A Fuck of Shit and Piss

 

It is a rainy Tuesday morning. A morning of the rains, this Tuesday is. It is Tuesday, and it is raining. It is also in the morning.

It has been raining for 18 years, and I am 18 years old. Apparently, there was once something called ‘the sun’, which would blast the planet with its radiation for somewhere between 8 and 20 hours a day, depending on the time of year. Now, it is obscured by usufructuary clouds, which galvanise loquaciously the arteries of the supine Firmament, that terrible petroleum devil which we love so dearly. O’, how I long for that tragic air!

The clock strikes nine, signalling campanically with sporadic integuments that the time has come for me to purchase a book. On avian heels I stalk these diluvial streets, my mind aflutter with visions of Morpheus: the skies graciously parting to reveal those pages, long which I have sought, that might hide within them some phantasm, some memory, some Oriental wagon of verity and dendricity, a Fifth Humour that might irrigate these distressed veins.

As I elegantly turn from Arkheion Avenue to this street of verisimilitude, I am struck by a sight which verily turns my bowels to liquid.

‘O-oh…! Mr. Xanadrianvier!’ I cry, tightening my buttocks and addressing the hem of my pencil skirt, praying to my God (I’m a Mormon) that my anus remains shut.

Soleil Xanadrianvier, the manager of T.G. Jones, High Street, Scarborough, stands before me. He is 6 feet and 5 inches tall, with Dionysian curls and muscles to match. His pectorals bulge out of his neatly-ironed shirt, threatening to violently and purposefully tear button from hem, like a cannon that fires buttons, as opposed to a quotidian cannon which ordinarily, as one so cannily imagines and expects, would traditionally and in true purpose fire artillery shells, those great black balls which with such vigour and pride would, in times of National need, penetrate the Quixotic walls of Babylon, like Hades in his Dining-room.

‘Hadst-thou come to buy an book, Miss Haviland?’ growls the bookshop manager. A wicked smile flashes across his countenance. My once watery bowels revert to solidity.

That’s me. He’s talking to me. My name is Arwen Aspen Mackayla Mackenzie Mackarthee Matalan Haviland. My knees buckle.

‘Um, um- uh, um, y-y-y-yes… um, mi’lord,’ I stutter timidly, pressing my cameltoe into the corner of a display table. ‘I am hoping to find an fantasy novèlle’’

‘Well,’ mutters the muscled Mr. Xanadrianvier, flexing his pectorals menacingly. ‘We have a fine selection of contemporary fantasy novels, all of which are written in first-person in the present tense.’

Soleil Xanadrianvier leads me through this wondrous emporium, this Garden of Alexandria, presenting printed portals into parthenogenetic worlds most fantastic; far-away universes of fairies, feiries, fayries, faeryes, feyries, faeries, feiries, ferries, faeyries, and werewolves, and vampires, and also sometimes zombies which, for ethical reasons, retain their ability to verbally express enthusiastic consent.

Soleil slides a girthy tome from a middle shelf, spasmodically rupturing the weight of this great artefact into my eagerly awaiting hands, which are three times smaller than his own, by the way.

‘I hear this one is quite good,’ Mr. Xanadrianvier says, gurning with pleasure.

Looking down at the thick volume, my Skene’s glands clench in anticipation. Gingerly, I caress the spine of this magnificent beast, and my eyes garlicly interrogate the words on its cover:

A FIELD OF A VAMPIRE KING IN A BLACK VELVET CARCHESIUM FALLING IN A VIRIDIAN PHALANX

‘Egads!’ I scream, clutching the book at my modest heaving warm gelatine bosom. There is something within me which recounts a fibre of these papers, though my mind, it seems, ultimately fails me.

Soleil leans in. ‘Open it,’ he grunts.

I obey, carefully prying the cover away from the codex. What secrets doest thou hide, O’ biblion?

As I peel back the opening pages of A Field of a Vampire King in a Black Velvet Carchesium Falling in a Viridian Phalanx, the letters of this girthy volume begin to float off the paper, like helium balloons filled with helium. Verily, I would close this codex of mine own accord, were it not for the stubbornness of the binding, which only seems to open itself further, like a reverse Chinese finger trap.

