A Greater Monster

by Katzman, David David

Dead again in the world of the living..

  Alive again into the world of the dead..

  I examine this audience..

  I can see them in minute detail..

  The women in the tier lofted above appear younger than those below..

  And their hair is shinier..

  Their noses are just a few hairs breadths thinner and straighter..

  Variations between those below … … in the weight of their cheekbones,, subdued pointing or rounding of the chin..

  The eyes are duller,, greyer..

  Tender lifts me up and places me in a tall,, transparent tube..

  You,, audience..

  You are all dead too..

  You just don’’t know it’’s coming..

  I begin to weep..

  I begin to weep tears that fill the tank..

  The tank fills up to my chin in moments..

  A lid is dropped,, I am compressed beneath the salty water..

  I feel my lungs collapsing as I hold my breath for far too long,, one big inhale..

  Gushing horror..

  Trapped

  Waking … a field of dead heat lifts a seething portrait from me: dancing with a thousand fireflies.

  Get my bearings. The tents. A few Pures wandering past. Surfaces are tan and khaki and dirt except the Pures in pale and white. Baskets filled with glowing lichens cast an eerie glow.

  I’m hungry. Gurgling, grumbling. Belch. A scent: raspberries.

  Flicking my tongue, I get the contours of the smell and track its thread through the crowds, snaking around tents, down alleys, past the pickled punks and leprous leprechauns until I face a small triangular tent seemingly forgotten and deserted. The scent is escaping through an entry marked with strips of material. I pass through the cool noodles … engulfed by darkness, imbued with berries, and I face:

  an abrupt emptiness of smell, a void.

  Absence hurts the roof of my mouth like loneliness.

  Turn to run but a wall of stench blocks my path,

  rotten eggs exhale and swallow me,

  violently sulfuric,

  alien and toxic,

  savage and merciless,

  the grinding gears of a tempest coming.

  I’m squashed, flattened, and dulled by them.

  Bobbing aimlessly in a burning soup of wishes.

  Numb.

  The lifeless stench has descended and envelopes my limbs.

  Lifeless and dumb, nothing else, only wordless stench.

  Dumb and churning.

  Somewhere, far away, tantalizing and taunting,

  drawing me closer,

  from out of the boundless plane rides a masked pungent must

  with tincture of sickly sweet decay by its side … stagnation crinkled with rust,

  a jolt of lighting strikes the earth, charged ions curl at the margins,

  the ring of struck bronze carried by a briny breeze,

  a wash of decomposing chlorophyll and salt on a beach of dried shells.

  I am itchy and hopeful.

  I take a deep breath, filling my throat with kelp and seaweed and saltwater and dark growing things.

  Sinuously, a heavy, unctuous aroma weaves through the brine and descends as oily jelly.

  I catch an ozone buzz, my septum serrated and slapped with fishy stink,

  my wounds laved in vegetation and shrooms,

  an essence I can’t place … dry and crusty, permeated with an odor of albumin yoked to peat—

  the heady richness of loam and worms,

  noisome methane rollicks in fetid sinkholes and

  thick carrion smells ring around me like ribbons of weeping willow,

  hushed cedar tickles my tongue muted by moss and cypress.

  Exotic steamy jungle, wildflower, a soupçon of chartreuse,

  green sap and spruce is wafted by a crisp spring zephyr

  split and split and spill my body into multitudes of fecund fantasies.

  From my skin, grasses sprout like hair pushing upward in pain and arousal,

  dried dung and raw meat odors penetrate my surface

  until I am seared by fire and

  can’t stop the harrowing

  and my hardshell

  unpeeling

  from my body

  as I’m flayed

  shark-tooth tip stripped

  nerves

  jitter spasm jitter chatter

  fear

  blinded

  deaf

  gradually

  weighed

  down

  smothered

  by choking ash,

  can’t escape myself alone with myself no one knows I’m fighting for breath

  catch a whiff, come to me, there

  dampness

  vapor

  water

  fresh water laps at the limits of my senses

  reviving, refreshing, clearing and cooling.

