CW: rats, mass destruction, blood, injury, nudity, body horror (fantasy), kidnapping, child abuse (physical), guns, child sexualization (parental)
THE SEVENTH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:« The children of the 'druzhina' in time would grow older. One day, they came to Kali Hichi, with the children of the children. 'What should we name our children, Kali Hichi?' They asked. 'Should we honor Nay-toe by naming them after Nay-Toe’s great works?' Kali Hichi responds: 'No, you shall not name your children Javelin, or Challenger 2.' Kali Hichi took a handful of sand, and let it fall from his hands to spread across the Zone. 'Name your children nothing; they will find their own name in the Zone.' »
Lanka, this might be the last time I wake. I rose from the drawer, which I'd decorated with the clothes of my classmates, with a terrible thirst. I searched for something to drink in the teacher's lounge-- I discovered a few bottles of painful plain water, and a few cans of tarragon soda. Thank you for being here with me. The ground keeps shaking, the distant percussions echoing throughout my halls such that the walls quiver. I take a can of tarragon soda and climb up to the rooftop. In the distance, plumes of smoke take flight into the air. Caravans of moving shapes; armies of stick-figures. "Lyudi," I think. I take a few crayons and a piece of paper and I sketch what I see; cavalry under the blue banner of a star, marching into the sun. Beautiful rockets whizzed into the sky to etch their names like heavenly pens. Nay-toe has come. I chew on a few dried pieces of fruit, and try to soften the thumping of my heart by rubbing my stomach. The concrete beneath me is supple, fluid; I worry it might turn to liquid at any moment beneath my feet. I draw a big beautiful star, swallowing up the sun.
When I spy a few of the stick-figures walking down the road towards me, I run down the stairs and hide beneath the windows of a classroom. I took my TT-33 from its holster; a good luck charm, and I feel less helpless as my slight hands grip tightly 'round the steel. I imagine training my sights upon the stick-figures, and I pull the trigger and it happens all so effortlessly doesn't it? I rise up from the window just enough to peek over the broken glass and charred wood: three men, dressed in thick black frocks that were sooty with ash, carrying flamethrowers to envelop what was left of the city in flame. The chalk of the old world crumbles so easily under their boots. Trinkets hung from their belts which shook with every plodding step, their faces anonymous under gas masks… they suck on canned air, rubber-breathed, lifeless eyes behind glass lenses, animated like plastic slugs sucking on the cratered earth. I watched them; I felt dizzy, but I had nowhere to run.
After they'd set fire to the post office across the street, a few fire crackers fell from the windows of the cafe onto the street, and the three men dropped their flamethrowers and jumped down onto the ground. As they nervously played with their pistols, four children dressed in their father's military fatigues came up from behind them; they held up their sticker-encrusted short-barrelled rifles, took a few moments to aim, and after a few loud bursts the three men laid lifeless as blood leaked from their frocks. The air became thick with iron, and I sank down onto the ground, crawling across the floor with glass cutting into my flesh, my bloody elbows leaving behind a trail of bloodl, and I jump up; running into the corridor with my tongue between my teeth. As the gunpowder smoke cleared, I heard crying, crying and searching in vain for anything sweet in the pockets of those men. As I dry the blood from my elbows with the hem of my block frock, I see the pianos I'd played for you earlier, and I tried to remember a few of the songs we used to sing. First I hum the note, then I try to find the note under my fingers. I try it a few times, a few of the notes sounding ugly and troubled under my voice; I follow with my fingers. I try to remember the words, but only the babbling of babies comes to me. "Ma, ba, da, da, ba, ma, ba;" I recover the melody with every syllable, something I'd left behind a rusting gate of which I'd lost the key a long time. "Ma, ba, da;" the sounds come to me so easily now. I remember watching you from across the seesaw, how your lips pursed when you formed the shapes to make the sounds-- it comes to me in a dream, as if it happens over & over again.
