerged within a spell of names that goes deeper than I can reveal.’

  Beyond the aromatic folds of a womb flower where lies an ancient well a new life pulses, awakening (is this new life or old to stir the waters that now flow a lifetime from our recollection?), turns and trembles for a moment, and then surges.

‘What is seen is seen.’

Repulsed, I spin my head away from its shining white body; the Wisdom Fish.

As breathless as Manzana, it fades with eyes wide, drawn toward the stars by the cry of a speechless night, a final passage. I gaze from the moon to a mouth that yawns to grasp air, whilst its confines and expanses merge. Two voices joined:

‘For these observations I rely solely on experience, though I am certain that similar could be made on the basis of instinct: directly and through a simple process of understanding.’

to pass through the abyss between those fears walled in (the honeyed walls, the walls of words) or walled out (foetus, corpse), as one. To conjure silence from the distance between my cries. A night for no-one, Embracing my vision. I see Nought.

Inside this mouth, where nostrils combat a hideous stench and garbage seethes, swarm lithe and half-demented rats: their mass above, their mass below. They move with the weight of bodies disenchanted, with wills to know. Their bodies spark in passing but never touch my own, as I traverse all roads uncertain: shall we collide?

“You may, though you won’t ever discover the spark, or find the fire,” breathes Haar.

“We’ll chase the phoenix over pyres far and wide, Till in the end we chase her out of sight, When death at last will sever her connection.”

‘Each face hereby sustains a mask in liberty. A knowledge passed down to us by our father, whose revelation was made perfectly transparent in Great Mother’s City, a best-seller of dubitable authorship, ceaselessly reiterated and translated, whilst its precepts have been raped for the sake of clarity.’

  I question I [Idea untranslatable; beyond self-referential constraints]: “Are we so far removed? Our hell could never be this dark, even should we constantly die!”

‘And how soon we found that with the end of life we consumed more earth than fire, such merit being incumbent on return to dust!’

“Quackshit!”

‘For whilst a fond hope for order dawns in the antique ideal of these time-grasping hands, they wait upon all that they desire.’

Propelled by these feelings of remorse I push into the mists of the Great Hearth Flesh, a veil within the mouth of Regina Piscis, our Apple Queen; lost member of so many thousand years.

‘To summarize her influence, Pagina Rosa, Director of the Altruistic Museum of Unnatural Histories, wrote: ‘Her presence was so awesome that most reverently evoked her as “The Primordial View”’.’

  She shivers now. Her mouth exhales and clamps with breathless haste. I enter depths obscured by nets and fog.

“And you will scarcely gain Manzana’s heart in there!”

  “Oh show me, please, if you are able, the route to lead me through blind skies!” These, twisting, winding, twining strands impede the realization of my will. They shape my progress in accord with my decline and lead toward a halt away from true fulfilment. So must this man leave all his mists and trappings far behind and let his vision be his guide.

With both eyes open I am witness to that which I have come to know as beauty, though through time I have learnt to observe from behind my fingers’ span, remaining speechless, anticipating her flight beyond me. Though I intend to follow her wherever she deigns to lead, and use her as I deem fit.
  Beauty resolutely strides away. Her chestnut hair, despite the haste in her step, gently rises and falls: Reinette swathed in blue (veiled); youth, warmth and pale (fragrant) skin.
  Suddenly, and I have no idea why I hadn’t noticed this before, I see that she has a companion who appears to be much younger, with a complexion that is darker, and who is manacled to her waist.

With its bonding of this pair, the chain, implores obeisance; enjoining blood to not staunch the ash of its flow, as they course through Manzana’s “core to the seed of time.” I digress, this has no great significance:

  Temptation is its own rawest state.

It is my aim, with this book, therefore, not to ignore the deviations, but to spell out both beauty and crime in each truth contorted, even the humble and witless distortions of our inner lives, so thoroughly promoted by those without. ‘Steeped in hocus-pocus blood for two millennia and secreted from the risen sun to purify.’ How many times I have been told.

  At this precise moment I see Reinette and her partner, Malina, disappear beyond the fog, which desperately clings to its vast web of temperance. While I summon “the blood of the man,” I crave lost fruits and am suddenly overcome by an acid blinding as of bile from an unseen hand; a weightless span of thorns that rains about my head of empty. Momentous thorns of guilt and of desire. Empty dreams and collective fears, revere and adulterate.

