MicroHorror

Out in the desert I grew sick of locust. Guts of paste, papery wings, legs like barbarous toothpicks; whether roasted, honey-pickled or fried in their own tobacco spit. Besides, the idea entered my head: why not give food a chance?

Then came that broiling afternoon I stumbled on a thriving hill. Scooped up a handful. Sifted out the sand. Devoured several dozen writhing beings.

The taste was piquant, sulphurous; with a metallic hint of exquisitely thin tin foil. Forget candied corpses: we’re talking swarming nibbling live pismires.

Most got crunched to death. Petioles, gasters, mandibles, heads, legs, antennas, alitrunks–broken, crushed; salivated, swirled, gulped.

But a minute percentage made it. Clung to the palate. Curled between molars. Grasped the uvula the way a whorehouse monkey might a chandelier. Onto the root of the tongue latched. Or got swallowed alive–thence to do battle in the belly with my tapeworm, like a mongoose with a cobra.

That first lunch totaled thousands. I was starved–had fasted for days; disgusted with locust, unable to locate a viable substitute. Of these maybe ten lived–hunkered down, scrounging off my esophagus; while I continued, ignorant of the infiltration, to consume prey alive.

I took a fancy to the eyes. Tinier than pinpoints. But of a toothsome gelatinousness yielding a tangerine licorice tang. Were I a gourmet, instead of an anchorite, I would doubtless have blinded billions, expressly to obtain a few precious thimblefuls of ocular caviar, so keen became my passion.

As it was, I gobbled only three more meals of squirming hymenoptera, before deciding they tasted too sublime. I returned to the killed, cooked, bland locust; the confusion of who ate whom no longer enchanting.

But of the few score who survived mastication, at least one resultant ant not only lodged herself in my larynx, but learned to manipulate the organ. So that, while talking to God (I’m talking to you right now, Lord) I unpredictably lapse into appeals for heaps of dead beetles.

When the insect commandeers my voice I also sometimes pray aloud for Domino sugar sacks high as Sinai; colonies more vast than Shanghai; the extinction of ant lions. A honeydewed aphid in every pot. And life everlasting–incessantly working oneself to death in the service of Heaven’s Queen.

Each time such pirated prayers erupt, the ants play musical chairs, racing around like thoughts that ought not occur.

Oh Lord, I recant me of these rants. Can’t you see? It was just a momentary mistake in dietary intake! Don’t hear this banter, this Indianapolis 500 of heretics!

Words be damned! This chaff of chance chants! Words, words, I got words in my pants. More words yet–all I own is a loin cloth!

You know me. Are intimate with my thoughts. Although (was it only yesterday?) thought felt bug crawl up back of throat–to penetrate some membrane giving into the brain…?

Time feels all the same out here under the sun, above the sand, among the horizons. Likewise inside–where you scrutinize the ant farm of my skull.

And because I am your slave, oh Lord–a feeler, a treader, an eater upon the face of the earth–all the world fills with the promise that work will conquer life.

Hey, Luna–tick-tock! Smile crazy, lick a tear. Let your face tell time. Set alarm for Xmas. Wake me to mass murder.

Hey, Luna–tickle time tomorrow. Such a sorrow, to own no particular erotic tic!

Oh, la la! Take me to your sister Ola. Land me in a cup on her saucer. While you rise, Luna, lusty as a tick struck blood. Rise from the couch, beaming at our antics, anticipating orgasm; in your fist a pearl-handled pistol gasping.

Oh, Luna–tick-tock! Tell when to dash a skull gibbous through the wall. Scent the room crescent silver. Crown the scalp with sparks. Detain logic lollygagging in the undead hall. Up from a half-dream you don’t even HAVE a sister–own brother sun.

Oh, Luna–tickle me fresh blood!

Slipped myself a Mickey. Right mouse clicked delete. Boarded Steamboat Willie. Took a powder inside a keg over Niagara down to Pluto.

Popped–a la John Glenn–out of keg. Hopped the ferry that pulled alongside. Flipped the pilot a Kennedy half. Bumped at length against the far shore. Scampered off to locate Minnie.