I stumble away from the piano; I've forced the hand of chance. The possibilities play in my head. My mind is in a haze; I'm there, I whistle the melody as you sang it. It is a way of coaxing you out of your lamp, to make the colors real again. The sunlight fills the hallways of the school with glitter. Down the staircase, I see a child with a short-barrelled rifle hanging from his neck. He's wiping his face with his sleeve; once more, once again. He doesn't mean me harm, but I resist the urge to embrace him. I approach him with the grip of my hand 'round the cold steel of the TT-33, I try to remember if I'd ever hit anything. From behind the child, two more children fall into the picture. They wipe their faces; their black hair is full of clumps, their deep lips are charred and black. "Who are we?" One of them asks. I smile, out of nervousness I suppose. "Who are we?" The other one asks; his voice was like a trembling flute. I could not answer his question-- I did not know the answer, and I didn't know what to say. You are orphans to the Zone, and you face the terrible reality of absolute and complete freedom. You could be anything you wanted to be. The stars in the sky are a mystery again. I wasn't sure how to put all of that in words. I made two fists, and I stuck out my index fingers, and I set my fists upon my head to fashion horns that grew out of my skull. I make a beautiful grin and I grit my teeth towards the children, and they smile. "Nico Nico!" They cry out; they make their own horns and point to the sky. And I smile too and I say "druzhina moya." And for a while, I’m lost in my thoughts of you.
THE EIGHTH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« As the children of the ‘druzhina’ grew mature, they became increasingly anxious and out of touch with reality. One day, a concerned ‘druzhnochka’ came to Kali Hichi and expressed her desire to become a healer for her people. ‘The cure for madness is to return to the world,’ the ‘druzchnochka’ proclaimed. Kali Hichi shrugged. ‘It’s madness to say we were part of this world in the first place,’ he said. ‘Let the animals have the world — I will return to my hotel.’ »
Imagine the scene: you find me lying on a therapist's couch. It's your couch; the one your father bought for your mother after he called to say he'd be coming a few days late. My body is languid, but taut. You can see just the slightest bit of tummy stickin' out 'tween my shirt and my jeans. I look like easy prey, but not entirely sweet; you wonder about my after-taste steeped in tobacco and ice tea.
What it sez in the brochure: when a woman doesn't know who she is, she returns to her own body as the site of her identity. Her desirability becomes her sense of worth. She begins to worship her own helplessness. Sheer fucking bio-power. I learned all about this in therapy. We have it twice a day here. Here, south of Heaven.
Am I supposed to know who I am? Like conceptually.
You stretch out on the couch; it’s leathery and soft. You mean, "should I know who I am?" You doubt it’s real leather– even the leather in your fantasy is plastic.
It's easy for you, Christine. You are a mere abstraction. You are an invention of some kind; I've given birth to you in a moment of crisis. You were nothing before I was impregnated with the idea of you. By the ejaculate of my imagination. Mhm.
And you too, Yelena, are a mere abstraction. You are a vessel for the idea of me. Before you were impregnated with the idea of me, you were nothing. You were a body held together by a mouth and a pair of legs. You are as much Christine as you are Yelena. You are a 'Mahimata;' your body is the production site of the future. Your mind is a womb, and pure desire is the sperm.
– I'm a mere object. I'm carted around like a pair of sneakers. I belong on the back of a truck, to be sold for a few roubli. My worth doesn't extend beyond me as a site of production. I'm a little doe-deer, caught in a trap.
– I wish you'd put me down already!
– Oh, but something comes to me.
You were upset about something, do you remember? I walked beside you; I sat beside you and you set your hand up against the window of the bus. The organs of the world passed by with jittering colors. You were depressed and I tried to cheer you up with a few jokes. "Look at the ugly rash on my leg." Oh. "Look at how small my boobs are." I see. We played shooting games in the arcade, and I’d push you down; I’d hold you down and make sure you couldn’t make your targets as you wave ‘round your plastic gun. And I fed you ice cream from a little wooden spoon and we shared a Dr. Pepper. And you were lost in your thoughts.
The mall was empty that day. Ghostly apparitions on the floors, breathing on a mirror. Columns disappearing into oceans of beige carpets. Set your nose to the fibers; you can smell teenage warchests plundered, and the decay of a whale carcass: hollow, sickly and thick with crushed candy and cinnamon. The glass dome lurches above us, an eye that splits open the evening fog, and I’m stuck to you like chocolate melting in your pocket.
Bitch. I should say something about the congealed slices of pizza, and I should say something about the smell of paper, and stale vanilla air freshener. A dead mall smells like a bathroom. Down the escalator; an endless catalogue of phones and televisions, gathering dust. And you remember; you used to beg mamka for a little cash to try out the hoodies and t-shirts on the clearance rack. The mirrors are stained with grease. I have nothing to say– I am exhausted.
We sat on a bench beside an empty fountain. The tiles are covered with shimmering pennies. You grab my hand and you turn the palm towards yourself.
– I want to read your fortune.
– That’s frightening.
– Why?
