Prince Prance had a favorite store, Eye Collector. A small, overstuffed closet of a storefront, packed with every object, color and sound imaginable and forgotten.

Passing jeweled lamp, swatch watch, alien radio, and handheld mirror Prance pushed his way into the racks of musty clothing so deep as to find worlds and wombs among the folds of sprawling dresses, hats and mats. Whole families tucked into the pocket of a giant's pantsuit or an ogre's overalls, sheltering siblings who had not seen the sun their entire life, feasting on crumbs pulled from suitcases some 4000 years old, made from stretched neanderthal skin on bone frame. Blankets and bedsheets that released smells ancient and foreign and impenetrable blocked certain stringing paths. Books covered with markings and patterns that had lost all meaning to any living thing collapsed into themselves, a thriving compost of dead language.

Tunneling into a pile of action figures,(He-man, Thundercats, Micronauts, Musclemen) Prance found a skull encrusted door that opened to a huge lake-filled cavern packed with candles all unique. They glowed, flickered, licked and glared from faces of strange shaped flame.

An orchestra of musical instruments played themselves on an island in the flooded chamber's center accompanied by a beat of drips on pots.

A man so ancient as to predate time sat in a rickety timber boat.

"Play me a song as pretty as that one," he gestured to the instruments, "and i'll grant you the secret of eternal life"

Prince Prance excavated himself from the troves and hurried home to his hovel, hidden among brambles behind a building quite forgotten in a part of town fell off the map.

He pulled out his casio and his cassette 4-track.

"i've got to record some good shit tonight!"

Nobody believed that it was because Yabo plunged his focused tool into a fool's scrawled map that the Gargantuan Who Was Eating Life and Land split asunder and fell to the earth. Most likely it was merely a coincidence that in the moment his article pierced the paper a crack appeared in the monstrosities face, followed its smile, and ripped off it's head from that gracious grin up.

When Yabo-Five finally ditched the other 9 Yabos and found Ramrak Ran, RRR was living in a small first floor apartment with his new wife Teresa and their child, Special. The magnets on his refrigerator spelled it out, "Special is the best thing that ever happened". RRR had changed his name to Gary Norman and he was happy and at peace. His job was not so creative that it tapped his strength yet not so physical that it sapped his strength. He designed tour brochures of certain historic areas in the city for a company called "Hidden Gems"

"Uncovering things best kept secret for five years"

"Yabo, i want to thank you. i know it was you who caused the schism that granted me a new life of calm and focus. I know it was you who brought down the beast that was eating our future. I will remember you forever and if i have another child as we are planning, one of the twelve names on our list is Gabe which is spelled roughly like your own name."

Gary Norman's home was only a few blocks from the site of the Gargantuan's corpse and Yabo decided to take a walk over using one of Hidden Gems hot-off-the-press brochures about the site as a guide.

The dripping form draped over five blocks of the financial district and reeked of a thousand open sewers filled with ten thousand shits of meat-eating man. It had attracted a gaggle of sightseekers. Noseplugs $2 a pair.

"The better to behold the beheaded behemoth"

Just after his arrival the festering form began to quake and boil. Nothing in the brochure could explain it.

Yabo stepped inside a storefront and watched from behind a pane of thick glass.

The colossal carcass ripped open, letting loose a frothing frenzy of manlike maggots. They tore through the onlookers, six-inch teeth devouring first clothing and then what was beneath.

It was the day after the Gargantuan fell, and the 500,000 inhabitants of Grave City-One headed for cover. Yabo-Five walked with the seven other Yabos down a dusty hallway deep underground kicking up clouds of clipped toenails, hair, skin, eyelashes and dried blood. They were seven years apart in age and walked seven feet between them. Had their shoes been size seven a heavenly straw would have appeared to suck them into the ether.

Finding a cell phone in the pocket of Yabo-Four, Five called Prince Prance at the Temple Tantrum. Prance was manning a gathering of Discoids, selling new manna based energy bars to their fiendish appetites. Five got the answering machine...

"Don't call me in the morning,
don't call me in the afternoon.
Don't call me in the evening,
don't call me in the night.
But if you can find a different time,
like in between the lines,
then call me whenever you like."

He didn't bother leaving a message, Prance was an impatient man, and Yabo was bleeding self indulgence.

Yabo-Six looked sick, grey under the eyes. Tongue pale and foamy. White dried spit on his lips. Six had little to say with his gravel of a voice.

Yabo-Two complained of being hungry.

Yabo-Seven walked tall and seemed focused on something up ahead.

Steam glistened from a floor vent in an alcove. they laid down amidst the vapor in a bed of discarded electric bills.

