Tozzath's Phantasmagorium

Tozzath advances, his spirit encased within the protective curling confines of a [[conch shell]] [[8<-continue]]

Pellucid pachyderms wade across the purpling River Flangees and Tozzath watches from the bank, the seat of his maroon pantaloons soaked with mud, his nostrils flaring with the fragrance of [[ombadalias]] [[mortigolds]]

whose obsidian petals throw shade upon girls swimming in the shallows, buoyed by their comeuppance and saved from soggy shrouds by their sisters’ scalding scoldings [[2<-continue]]

whose lacey petals flutter like the wings of long-dead butterflies, bestirred by ghoulish breezes, the colors bleeding from moribund antennae, slim as a cat’s whispers [[2<-continue]]

Tozzath casts his gaze into the river’s ripples, where crocs lurk, awaiting unwary dreamers, ready to snatch their phrenolic flotsam in bejeweled jaws and shred it into despairing wisps spiraling into slanted [[moonbeams]] [[2a<-continue]]

glimpsed from quiet rooms with carelessly parted curtains made from the silk of a once-noble lady’s sigh [[2a<-continue]]

But Tozzath spies their wake and awakens to what is real and reels in his line of sight to cast it into calmer sites [[3<-continue]]

Tozzath’s mind plumbs a palatial abode atop the highest hill in Anakabrazan. He climbs a [[thick tower]] [[slim tower]]

composed of basalt blocks looted from other palaces where pallid-faced potentates once wore amulets fashioned by listless suitor-less sisters. [[pushes<-continue]]

ringed by crenellated battlements [[pushes<-continue]]

He pushes his essence through walls of besooted sandstone, recoiling briefly from the oppressive opulence of the king’s slumber chamber [[4<-continue]]

Scents of licorice and sandalwood and kershoolo rise from incense sticks, and Tozzath wends his way past furnishings of walnut and mahogany encarved with likenesses of [[winged beasts,]] [[4a<-continue]]

feathered boas and eunuchorns and gruffins and herpies [[4a<-continue]]

and approaches a bed covered with damask cushions filled with [[crumpled maps]] [[nightingale feathers]]

crumpled maps drawn on elf-skin parchment marking the spots where villages used to stand before the overflow from disrupted rivers swept them away, stirred up by translucent elephants herded by the tongue-lashings of undrowned girls [[5<-continue]]

which sing nocturnal ballads when tossed and turned upon [[5<-continue]]

Tozzath eyes the furrows in King Doasdra’s troubled brow, where seeds of doubt sprout like weeds, nourished by a rain of ruminations. Blue rivulets of [[dreamstuff]] run down the potentate’s weary face, lined with the memories of sixty sunsets, and creased by a dozen more, lost in moonless crevices [[7<-continue]]

King Doasdra’s neatly trimmed beard belies the thicket of twisted briars in his brain, entangled entropies cloaked in a conscious canopy as convoluted as the treacherous undergrowth within the wytchwood forests where a [[crone]] of thorns dwells [[7<-continue]]

Bexafaraya [[7<-continue]]

snatched from a beach where the paw prints of forgotten creatures mark the shiftless sands drizzled through an hourglass of purest amber, overturned by the hand of Time [[8<-continue]]

Tozzath fights through the flora and breaches the beach, wading into waters where sad thoughts settle like silt in the somber depths [[He pursues the elephants]] [[He follows the flowing water]]

whose tusks spear the dusk, tearing it asunder. Sunlight spills forth, blinding Tozzath, who blunders into a watering hole, sinking up to his sighs. The elephants pull him out with their trunks He opens one, fashioned from mahogany. The interior smells like rosewood. He reaches in and the thorns prick his flesh, inoculating him with innocuous insights into the river’s undertow, where undrowned girls doff their dirndls and wash their waste-soaked waists as they await low tide to ford the fjord [[He follows the flowing water]]

He follows the flow, paying homage to a tributary, and dries his very best, as a dusty road commences beneath an umber sky. He sets his feet upon it, his soles shod in slipshod sandals [[9<-continue]]

He [[follows the road]] [[cuts across the field]]

which meanders among oleanders and ventures into cornfields, stalked by husky plants brandishing tasseled talons He comes to a village and his sandals slap on cobblestones. The noggins of long-dead cobblers pop up like gophers here and there, promptly run over by wagons laden with lager, the skulls crushed like melons [[cobblers<-continue]]

who give him sanctuary in exchange for servitude. He hunches over his work table, creating boots for toe-headed ladies, until he runs out of hobnails and goblins emerge from the hearth and pluck out their teeth and hand them to him in a soiled paper sack But he has repaid his debt and wishes to depart and the goblins give him grief, so he goes after them with hammer and tongues, pummeling them with puns, leaving them speechless. He escapes into the silence, exercising good trudgement as he hikes back home [[cuts across the field]] [[14<-go to Anakabrazan]]

He cuts across the fallowed, hallowed ground and nears a farmhouse where termites have made a banquet hall of the boards [[11<-continue]]