– Dunno. What if I don’t like what you have to say?
– Don’t be such a fucking pussy. What is "pussy" in your fake-ass language?
– What is it?
– Mhm. Mhm. Oh that’s interesting.
– What?
– I see beautiful rolling fields of crystal. I see the sun exploding behind the horizon like a brilliant disk, filling valleys with burning hot light. Deer and rabbit run ‘tween the leaves, ‘tween teeny-tiny strawberries that hang on the vine, while under the soil a thousand insects writhe in agony.
– Go on.
– I see a time when it is brother versus brother. Sister versus sister. These will mean little when the dirt under your feet turns to glass dust. It gets into your lungs. When the sun falls upon it, a thousand little rainbows bloom. Isn’t that beautiful.
– Oh. I’ve had just the worst week. Can I tell you about it?
– You can tell me anything. Really, anything. Have you kissed any boys lately?
– I went looking for you. I was looking for myself, somehow. I was trying to recover myself, rescue myself. Most of my life has been drifting in-n-out of sleep, from one dream to another. Do you understand?
– Does it matter?
– No, it doesn’t. Anyway, I paid a coyote to smuggle me into the Autonomous Zone.
– The Autonomous Zone? What’s that?
– It’s a place where flesh and material don’t matter. It’s a place where only thoughts matter, and it’s desires and wanting that bring its world to life. A world of pure commerce, of pure freedom, pure intercourse. An exchange of everything that is not material. All that is solid melts into thin air.
– Sounds like Heaven. And who rules this kingdom?
– Nay-toe does. But Nay-toe demands only that you desire, and you desire without holding anything back. That’s why I went looking for myself there.
– We both did, didn’t we?
– A few men kidnapped me and took me to a city ran by Korean pop-stans. I escaped when they started bombing it? – Why did they do that? – Liquidation. Sometimes, to make room for the new, you have to burn up the old. I found a child, Nay-toe’s child. She couldn’t speak because she was missing a tongue, and her face was molten.
– Molten? It look like it melted?
– Yes. Her face was liquidated. Nay-toe’s daughter has no face, she has no tongue.
Yelena, Christine, Marena; these are mere daughters that grow out of the fertile mud of your thoughts. With a few filters and some smart angles, you could be any woman you wanted to be. They replicate endlessly; by themselves, possessing value and worth by mere circumstance. Without flesh, the old constraints of supply no longer matter. Flesh is limited, but desire and appetite might be endless. It must be; your minds and hearts must endlessly expand, to make room for endless permutations of daughters.
Strange. I realize I've spent most of my life dreaming.
– Let me tell you where they took me.
– That scares me too.
– You don’t have to be scared. To be honest, I belong there. I’ve always been a violent, misbehaving person. I’m not sure why. I think I want something that’s not possible.
– What?
– Complete autonomy from the world. To be myself without compromise; to not have to accept that what I am is the consequence of the world that has created me, and nothing more. Value is subjective after all; I cannot look within myself for that, because my value exists only in my exchange. I used my fists to shape the world as I believed it should be.
– Both you and I are orphans to this world. That’s what set us free. We owe loyalty to nothing. Life means the same to us as death.
– You remember that night? I know it’s sad, and cringe, but it was the best night of my whole life.
I don’t know where we were. I mean, I don’t remember how we ended up there. It was someone’s place; a shitty little spot made shittier by a basic dishonesty about its own shittiness. I woke up, with colored cheap lights beaming into my face. Islands of colors float among an ocean of speckled white paint. I pulled you up from the couch, and I slapped away the greedy hands, and I set you on my back, and I carried you like the queen you are. I carried you down the stairs, I carried you through darkened streets, and I set you up against a street light. I held your beautiful face in my hands and I kissed you on the forehead.
– Are you in love with me?
– I suppose I am. But it’s not a kind of love I understand. It’s not the love you see happening in a thousand parking lots, fogging up windows. It’s something destructive, self-destructive. I don’t want to be myself. I want to be you.
– You can’t deny what you’ve become.
– I don’t want to. Not anymore.
Do you remember the first time you became Christine? I invited you over to my place, and I dressed you up in all that stuff I kept in the big box under my bed. I dressed you up in all that hot couture shit. I did your nails, I did your make-up. And it wasn't enough for you. To merely 'be' Christine wasn't enough. You loved me before you even knew what love was. And you exact your revenge with every single thirst-trap you post on the 'gram. You are a cruel, heartless bitch.
