Scatterbrainv2

Scatterbrain
by Baba Tornskin
From the ash-covered plains a gigantic stairwell wound around a pillar stretches up towards the sleepwalking clouds. If a man undertook the century long climb to the top, he would find an archaic petrified tree that could answer any question. The tree, as such wonders tend to do, attracted rivers of believers as well as merchants. The enormous stairs used to be mottled with food stands, markets, lounges, dancehalls, and the odd brideshop. Yet times are hard and pilgrimage has run dry. Businesses, and especially the brideshop have suffered considerably. To make matters worse, Mark, the owner of the brideshop, is stuck with a particularly ugly bride-to-be. His reputation had sunk and he was just about to abandon all hope when he noticed two familiar shapes approaching his shop below.
Mark rushed down the spiral stonestairs, through piles of rocks, racing against the tiny avalanches he himself triggered. He thinks of his past mistakes, his almost ruined brideshop, and all the pregnant phantoms of memories which had held promises of change... and still tonight, one more promise: to sell the ugliest bride in his store and save his business.
“To persuade them...” Mark thought in his ornate language, “to ensnare them with a two-sided language, first with sweet words and then with tempting profit. They must take that ugly hag with them or else I'm ruined. That woman, that blight, her filthy presence stains my brideshop and hurts the trade. She must be banished!”
As Mark ran down, he kicked a large stone out of his way; as if severed, the rock rolled down and fell down from one side of the cliff, a strange beauty animated it as it fell and crashed in front of a dilapidated wall. A few meters away, two creatures stirred. 
The crash woke Mantisse up, and in a fright he said: “What means this scene? Awake my heart! How late the shopkeeper.”  To his left there was a burning witch. She remained silent, but the flicker of her flames projected fantastic appearances that ran along the fissures of the wall. Mantisse's oily moved from left to right. Mantisse was, it must be said, a half man, half praying mantis, and the burning witch besides him, his daughter.
Finally, dashing, panting, puffing between each word, Mark, all apologies, arrived.
“Do forgive, the circumstances, I couldn’t even change my old ones for my new ones... buy hey old friend!” Mark said.
“Late! Is this too the custom of the place? Are you listening?" Mantisse said, but Mark’s eyes were nailed to the fantastical beauty of the burning witch. He immediately fantasized of her flaming body wringing on his bed. 
After a pause, Mark replied very politely, “No costumes this, but the true clothes of my trade. Look, how they are laced from moths as real and black as the ones that swirl around your flaming friend.  But, back to your last remark,” Mark cleared his throat, “how long has it been, seven hundred, thousand years? We used to spend the night drinking and howling over the furniture... not even thirty pieces of psychocandy would suffice, not even thirty, jolly-gentle!” Mark said.
“Oh, the days of yore! But tell me, how comes it,” Mantisse kicked some pebbles around the so called entrance of the brideshop, “that your once prosperous shop is now the very triumph of dilapidation? Unhappy ruins blossoming in a spiderweb of crevices. What’s become of your steady business?” 
“A plague of problems have hurt my dear brideshop (thebeautifulgofirst theuglyones staylonglonger). Simply put, a swarm of cunning shadows conspired and sunk me in despair. They exist, believe me, I have seen their broken bodies and their damned faces up close. I couldn't shake them off. Now I'm considering running away into the perfect wasteland of razor sharp jungles” Mark said as his arms bowed to the horizon, “and if I get lost? You would have to look for me with a dog, and bring his friends too, to search my corpse out by the smell.”
“I see, but of ourselves be clear, we wouldn’t search you with dogs. Stop your business then, and do not bother.” Mantisse chirped as he paced beside the burning witch.
Mark thought to himself, "Good, simply hopeless.., To aspire, to conspire and finally to fall."  Then his attention swirled back towards the light-bearing witch. Her light made the night blacker. “That a person such as this is possible... My, I could dedicate myself to taste those richlooking flames which gush forth like blood,” Mark said.