‘Between these two extremes subsists an entire gamut of more or less liberating constraints, themselves the focus of a partial disorder since the creation of time.”

  These are my reason when I don my rainbow cloak in the unforeseeable chaos of natural things. These are the general solution and their vacillation lays its burden squarely on our shoulders, but is ultimately ineffective.

In our fertile age:

I will try to give you only the details that you need, and assemble the fragments for you, so that labour may be eschewed.

There is surely merit in disregarding fish heads, bones and scales, for the vultures and hounds.

A mounting body of evidence suggests, and I am sure that even paltry investigation will confirm, that the growth of the rational mind over these twenty centuries has steadily and surely devastated even those supposedly most primitive quarters of our hallowed globe. Nor should we forget power: a ladder for spineless worms (tiny star craven worms) who have many needs for reason, or the precious metals and lures for sucking our spirits from their shapeless holes: though if you wish to be consoled by these definitions you may remain disappointed, even should you read them to the end.

When the soil calls: I then emerge from the fog, a seed—of giant star anise, far strewn without its pod (some say its body, some say its heart)—reach out, a long but unassuming finger:

Into a thunderous hum of bees

Nine golden serpents

two silver orbs (I see and scent)

While obscurity contains all enigma regarding the genesis of these nuclei, the theories that sweeten their actuality demand paradises that are totally fictitious:

THE MEMOIRS OF KING VÍABORRA OF
THE IMPERIAL DESERT TRAIN

Some wish Manzana to be esteemed the rose deliverer of our frail race, for she has given its ‘members’ balance between their heated will and their frozen means. Such creatures, though sentient, act indiscriminately.

as light by motion intensifies with scents dispersed by the dew of anise in night beds I doubt my fate: whether I can fill this grain with life, a wheel, a horseshoe’s curl, to reveal a gutted self still breathing; the desert hollow of a body drained too deep, in need of fluid to meet halfway its thirst. A maw to guide me to a deeper passage, through new veins in untried waters. These could feed and give life to those with which I have grown used:

“Doubtless it would be my wisest move to approach these waters’ edge [To pursue my star julep].”

a mortal: my four limbs crawl. Stray visions from an orchard pool of mead draw the change that has its grip upon my frame.

“You need never arrive,” rings the wash.

Whilst hypnotising ripples, through the cool waters build: ring upon ring lift their heads and fan their wings, to spangle the pool’s silver light; so too it’s awesome guardians, who rise a bloodless, headless corps: on legs firm and strong, with arms hung limp as useless members.
  Archetypes: selectively bred and reared as the chosen race for this dawning age; the one now to live with. But contrary to these saviours’ efforts to derive their “volition” from subaqueous depths of pure desire, their necks release steam into the moonlight ether. This emission is the constant stream of their labours and their brightest thoughts, and it is this that creates the fog. All has been miscalculation: their dynamism?, their drive? Within their vascular bodies our portents brew, not only the virtues of efficiency, accuracy, speed and dimension, but other rare optimal potions.
  These are the sacred brews. They will yield the answers from which our kinder true shall rise; for we need believe that this is how it is and even that we will witness miracles: no longer able to peel back the outer skin, which is to say the life and death mask.
  How weak the nine roots that trail the stump of the hour and the sacrificial three?; the blossoms and the thorns of our Sacred Island Apple Queen, Great Mother of Translucence [How such vessels must appear from beneath the skin of these waters]; in whose age of uncertainty we at first glimpse the immense power of the project we have become a part of and thus begin to ascertain the base of its coercion.

[missing section: “It is an … flayer of mantles.’]

Abominations, they bustle and crowd upon the moist earth that surrounds the pool: arms detach from bloodless sockets in the constant fray. Their artificial torsos topple and hit the ground.

For those who strive fall hard if progress through them slays the nameless feeders of its dawn; when they have built their city and lent the name “Capital” to its walls, after the substance of their law.

‘Dear Friends.’