I took your hair, your face, your skin. You became a vessel by which I propagated myself. You are a symbol of the exotic; your body is the frontier, unconquered territory. Your eyes are the promise of taking without giving; a victory without competition. Your face is the future, and the future is always worth something. My own face is the forgotten past, populated with ruins and mass graves. I don't want to be a Nabokov; I want to be a Leung. I want to be an endless series of Leung(s), replicated and simulated by my followers. I took the body of that little bitch with bad grades and transformed her into an avatar for pure desire and its potential. I took the body of that annoying little runt from Hong Kong and I molded that flesh into a vessel by which to carry the spirit of Nay-toe. The future of desire is a computer-generated Asian girl standin' a-top a galaxy of ruins; she is the symbol of global capital. I gave you life again. Without me, you're nothing, Christine. Without you, the name 'Yelena' is meaningless.
When I laid you in your bed, I stripped you of your clothes. I removed your canvas low-tops, and I pulled off your soft, meshy socks. I pulled on your distressed jeans, ripped at the knees, and I took off your cardigan, and I tore away the tee. You were open, nude as the news. I took a little hand mirror, and I set it up against my own body: these are my blushing, slick lips. These are my blonde strands of hair, delicately resting on the temple. These are my pert breasts; this is my tender belly button. These are my lacrosse scars, these are my stretch marks; this is my flat, inflamated nose. I watched the reflections of your shape resting on my body, covering you in slivers of light. Now tell me, where do you and I begin?
THE NINTH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« The children of the ‘druzhina’ watched as the rivers turned sour and green; the sky was a sullen purple, and the air became thick like smoke. Kali Hichi shrugged, then took a few puffs from his pipe. The sky was filled with the screeching of dozens of rockets. ‘When the thoughts of man can’t live in peace with the world as it is, his thoughts declare war upon the world. If he must choose between his thoughts or the world, he’ll choose his thoughts. Mhm.’ And that is how the ‘druzhina’ came to understand that they were not of the world but despite it. ‘Thoughts are the sword by which a monzhj will carve herself out.’ »
I'm back in that place again. There's an endless lake stretching from my toes to the horizon. The sun seems to burn whatever it touches. Oh, I'd like to wake up from this dream but I seem every time to wake up to another dream instead. I shut my eyes and a new reality forms before me, and things make less sense than they did before. Oh Christine, come to me once more again. Why have you forsaken me?
Imagine I take a few hammers and a choice selection of a knife. And I start to carve you piece-by-piece. Delicately; I have no intent to harm you. We take off your face, then your hair. We detach arms and legs, we rearrange the boundaries of what you call 'Yelena,' or 'Christine,' or 'Marena.' And who is to decide that these are my hands or your hands? Who is to say that this is not your delicate neck sitting on my shoulders? If we join our lips, where do you and I begin?
Okay. Now let me see it all put into a single picture. Yes, I start from the top. I pick blonde hair because it gives me the most points. Yep; we are trying to maximize our potential here. I pick the elven ears, for the cosplay potential. I pick the smallest, the cutest nose; I buttress this with thick yet neat eyebrows that form a perfect bow across my face. Full lips, but not too full. Give me a jaw worth framing. And let me twist this, let me endless rotate my own face and roll the desired constellation. Let me solve this riddle. Who am I meant to be?
You've been here before, Yelena. Nay-toe's cradle; where a race is born. Matter meets soul, meets pure spirit. You hold within you the seeds of a new culture. You are pregnant like a bitch, swollen with beasts yet to be given a name. Before they were only thoughts carried by the wind that haunts the zone, but you've given them shape & form, you've given them flesh. And who shall your children be? With which tongue might they speak? Which songs might they sing? So far your life has been a series of awakenings. A series of headaches, brought on by the bright light of fires & suns & rockets. A hot canvas onto which you might paint yourself, in brilliant red. That is the gift Nay-toe bestows upon you; the endless rearrangement of body according to the word-- did you know they call it λόγος in another tongue? And something in another tongue. There's a endless highway of tongues, stretching from horizon to horizon. Another flash of light comes from the sky.
"Bitch," she says while sticking something into Christine's mouth. The orifice looks so needy, so open and willing. Drool runs down her neck; a river connecting one body to another. "Do you know where you are?" Christine looks around: the children are hungry; they chew on plastic as they play with their rifles. Christine mumbles; what she has to say does not matter, and no-one hears anything. "Every e-girl has the same fate," she sez. She sux on a lollipop, and her face is shiny and red with sooty eye shadow and long hair dyed pink in ponytails. "She dies on the screen, she's encased in amber forever. The image is her; the body rots away to perfect the image." She comes closer to Christine, close enough to smell her perfume; it smells like colors green and red and it's so bright that your eyes burn. "Do you know what I'm saying?" Christine shakes her head in the negative.
