Cucurbit Mosaic Book Two: Liquid Nitrogen is Chicken Soup for the Faustian Soul, by Hannah Faster

CRYOTOPIA,
Forgiven Viruses from Front to Back and in Between

This snail shell has afforded me many swell hiding places, over the last few centuries, I am happy to say that recently I have acquired, as per regular, a taste for diesel fuel and church-bingo. That is B-I-N-G-o. I live about eighteen miles down the road from a homunculus bar, were several diminutive people get together every weekend and ‘hop the twig.’ They mostly drink wood alcohol, but on recent occasions they have been serving a peppermint-flavored beer, that is reminiscent of distilled puke. The world we inhabit is cold, as in sub-sub-zero. I am a sub-sub librarian to her majesty, the sub-sub-queen mum’s the word, virus, almighty, mighty. She is great. We all love her because we pay taxes to love her. It is called the privilege to love you tax. We all pay gladly. She is real pretty, too, a homunculus aflame with rubies for eyes and down-feather goose pimples for skin. Hair the color of moonlight. She is bar-none. I tell you what. She rides a bicycle that looks like a pissing contest between unicycles. She wears underwear on her hands and pantyhose over her face in public, so no homunculus will recognize her. Her voice sounds like a cooing dove masturbating a watch ticking at thirty miles on a clear night. She is insatiable entropy; she is butterfat from the cup of life. She froths. She bubbles, she giggles rain-drops, gum-drops and sub-sub-drop-drops. I love her with all of my heart and most of my lungs, she does not get any love from the following: my pancreas, liver, kidneys, nor spleen. My nervous system says, “she is alright.” My brain cannot stop thinking about her. Most other homunculi feel the same as me, about her, pancreases varying. Last week I went down to the homunculus bar, to play a little church-bingo and drink some sub-sub-absinthe with some buddies of mine from work, fellow sub-subs. One of them began telling us about how one day a couple of months ago he had the occasion to meet her royal smallness in an anti-gravity chamber pot, to discuss further expansions of the extra-somatic system to the royal court. And then over a cup of fresh rainwater they began ‘making out, the old fashioned way’ (his words, not mine). Blah, blah, blah…one thing leads to another and they begin the act of homuncular coitus, the new fashionable way (with sticks and stones). We all started laughing because we knew he was full of shit. He is gay, by the way, a little gay homunculus that hangs out with me and my girlfriends, he is pretty much the only male we hang out with. Male homunculi can be so alchemical and dependent on arcana all the time. I like to just take her easy, if you catch my drift. No reason, to get all flippant about sulphur and mercury all the time, just sit back and enjoy the Alembix, that is what I say. The Alembix is the name of our Cryotopia, our city; our country of the diminutive. But like I was saying, he was telling us that he was having new fashionable sex with her highness, the royal sub-sub-petite. And we were laughing because he was lying, and because he doesn’t know how to have sex with females, even if he wanted to. And we drank more alcohol and became intoxicated on the fermented enemata of the fluidium prima; (it is like an egg nog made out of eagle’s ember). Well, okay, the story doesn’t end there. That was when one of my girlfriends, named Justina, began this story about the homunculus that got away, the one with the corncob pipe, that is not a pipe, and a button nose, of whom, knows a nose, with two eyes made out of Cole Porter. Any ways, to make that long story short, because it is a friend of a friend of a friend sort of story: the sub-sub-shit-unit hit the sub-sub-fan-unit, and all the sub-subs were called upon to bring order back to the Cryotopia by sun down tomorrow, or else. We just did as we were told and stayed underground for the next couple of seasons, then when we were told it was now safe to re-emerge. We all thawed out and had a drink down at the homunculus sub-sub-pub. Hot cocoa and black hole juices were poured quite liberally all over existence, and I thought it was good. Good to the last drop.











ABDUCTIO,
Or The Secret and Most Quarrelsome Life of Pond Scum


Listen to this: HEY ANY OF YOU DOWN THERE! CAN YOU HEAR ME?

IT IS RUTTING SEASON IN SUB-SUB-CREATION!

“WITHOUT a fore ward glance I was able to maneuver my squalid discontented ass out of the parlance of the rowing boat of good fortune. I have been near, here and far, for the last pleasantly portentous decade; and it is terrific to be back again. Ready to shed these turtle wax memories from the age of ABDUCTIO and HONEY.”