  My breath is in pain.
  I see one amongst them who appears to me whole. Can that really be him? The One: both the eyes of his head shut tightly, tightly; beating a course through the pool: a rhythm, its central core, a body and heart that throbs with a flow of crimson blood to his cheeks.
  And now I realise, as the face of the Seer Fountain twists in speechless concentration, that words are a search for the present, but that speech for posterity is simply a loosening of untried vows.
  His dumb show is drafted from the freshest flesh of Earth and of the Universe. This desert death as fruitless as pure union: a mute unction that fails to break down artifice. His ends are unattainable but it will by no means be harmful to pass his whitened kernel or its sweet carmine eclipse through the constant and exalted flame of an artful rite. He will therefore be consumed by the maws, his own, and engage his divisions in journeys that no restitution could begin to assay. Should the need arise (and it is senseless to assume that his is the surest path through all these cycles) it would be wiser for him to aid his passage with a thorough cleansing from purifiers than to hack away at it with blades or savage it with tasteless carnal contortions (smoothly executed gyrations would do no damage, but a well timed dash attack or forward plunge is quickest) in the belief that so long as no blemish afflicts his passage no harm can come his way.
  That a single grain of utility might gush forth from this twilight walkabout is known… bringing rains to animate the cryptic soil.
  A sovereign commerce for frauds and witnesses alike. Haze and relation: civilized through and through.
  Transparency: the fictitious, even aimless eye that flashes toward Earth and far beyond shows little sign of resistance and the branches of his deceptive trunk reach far into the sky.
  While I watch the tamed waters recede, nursed through my compassion by his crudely drafted postures, spotted by a hideous stud of flies and washes of rare salts, I see dust-barbs sprout from devotion’s “twinfold discord”: biting.
  This ape claws the soil with developing fingers and reveals the making of the man, as does his spine that stiffens as he rises. The genesis of Homo erectus, with characteristic big toe and thumb, as flawlessly beautiful as those illusions of development and stability we experience daily in our present lives.
  Evolving: to be man is to walk tall.

Water yields to green magma. His firm resolve surely precludes the shedding of tears, thick with head and heart, in favour of a pure scent of purpose and a veneer that slowly hardens to a tempting crust ‒ to walk his ingenuity:

In this strange world, how might he summon air? How might he quell his hunger: so far removed?

watching the stubborn nails of his hands as they tear so painfully and the nails of his feet as they likewise scar. Slashed by unseen blades from a wind unfelt.

And these abrasions seem simply to be: stone avengers of all destined roads, of his existence and communication with those who gave him life.

  They heal as suddenly, and his throat is racked by a din from the hell of his ignited ens, followed by a measured calm.
  Central to the silence of this stage a Man stands tall: his nails are painted, his helmet is red, his penis erect.

I hear the cocking of guns.

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.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 6