"Let me describe how beautiful you look," she sez. "I've bound you in rope; your wrists are tied together with dozens of bands, and your hands are held over your head by a long trail of rope that runs down your slender back. Your body is made lithe and defined by a rope harness, which hugs your body such that even your modest curves become sleek exclamation points at the end of your sentence. And of course; your legs are spread by rope which ties your ankles to your thighs, and when you dare to shut them, I will force them open like a rapacious male driven mad by your beauty." Christine squirms and struggles. "And I record every movement; even the most delicate spasm is a spurt of hot, silvery oil that explodes from deep within the soil.. Don't you want to be like this forever, Christine? Haunting the imaginations of thousands?" Christine shook her head. "Endlessly reproducing yourself?" Christine shook her head. "And the little bears in the tribe will play with you forever." Christine shook her head.
– Wait, hold up. Yelena, hold up.
– What?
– So you went looking for me in the Autonomous Zone? But I'm not real? I'm a figment of your imagination?
– The part of you that lives in the world is a figment of my imagination. Your physical body is real, but that doesn't matter. No-one knows your physical body; they know my creation, the image of you that I've painstakingly pruned and trimmed. Yes; a bit of fat there, a bit of face-tuning here. This is the Christine that we know. This is how I keep you as an image alive, even long after the flesh withers away. That is what Nay-toe gives us; you are the burden I carry.
– You look for me in every image, don't you? I am the shadow of everything you refuse. I am the sexual negative of the power you deny yourself; I am the 'thot daughter' to your 'holy mother.' And your denial gives me life-- boys want to take my body and take it rough, and girls want to be the sort of girl like me who likes it rough. I am a bleeding orifice, a gateway into a fleshy and blood-splattered world where you are a fuck-crazed queen, a sloppy bitch who doesn't give a fuck; your head is full of plans to fuck someone else's boyfriend, and to take their money and their shit-- punish them for their pussy-lust. And you let me get away with it; it makes you hot to imagine me getting fucked in every way that you deny yourself. I'm a doll, a puppet for you to play with. I am a 'fuckable Sim,' and you 'plop' me in a room without a door full of polygonal studs.
– No; no, not anymore. You're gone now. You belong to someone else now. You belong to the thousands who have known your image. They have their own Christines-- let a hundred Christines bloom.
– Then who are you supposed to be? Bitch, who do you think you are?
– I'm the coming of Spring. My grasses run hot. I drown in the underworld, and I'm reborn in hot white heat.
Strange.
THE TENTH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« On another day, the same ‘druzhnochka’ came to Kali Hichi and once again expressed her desire to become a healer for her people. She was confused; she did not understand why Nay-toe would make people sick, or start wars, or refuse to work. Kali Hichi came up to the ‘druzhnochka’ and asked her to examine herself. ‘How does it feel to be healthy?’ The ‘druzhnochka’ was confused. She touched her own body, and had forgotten she had it in the first place. She had felt nothing. ‘It doesn’t feel like anything to be healthy.’ Kali Hichi smiled. ‘But if you’re sick?’ The ‘druzhnochka’ responded: ‘yes, I can feel it when I’m sick.’ Kali Hichi followed her thought: ‘same with peace. It is inert. But war is impossible to ignore. The same is true of the indignities of work. But once we refuse to work, we are visible once more.’ »
Yelena watched from the top of the Ministry of Culture overlooking the "based camp" as the artillery pulverized the city of glass around them into a fine powder; the dust formed billowing, gigantic clouds of fog that rushes through the valleys, through the mountains, covering everything in a shining, white film. The dome of glass beside her had been shattered, and the ground was full of debris and shattered concrete. Blood mixed freely with oil; metal shrapnel with bone. The boys and the 'Alphas' had scattered into various directions, nervously waiting for instructions from the group chat. Yelena looked at Little King Samuel; he seemed nervous and ready for a fate he is yet to comprehend. His sweaty palms played with his phone, spun in the center like a fidget spinner. "What should I do?" he whispered to Yelena. When the shells began ripping through the bunker, Little King Samuel had covered Yelena with his body-- she felt she owed him something, her gratitude softened her heart. But she understood nothing of the Zone nor the lost souls dwelling its fresh winds; the women had fled back underground, locking the boys behind them. They would wait for their own men to return, in life or in death. "What should I do?" he asked again, with his face stuck in a nervous smile. Yelena thought of telling him that he was at the end of this journey, that his subscribers would not be seeing his content on their feeds once more, but this depressed her.