  I’m swimming in spumes of watery air and

  skimming over fields of grass, buttery dander, and sweet almond oleander—

  swiftly blunted by musk and bile, shit and semen,

  pierced by spikes of acrid urine,

  puffs of flint and burning wood infiltrate my nostrils—

  a blade like a flame slices through the center,

  a gust of clean air so crisp it tears into my nose like cocaine,

  this clarity is

  patiently,

  delicately

  infused with juniper and linseed oil,

  plaintive hints of sugarcane and orange at the outskirts,

  I luxuriate in this decadent mélange until—

  creeping in from the periphery—

  stale sweat, leather, and gunpowder intrude into this concoction, surround me,

  dragging behind a flatulent miasma of manure,

  necrotic bodies ringed with spoilage and squalor settle upon a mountain of garbage,

  the unmistakable punch of sizzling hide stamped by ink,

  exhaust fumes eclipse my throat,

  the inner lining chipped away by insecticide, grease, and melting plastic,

  a veil of roses and rue lifts, revealing old driftwood sailing on a ghost of rainforest,

  chlorine in a concrete pond sipping a cocktail of charcoal, ice, and sand,

  hills of melted tar, overflowing sewers,

  sweet malaria and sinews of muscular poison approach—

  penetrating toxins, vulgar, vicious toxins,

  violent and alien,

  but instantly, it’s gone.

  Emptiness.

  Devoid.

  Dullness.

  Death.

  Can’t take this. So dark, can’t see. Get up, the roof presses against my head. Feel drunk. A dull gut punch. Grasping blindly, find the flap and leave.

  The path and walls and air tremble. Slices of lights plunge in and out like migraine needles. Can’t control. Weak. Mouth pits burned out. Sensation overload.

  From a nearby tent, a voice.

  “Males, females, Pures one and all, come see our main attraction, see G’Nesh perform in public what you rarely even see in private. See the minimal made maximal. The most potent act of all, the ultimate sexual act, flagrantly in public. Now, if that’s not horny, I’ll burn my ass hair. Just a few drops from your dropper. That’s all it will cost. Just a few drops of your life. Command: Come and see.”

  This Talker appears generally human but with a face shaped like a bean. Wears a pristine white jacket with large brass buttons up the front, white gloves, and dark brown furry legs. His face is the color of pearl and his short spiky hair, flat on top, is the same color, almost indistinguishable. His thin-lipped mouth rimmed in olive is too big. I show him the ticket from my pocket. He cocks his head and squints at me funny, waves me in. Have a feeling this G’Nesh is important. Can point me to the bird girl. I’ll stick out the hunger.

  The room sails in velvet evening, quiet and soothing. The audience attentive like polite children. I take an open
seat in the front facing a blank, dark wall of obscure and subterranean material. How far? Flat or curved or corrugated? Curtain or wall?

  What is that?

  Gasps all around. The impossible figure is black but pins me like a spotlight; it extrudes from the surface and fills the room like space itself. Can scarcely make out its contours—it fills all corners of the room, floor to ceiling. It surrounds me yet is in front of me. It shines bituminous. The head, so many parts coming forward, sideways, down, inward. Like a bomb went off inside an elephant. Tubular, flattened, bulging, misshapen trunk, dangling flop ears as irregular as continents, four black eyes bulging on stalks, sweeping the crowd until settling on me—no, the male to my left.

  The man looks over his shoulder then back.

  Silence. I’m holding my breath.

  Eventually the man stands and walks toward the thing. They face each other, the man’s arms akimbo, defiant. He turns and looks back at us with a sneer. The strange being’s trunk touches his neck, and his expression is transfixed. His whole body becomes a statue. A floor light floods upward, bathing him in a column of illumination. We are quiet, straining to see. The rise and fall of his chest. Slows? His breathing stops; his sneer is unchanged. As one, we lean forward, can discern no movement. The skin, his skin becomes moist and his arms recede like erosion into his body; his legs kiss, becoming a tail, his ears vanish into his body, his eyes and nose are swallowed up as dimples in his face; he falls flopping side to side and front to back, his clothes dangling loose around him, the shorts splitting off, a huge tail furiously flagellating, gills now on his neck, closing, opening, closing, pleading.