Here then, are Gyron, Pile and Cotise - mechanised wind-up toys of tin, with tiny wings and flat, resounding feet. They are a distraction and too late I see that the ring of light has become a ring of blood, towards which I am pulled, or am I being sucked?
   As I pass through the opening I become filled with trepidation. I cannot decide whether I would rather turn back and pursue the three Palotins or continue to the other side, especially as the first thing I see is a guard on horseback, tearing towards me, swinging his baton, with the quite evident purpose of frightening me and driving me back.
   I pull away, so as to avoid his blow, but when I look again I see a spinning wheel of letters, which suddenly stops, tossing a single letter into the air, towards a gaping pink mouth, and this, I realise, is the aperture through which I am destined to pass, and the guard's sole purpose is to prevent me from doing so, although when he returns I find I am able to pacify him with a few  simple words, although I have no idea what force inspired me to utter them, 'Truth the face of demand; of favour controlled by ritual fate' at which his rage is sucked right out of him and up into the gaping mouth, towards which I have resolved to head.
   As it is drawn in, ejaculate is spouted out, much as sea water is forced from the blowhole of a whale, and as I alight upon the surface of this new world and gain confidence from the guard's weakened state, a quick jab from the heel of my boot is sufficient to shatter his image into celestial points of light, which crash like breakers at the edge of the sea, at which, seeking to further illustrate this metaphor, resonant voices slowly intone, 'Breaking'.
   Now, I feel, is the time to make my move, so I leap into the mouth, and thus am I forced, as a newborn, straight out of the anus of god, clutching to my breast a sacred book. Maybe it has knowledge to convey? 
   I am encased within an amniotic sac, the skin of which resembles that of a grape, and thus I gracefully descend, without extravagant display. I have embraced my destiny. I am a cold sun, brandishing a contagion of words, intended only for the eyes of those who fake. Lightly, I touch upon earth once again.
   I have landed in a palace room, where a young girl drops to her knees in rapture before me and starts to prey. She blushes deeply, and that can only be on account of something playing through her mind, as her eyes are so far lowered that she would be unable to bear witness to anything that might occur before her. Whereas, through the window behind her, I see guards on horseback pass, riding quickly across the drawbridge and into the castle. The sun is high, but is being steadily blocked out by fast moving black clouds.
   The girl is suddenly gripped by hysteria and thrashes about, emitting raucous bird noise. A lightning flash briefly floods the palace room with dazzling light, pinning her to the ground and branding her; it penetrates her heart as it attempts to reach cold earth far below. She is subsequently split in two. In the outlines of the ash, which is all that remains, and seems composed of iron filings, is inscribed a sign, a pair of horizontal lightning bolts.
   I step into the centre of the seal and find myself in a meadow with the same girl curled naked at my feet, and I feel we are conjoined by a mysterious psychological power.
   We are together in the game, at the onset of a labyrinth. However, she appears to have been stripped of any ability to follow. Her body seems quite devoid of life. I must depart alone.
   Tiny bubbles rise from between her lips, as though she were under water, and as I take these in my hand and pocket them she disappears. I start to run.
   The path I have chosen slopes upward, describing a zigzag, and I run at such an accelerated pace that my breath forces its way from my chest in hiccups of laughter.
   The path of a sudden diverges, and here is a well, from which leap a ring of seahorses, carrying between them a crown, which they let drop, skilfully, onto my head, and as they swim away through the air it binds itself to my scalp.
   I stand motionless, waiting, and day turns to night. A nightingale has built a nest of tinsel, acorns, flowers, extinguished candles and gold leaf, upon the crossbeam of the well, and this I gently lift, to place it on my shoulder, along with the bird, which continues to sing gaily. I walk now with a step that is lighter, and more free.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 5

Initially, the discharge forms isolated droplets that are not so very threatening, but gradually spurts with building vigour until it builds to torrents, flooding everything.
   There is one mound of the stuff, however, that particularly attracts my attention and I plough into it without regard, uncovering a plastic shopping bag that contains a costume; a costume that combines elements of the scholar's robe and the garb of Pulcinella, which emits colour in the form of light.
   A ladder now reaches into the sky and in my new outfit I endeavour to climb it, laughing in the face of the lightning that seems to want to frighten me back.
   I rise into a hole that rends the sky and discover that I have entered a capacious golden balloon. As if on cue, a wind now grips the balloon, but it is like no wind I have ever known, because the grip itself and the movement it provokes are more evocative of a giant hand, lifting the balloon and placing it down again.
   I now look around and see that the girl with the zigzag scars is here, at least I think it is her. She is wrapped around with sky blue ribbons and sits, isolated, in a corner, and as I look in her direction the balloon is enveloped by a strange illumination. She seems to be brooding, but what is it that she wants?
   I approach her and start to slowly peel the bindings away, handling the ribbons with sensitivity, as though I don't want her to notice that I am removing them. I perceive that she is perhaps blushing. Her hands are bound and it would appear she no longer has legs, but as I free her from this egg shaped cocoon I realise she has become a bird, or to be more precise, a human, angel, eagle hybrid.
   At once I mount her and we take flight, through the clouds to the site of ruins I presume are the ones about which I had been forewarned. However, all forms here are transient: at once in a state of collapse, or buried beneath the soil, and simultaneously whole, or full of life. One moment I may see a thing in all its glory, the next it is as likely to lie shattered, destroyed. Sun and moon likewise alternate rapidly, but without the discomfort of strobing light. It is in fact my head that flashes in concord, like a Belisha beacon — on when it is dark, off when there is daylight, and the sequencing is such that it is never truly dark.
   Through the flickering light I see projections of text, poems, quaint drawings and photographed memories. The walls are weeping blood into pools and slow moving streams. Church bells toll noon.
   Somewhere amidst these ruins, within a place of concealment, there is a void. This void contains another, and within this there is another, and on, until an exit point is found, and it is at this juncture that I believe I will find the Book of Lies.
   Muffled drums can be discerned, and would appear to be beckoning me inward. The belly is open and nothing can block my descent, but am I moving towards the mind or the anus?
   Fleshy spheres swell and burst to reveal, firstly Ubu, in black, then Gyron, in red, Pile, in green and Cotise, in blue. Ubu starts to declaim his verse in a voice that recalls the gutteral flush of a toilet: "If nights are taboo but work contrite try hard to hallucinate harp's purr fat thus howling forces heart ride home thus knives recorded art spot crack. An invite in black, in a rock left from up fall, is party base average. Avoid."
   All four characters start to turn on their axes and tear through the organs, the flesh and the bones, in an act of total carnage. They leave behind them an unidentifiable odour. It seems madness itself has been set free.
   But those free wheeling bodies are now drawing me in. I feel I am being pulled towards a ritual space, as the road through which I pass is lined with figures depicting gods.
   A light above my head defines an opening, and it is towards this that I ascend.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 4