--- SAL AMMONIA, from his Memoirs of Sub-Sub-Walden Pond

(Sub-Sub-Walden Pond, somewhere in history, most forgotten.) The size of the bath tub. A super-symmetrical bathtub fashioned from the larvae of Peruvian Deciduous Espresso Bugs. Black water in a bathtub near critical mass. Half smoked cigarettes, rolled from scratch, and toenails, freshly dismembered from a slight man-beast, float menacingly in the water. Ready to pounce most fearsomely on any and all. A ghost of the memory of the past hides behind the claw-footed tub as it sits like Seraphim. (In the archway of false cherubic light.) The two eyes of the ghost, now called Mimidae, then by something else; may be all that is left of this ‘left-over-food-in-a-pneumamaterial-prima-refrigerator’ soul, a teenage child, now in a false limbo; an artificial after-life. Where artificial things go when they die.
Fishing from the banks, I swam to the shore. Inside of the water all one thinks of is burnt algae. The ghost cups some water in her hands and drinks. Refreshing to the last sip. No fish; only abducted scales and two or three ribcages.
(The size of a sub-sub-tadpole.) We are here now to level out the playing fields. And the fountains of artificial blood now so prevalent in shopping malls: (ARCANUM SAGUINIS HOMINIS AD ABSURDUM): not our bathtub earth.
At the end of the long tunnel, choked with rowboats and sub-sub-flotsam, the cherubic light pretends to shine. Green, florescent ooze slobbers over our faces as we attempt to smile and be warmed by its presence. There is no laughter in the middle of this feeding frenzy of the saguinis drip-drip. In all good horror flicks the light bulbs always end up bleeding, so they do here as well, only they bleed towards magnetic sub-sub-north, not the other way around the crack. We totter back and forth to project our thoughts on the matter. We are too mad to pretend. All we can do now is have faith and believe.





HERMEGENETICUM,
Public ‘Our Rubber’ Fountains in the Age of the Tooth

“Rosa Tartar, pass the salt.”
“Don’t think that this isn’t the juice of Bach.”
“Assume nothing.”
“Just pass the fucking salt.”
“Already?”

--- Baalerina from Nursing Poisonous Frogs

Looking back now, I would say that I enjoyed my job as the sub-sub-tooth hunter. It wasn’t an exceptionally hard job, but it was definitely one of mystery and intrigue. I worked for the diminutive corporation Wisdom Teeth, as a freelance tooth hunter. I actually worked directly under the original tooth hunter, the glorious winged homunculus named Rosa Tartar, you may have heard of her as the ‘TOOTH FAIRY’, but she is a winged homunculus, not a fairy, believe me. She taught me the ropes: tooth sensory and detection, inconspicuous dentistry, extra-dimensional molar extraction, and the retrieval and collection of baby teeth.

But I don’t really want to talk about tooth hunting. I am retired now for a reason, a tooth gathering homunculus no longer. Rather, I want to tell you about the ‘Public ‘Our Rubber’ Fountain’; of whom, is really a bed-ridden soothsayer the size of a thimble, (which is gargantuan to us homunculi). Her name is Liquid Nitrogena and she lives at ground zero of Cryotopia, that is the intersection of Arcanum Avenue and Cucurbit Way, right near the black hole juice shop, Latte Freakin’ Da. She lives in the park there, Spagyric Park. About 20 years ago she was just a regular, old, butyrumantic soothsayer, or alchemical fountain: a divine wet nurse. People would come to her to partake of her breast milk, which she provided in a myriad of flavors from strawberry and chocolate to pistachio and ginger. She was a virtuoso butyrumantic wet nurse, so to speak.
The problem with career wet nurses like her is that their breasts increase in size slightly with each divine nursing. She eventually became the bed- ridden soothsayer she is today. Her breasts are now almost eighteen times the size of her original body, which is almost the size of a thimble.
Most homunculi who partook of her milk were posed with a riddle or some diminutive form of divination. Some had visions, others died directly. Some never experienced any form of milky bliss. Some could not even taste the virginal milk. Some, like me, tasted dreams. I knew some one who claimed to have tasted dark matter and strange quarks, with a hint of citrus.
The bed she lived on was fashioned from the down feathers of an abandoned couch and a coat hanger bent into an art nouveau like swirl of branches and spirals. Her pillows were cornhusks and marshmallows, the quilt, which would have covered her several times over, could she actually wrap it around herself; was stitched together from the clothes of all those who died after drinking her milk. Around her were various offerings from travelers and pilgrims who had come many a long, lost winter’s night to drink of her healing liquid.
Now, Liquid Nitrogena would always allow anyone the opportunity to drink from her breasts; but she always stated that it was at their own risk.

