I peer at the bottled mermaids. There are a dozen of them, misshapen and pickled. Soft green and purple-veined. They have eyes like huge white spaces, as though buried under deep snow. I want to pluck out their eyeballs. Taste them.
In my mind I move charcoal over the paper, catch them, the little fish women. Catch them on powdery sheets, fingers black with dust.
Now I want to look at the dinosaur. I like its bones. All crack and splinter. I want to feel its great teeth. I look over the balcony. I see two little girls. Sweet as a custard tart. I want to eat them up. They are part of a guided tour squeezing down the narrow corridors, wafting a stench of mutton fat and tobacco. I can see the mummified Pygmy midgets, with scissor-smiles. Snap Snap Snap. Teeth biting bone. Teeth biting bone.
And then I smell him.
LOVEHEART
I peer over the balcony; he’s within the guided tour. He’s wearing green with red hearts exploding all over his coat. And he’s with the butterfly girl. She’s like a bottled mermaid; she’s been pickled in a weird formula. I want to stick my fingers in her jar. She’s carrying weaponry! Unbelievable! You’d think there would be some sort of security.
The tour guide, who is a hunched dwarf, screams, “And so he died from a festering wound!” and then “If we can hurry along, there are some fascinating examples of cannibalism in the next room.”
Loveheart looks up and I speak over the tour guide. “And if our paths cross ever again, Mr Loveheart, AND IF OUR PATHS EVER CROSS AGAIN,” and I begin to descend the great staircase. The bottled mermaids explode in their jars.
The butterfly girl throws a blade at me. It zizzes… impales my top hat to the wall. I am impressed! I am laughing.
Loveheart, Boo Boo and bottled mermaids
“What a coincidence!” I shout out, “We JUST keep running into one another,” and I draw my sword.
“YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT ON MY BOOT THAT NEEDS REMOVING,” he bellows.
Boo Boo launches herself up the stairs and leaps into the air, blade aimed at his head.
He grabs her by the throat and pulls her to the ground.
As quick as a wink she spins her blade and sinks it into his heart.
He staggers backwards. Pulls the blade out, “You have completely ruined my waistcoat !” and holds her by the hair mid-air.
“LET HER GO!” I demand.
“Or what!” he laughs.
He clicks his fingers. She disappears. Reappears behind him inside a glass cabinet of the mermaids. Suspended in water. Bashing her fists against magic glass “BOO BOO,” I shout and leap up the stairs. Hack into him.
The curator appears, “Gentleman! Could I ask you to desist?”
The demon pulls the curator’s head off with his hands; it rolls down the steps, tomato-red splattering the glass coffin, within which a stuffed crocodile smirks.
The guided tour screams and segments. The tour guide glances at his clipboard in bewilderment, the head bounces playfully down the steps and rolls by his feet.
I smash the glass, the water falls out and Boo Boo tumbles into my arms. She coughs water, grits her teeth.
I AM LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD.
Energies loop and sizzle.
I AM OUTSIDE YOUR RULES
I stab my sword into the demon’s gut. He grabs me, pulls me closer to his face. “I am having you for dinner.”
We disappear in an explosion of sparks.
The House of Zedock Heap
I awake on an immense bloody-red velvet-cushioned bed. I YAWN!
The room smells of Turkish delight. I am a sugar cube! I AM A SUGAR CUBE!
I wonder if I have I been drugged?
I was dreaming, I remember. I was dreaming I was a Lord of the Underworld. My name was written upside down on paper stars. Each one a part of me. Each one dangling on golden thread; wobbling in deep space.
Perhaps I have been dissected. Oooops! I fall off the bed.
My legs buckle under. Where is my sword?
I hold the bed post, prop myself up. My name is Heart.
My name is HEART. I have a cat. He is very fat. He is a fat cat. I love my fat cat.
I’m in a bedroom! So much red, it hurts my eyes. The walls are made up of roots which intertwine with one another and they are moving. The walls are alive! I touch them and they swell and then spiral in my hand. I examine the doorway – a red portal with a black wet hole for a lock.
This is a very odd place and my brain feels rather soft. Perhaps I should have a little sleep, dream of icing sugar, dream of spaces made of sugar.
A great watery mirror hangs on the wall above the bed and it shimmers. I can see sea-worms and small opaque starburst-fish swim within its depths. I stick my hand into the mirror and remove it, dripping and glistening. The looping roots begin to entwine around me and pull me across the floor to the vast bed which splits open like a flower. It has fangs!
On a small table by the bed sits a solitary book. I reach for it, my fingers fondling the cover which is made with human skin! How very curious! This book must belong to a mad man!