A moonlight deer bounds this way and that, over rivers and between trees, until the blue light returns. Although the balance between day and night remains unstable.
   But think again. The evidence is right before us.
    Whilst I am enraptured by the visions and the silence the children sneak in around me and swiftly lop off my head, which rises as a sun, while my own world view remains one of darkness only.
   As my head floats away I feel roots connect it to my body and life and death will not detach from each other, so I let out a peal of laughter.
   Silver unicorns, signifying purity, pass through the darkness. Up and down, mimicking the rise and fall of celestial bodies, appearing random in motion, but held in unity by an unfathomable design, and as they start to dimly radiate I feel purified and youthful once again, as though reborn, innocent as a child.
   I turn my head and see my body, naked. I shut my eyes and vomit to the ground and  when I open them again my body stands, now dressed in a pastel blue t-shirt with an image of a dinosaur upon it and a suit of deepest black. My pose is relaxed, unaffected, candid, and I feel that I am in some way soiled, as though the gaze to which I am exposed is in some way inappropriate; as though I was being studied to determine my sex.
   I am washed, as an infant would be, and a resounding slap upon my arse cheek sends me leaping, into a cot, which may just as easily be a coffin. I dangle, as though suspended from a string, and thus am I tethered to my female counterpart. An angel? A work of fiction? Is she real? Nonetheless, I am floating freely and feel happy to do so, until I receive a blow to my mouth.
   It is a freshly plucked heart, and blood drips down my chin. My own heart is now exposed, as though I was Our Lady.
   I start to whistle, in the same way as a kettle when it announces that it is ready.
   She comes at me in a storm of angelic light. The air crackles like shifting ice. Her hair seems to sing. She is everything. She wants me, but is it love? She throws herself upon me and we roll.
   Her demeanor is simultaneously wanton, coy, open and censorious, as she peels aside her clothing suggestively then conceals herself again, spreading and unspreading, in a coquettish yet childlike way. I pull out a telescope with the intention of examining with greater intimacy the minutest particulars of her beauty.
   No holds are barred and I savour every detail, especially those places that are typically regarded with modesty. Her flesh weeps roseate tears. A wind that rises straight from the earth turns these droplets to rivulets then to a flood that threatens to submerge this land, and through which swim a team of sea horses, then a sailing boat. As they pass she floats into the air and upon the water.
   A line of fish floats past. They appear to be bound together, pursued by a naked baby who is trying to catch the one at the back, though as it swims its limbs detach then float upwards and away, until all that remains is a sphere.
   This is the sun and the líquid vapourises as new life starts to emerge. The air is now a crimson fog.
   A phallus has risen from the ground and now uproots itself and rises into the sky, where the fog condenses upon it in droplets of dew. The liquid thus formed has an astounding brilliance, whilst the penis spits venom and in this way seeks to debase everything.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 3