A motorized cat purred by, its solar panel perky and flitting.

Yabo-One was missing.

"Good ficking riddance. One less yesturday to think about, my past has left me behind..."

"hey Three, you try and call Prance"

three rings later and it picks up....a low gurgle, a distant giggle and a distinctive popping sound. The stamping of tiny feet?

Deep yet pitted silence that night. Broken here and there by the scream of police or fire. “Burn! BURN!” they YELL. “Burn false realities, cleanse back to One Path!” Every night something burned. Ever since the Schism that ripped the town in two. Time now realigned with past and future side by side. Yabo and YoungYYabo walked together in the deep black fever pitch. Somewhere sunk down by Sycamore Street. Footstep and footstep absorbed into blanket of still living…............... “donuts” said YoungYYabo. “That’s all I want.” He’d been watching Twin Peaks, where donuts are a reoccurring visual. The texture, sugar clumps cling, adhered to edges. Super glue to glue skin. Sugar saps strength, brown sludge to slow motion................... The Yabos pass an arm blown off by soldier. Arm blown off of soldier. Past a group soldering the arm back on a robot soldier who had fallen against a pile of light blue aluminum trash cans with portraits of 1991 TV stars painted on them. The robotic 2090 Corpsmen had been patrolling the streets, returning in shifts to their Floating Citadel. All in all there were 15 different authorities now in town. But it was not hard to elude them, all you needed to do was duck into the vast pool of a new period. Hide behind a skin of memory. Step inside a stair of shadow. Peter down a rabbit hole. Melt into a meld of alley and Tra La Lolleys. Ditch into the drip of a drainage duct, the network of plastic pipe bringing the acid and single celled Rainlike, miles from the rooftops where city hit the sky, where rich OnceMen played golf under a false sun. a hole in one, a hole in Wonder................. I looked down at myself as this young boy. And OldYabo looked over at me. A broken twisted frame. No, Look again with a new path taken, give a simple token. Old Me stands a healthy third generation EmbryonicSource grown Radical................ I need to find the others, I’ve lost touch…….

"THE TIME IS NOW!"

all present eyes opened in unison.

one prying eye monitoring the room through a surveillance camera intensified his gaze.

a group sigh was exhaled.

"who are you?" breathed Yabo,

the naked newcomer came into view, a nonSex.

Yabo could not help but stare at its crotch, which instead of general reproductive organs contained a small black hole. a colorless infinity. in a moment Yabo was sucked into the void of deep space and carried across an eternity. he spent a small lifetime in that generous expanse.

"but first we must rip open a section of reality"

Yabo snapped back into dim room.

the nonSex sat in the fifth chair. the five joined hands. "can we do it, just the five of us?", Faytus asked.

"we can, if you focus on the tear, conjure up the image of the thing in life you want to tear the most. not destroy, but re-align. open up. except you Yabo, you decide the place where it needs to happen. you aim the weapon."

"NOW!"

the table lit like a small sun
the street door slammed shut
the foliage burst into flame
the prying eye went blind
something within the crotchverse turned its momentum toward a distant newborn star
greygary shattered, sending small pellets of himself into the flesh of the others.
Faytus shrieked and Ramrak howled
the nonSex smiled

and Yabo glanced down at the map and made his decision....

Faytus, Ramrak Ran, Yabo Jagaimo and greygary sat around a stone table in a plush lush green forest. plastic grapes swayed in the breeze. a stuffed crow eyed them curiously. a wooden snake dangled from a high branch. six chairs sat around the table, two empty, one for their friend rinTin, who had not arrived. the other was left because they had a feeling it should be.....

a solar panel beeped above. evidence that this city, or at least this building, once sat on the surface of the planet? that this planet had some sort of sun?

6 months had passed, hunger had come and gone, their flesh had gone from soft and oily to stiff and sunken. parchment. even Ramrak had dried up, and he was the unceasable sluice.

Yabo had gone deep, to discover where, what he should be doing. his hand at times had drawn marks on his map. memories had bubbled up to just below the skull.

......his parents had two different size spoons for everyday use, a child he had always demanded the smaller. older, he was always looking for the largest spoon he could find to ingest whatever available soup or stew.

probably laced with sugar, neoSugar or sweetless suga.

i like the taste but not the effect, and i don't mind my ass leaking into my pants slowly over the course of the day. in fact, i want my ass to leak, i want my faucet to leak, i want everything in my life to remain fluid, because dryness is death.

So close to dry death, our four untrustable comrades sitting so still.

just past a few moldformed trees, a door opened. light raced in from a streetlamp.