  He shrinks, his body compressing into itself.

  The air crackles with static.

  Its many eyes closed, G’Nesh is still except for its trunk, which pets the thing like a kitten. The thing shrivels to the length of an arm, a curled worm with a bulbous head. Looks like a fat, white maggot with eyes. Its pointy, curled body smacks the floor again and again. G’Nesh rolls it like dough as it wiggles and turns grey and green. The thing mutates, its surface crenulates into tiny scales like my own … a tail and limbs with claws … fur shooting up from the scales … conical nose … whiskers and small teeth … tail separating, getting longer and fatter and furrier, limbs getting thinner and longer … body more wiry … thicker, now thicker … heavy and full, strong-limbed … muscles knitting … hair falling out … coloration getting lighter and lighter until it is near albino again, his features becoming straight again and clean and even, his chest widening, waist narrowing, muscles growing, his cock getting bigger and bigger, his balls heroic.

  “BEHOLD!”

  Stunning to hear after complete silence, the words catapult like flaming boulders: “THE EVOLUTION! THE PUREFECTION!”

  He releases the man who looks almost as he did before, but with new and improved family jewels … and a changed face—how?—younger? He gets up from the floor unstable, unsure. As he returns to his seat, smiles and nods encourage him, and, except for me, those nearby slap his back or his spear-like penis. The creature is gone. Didn’t see it go.

  A chill in the air. My stomach ache has graduated to a dull but unsettling pain. Hurry out. Collide with another creature outside the tent, knocking us both down.

  “So, would you like to fuck?” Bunnygirl asks me as we sprawl in a tangle. “Just a droppersful.” Plush, cropped black fur and precise features grace a heart-shaped face.

  “Uh …”

  She is petite. Slim and less than chest height on me. Naked from the waist up, her breasts ringed in many colors with large, erect dark nipples. I saw her before. With the unicorn. A short black skirt barely covers the tops of her slender legs that end in rabbit-like paws.

  “Ooooh … not a Pure.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to fuck?”

  “Uh … probably not … the right time.” I pick myself up and wipe the dust off my suit.

  “What’s your trick?” she says, bounding to her feet.

  “I … could use some food. Nearly starving is my trick.”

  She puts her hands on my chest; her touch is light as a feather. “I know where.” She hops past me; I have to run to catch up with her.

  “Slow down, please. I’m not so steady on my—on my feet.”

  She pauses to bounce at my side. “My name is Maphroditee. I like to fuck. What’s your name?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have one.”

  “Pick.”

  Name myself? Got no purchase to name myself. “I don’t know.”

  We continue down nameless roads toward a nameless tent with none to witness.

  “You can feel the sun beating on your pelt.”

  “What?”

  “The sun. Déjàvedic. Sans signified, sans substance, a neutered noun. Outside. I remember I was there briefly.” She looks at me, and her eyes are big and luminous. Copper with glittering flakes. “Felt the sun. Exposed a rare moment. When the sun was out, you could feel it tapping on your cells, the surface of your body tight, throbbing.” She moves like a ballerina. “I never felt that since. Or else I never felt it, and I’m just fantasizing.”

  “I …”—what do I want to tell her?—“… can … remember a time … when I thought my body was … was solid. When I crawled enough through—slowly enough through time that … that I felt like … myself the whole way.”

  “The sun presses through your eyelids when you close them and face it.” Her voice carries with it the perfume of imagination.

  “You’re only solid one time, I guess,” I say.

  “The outside was a brief moment of breathing.”

  “It’s a fake … because … apparently that’s … that’s just the beginning. It’s sort of—was even faith then, I guess. Naïveté before a storm.”

  “I remember the feeling of grass on my tongue. It was a clean, crisp, light orgasm. All my hairs stood on end. I would thump my tail.”

  “Do you have a tail?” I ask. “It sounds like you were once a—another thing.” A rabbit.

  “Once was what?”