I was assigned a special mission one night to hunt some very peculiar teeth from the mouth of crocodile named Lutembi En Soph. So, I asked Liquid Nitrogena if I could take a small phial-frog of her ‘our rubber’ with me on my trip.
She agreed because we had recently become girlfriends.
She is a very sexual creature but never truly explored sex because of her desire to stay a virgin, so as to keep on producing her spectacular ‘our rubber’. I didn’t know it would happen, but after we became lovers her milk began tasting even better. And not just to me, every homunculus in Cryotopia was talking about it. But they didn’t know it was because we were making love all the time.
No one knew we were having sex because no one could see us.
It went like this: I would find her face and body inside all of the boobs and squeeze in between her breasts. It was a very private affair no matter how many homunculi were around. We soon fell deeply in love.
























THE PENCIL BOXER,
Whispering, “I Love You,” Upwind.

With a newly acquired phial-frog of ‘our rubber’ I headed out to go extract crocodile teeth. Her milk still tasted of dreams to me, but there was more substance and flavor to them. A little liquid Liquid Nitrogena for the road.
What makes her milk so sub-sub-grand is that it is swarming with things called Hermegenes, even smaller homunculi than our selves. They are the size of bacteria. They are delicious. Liquid Nitrogena is often referred to as the Hermegenticum, because of the vast amounts of colonies of Hermegenes that live in her. We sometimes make alcohol-like drinks with them, because when one gives them blood or sperm they expunge a substance very similar to alcohol, but more potent. We call this arcanahol, and drink it on special occasions.
I gave Liquid Nitrogena some very special oral pleasures for the milk for my tooth-hunting quest. She whispered, “I love you,” into my ear before I left. I kissed her on her mouth and told her I loved her too.
I got lost on my way leaving the Alembix and never found the crocodile. I have one last drop of Liquid Nitrogena’s ‘our rubber’ that I am saving for when I get really sad. I don’t know how I got so lost out here in the Alembix. I have not seen another homunculus in years. I am subsiding off of my own tears and mushrooms I pick from around an oak tree about two miles from an abandoned pencil box I have been sleeping in.
Every night I pretend that pencil box is my coffin. Last night I dreamt that I drank the last of the milk and that my pencil box turned into an oven and I was resurrected.










HOPS‘O MY THUMBILICUS,
Two Viral Memes Walk in to a Bar, the First One says…


“DO YOU SERVE ARCANAHOL?”
--- Viral Meme, One


HAVE A VERY CONJOINED X-MASS


1)
I am joined to my twin sister through an umbilicus protruding from our navels and by way of our thumbs. The thumbs we separated long ago, when Cryotopia was just a tiny village full of inbred homunculi. We have yet to cut our umbilicus, for fear of death.
We never leave room 40 (the North Pole Suite), at the grandest, most illustrious hotel in Cryotopia, Splendor Solis Inn. “We are completely mortified of being made fun of in the streets by normal looking homunculi.” (So we order everything in. (Food, water and what ever utilities.)) “Thanks to the Internet and the thrills of cyberspace we can explore the world through alternative means.”
We are not agoraphobic, nor are we adept at mercurial wringing.

2)
My twin brother and I were conjoined at birth in two places: by the thumbs, and by an umbilical chord that runs from both of our stomachs, into one another. Our birthing process killed our mother, Rosa Tartar, who possessed the secret on how she was able to feed us while we were growing in her womb, (without proper channels). (A special blend of milk and cookies.)
Doctors used to tell us that it involved special butyrumantic sessions with Liquid Nitrogena during winter solstices. Something called the non-specific periodicity of lupal orifices. She nursed us, IN UTERO, through cloacal sub-sub-pores that were located BETWIXT her mammary glands; (we are not truly mammals).

3)
My name is Remy Las Luna. My brother’s name is Romy Les Sol. We are conjoined homunculi of opposite sexes. It is quite possible that we have different fathers, and concurrently possible that we have different mothers; it takes a village, right? But, seriously, it sucks being conjoined to someone, you are not even sure you are related to…so…
We began working for the Distilled Spirit of X-Mass about twenty years ago. He does the shipping; I do the receiving.











LUPIS LAZULI

Last night we crept out of the hotel under cover of darkness and partook of the breasts of Liquid Nitrogena, simultaneously, while she lay crying. She has been crying for five years now, and not a soul has any idea why.
Her ‘our rubber’ tasted of the tears of all tomorrow’s sadness (es).
They have begun harvesting her tears in thimbles, and selling them at Roadside stands, by the droplet, as the Undeniably Lupine Tears of Liquid Nitrogena, (we hear they cure chicken pocks and scurvy).

(It made us howl at the moon until we bled from our eyes.)


















How Santa Claus is in Actuality, an Ancient Alchemist, From Old Rome, and All the Elves, Homunculi, and the North Pole, a Hotel Room in Cryotopia; and, How Everyone Lives Off Of Dark Matter Soup and the Letters Kids Write to Santa:

Well, that pretty much covers everything but the reindeer, which is a total fabrication of down right pernicious intention. Once a journalist tried to describe us as an ‘Island of Doctor Pernod’. We disagree without pretense.
