Suddenly, my attention is drawn suddenly, by a sudden rasping sound coming from the throat of Soleil Xanadrianvier. I look up, and I see the bookshop manager on the floor, writhing in agony. I drop the copy of A Field of a Vampire King in a Black Velvet Carchesium Falling in a Viridian Phalanx, which certainly only seems to thrust itself open further, like a furious clam, vomiting its enchanted letters into the air, which cling to the skin of Soleil Xanadrianvier like napalm.

‘Graaaauggghh!’ cries Soleil, screaming with ecstasy. Tears are creeping across the fabric of his shirt and jacket. Thick fur is sprouting from every part of his exposed skin. The bulge in between his legs, once a modest package about the size of his own fist, inflates verily to the size of a beach ball.

‘Mr. Xanadrianvier!’ I exclaim, fearfully and readily. ‘What hath happened?’

Soleil Xanadrianvier looks up at me with blazing eyes that burn with a fiery flamessence. ‘I hath selected the wrong book! The powers of Philistia are consuming me!’

I clench my buttocks, stumbling in my stilettos. ‘My good sir, pray tell, who or what is Philistia, pray tell?’

Soleil Xanadrianvier winces as his shirt explodes in a mess of fur and blood and sinew, his tongue jerking violently.

‘You don’t remember!’ ejaculates Soleil. ‘But you shall! Find the right book!’

Obediently I peruse the painterly bookshelves of Mr. Xanadrianvier’s shop. I don’t remember, but I shall. I must find the right book.

Garlicly, I pluck from the shelf a title. Banana In My Pocket. I thrust its pages open, voraciously stroking the spine with my damp digits.

Nothing happens. No words float from the page; no revelation descends from the muses. Not the right book.

I procure another book. Musky Husky. Clumsily, I drop the hefty tome, and I feel my bladder loosen for just a moment. Wincing with surprise, I tighten my urethra. Not now.

The copy of Musky Husky unfolds as it lands on the floor. But there is no magic to be found on these pages. Only words, far too many words. How is anyone supposed to read all those words? These pages are simply too full.

Soleil on the floor roars a mighty roar. I don’t have much time left.

Quickening my pace, I liquoricely clack across the floor in my heels, my emerald orbs drawn to this third title: The Sharting Shoggoths. Intensely, I thrust open the book with apprehension. Nothing happens. I am too late.

Incontinently I look over at the bookshop manager. Soleil Xanadrianvier’s transformation into Lunarius Xanadrianvier is complete. From a pool of his own urine, he rises to his full height of 8 feet. He is covered in thick, grey fur, with a lupine snout, adorned with pointed ears. He appears more than happy to see me.

In the shadow of this argent fiend, my breasts reach their final stage of maturity, gaining mass and darkening around the areola, sagging slightly (I don’t wear bras because I’m a Mormon) and staining my blouse with rings of lactation. My bowels liquefy.

Suddenly, I remember everything. I’m actually significantly more cosmically important than the narration first let on. I’m a fallen deity with amnesia, a goddess-queen from another world, and Lunarius, the Crown Prince of Philistia, is to be my husband (we’re cousins, but this was published in a jurisdiction where that’s chill).

‘I’m not gay, by the way,’ Lunarius growls, flexing his bestial muscles with a wicked smile. ‘Nor am I bisexual, and I am also a virgin, so there is no chance that I have ever been intimate with any other men at all. I just thought you should know that.’

My hymen ruptures, soaking my pantyhose with a deluge of the humours. ‘I wish to marry you,’ I quietly shriek.

‘Ginesthoi!’ ejaculates Lunarius, flourishing his meaty, clawed lupine finger as if it were the wand of Circe.

From thenceforth we spend the plupart of our time in Philistia, for the commoners of that world are far more accustomed to the sight of a being such as my new husband. I wed Lunarius here in England, mostly for tax reasons.

Weeks later, our honeymoon in Croatia has concluded. I have decided not to go to university, because my ontological role as a wombyn is to be a homemaker who births and cooks and looks pretty and so forth. I press my face into the volume of my husband. He is an 8-foot-tall furred monster with rippling muscles and a 25-inch penis which is constantly erect, but I love him for other reasons too, such as his generational wealth and healthy investment portfolio. My bowels turn to liquid.

Three years pass, and a Wisconsin-born university student with a YouTube channel uploads a ‘video’ ‘essay’ titled The Quiet Sadness of A Fuck of Shit and Piss.