"I have someone I care about, Samuel," her voice was soft, promising. She touched Samuel's arm, and she felt the tension that laid beneath his skin. "I have someone I care about, a lot. She's just a little girl. She has a wound on her face, and she can't speak." Samuel looked at Yelena's face, studied it for the first time; the flaky skin, the redness of the flesh beneath the fine hairs, the way the edges of her lips were so slightly crooked... "I'll find her for you, Lena." He looked out towards the horizon; thousands of little pillars of smoke fucked the mountains with a terrible screech and a flash. "Because I need you," he said with a pathetic tremble. Yelena felt her face grow heavy, and a sudden warmth came into her chest; she'd missed being needed by someone. "And she needs me, Samuel," she answered.
Once the bombing had subsided, Yelena followed Samuel back down into the missile complex, which had transformed into an orifice of burning metal and petroleum fume. Several of the levels were covered in white fire-extinguishing foam, which sputtered out of the ventilation shafts and doors with gooey excess. Paco and Groypee met them on the ground floor, their faces covered in a sticky drama of oil and sweat. "It's NATO," Groypee wheezed between deep breaths. "NATO liquidiation. They're emptying this entire sector of the zone, and executing anyone that doesn't surrender." Little King Samuel's face turned white; he sucked nervously on his vape. Paco blew a silent kiss at Yelena, then played with the bolt of his AR-15 pattern rifle; a little anime figurine with a leash 'round its neck hung from the barrel. "Groypee, Paco; go find a little girl with a wound on her face," Little King Samuel ordered with a tremble. "Half of her face looks like it's melting," Yelena interjected. "And she can't speak--" she added. "She can't speak," Little King Samuel repeated. "Find her and bring her here," with a bit more authority. Paco and Groypee stood quietly, in waiting. "Because I said so!" Little King Samuel shouted. Paco and Groypee looked at Yelena, then turned away; the broken glass crunched beneath their feet. "They won't fail me," Little King Samuel said to Yelena, to comfort both of them. Yelena picked up a large jacket from the ground beside a few chunks of broken concrete, brushed away some of the ash, and covered her shoulders with it. Little King Samuel's head hung down; he watched her with a strange expression she'd never seen him wear before. "What," Yelena said. Little King Samuel thought about what his response should be. His expression died away, slowly, as sleeplessness set in: "what do you think should happen next?" he said.
Outside of the Ministry of Culture building, a crowd of boys were shouting and chanting: "based! Based! Based!" And they hooted & holler'd; above their heads, a doll shook with every wave of the mob. Yelena walked out towards the crowd, Little King Samuel following her, and the crowd cheered as they moved towards Yelena with enthusiastic smiles. She saw the strange twitching of their faces, full of chain lightning. They looked like creatures drunk on blood. The crowd spread as they stood before Yelena, and a few of the boys brought the doll down on the splintered, burning ground before her.
Yelena wiped the sweat and tears, the hardening makeup from her face; before her, on a large bed sheet, laid Nico Nico Nicole. Her ankles and wrists were bound with belts & chains, her pink overalls stained with dust & blood. Her face, her hair were more of a clump than the shape of something human; her beaming eyes looked up at Yelena like two collapsing suns. Her breathing sputtered, and with every wheeze a dust cloud shot forth from her throat. Yelena bent down towards her, as if she were gazing into a placid pool-- Nico Nico Nicole squirmed, her full lips trembling and shaking. Little King Samuel bent down beside Yelena, and he took Yelena's hand in his hand, and he took Nico Nico Nicole's hand in his other hand, and he whispered: "Ok... yeah, I ran out of time, Yelena. But, please, will you join me in the coming of spring?" Yelena took her hand away, stowing it closer to her heart; she felt a strange gratitude in being able to stretch her fingers as wide as they would go.