LUPIS LAZULI, Baalerina 12” (p) re-mix


The North Pole is located in room 41, of the Splendor Solis Hotel in Cryotopia. Santa’s workshop is really a closet with a few coat hangers and a ‘do not disturb’ sign, which smells like breath mints for snails. Santa is the remote control nailed to the shrine of Gideon’s Bible. The elves are the germs left by a junkie shooting up on the table and the residuals of coitus between hookers and johns. Rudolph does not live here.

Stockings have been left by the chimney; forgotten by winter travelers eager to get home.

There is milk on the bathroom floor, where Liquid Nitrogena left it spilt the night before.

They have moved her in, out of the cold.

She is still crying tears of lupis lazuli.

They crystallize and form sub-sub-precious stones.

She keeps them in a pair of shoes near the door.

Her Hermegenes are screaming for love, crying the long, cold symphonies of the night trade winds.

She wants to be back outside, but she can’t move -- for her breasts are too large for auto-mobility.

I have come to drink ‘our rubber’, and am currently doing so, while giving dictation to the stenographer at the polar right of you, right now.







ALCHEMICVS ROMANVS CLAVS

“I BET YOU ARE WONDERING HOW I GOT HERE.” --- X-Mass

<> PUT TO THE TEST

Simple Emboitement:

I was pre-formed here, in room 41, pre-consciously, by my self, from my Laboratory in Old Rome. I formed a sub-sub-black hole during some experiments with my work in the Theater of Terrestrial Astronomy, in a small cucurbit.

Quantum Non-Non-Recurrents:

I am only observing myself from another time and space and forgot to go back. I can’t because the technology hasn’t been invented yet. One day it will just happen: and all will be back to normal.

Aurum Divergens:

I currently reside at the state mental institution as a flaw in the mind of an attendant. I keep on being reincarnated as the song he gets stuck in his head several times through out the day. My life spans are now as long as he keeps the songs in his head. I have an extremely strong will to survive. I have been reincarnated almost five thousand times as Madonna’s Like A Virgin, and almost one hundred times as Dolly Parton’s A Hard Candy Christmas. Once I came back as U Can’t Touch This.

Butyrumantic Theory of Sub-Sub-Non-Local Reciprocity:

I am in a penatorium, of sorts. I must perform massive amounts of penance (x). I have been given the power to fly, like Simon Maggot, to transport drugs from one world, to the next. In some former life I really fucked up and am paying for it now. This really depresses me, but I am suppressing it. Which explains my unquenchable cravings for comfort foods like cookies and milk. Each act of penance is met non-locally as an act of zepto-metric bricolage: i.e. the appearance of presence, under trees.









CUCURBITIERS,
Little White Homuncu-Lies Don’t Really Hurt Anyone






I

She wiped the dried lupis lazuli from her face and looked under the tree, to see what the spiritus mundi of X-Mass left, incognito. Blended in with the pine needles were soft waxy lips. Beneath an endless supply of artificially colored sub-sub-lights hung gallant anagrams of weeping willow trees.
No coal, no lover, no poems for the pudding.
With no thoughts towards sorrow, Liquid Nitrogena went back to sleep, where the minions of cucurbitiers danced in her head. Starry sub-sub-nights in the sub-sub-zero range, the invalid sleeps tonight in a pool of her own design.
























II

Outside the hotel, parceled into the aqua-vitae-ducts, hid the sub-sub-species of the diminutive, cucurbitiers. I am one of them, a sidekick to the sub-sub-meme-plex, herself, Sbaalerinonina. (The super-symmetrical, (as in sixth dimensional) sub-sub-Baalerina), she is leading this operation. Well, I don’t know if that is the right word for it, she is in charge of psychological operations; we have declared war on the diminutive homunculi of Cryotopia and all the rest of Alembix. They really piss us off; walking around all swish and shit all the time; acting so fucking gay. Plus, they are irreligious blasphemers of the holy mute books. They bath in spagyric substances on the Sap-bath. They even drink saguinis mundi before high noon.
We have been summoned by the Lord of Hostesses and Hosts (proper), (seeing as how we are all viral parasites to his or her black or white holiness), to destroy all the unbelievers, blasphemers and Cryotopians. The Lord-Up-Above-the-Cucurbit, is on our side, ready to bite and pinch and rape and pummel all of the unbelievers, blasphemers and fornicating naughty ones.
They will all burn in hell, in the retort, and we will be laughing from our spissatusai, drinking the sub-sub-blood of the diminutive.


fin

--- Hannah Faster, Eugene, Oregon, 2002