Quest for the Cosmic Jazzma, Disk VI Kraken and the Aureate Fleecers Meet Pennie Loopy and Dime Medea,
part 2:
So they journeyed down down down
thru Arkanasouse, snaking up on the Rexy Morti through a forgotten
Serbian's intrance hidden deep
in the Oz Arks. Hoary with ague the steps leading down into
Tenebras, draped in cobwebbery moss
with stonecycles overhung and underpronged like Leto's spicey maw,
fearsome suffice without any
triskulled cujo to guard the dour. Pye kept his ears pricked,
listening for moloch engines. He thought
sure as shaitan they'd end up lust in some dark ice cavern
feasting like the blitz & cthonner stag
party. All ways deeper they went for what seemed like daze, till
finally the path turned up a bit.
There at the top of the rise they saw an archway, studded with
stalag-- tites above as mites below.
On the keystone was engraved the figure of a camel, fully loaded
as if partaking in a caravan,
anxiously confronting the cyclopean glare of a giant upright
needle.
Halfway up the heights they
stopped, halted by a vision of three figures standing before the
aperture. Raven-haired furies with
chichi tipped in cruel barbed kinibras of silverine with matching
drawsting kinidraws pinching the
vertigo smiles. Two of them kneeled, one holding a multi-tanged
spear and the other a halberd
straight from Mock Eddie Sade's collection. There in present-aura
positions they flanked the
starkest of the three, she who stood with twin razor hatchets held
aloft as if primed to perform at Benihana Samoa.
"Who in the mutterfeichen heil are they?" Pye whispered to
Petra.
Only frozen terra held her from snickering as she answered.
"They are the Lascas, Guardiennes of the Gate, or
haven't you heard the Tale of Terkel?"
"No, I haven't."
"Terse Terkel was chopped to bits by them,
but never died, even as the bits were broiled and eaten by the
Lascas. His astral body was then
enslaved for 1,000 years and a day. Upon release from which he was
reborn as a hollygreen giant
on the angry red planet of the Asuras, Barr Oom.
"Goth furbit I should stand where stood Terkel,
then!"
"And then there was the fate of Arfius among the Maenads,
deep in the Amour Zone Jungle..."
"No thanks, I've heard enough!"
"So what do we do now?" Grigori asked. There stood the
Lhascas, armatured the teats, waiting.
"There's only one thing we
can do to save our skins!"
"What's
that?"
"Strip!"
"Strip what?"
"Your clothes! Take off all your clothes everybody!"
"You're clean outa
your skull, Luease!" Kooky blathered.
"Don't argue! Do it! Everything! Hurry!"
So they did and the fell ones took immediate note. Fangs
gleamed the more brightly, barbed tongues licked scarlet lips
the more slaveringly, eyes shone the more gloringly in
salicipation.
"I don't think this is such a good
idea," quith Pye.
"Trust me," said Luease.
"That's how we got in this fix," Kooky offered.
"Buck-buck-buck ba-cock!" she mocked them.
"Okay, okay, so what now?" Grigori gritched.
"Go straight," Luease murmured.
"A little late for that, don't you think?" said Furry.
"Go FORWARD--slowly," Luease amended. And so they crept
fearfolly on, impinholed like swiss cheese by the
crimson glares of the demiurgesses.
"I feel like a piece o' me," said Pye.
"Don't you mean 'a piece of meat'?" Petra asked.
"That, too," said Pye.
"Don't think you're the Lone Ranger," said Kooky. "That
one with the halberd feels like a piece of you, too-- with
mustard!"
"And horseradish!" Sita added.
The two kneeling now rose. "Wh--what're they up to now?" Pye
stammered.
"They are Avonie and Acavisi Gath," Luease answered, "rising
to test our steadfastness!" Acavi and Avonie stepped
forward, twirling their weapons, then froze at the ingaard.
"What now?" said Petra.
"Keep moving!" Luease answered.