I pick myself up and approach the feast. Upon closer inspection it becomes clear that the food, which had previously seemed so bright and tempting, is in fact composed of wax or has been carved from wood and painted. It is the sculpted replica of a classic feast, but none of it is real.
   As I move away I become aware of a terrific ululation, which could easily be an echo from my own stomach, as I am feeling the strains of hunger.
   I step onto the train of a long glow that emanates from a window ahead. It conveys a sense of promise.
   However, this feeling is foreshortened as I witness phantoms fleeing out through the window with a hellish warbling din and off into the darkness, as though their aim is to evade a danger I am unable to perceive. Behind them comes JD, waving a ghost-like handkerchief to shoo them away.
   Once he has seen them off he leans out to me, and without a hint of irony, intones 'The tang of wild orange'.
   He gaily waves a sistrum in my face then spins around and makes a swift departure, rattling as he goes, though in his wake he leaves a silence that seems burdened with shame.
   Upon the ground lies another note:

   "Clare behind the statue of
   cupid beasts. Crazed babe, as
   cute and simple power devoted
   to each daily shade of style."

But as I pick it up and head down one of the bifurcating passages I perceive a crowd behind me. They must have come from the other passage.
   I look back and see decapitated men, chickens, quails and other flightless birds advancing quite quickly, but in a clueless way, as they jostle and bump against each other, spilling blood before them.
   'Am I destined to become one of them?' I wonder. If this is to be my fate I cannot accept it.
   The pooling blood thickens and starts to swirl, then disappears into the soil, as down a plug-hole. The air fills with a steam of vermilion hues which condenses upon the walls but is quickly absorbed, as though stolen away, leaving the passage dry, as the last of the blood is sucked into the earth and man and bird collapse, thoroughly drained.
   A heavy "clunk!" as of fallen metal, draws me deeper into the tunnel, where I see distant figures in crimson robes, but all too briefly, as they retreat into the shadows. I pick up a medal from the ground and hang it around my neck. It is a reading award, or, to repeat the legend scored into the flat pane at its back, it is a medal awarded for the Consumption of the Written Word.
   With the medal hung I stand proudly and a two dimensional figure stretches from my torso and emerges from my body. A female child, naked but for silhouettes and shadows, whose first act is to grip my arm and from there feel me over, to make sure that I am real.
   I am so absorbed in this process that I do not notice the two men who have approached and now flank me, each swiftly grasping one of my arms, as they carry me along between them, though as we progress I realise it is in fact I who is leading them, and so fast are we now progressing that they start to spin like cartwheels.
   I decide to pull us to a halt and when I do they lift into the air and coalesce into a solid globe.
   Now I am approached, somewhat apprehensively, by the children I had seen earlier but who by now are feeling courageous enough to lay their hands upon me, the stranger in their midst, and, like the two dimensional girl, probe to see whether I may be real, or an apparition.
   As one, they inhale deeply, then each attempts to insert a slither of bamboo under one of my nails, but as they force it in they disappear, as though they were being sucked into my finger.
   I feel surprisingly little pain and am compelled to lift my arms so that my hands are projecting outwards and from the tips of my fingers I shoot arrows of fire, which turn back to children as they penetrate the ground.
   The keys that they now hold, the keys of binding and of choosing, signify that they are at last free.
  One girl kneels to prey. My heart stands still, I tremble. Someone rings a hand bell. Another takes my hand whilst her friend takes a snapshot.
   Blooms rapidly erupt from all sides of the passageway until its hideous walkways are concealed beneath bright and colourful flowers and from the hearts of these gush fountains of blood, milk and "water".
   I feel intoxicated but equally succumb to drowsiness. I stretch my palms before me like a blind man as I dream.
   Three sharp blows serve to shape the darkness into the vision that now forms before me.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 2

It is at this point in the tale that a man with a fabulous tail strides in to introduce himself. He swishes it firstly to the left and then to the right, as he steps up briskly to face me and slaps me with a finger on the nose. I must admit, I turn quite pale when he rolls his eyes and digs in his heels, before leaning in close to me. I feel I might die, although his eyes do not convey malice, and not for a moment do I believe I might actually be harmed.
   "Russian!" he pipes. "Well I'll be damned! I've lost sausages here. Do you want some?"
   He flicks a toe and spins around, and in a moment is gone. What a character. I've no doubt I'll see him again.

