untitled work in progress

Ganymede and Thed slither ‘long the balustrade, trading orange pork specimens gathered from the heart of the purple quasar in the room with the long windows.
Balancing pink Spanish slug lips laterally, avoiding laser moonbeam locators, elegantly. They speak in low whispers. Tongues caressing ear-shapes and chests erupting red flowers and snakes light bites on soft shoulders. Battle scar beauty mark – long ragged road across the eye, pale and hypnotic in soft shadows - Thed of swords and rape, inside out goddess of meat and viscera, teeth clacking like silver tree branches in core of winter peers into Ganymede’s amethyst eyes. “What vulture must the great pig pass on his flight to your moon?” Keening, drops razor, axe, and flail, machete and poniard from her black horse mouth, absence of infinity.
“Abasi’s vulture. The Inchoate One – the nest of your desiccated womb, automatic, beyond repair – the lyre in the maelstrom. The messenger circles.” Rending rotten meat with perfect teeth, Ganymede wiggles his little finger and sighs.
Thed sets her mouth into a grim straight line as her florid cheeks erupt small brown moths splashed with oxblood red patterns. The moths curve up toward the high ceiling near the holes where the moonlight invades, flutter in a chaotic arc and fly back into her skin. “The Architect,” she coughs, and then, “the Architect and his whores. The whores with the flaming red hair that whirl about like tempests with lightning eyes, them and their black sword bearers who ride the tall azure stallions with armored steel plates on their necks like centipede bodies, they will ensnare the messenger with their magic totems and five-fire-nets.” She coughs again; a great ragged hacking, moist and smelling of musk and ancient cellars. And with her eyes heavily lidded, she says, “Go, pretty Ganymede. Go to the elephantine mountain peak of Mother Lotus. Seduce her, exploit her spectral corona and take the five-sided-shield to the Architect.”

Ganymede stood naked in the center circle, his elegant hands upon his milk-white thighs, and stared up at the hole where the moths have fled. When the last dun-winged insect was lost from sight he opened a small hidden cell under his skin with his fingernail and dug out a single silver capsule.
“To Korros,” he murmured as he put it in his mouth. “Abasi befouled.” As the silver capsule dissolved on Ganymede’s pink tongue ophidian arms writhed upon the sills along the jackal pen where carcasses were shoveled after revelries. His pinprick pupils became fathomless black windows framed in blue-white shot through with scarlet swords. His dark lashes fluttered as he fell through the obsidian bricks of his cylindrical keep, fingers curled and crow sounds scraped from his throat.
Traversing secret byways he came to the arête before which, the verdant Plains of Korros opened up and extended like a wedge to the distant rusted stones of decaying Tharsis. Ganymede’s toes found the sharp edge of the ridge and gripped it like talons. Ten thousand black stallions grazed below milling beneath the sour-eyed glower of the hulking megalith of Korros. Vermillion and magenta clouds churned on the horizon. Indigo folded through violet and was lost to lavender haze.
“I have seen mountains,” he mumbled. “Cairns of bone and foul flesh stacked to Abasi.” He cracked his knuckles and glanced back at the megalith. Viridian moss clung to its leeward side and silver ivory reached its curling tendrils into its prodigious cracks. The amorphous head’s hundred eye sockets filled with indanthrene shadow stared down at the stallions at its crumbling feet.
“Korros.” Ganymede rolled the R’s, allowing them to fill his mouth and purr between his lips before letting the last syllable slide out with a sibilant sigh.
The megalith moved. The hundred empty eyes stared up at him. A light wind pushed at Ganymede’s long blonde hair. He searched the sky for eagles or condors and saw nothing but distant cirrocumulus above him. The great churning was far in the distance yet. He stared at the Korros megalith and it spoke into his mind.
“I, Menhir, King of Dolmens see you, pretty boy. What do you want? What do you want? You must say it before the dust comes and rasps your pretty flesh away. Say it before I send my stallions to shatter your young bones with estrapades.”
“Korros, dear stone, your horses hold no sway over me.” He balled his fist to his chest and made a shallow bow. “Don’t you know I am a Taraxippus?”
The megalith stared a silent millennia. “What then do you want?”
“Simple protection of passage. Unmolested free range from point A to point B, there,” He pointed, “Out in the churning. And further, yet.”
“Then go, pretty boy.” The long grasses parted and there was a pathway that started at the foot of the arête and extended until distance obscured its narrow winding. “Follow only the path. A simple step beyond it violates the law and you will be consumed, Taraxippus or no.”
Ganymede leapt from the scarp and began along Korros’ highway.