Then the two barbirazorous sisters proceeded to dance,
jabbing at the jolly seekers from within a whirling blur of
lashing locks and divine amatomy. Netherless, Petra and
Grigori stepped forward, and the two Lascas froze once more. Then
slowly, ever so deliberately
they extended their points and nicked the left breast on each of
the two boldest, just below the
nipple, whence dark blood trickled slowly down from each point
where sprite pierced mammer,
infirming the clay. The two psychers were let pass.
"Uhboy," Kooky gulped, stepping forward. He
was nicked, then allowed to continue past them. The rest followed
suit, and were likewise
moodilated. But suddenly Avonie swang tawnily over to Pye, looked
him in the eye, grinned, then
bent to his groin, and there where the trickle of blood ended in
the pubic tangle, licked the stream,
cleaning it with a catlike tongue, liptiptoeing up his torso till
she reached the wound itself, where she
fastened her laps and frenched the aperture her sister'd made. Of
course the Kraken like to spilt his
johnson ink all over the cave floor at that jointure; his knees
became butternut, eyes cruised. Right then she let up and stood aside.
"Sheeeeeee-yit! That'll leave a mark!" he panted, staggering
farword. And indeed it did: forever afterword he carried the
hickey like a crimson kiss for lick, a
ruby taboo liplash. Nor was he the only one to escape scathed, for
as Big Kooky Ooland passed
by, Acavi swung her horny-handled halberd and with the flat of the
blade whacked him a good
soundy one on the deary rear, leaving him with an orange crescent
birthmark tatoo there as a
memento that was to follow him through divers succeeding
incarnations. They had passed the first
test, but now they had to face the tallest of the three-- and her
arcing axlets!
"That's Alpannie, the
most fearsome of them all!" Luease whispered. Said one whirled her
hatchets before her in a
complex maze of loops, circles, and figure eights, swooping within
inths of their tenderest bulges and
appendages, the polished mythriline razorlike blades flashing
faster and faster till they seemed like
ribbons of light suspended in a silvery pattern in the air before
them. Then suddenly she stepped aside. The pattern lingered.
"What now?" Furry ashed.
"We step through the pattern," said Luease.
"And don't stop, no matter what!" added Petra.
Thighs traumbling, they stepped through the pattern.
They felt the searing ribbons of silver slice through them
like frigid flames thru a hundred metabolical
planes, yet still they pushed on through the archway.
"We made it!" Furritoes exulted.
"Yeah, butlook at us!" Kooky said. To look, indeed! For each
of them was sliced throughout with vacuum
stripes split in the form of a body-wide lace-light doily, like
cartoon salamies. There was no gore,
not even the least drop of blood or billy rubin. It was as if
someone had simply painted quarter-inch
lines of invisibility reflecting the curves of the pattern on each
of them.
"I feel kinda spaced out," said Furry.
"I can see right through you," said Petra.
Then the slices seemed to settle in, the bits come
back together.
"We're whole again," said Grigori. Pye shivered, though. He
could still feel the icy slices. A cool breeze seemed to blow
through him, caressing his inwits. Now they were past the
archway, though. Leaving the three Lascas behind, they walked down
the passage into the deeper
dimnest of Tenebras Proper. By and by thru twisty and torquous
ways they came upon the
high-backed iron throne of the Kink of the Utterworld, Bluetao.
"Greetings, pilgrims," Bluetao
rumbled, "what brings yall all here to thrall so nakedly in the
noxus of my power?"
"We are on a
mission from Goddess!" said Petra, stepping forth and holding the
golden bough aloft.
"Ah! The
Talisman of Ol' Cyrus, the Baugh o' Peace!" Bluetao exclaimed,
impressed. "That's a good one!
Nothing I can do against the golden bough! I suppose I'll have to
take it, whether I want to or not."
"Keep your distance!" Petra said, slapping one of his grimey
outstretched paws for emphasis.
"What? Oh, I see. You don't understand. Didn't the Goddess
tell you how to use Her token?"
"Uh,er, well, uh--" came Petra's swift retort.
"Look," said Bluetao executing his best Lou Grant
impression, "you got me red-handed. Let me give you a little
friendly advice, worthy opponent to
worthy opponent."