We had just been married. Cake still on lips. Strolled through the garden, trading gold futures. Till a snake bit her foot. Now up to The Mick to foot the bill if we ever again to coo.

For what seemed days, in a daze, I followed the urine brick road. At last came upon the City of Dis. Sneaked under Dat Gate. Hustled down Dese Avenues. Darted across Doze Plaza. Entered, as if being interred, the F-Word Palace, where Dis discovered Himself on a throne of iron gilded with rust–from the many, many tears.

The wizard’s lidded eyes watched the intruder. I glimpsed mirrored on the pupils only my little black-and-white self; the hundreds of attendants crowding the chamber being beings incapable of reflection.

“Holy cats,” Dis finally exclaimed. “We got rodents!”

Persephone, seated beside Him costumed as the Witch of Endor (it was Halloween–always down there Halloween) farted. From a distant room Pluto barked. The stink fought for recognition above the brimstone.

“I’m here,” I squeaked up at the obscenity slouched on the twisted throne, “to reclaim my wife. I pose no threat. Represent no colonial iceberg tip. No flesh and blood in its right mind would ever dream of infesting this shithole. Give back my wife, and your turnips, caviar, pomegranates, whatever you goblins gobble, stay untouched.”

A harmonica leaped into my little white fist. “Here–lemme blow a tune to melt your heart.”

Persephone belched ozone. Predicted the fall of Israel. Then motioned I toss the harp. Nobody in hell a follower of anything not discord.

“I can blow that, too!”

Dis shrugged, “Take the bitch. P in the A anyway. Scatters her scat all around the kitchen. Only use for her is to chew the cheese off my frenulum. But, hey, watch it–don’t look back; not till you reach topside.”

He rooted a finger up a nostril. Winced. Yanked. Contemplated on the tip–in the torchlight–a sooty booger the size of enough plastic explosive to bring down a jet. “So turn around. Scat!”

I did. Weaved through the slavering attendants garbed in rags of goldshot silk; the bonier specimens leering at my round black body.

For days I hiked through gloom along the urine path, hearing at my back my every step dogged. Trek the psychic equivalent of an orgasm in reverse. All the while the wheels of cogitation spinning, digging ever deeper the following rut:

If I fail to look back, I believe Dis; show faith in hell. On the other appendage, the devil being the devil, he’s lying; what’s behind is a fake–a zombie knockoff or some giant insect made in Japan. Minnie still back in the toilet, mind overflowing with rot.

I can’t play the dupe. Even if I am Mickey Mouse. This is the Big Tent. Anchored to the pole that turns the stars. Too much contradiction for my dick.

I whipped around–ready for either rage or ecstasy–first ray of dawn not quite hit–and it is Minnie, who bursts into tears, waving to me a last paw, as she vanishes into the mouth of Pluto yapping at the morning paper flung out front on the concrete.

Light a candle. Tie a balloon to the chair. Get into silk pyjamas. Tired of getting ahead, get comfortable in bed. Put a .38 to my head.

Cock hammer. Fondle trigger. Prepare to blow myself into that sleep no traveler ever posts a letter from. Mutter to the air who cares about a cock for whatever Greek?

Depress–amid visions of caterpillars pooping my jammies–the trigger. Click… on a dud; time stopped on a dime.

Into the room clicks Miss Fire–nude but for nylons and stilettos, plus a strap-on. Face blank; buxom, hippy, rollercoaster curvaceous.

Struts over. Hops up on the sheet. Yanks my bottoms off. Indulges in a spate of head; which fails to qualify as getting ahead; so I allow the blood to swell the tube to bursting.

The wheels behind the eyes spin, deepening the rut. Till, when I’m about to seed her gullet, she slams me on my chest. Elevates my butt with pillows, and the rape begins.

Hums while she works Dixie mixed with Jingle Bells. Ditty cramps memory cyanide-in-the-punch fast. Goes around; and around; comes in the face of any escape. Sounder she humps, naggier the beat.

Dildo does a number on my rectum. Bed creaks up a cricket nest. Frame bangs wall. Humiliates me to have started this whole affair.