Little King Samuel rose to his feet; his shadow stretched over the crowd of boys with needy faces, and Yelena had never seen such bliss before. She felt electricity run over her fingertips, and she felt the sudden longing to touch someone-- she felt the longing to spread this electricity. She reached for Nico Nico Nicole's face; she wiped away the dust from her face, and found hot ruddy skin under the surface. "I don't know what's going to happen," Yelena said. "But know that I'm here with you, somehow." A plume of smoke rose from the depths of her chest, and Yelena heard the faintest crackle of a voice. "-," she said. Yelena tore off part of her frock, spat into it, and tried to clean Nico Nico Nicole's face: first she wiped her cheeks, then her lips, and her finely-articulated brows. One should face her destiny with the cutest, most elegant face she might muster-- Yelena thot. "I think we've met before, haven't we?" Nico Nico Nicole's eyes remained wide, open; Yelena saw herself in the trembling blue surface of her iris.
"My brahs," Little King Samuel shouted. The boys stood at attention, with their dirty white shirts and their snot-filled noses. "My brahs!" once more, he bellowed, with a voice ten-fold his size. The boys fell to a hushed silence at the sound of the resounding trumpet of destiny, calling upon them to meet their fate. "Look above you, my brahs. 'We're all gonna make it, brah.' Look above you... the infinity, Nut herself smiles upon you. Oh! What is man, what is woman?" The boys smiled and shouted in response: "every man and every woman is a star!" Little King Samuel smiled, and he motioned at the tallest boy to take him upon his shoulders, where Little King stood like a prophet. "Today, we abandon the smothering arms of the bitch Earth-Mother, and we take our place 'tween the warm tits of the universe. Who, who among you is with me?" The boys resounded, screaming in applause, and they lifted the body of Nico Nico Nicole into the air by her bed sheet in holy procession. "Look to the mountains, my brahs!" The boys cheered; they lifted Yelena up by her ankles, letting her body rest on the shoulders of a squadron of boys. "Look to the mountains; look at how the burning disc of the sun is penetrated by the peaks of the mountains there amongst the phosphor-colored skies!" The rays of the sun entered the glass, and covered the valleys in thousands of shimmering colors, as if reality itself was slit open to let its luminous vitality ooze away.
"Break, break, break!" Little King Samuel shouted as they marched up towards the lip of the missile complex, where the hot, red, burning tip of the rocket pointed towards the skies. "On thy cold gray stones, O sea!" A spear of destiny formed, with Nico Nico Nicole at its head. "And I would that my tongue could utter," Little King screamed. "The thoughts that arise in me!" Yelena felt the buzzing of a million horns rattle in her ears; she felt the deafening sound of the boys clamoring beneath her, single in purpose, marching into time like a lighting bolt that might scorch the earth. She felt frightened; frightened by the possibilities suggested by her will. The boundaries between mind & body now seemed to threaten utter collapse; the beasts beneath her have no longer a need for a name, for they were merely the atoms at play in some great burst of energy. Little King Samuel stepped down from the boy's shoulders, and stretched out his arms towards the missile that steadily rose from its womb.
"Tonight, my brahs, we return to Nut her long-lost daughter. We will purify the heavens by purging the Earthly body, and restore the honor of the night." Little King Samuel stood on one of the hydraulic arms that pumped hard as it erected the missile, and faced the crowd of boys as they stretched out their arms to extend Nico Nico Nicole towards the missile. "Do you not love her, my brahs?" The crowd screamed in acknowledgement. "Is she not the most beautiful puppy-e-girl gyatt semen demon you've ever seen in your lives?" The boys climbed the hydraulic arms, pulling up Nico Nico Nicole by her legs using rope, and securing her onto the red head of the missile. "Just as it was in the Iliad, we will eat of Nico Nico Nicole's body, and we will ask Nut to deliver us onto death with honor." Yelena watched with feverish anticipation, her forehead boiling with the heat of others; Nico Nico Nicole hung from the shaft of the missile as the boys cut away at her clothing with knives to expose her precious nudity. It was ritual defilement; they transformed her into an animal, into an extraterrestrial creature which hovered above the soil. "And in exchange, we shall impregnate the skies with an incredible burst of vitality; we will fuck the world."