The sky is now filled with apocalyptic black clouds and a rain of golden flakes begins to fall. Loud rumbling is followed by a legion of black clad militia on bikes, wearing full face helmets, emblazoned with the insignia of the Noose. For the most part they stare straight ahead, but not one, who is presumably chief and is scanning the horizon, which is how he comes to see me.
   He breaks from the group and heads straight for me, then plucks me up in his strong arms and drops me into the carriage of his bike before rejoining formation with the others. They are heading for the Reconditioning Centre for Dreamers. "Here's another one" he announces to his men "Roaming around in the open. Almost certainly a dreamer. Maybe even a poet."
   The terrain is quite featureless, although before long the entourage starts to navigate its way through streets beneath grey edifices which increase in size as we travel between them. The shuttered windows are occasionally thrown open and through them appear giant heads which appear to jeer. However, the skin on their faces is flaking and peeling. It is red raw.
   People start to crawl from the houses. They cling to each other, then come more, forming a sticky morass that grows into a corpulent, pulsing red member, into which the team of bikers collides and penetrates. Because this is the penitentiary. It is the soul, the brain, the heart. As they penetrate a whistle blows and the membranes of the walls snap shut behind them.
   I am led to the front desk and the man there wants to take my temperature. He rudely seats me down and places a sensitised helmet over my head. The device reads my ears, my nose, my eyes, my lips. Sensors creep from it and move across the length of my body, concentrating particularly on the area of my sex. He reads the instruments and declares "This one's a dreamer alright!" However, the soldiers have all returned to their duties and there is no-one around to hear him. He is now playing at the machine as though it was a games console, and the music is getting steadily louder. He leaves the machine to walk with a female assistant.
   I close my eyes and abandon myself.
   I see them dancing around a pince nez, which spins at the tip of the trunk-like nose it is attached to, but every so often inverts and moves around like a caterpillar.
   I speak and they disappear then reappear either side of me, unplucking the sensors from my body.
   "The sensors can't be wrong" one declares. "No doubt about it, a dreamer" the other replies. And I wait, I cannot say how long. I feel like an innocent, bereft of all moral turmoil. I seem to wander without volition, going nowhere but where fancy takes me.
   And so it is that I stumble upon a lavish feast. As I enter the dining hall my body fades and I float amongst the tables as a ghost. A crucifix that stands before one of the central tables bows as I approach it. The women who are seated on either side breath fire then jump up and briskly leave the hall, as though they had been affronted. They leave behind a pair of notes:

   "It is a book that lies apart."
   "It passes through the scripted ruins."

And then I plummet to the ground.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 1

The cat has left a gift upon the kitchen floor. It is a mouse. Its heart still beats, though it is at pains to do so. A bubble of thought rises soberly into the air: 'Please let me be', but the guardian cannot hear this. She is turned the other way. Her thoughts sink slowly to the ground: 'Where are they?'

The floor has recently been washed and the pulsing corpse could be the sordid decoration on a ceremonial cake. A something to be proud of. 'They must come soon'. In the distance a bang and the sound of footsteps: approaching, deviating, retreating. Silence. Patience. 'Miaow '. Here they come.

But the high sonic reveille that greets her when the door is opened is too much for Ting and out she darts through the cat-flap, as fast as her aged limbs will take her. This may be the last gift she leaves.

Had she stayed in place, however, she would have seen that her gift had brought not joy but resigned anger, as the mouse is quickly scooped up and carried outside to the bin. The bang of the lid as it closes is indeed a joyless sound. But imagine, if you please, that mother and father had taken a turn around to the back of the house in search of Ting and found there a palace of fur and twine, of trinkets and bones. That her mouse had been only a foretaste of the stuff her dreams were made of. 

