#ammutseba

Next the fox in the pinstripe suit offers a dark stone which sucks in the life and light and refracts it into dazzling colors. He chuckles and says, “For you, love. See how vivid the toxins are? I find them delicious to break into your maw and fill your eyes.” Within his quaternary set of arms are more such stones and he moans in soft tones when he presses them to his eyes.

You accept both gifts and allow their lust to fill your core. They have many stories to tell of the dead stars, more stories than you could ever hear before your physical form crumbles into dust and leaves you alone in this lonely realm. At this future they giggle madly and reach out to stroke your form. The sentience of their energy is startling in its intelligence and otherness and hunger.

“Who is the progenitor of these gifts?”

“Our Mother, of course,” replies the fox. His easy chuckles fill you with ease not unlike a hare in a glass box. “It is she who provides you with a future under her night. She who devours the stars, devours the light and thoughts and being of your fellows, and disturbs the charts of your ancients. You love the blessed dark of her corruption. You want to fuck it.”

The goat gives a weary smile. “Forgive his adoration for mother. Ammutseba, child. She offers you a destination if you surrender unto her spitting, devouring gaze.”

Your thoughts turn to the stars blinking out like a plague upon the fireflies of your world, little hopeful insects that guide your children home and crawl into the mouths of the diseased in acts of kindness, and you see them flickering and dimming and falling down to the earth as the stars vanish beneath your charted skies. There is no mourning.

You ask with hope: “Will she hold me?”

The fox grasps you by the shoulders and his eyes spin wildly in delight. “I assure you love, she will take you into her spreading infection and embrace you as she would of any. You will no longer be bothered by the lights. Surrender unto her and you will be alone no more.”

“Then please.”

“Drink,” the goat commands. His forms flickers and splits into refractions of colors you cannot comprehend, lightless colors made of absence, and she tips the cup of stardust to your lips with a single layer of her being. She is hypnotizing. “These are are the memories of your beloved dead. Consume them. Devour them as would our mother, and absorb their being and essence within yourself until you are here and they are not.” There is a shroud in her eyes and it tickles your flesh.

You drink of your dead and take the stone within your eyes. You cannot see, there is nothing. And yet you see the goat and the pinstripe fox around you and they dance as would a drowning man. The fox takes you within his jaws and presses his eyes against you as the goat blinds you in her empty, ever changing colors.