"Uh, I dunno--" said Petra.
"This golden bough thing, it works like a ticket, you
see. That's why we call it a token. You have to give it to me to
pay Penie's passage outa here-- like
handing a penny to the Ferryman at the River Styx."
"Oh, ah, well yeah, uh, I guess that makes
sense," Petra said. "So come on, hand it over. After all, you
somehow made it past Cerberus and
the Lascas. You've beaten me. Nothing I can do now to keep you
here. Give me the token and I'll
give you liddell Penie."
"Uh, okay," Petra said and passed the bough over to him.
"Very, very well," said Bluetao, "smart move. Uh, you did
pass Cerberus and the Lascas, didn't you?"
"Oh yes!" said Pye. "We passed the Lascas! No problem!"
"And Cerberus?"
"Cerberus? Cerberus who?"
"Oh! So you didn't pass Cerberus?"
"Well, maybe we did and maybe we didn't," said Grigori.
"Yeah, I mean, we met so many Personages along the way. One can
hardly be expected to remember them all.
What does he look like?"
"Cerberus is a three-headed dog, breathing fire from all six
nostrils. I should think one wouldn't forget the sight-- if, that
is, one has passed him!" Here the Archonaut's eyes gleamed crimson
and shadows round about ceased to sulk and began to hulk.
"Okay, okay!" Pye said as the gloom loomed huge about them.
"So we didn't pass Cerberus. So sue us."
"Indeed! Well that changes the whole scene," said Bluetao.
"For had you done so, then I would have no
power over you. Bypassing my triskulled mutt, you see, is an
integral step in the Utterworld Rite of
Passage. Without that major experience, the golden bough is
useless to you. I, however, can use it
with impunity, especially since you have so graciously handed it
to me!" he said and pointed it
straightaway at Petra's third eye. Zap! There was a flash of flame
about her forehead and a black
and red crablike demon appeared, perched on her brow and raising
its hypodermal foreclaws to
strike deep into her frontal love anatomy. Quick as a snick, Big
Kooky snapped off one of his own
vulclaws and hurled it zipping into the archtypal arachnid,
skewering it like a crab-kabob on
Neptune's trident. It fell to the ground, writhed for a second,
then folded up its legs and lay still.
"That was some whopper of a claw!" said Pye. "You musta hit
him in his wittles!"
"That was my pookah dust claw. Just a little dabble do ya
in."
"You mean it was poisonous? You threw a damn
poisonous claw at me?" Petra shrieked.
"Some name it poison. Let's just say 'toxic'. I doubt the
demon's dead."
"Hey, keep it coiled, Petra!" Grigori said. "Kooky's never
missed yet. And if he
hadna got that thing, you'd be a goner for sure!"
"I guess you're right," she sighed. "Thanks, Kooky.
I'm glad you're a better shot than William S. Burroughs, anyways."
"Ha!" said Bluetao, "a luckier
shot, you mean! But no such luck will save you now, for with this
bough I may weave a web that will
keep you all here from now till a quarter past Doomsday's dusk!"
he added, waving the branch in
the air like a prime evil Amadeus conducting a hard day's night on
Bald Mountain. Then the light all
round them grew blood red and it seemed every shadow became a dart
pointing multipronged at
them. They quailed at the sight of that horde of barbed issuates,
and the blue beard of crappiness left
their souls ajar. Then Mamou Sita Leona proceeded to sing a song
of the old country.
It began:
"As we marked time in B'avalon,
Our captive, flailing love,
Wounded, bloody, hardly hove..."
and ended:
"By the wastes near B'avalon
We lay down our weapons
For this Aeon--"
having had much to do about muffins in the middle.
"Ah! That B'avalonian reggae! It's so elemental! So
sedimental!" Bluetao muttered, and tears trickled down his hoarny
cheeks. "Go ahead, take her," he whumpered griffly.
Then a slow smile crept up his jowls. "If you can, that is!" he
chuckled.