He steps onto the porch with catlike grace and finds no door to knock upon. He enters, stirring dust motes caught in a [[sunbeam]] pouring through a shingular aperture [[He goes up the stairs]]

The grand [[markets]] of [[Anakabrazan]] stretch before him

He steps into the slanted ray and is smote by the motes and elevated to the vault of heaven, braced by moonbeams. One of them fills with fissures and comes close to crumbling, but Tozzath mends it with hobnails furnished by imps clad in golden raiment. They shower him with praise and he rides their wet words back to earth, landing in a cornfield where he loses his way in the maize until sunshine wilts the stalkers and wind gusts flatten a path for him to follow [[hurries down road<-continue]]

He ascends rail-less steps and heads down a hallway, pauses, passes through a closed door; Its piney panels tickle [[12<-continue]]

He hurries down the road and comes to a village, losing himself amidst the [[cobblers]]

A young girl clad in shadows lies on a bed of rusty spirals while her [[head]] squats in the corner, covered with cobwebs. [[13<-continue]]

A small spider splays in her open mouth. The eye sockets serve as a hovel for fruit flies. Her scalp is bare, the hair plucked long ago, prized nesting material for birds, none of them nightingales [[13<-continue]]

The girl’s thin arm moves, her bony fingers grasping an emerald nestled in her cleavage, attached to a scarlet ribbon draped around her cloven neck. She removes the priceless pendant and places it in Tozzath’s palm, cold as an unswaddled [[foundling]] Tozzath [[drops the pendant]] [[accepts the pendant]]

And an old man, swaddled in silks, shall soon depart his bed, and recall the emeralds he made from broken bottles before he ever was [[13<-continue]]

and runs from the room and flees the farmhouse. [[hurries down road<-continue]]

He leaves the shadow girl and departs the farmhouse. The baked clay beneath his feet gives way to golden cobbles, and buildings of alabaster and porcelain rise on either side, topped by bulbs and minarets of finest moonstone [[14<-continue]]

The grand markets stretch before him, bursting at the seams with beggars and choosers, merchants and mendicants, overflowing with goods and bads. The clamor rings in Tozzath’s ears, mingling with nightingale songs [[15<-continue]]

a city off the coast of Fleece where beaches of golden sand bear footprints from toe-headed boys, the sole swimmers in those heeling waters [[markets<-continue]]

He spies two ragamuffins in an alley. A boy picks up a piece of broken bottle and turns to a disheveled girl, draped in grimed homespun, not shadows, her eyes bright as [[emeralds]] [[16<-continue]]

The boy entwines the bauble and hangs it around her neck. She kisses his cheek, leaving a smirk and a smudge [[16<-continue]]

A wagon heaped high with melons rounds a corner, the driver cracking a whip over hunchbacked horses. A [[melon]] falls from the back and instantly a dozen urchins descend, their ears attuned to the sound of falling fruit. Their dinner chime. [[17<-continue]]

Three dead men stand amidst the market square in Anakabrazan, lifting the lifeless heads from their rotting bodies, placing them in a bin alongside day-old cabbages, selling them for ten tuppees apiece to eager buyers [[17<-continue]]

The boy and girl [[dash out of the alley]] [[remain in the alley]].

The boy steps in dog droppings. He slips and falls, sliding beneath the clattering wheels. His head splits open like a melon and the girl screams. Somewhere, a mongrel mourns [[18<-continue]]

ignoring the melon melee, their thoughts entwined with the pendant’s string as they drink pee soup from their cupped hands, their souls satiated as their stomachs growl like mongrels [[23<-continue]]

And in a silken bed in a marbled manse on the higher side of town, a noblewoman cries out as the slippery head of a newborn potentate pushes out of her pussy. The odd indentations in his skull will fade in time [[19<-continue]]

The boy comes to the farmhouse, cleansed by the rains of remembrance, no longer confined to the prism of Fate’s fractals, and the two fast friends ride a kinder conveyance, with bespokened wheels, spinning yarns no one can unravel And they quaff dreg-less brews from green, unbroken bottles as Tozzath gazes into emerald depths and watches pellucid pachyderms wading across the River Flangees

The next day the grimy girl stoops in the alley, prying up paving stones, clutching them to her heart. She hurls them at the melon merchant as he passes by but misses his head. A stone lands on his foot, barely denting the toe of a hobnailed boot. The girl tries to [[flee]] but is seized by soldiers [[20<-continue]]

but there are no flees left. They have moved in with the mongrels, who feed them from their follicles [[20<-continue]]

A crowd gathers in a courtyard outside the army barracks and watches a soldier’s scimitar seek out the girl’s slim neck, sending her soul to the shadows. Her head is sold alongside the melons and cabbages and fetches a fair price [[21<-continue]]

Tozzath returns to the farmhouse where the girl still tarries, tallying. She carps about unkind cuts, refusing her rebirth [[23<-continue]]