"THE TIME IS NOW!"

all present eyes opened quickly in unison.

a group sigh was exhaled.

all reached for their shirtsleeves and exposed the flesh on their right forearms.

an insignia had been burned in, the shape of a star with a slash through it.

"who are you?" breathed Yabo,

the naked newcomer came into view, a nonSex.

Yabo starred at the mark burned into its forearm

it was the same as his own.

through white paved streets, polished sign and gleaming citadel they walked...
yabo,greygary and RamRak moved forward. tired of holding their breath....

RamRak, his boiled purple flesh oozing, his presence mammoth.

these were industrial buildings, human built mountains of brick,wood
but they are no longer industrious
now symbols of wasted potential, housing for the wealthy

historically places to make things, to expand...now parallized in realized use......

A particularly large one blocks the horizon, in its side a squeakless door slides open, a white suited debonair departs

a dry wind whips through, RamRak feels it in his phantom hair..

Yabos hand slides to the stick he has whittled into a spearlike sword.

Greygary eyes sink back into his head, his flesh fogs

"welcome to Manicured Mill", the voice carries the robotic stiffness of reading off a card

"are you endorsed guests?"

a gleaming figure stood before them, utterly still.
the three thought too slow, the porcelain Gatesmen knew their foreign unwealth, unworth

Ramrak Ran, slamming with a slight sponge sound into the white figure. carrying him forth and smashing together into the millwall. Porcelain shattered.....

from each piece a new gatesmen began to grow.

"we have to go!" yabo yelled, they turned and ran....

Faytus pronounced the word over and over.

"spring" "spring" spring"

a gang is reworking the roof of the neighboring building. they swarm.

four nights ago a building on the opposite side burned for two hours.
firefighters arrived, they swarmed.

up on ladders, sliding down shutes. plumes of water arced.

a huge tree spread its arms against the smoke.
Faytus hid in its shadow. her hands quite cold.

flames licked

"fuck you mutherfucker!" came a fighters voice on the air.

say what you will, but its time to set out and meet with the others.

yabo was back on the road. his car gassed with a canister stored some fifteen years prior in the garage loft. his dead parents waved him off. he drove through the night, singing all the while. such a genius he was as he rode! every word and sound he launched toward the windshield was purrrfect in form and fury. ha ha! he was minutes from the destination, a plain white cement building. adjacent to a burnt husk of a car maintenance shed. behind the sign for Danny's Appliance. GreyGary, RamRak Ran and Burnt Hed would be there. he pulled over a few blocks away and slipped into a bulbous polka dotted building he used to haunt when he was a ColorVamp. oh so long ago! "a few more minutes to myself".

he sat and absorbed in silence.....

and wrote a quick few notes......

"the temperature which had been in the high fifties suddenly plunged to the low tens.
fahrenheit.
these sneakers, perforated with sporty little holes to allow sweat expulsion are quickly becoming ice trays.
the world is an ice tray. the fake sun has turned its back on us.
these glass windows are but a line drawn from above on frozen mist. they hold as much as a bucket with a hole.
draw a map of the house and color the inside and the outside blue.
the cats follow me, clicking their townails, greedily eyeing my lap.
they offer cut off circulation.
which brings me back to the ice trays below.
weather control must be on the fritz, someone is falling behind on the methane payments. temperticians stay high on the stuff for weeks on end. and when they come down, we all go down.
washing the dishes is my only solace."

boiled purple flesh oozing, his presence mammoth.

location. A small cabin near the quivering tower of infernal announcements.

Ramrak Ran squinted in the mirror. through this impressionistic filter he was a beauty of great power.

drips of his secretions pooled on the floor.
the smell was slightly sweet. it hung high in the room.
cotten candy cloud....you know, like smoke machines. but less synthetic.

he set out drawing with a purple crayon. a figure on the paper that Yabo had loaned him. the paper with a line, a squiggle and a square with an X.

He drew a portrait of the giant figure he could see on the horizon. A Gargantuan form jutting up a hundred feet above the cityscape. reaching down and spooning gobs of land and life into its toothy grin. howling all the while. a crown of hair upon its thorny head.

was this a human transformed or some sort of warring God.
will the wonders never cease.
A Plague of wonders

Is he howling because his stomach is full? or empty?
Maybe he is stuffed and hungry because he forgot to taste.

Poor RamRak, he can't draw very well.
he sets about whittling the crayon with a fingernail into a gnarled twig.

it was hard to get to this cabin, jumping from pillar to pillar. sometimes actually having to leap again before landing. pushing off from pockets of thickened air.

Quite a skill, air walking. Rich RamRak Ran