Imagine then, that they had ventured through a magical doorway constructed of twigs, cobwebs and fish bones and stood in wonder, unaware that Ting, perched up high and looking down upon them in a curious way, was counting the seconds until the commencement of her glorious plan.
   When their hands join they find themselves formless, as suspended light that finds expression in a single spark that separates itself and journeys through the air into the murky dark where it settles at the heart of the gloom (the soul is infinitesimally small - a zygote, a sperm).
It is cold here, a foreign place, not entirely dark, but casting little lustre into the surrounds. It is the centre of a place that is yet to be realized, an island in the shade of trepidation. The spirits of dead mice risen abound. The crystalline centres of their eyes crackle and fizz as ice cold water washes through them. Just above the surf small flies gamble with their lives and often lose. However, it is not entirely silent, footprints splash determinedly through the tide and stop before me.
    I can see very little in this gloom but as I attempt to stand and face my assailant the space grows a little brighter. There is now light enough to see her face, which is rounded and dark. Her hair is pinched back; her eyes large and wide. Her lips are full and, stretching diagonally across her cheeks, from her chin to her ears, are a pair of zigzagging blue scars, like bolts of lightning, and it is from these that the dawning light shines.
   She takes my hand. Hers is soft. It feels like the kind of hand I would want to hold, and she guides me along behind her.
   When she stops we are at the basket of a moored balloon, into which she deftly climbs, urging me to follow.
   Once I am inside she cuts the guys without hesitation, and we rise into an uncertain sky, where nothing can be seen, no birds, no clouds, no ground below.
   It seems an age before the balloon becomes trapped at the edge of a mass of weaving briars, into which she deftly leaps, while I cautiously follow. Though as she starts to weave her way skillfully through the dense entanglement I realise that they are in fact giant hairs and that we are venturing along the brow of god.
   Our passage is slow and cumbersome but we reach the end in due course and she disappears into a hole that marks the position where the third eye would have been located, and I of course follow her through, but as I drop down I realise that I am once more alone.
   The vast space into which I have landed, I soon realise, is the brain of god.
   As I walk deeper into it the dots I had seen in the distance loom larger and I can make out figures: men and women at rest and dreaming upon slatted beds. There are also children, but these are not dormant, they run free, but are forever concealed by shadows, as they evade the realms of adulthood. They play hide and seek, but with every intention of losing themselves entirely, of never being found.
   The adults, who lay on their backs upon the beds, have sheets pulled over their faces and seem at first glance to be dead, but as I approach I can see their chests are rising and sinking and can feel their breath, which is slight but nevertheless regular, when I hold my palm above their mouths. When I lift the veil from their faces their eyes flicker wildly, reminding me of antique computer banks, rapidly saving and deleting.
   I now notice that none of the bodies are in contact with the beds upon which they appear to rest, levitating a centimeter or so above it, although they will not budge when I attempt to move them, not even slightly, as though they are in some way rooted, not only to the bed, but also to the earth beneath it.
   I further notice that some are levitating over thin mattresses rather than beds whilst there is nothing at all beneath others,  but every one of them is equally resistant to movement.
   There is one, however, who lays face down, and I am inclined to believe that this one, being the exception, will not resist.
   I am right, or at least partially so. When I grasp an arm and try to turn the individual to face me everything around me starts to fade, as it would if this were the dream sequence of a film, and when I let go the individual starts to turn freely, as though of its own volition, and then starts to spin and cocoon itself in a web that is the colour of faeces.
   As though this was a cue I sense that the children are gradually approaching, moving cautiously into my field of vision, though when I turn to face them they are gone.
   I also sense that the patch of ground upon which I am standing is starting to shift and sink, but is the cavity that is forming as much a cavity in the skull where my adventures are taking place as it is a cavity in the soil where I stand, which is all that remains as everything fades around me?
   The spinning cocoon gradually tightens and elongates until it becomes so dark and heavy that it drops to the ground, where it cracks and spills its deep brown liquid contents, which start to corrode a deep hole into the earth.
   As everything has now faded away and I am in danger of being consumed by the disappearing world of which I have become a part, I drop down into the hole, trying my best to avoid touching the corrosive ooze that runs down the expanding walls of the funnel, and as I descend I look up to see the children's faces appear over the rim. Attentively, they watch as I fall.

I don't have too far to go and land quite comfortably upon a meadow, dotted with large white balls that I initially take for stones, although they are very smooth and most perfectly round. Also, whichever direction I cast my eyes there are giant shoes of every description. I can't resist picking up one of the stones and am surprised to find that it is lighter than anticipated. I attempt to toss it into a particularly elegant Victorian boot.