  “Nothing. I just remember words. Scraps.”

  “I was once another thing? What do you mean by being another thing?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t much know much what I mean. I remember I don’t think I used to stutter.”

  “Stammer.”

  “What?”

  “You stammer, not stutter.”

  “You remind me of someone.” On a white couch. “She had black hair.”

  “I have black hair.”

  “Yes but yours is all over your body.”

  “Is that a difference?”

  “No, not really.”

  We’ve stopped at a large tent. Where am I? I’m with a black rabbit.

  “I very much enjoy fucking myself,” she says.

  “That’s nice.”

  “I come in so many parts of my body simultaneously, it can’t be explained with words. It never stops echoing. I could continue indefinitely, but difference is erotic and that makes me feel alive. To touch things that are different. Stay here. I’ll get you edibles.”

  She scoots under the tent wall, and I’m alone in a narrow walkway leading twenty feet in both directions. It’s quiet. Distant voices and movement … somehow comforting. Wasn’t I starving? Hunger has evolved into intoxication. The roof above: abruptly splattered with snakes of color, paisley sea dragons, squalls of Northern Lights, and spires of living fire. Schizophrenic rainbows. Vanishes. Returns to grey. Did I imagine it? Sigh. Nothing ever doesn’t change.

  Dirt the color of grease. The tent walls, all the same olive color. Rub my hand against the material—a supple patina. Not like canvas, more like some kind of hide. I jump and can see just over the wall that the tent on the opposite side is vacant, no roof. Probably to allow light in.

  Maphroditee appears with an armful of pea-green plants—tubular like celery and bathed in oil. Don’t care what they look like, I take one and shove it
in my mouth. Not gag-worthy. Like aloe. This is okay. Take them one at a time from her and shove them in my mouth, chewing, swallowing, quickly, quickly. Finish the last bit. I’m wiping my mouth when she asks, “What is this?” pointing at my forehead. I touch my temple—sensitive. Feels like a wound. How did I get this?

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember. It’s—I think—a wound.”

  “No it’s not. Sit down.”

  I sit cross-legged in the corridor, and she inspects me. She sniffs at it. Runs her fingers around the area lightly. She licks it. A prickling sensation tickles—not in my head—where? She puts her mouth up to my forehead. Warmth rises from my toes to my eyes. She holds up two furry fingers in front of my face, drags them across my eyes to my temple; SQUISH as she slides them into the wound. Discomfort. What is happening? Where? I’m looking for someone. I have to be somewhere. What I where how? Figure it out. Can’t go somewhere if I don’t know who I am. This is important. Remember is important. Where am I? Where am I? This person in front. Who? In a black fur coat. Pressure inside my head. Inflation. Warmsoft syrup dripping down my neck, spreading through my body. My skin is purring. My cock is creeping out of its sheath, broadening and lengthening. The black fur creature guides me to my knees, kneeling over my head. A furry leg in front of my eyes. Up a black tent. I am floating in a sea of caramel, my legs stretched out, immoveable. Black fur creature shows me a bright pink cock like an arm under the tent in front of me. A magic wand. The wand casts a spell upon my eye. It moves out of sight. A release of pressure and a sucking sound. Warmth, still warm … but clear.

  “Is it okay?” Maphroditee asks.

  Looking into his/her beaming tangerine eyes. Nothing past the shiny surface. I nod weakly. A warmth enters my head, exquisite electricity tingling down my neck. I know what I want. I want to feel.

  Cue the gear. Short blue tinsel skirt, fluid. Arrange fluke notch in back. Slide it, tight blue top holding rapt my fatty fat fat groovy belly and chest. Clickity-click my scarlet painted hooves. Ringward, slap the pigbrid on the treadmill, “Up it, piggy,” and out.

  Drink it: “My dear Pures.” Holding my arms out to invite everyone. “My dear lazies and genitalmen. We be gathered here today to witness the witless hissed story. The passing of an utter memory.”

  These white, blue-eyed angels sit dumbstruck, stupidstruck. My bodice alone amazes them. My language baffles them.