"And just what does that mean?" said Petra.
"I mean, if she'll come!" he guffawed, holding his vastly
flubberlating jellybelly. "Follow me!" he said cheerily as he led
them through a fanged archway. There was a slogan
engraved on the limestone gums overhead. ABADDON ALL HEMP, YE WHO
INTERRA HERE!
"What the heil does that mean?" said Big Kooky.
"Don't ask," said the Pope.
Bluetao brought them through money a wilding and wooley
passage till at last they came to a chamber filled
with every manner of torture tool and interrogation instrument.
Pye gasped. Never in his wildest
Mondo-Freudo DeMillean fantasies had he dreamed of such ingenius
engines of agony.
"I call it my Love Dungeon," Bluetao burbled happily. "You
like it?"
"It has a certain ambience," Pye replied, "but
it could use perhaps a little carpeting, and I couldn't help but
notice that a number of the
manacles and pincers need re-chroming."
"Re-chroming? Well, I spose a little polish wouldn't hurt
them. I'll
speak to my zombie housekeeping staff about that. However,
carpeting is out of the question."
"How's that?"
"Notice a certain texture about the floor?"
"You mean that subtle crunch within an
overridingly slippery greasiness?"
"Indeed. You're quite perceptive. That's bat dung. The
slippery
stuff is fresh-- the crunchy effect is produced by aging. What
with several billion of the little
aeronautic shit factories flying through here daily-- why, there
isn't enough rug shampoo in all of
Hades to keep it clean."
"I should think a goodly douse of staingaard with maybe a
fishnet hung strategically accross the top of every archway..."
Pye began.
"Preposterous! Why, the expense alone--!"
"Ah, but consider the elegant cobwebbery effect of nets studded
with little rodentine aviators!"
"Absolutely not!" Bluetao sputtered. "This is what comes of
allowing interlopers into my demesne! Anyways, here we are."
Penie hung head-down by a chain suspended from the ceiling.
Her slight little naked body had turned quite blue by this time,
and she wasn't breathing.
"What have you done to her?" Petra hissed. "Allfeather
Ewepitar will have something to say about this!"
Grigori added with a severe frown. "Hanging is a deocidal offense
these days!"
"Now don't get all
riled," Bluetao said, "no need to go running off to Padre Chronos
like a buncha little snitches."
"She's dead, Bluetao!" Petra said.
"No, no, no, you don't understand. She's not dead. After all,
we're all immortals here. What happened is I hung her up like
this because she refused to be my bride and
queen. Also, she was easier to molest this way. When she was
running around loose it was like
trying to fondle an octopus. Then she threatened to hold her
breath till she turned blue if I didn't let
her down. When she did turn blue, I felt the hue was very becoming
on her, so I let it be."
"Now that I notice, her cheeks do balloon out somewhat," Pye
mused, summoning all his eloiquint essential tact
"and I can certainly see your point about the fondling."
Petra frowned and jabbed Pye in the ribs
with her elbow-- rather painful, seeing that she was wearing
spiked funnybone protectors.
"Of course, this is really beyond all reasonable tolerance!"
Pye amended. "You must release her to our
custody at once, Bluetao!" ("Where the heil did she get those
elbow protectors?" Pye thought,
rubbing his ribs. "I could've sworn she was naked when we passed
the Lascas!")
"Alpannie gave them to me," said Petra, reading his
thoughts, as she was prone to do-- okay, oft supine, also. "Awe
right, so I boosted them when the gimmegoddesses weren't looking|"
"Why certainly," Bluetao
grinned. "In all factuality Penie can get down on her own. The
bonds are all illusory, you see. All you
gotta do is call her. If she comes, she's yours."
Pye didn't like the gleam in Bluetao's eyes.
Nevertheless, he attuned his exhumanistic skills and made the
essay. "Penie, dear, come down from
there. This is Pye speaking. You don't know me, but your mother
has asked me to bring you home
from this dreary place. She's worried sick, you know, and it's
very hard on the rest of us, what with
the glaciers and pluvials running a muck all over the landscape.