About to undergo massive anal menarche, I squeal, “Let me… let me SEE!”

The blind guppy wiggles up. Demands a dime. I even let this dipshit gimme lip. But a dime I don’t got.

But as I keep getting fucked, a credit card jolts from my pyjama top pocket. The guppy makes off with the plastic. Puts himself at my expense on a rocket to the moon. From where he telepaths a path out for my set-about butt.

Dig fingers into mattress. Guppy inside the skull berates, “Dig it! Dig it! Dig it to the nth!” See through thought flesh show spirit way out, if the spirit gets enough way out to reverberate.

The firebird then racks the balls in this game of pool. Pulls out. Jerks me up on the bed edge. Jams the toy down my throat.

Fortunately, eager to die hungry, I have been fasting for the last forty-eight hours. Isn’t much to taste–mucus on plastic, trace of a blood finish.

But must the gag persist? Can’t she see suicide just another wisecrack in this routine before an audience of gods bored shitless?

He isn’t really a guppy, I think, trying not to gawk at the above insight. More a pollywog–dark sperm snapping about, about to tap into an egg the size of a beer keg.

Comes that tune again–vibrating down through her pelvis, oscillating tonsils; now more a cross between Yankee Doodle and The Syncopated Clock.

To drive rhythm home, she exits my pipe. Cranks head sideways, palm on crown, other below jaw. Takes aim. Dives polyurethane erection through my ear.

Pounds so hard screwed-shut eyes hallucinate both ears shishkabobbed, thinker rooted through, apple cored; while chords circle; till she halts tip mid-brain, and the plastic speaks.

But either it’s dumb or I’m deaf. Bottomline: read lips, decipher fluctuating orifice ordering chaos embrace–kiss number off, file down rank, hump the first, screw the last, felch in-between. Welcome to stasis is crisis, metamorphosis stutters to evolve puns on the better.

Dildo pee-hole jabbering at my pituitary too much. Eyes swing coffinlike open. Roll up at her own prune pit balls, where back stares a crapshot brown.

She gets out of my ear. Rebalances on stilettos. Pauses outside my pate two syncopated beats. Then gorgeous pelvis thrusts strap-on through gore-greased gash.

Rocks through my temple. Follows the slug’s path. Seems Miss Fire after all live.

A moth stitched over the pocket flies. The guppy still births on the moon. Credit no sweat.

She fills me with plastic. We have won. We are one. Both will survive. Two forever dead ahead.

Got all dolled up. Hair done. Eyebrows plucked. No idea where going. Over the phone, he guaranteed it would be nothing like the movies.

Occupying the rocker, I contemplated the overhead parlour globe glisten on my new nails. Listened outside for the honk. This our first.

He’d always been around. We’d just never gone anywhere. He said we’d go for a spin, try not to talk about the office.

I smoothed my dress. Tightened hose. Dabbed at shoes. Read, reread, memorized the comics. Cinched belt. Picked lint. Unraveled in the crossword the last few impossible clues. Endured the blues of fingers drumming whatever daydreams under the skin.

Till on the wall above, the cuckoo Dad brought back from Iceland–ten years before his arteries clogged–squawked midnight.

A tear welled. Trickled across the cheek.

I smiled slightly–to channel the drop onto the tip of my barely extended tongue. Licked the lifeless liquid in. Mixed it with spit.

Stood up, again.

I swallowed. Plucked pins from hair. Stood. Pressed to my chest an intangible corsage. Drifted upstairs–once again to love myself to sleep.

Kick the statue’s crotch. Break a toe. Slap it in the face till palms bleed. Shatter knuckles gutpunching the sucker. Bite nose. Chip teeth. Butt the sumbitch in the chest till at last black out.

Wake up on the grass to the tickle of a fly sipping blood. Prop up on elbows. Focus, in the growing dusk, the roots of a dead sun…

Dreamed I forgot to stir; froze solid; a monster threw me in god’s own stir.

Hobble to broken feet. Catch breath as if myself had set the trap.

Confront creation. Bespit granite eyes.

Choose to leave the rain to melt–long after I pass–the statue. Move on into the night to pick, long as I last, the next loser.