The boys stood there in the shadow of the missile, its tip hot and needy; some of them with hard cocks, others with faces sweaty and red. Are we together in the world again? The image crept into her mind: the missile exploding, filling the greedy orifice of the night sky with light, and the dust of Nico Nico Nicole's body covering the earth to return life. They hold up their phones with unsteady hands, jittery frames cumming in-n-out of focus. And thereby, the image is scattered to the wind, transformed, such that Nico Nico Nicole's cute little face becomes a totem of Nay-toe's power. "Yes," Yelena muttered to herself. "Every image of a hot fuckable body is a totem of Nay-toe's power; it is a symbol of the market's fertility as a pure image, such that it reproduces perfectly without matter. When Nico Nico Nicole wears her cat-ears for her subscribers, every saved GIF of her becomes a talisman of Nay-toe's power; 'wear my feet pics 'round your neck, and you'll find no flesh to be irresistible to the awesome power of the market.' When she speaks of wanting to be fucked by strange men, it is Nay-toe which possesses her, and speaks through her." And the whole thing is being streamed live, frame-by-delirious-frame. Endless replication; her body is no longer her own but merely an array of organized color, differing from your body only in how those colors are arranged. Yelena clutches at her own stomach– fleshy worms twisted and writhed within her; eating her from the inside out.
She tears at her stomach, revealing the innards. She’s herself, yes, but the innards reveal nothing about herself. The deeper she digs into the viscera & guts, shooting out hot blood like a derrick, the greater the arbitrariness of this flesh, of this tendril and this artery. She is a tower of meat, with unremarkable insides; her body makes her anonymous. The image of herself which she projected onto the world had nothing to do with her body. It was an invention, a fantasy of a mind that wishes to see the world in a certain light. It was no less artificial than the cuties on the ‘gram, cut-up, touched-up, reconstructed pixel-by-pixel. She clutches at her own body, feeling the fat and bones ‘neath her fingertips; there is nothing of herself here. She invents herself because this means nothing to her: she is a delusion, a product of time + space. She is stillborn, brought into a world defective by inadequacy. To be born is to be forced to acknowledge that inadequacy– to be born is to be alien. She looks up at the tip of the missile from which the little slut hung: Nico Nico Nicole’s ears were hot, and her flesh yielding. The rope cut into the meat of her body, such that it bulged and spilled beyond its sinewy borders. When the missile fucks the dark orifice of the night sky, Nico Nico Nicole’s cute little body will fill the emptiness with milky-white flesh, and the stars will be a mystery once more.
Yelena walked away from the crowd standing in the shadow of the missile, and no-one seemed to care-- she felt she'd become invisible. Invisible, and yet completely in bondage. She saw nothing but glass in every direction; freedom is meaningless if she has nothing to do. Bored, she walked towards the mountains, of which a jagged peak stuck into the sun as it collapsed into the purple horizon. Above her, a large tower encased in glass shot rays of rainbow across the white, shimmering soil. So much energy, she thought as she covered her face with her hands to protect her from the blinding rays; the soil is boiling with energy, and yet everything around Yelena is inert and dead. The valley between the peak of the mountains gave the impression of two hands reaching towards the sun; well fuck, now I remember how that one goes:
THE ELEVENTH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« Kali Hichi went down his mountain, and saw that the ‘druzhnochka’ who came to him earlier simply would not leave. ‘Gospod Kali Hichi,’ she spoke to him in a desperate voice, full of longing. ‘I want no life but yours,’ she said. ‘I love thee, and I wish to be your disciple. And I wish to be your "lyubovnitsa."’ And Kali Hichi accepted her, for his solitude had started to bore him, and boredom offered no enlightenment.
’And what shall I call thee?’ Kali Hichi asked.
’My ‘lyubovnichek,’ she whined. ‘I have no name of my own. What should I call myself?’
Kali Hichi shrugged. ‘Pick the first thing that comes to mind. You may change it whenever you wish. You have no bondage to that name. For your name only represents yourself, your own ego; some sort of attempt at being yourself.’ The ‘druzhnochka’s’ eyes grew weary and she sat on the stone beside him.
’If I’m not myself, my ‘lyubovnichek,’ who am I?’ she asked.
’You are a self with a name, at war with a reality that exists around you without name; within you. You will do things, feel things beyond the control of what your name should represent. And you feel shame because who you are and what you do will grow distant as it does between lovers.’ Kali Hichi embraced the ‘druzhnochka,’ and smelled her hair, and touched her face. She was overwhelmed with a sudden, piercing sadness.
’I will be your ‘lyubovnichek,’ he said. ‘Pick any name, and I shall call thee that.’
’I will be your ‘lyubovnitsa,’ she said. ‘But I worry that if I may be called any name, if I am bound by no name, then I am merely to float among the vacant stars; like my name, the fact of my life is a mere accident. If I’m thrown into existence, what world exists to catch me, my dear ‘lyubovnichek?’
Kali Hichi didn’t answer. He embraced her. »