Come on, now." Penie didn't stir. "Penie, you really must come.
We've journeyed a long and
firestonied path to lead you back to the
light. You're not a little girl anymore. Time to quit this
unattractive behavior and start assuming a little
responsibility. After all, you're going to be Goddess of Fertility
someday." Still there was no sign of
life from the kid.
"Pye, you dumb booby," Petra said, "you don't know squat
about talking to teenage
girls! Let me try."
"What? I bet I do know how to handle teenie
boppers. Why, only yesterday I was
talking to this one little fox in a tanktop-- Kooky was with me;
he can tell you-- I had her right
where..."
"Shut up, Pye, fore you get us both into some hot sheepdip!"
Kooky whispered out of the
side of his beard.
"On the utter hand, far be it from me to come between you
and your girltalk. Sock
it to her, Petra."
"Penie, honey," Petra began, "you know that blue skin
doesn't look a bit right on
you. And your hair hanging down like that-- why, it's almost in
the bat dung. What good is Dawn
without rosy cheeks? Come with us and I'll give you a complete
makeover. We can go to the maul,
too, get you a whole new wardrobe, whatever you want."
They watched, but Penie didn't stir a
sternum in response.
"This isn't working," said Mamou Sita. "What we need is a
little magick. Likethis:
It's all so queer, hanging up this way,
Waiting out the millenia,
While youthful beauty gongs
agley!
The crux of the binet,
The fourpoint mantragale,
Bodhi to bawdy, Chrisnews to Gautamale--
Windingsheet mudmight cold not wrap her,
fear cannot barren her,
nor erorot entrap her--
Risa, lashtong me! Shwite and saussy!
Penie, come to me! Down from your haussy!"
"Down from your
hossie?" Kooky muttered.
"Shhh," said Luease. They watched and they waited. Still no
sign of life
from Penie.
"Oh bejuices! You guys couldn't summon wetness to water!"
Kooky said. "Here's how
you do it. Penie, sweetie, come down from there and let me wrap my
hairy lips aroun' yo' face!
Come on, babycheeks, we'll have some beer and a couple of subs,
watch the sun go down over the
steedway. It's 'Supermonster Chariot' day and the Nubility get in
free!" Not the slightest quiver from
the hanged goodness--
"That was stupid!" said Luease.
"I have an idea," said Grigori. "Pye, hand me
those ludes and put the Jackson Five on the boobbox."
"But I don't have any boo..."
"Just do it!"
Grigori said, with an exaggerated wink to Pye.
"That dumb Shaitanist'll blow the whole gig!" Kooky
muttered.
"Hush!" whispered Leona. "I think he's onto something."
"...bbox!" quipped Pye.
"Hmmm," Grigori loudly whispered, "we only got two or three
ludes and a bit of hash. Hope there's
enough to go round. We'll just do them up while we wait for Penie."
Straightaway the goddesschile
popped down from the chain and stood before them, a resin-brown
blush chasing the blue from her
divine epiderm, yet rosy each cheek, peachlike, downy, even thru
the chocoatl melanin-packed
body-sheath. (At that point, ignited by the sight of such rosy
peachlike cheeks, Pye remembered
what it was like to be a puerescent pioneer of puberty wetdreaming
in Alpha Silva {the "A Forest"},
langouring in the Seedpod Bardeaux, an intergogic state of
pubescent Natural Puernograbic Hebbin
for a twentieth of an alternal nocturne.)
"Me some ludes too!" she sang.
"Penie!" they all chorused.
"Thank Couth you're alive!" Petra exclaimed.
"Yeah, yeah, so where's the ludes?" Penie said.
"Well, uh, you see," Pye began.
"Wait a minute! You're all naked! Me, too! What's going on
here? How
did I get here in this cave full of naked old people? Stay away
from me! Don't touch me! I'm
warning you, my Mom's a goddess!" Penie shrilled, "with a rabid
goombah lawyer from New York!" she added as an afterthought.
{continued on next pooka}
Pennie Loopy, continued