“Control thy tongue old Mark, for this is my daughter. And to the point, no shows now, just business, or have you forgotten your trade?” Mantisse chirped. 
“What means you sirrah? Mark has not forgotten. I’ll tell you, this is the correct place. Here you, or your flame-bouyant daughter, will find a beautiful companion,” Mark said. Then, sitting over a mangy parcel of stones, he produced a small leather lyre from under his moth-laced cloak and began to strum a few notes. After a few seconds Mark began to sing along, “There is a girl in my shop, with a past that clothes her all round. I think she’s a perfect match for your sparkling daughter. I have a girl that dedicated herself to pull butterflies from under the stone-stairs and write her dreams over their wings, so she could then sell them to curious onlookers. A very particular girl, she never spoke to anyone and simply bore indignantly the unmerciful burden of her three little sisters.”
“At some point, her strange dispositions moved the judges to rave with hammer and wig and unmercifully to judge her. They sang their rant, ‘The subject was in fact, in fact! By judge and hammer sentenced to predicate in nomini pater as a she-witch consorting with devils et filis by the power invested in me and may god to a witch be tied to a mast and mercy be whipped on your soul, your skin lashed spiritu sancti to confess with ruby alphabets and so on, to be, by the operation of the flames, to born perpetually in bloody flames until consumed thy scenes be purged etc. etc.’ After the sentence, my girl swore never to name a word and tore apart all her winged scriptures.”
Mantisse noticed thoughtful. “Sins? You were a little grave there. What’s her name?”
“Look closer, behind this dilapidated wall lays Steorra. The people entitled her with that nickname, to keep some illusion of hope or destiny.” Mark said.
Mantisse walked and bent over to observe behind the wall.
“What! Is this a joke? Poor abomination, mark how deformity jests in her nakedness! Not tender beauty, but a catastrophe that feeds on indifference! Mark, surely you tease our moods with such hideousness. Besides, your song does not hold. What is your meaning here, if she was sentenced to burn, why is she made of stone? I see not a witch but a statue, a macabre monument to ghastliness, an abused sculpture. Besides, your story is not realistic. Speak plainly.” Mantisse chirped.
“Plainly, I speak, and you can see that obviously innocent she, from the sentences was... and is.” Mark replied.
“Obviously? Who profits by preserving such a hideous life?” Mantisse hissed frantically and then addressed her burning daughter: “Fortune of my latest years, let us make haste and shade away from such an accursed abomination.”
Mark shot straight from the corner of the wall to detain Mantisse. “With her, there’s plenty of profit. Forgive me, my words are like a razor rusted. True, true she looks like an old time reveler. But remember, there must always be something wrong, because there’s never a perfect match.” Mark said.
“A joke, a joke! Come, old friend, show us other girls. My torching daughter burns uneasy when so many moths whirl around her.” Mantisse chirped as he quivered back and forth in a hypnotic rhythm.
“Oh stay!” Prayed Mark on his knees. “Listen to your mind. Listen! Underneath her shady nakedness she wears a wealthy secret. She’s a mark herself, and towards a powerful wealth she can Mantisse take.” 
Mantisse washed his greasy head with his forelimbs. “Your stinking breath! Rustical and favorless are all your words as they try to escape the catastrophe of your meanings. Nevertheles... if there be profit in her deformity, tempt me more to hear it.” Mantisse said.
Mark’s eyes swirled around the burning witch and he said. This was his chance to get rid of Steorra. He had to come up with the best he had. “Such a glorious model, of complexion un-surpassing, this is the beauty that is made for us. For many years we deceive ourselves with wives tales, but perhaps we should ask them to read more to us, for whole nights, for years even, for where they are we must ever be. Thus, allow her to be your wife and lie with you, take you in, and you shall find her private arts exceedingly glorious. Race into her voice, kindly venture therein, and be slayeth thereat.  She’s your dreaming Africa, her face was painted with gasoline, her body written with war designs, and yet, and yet, she’s not a threat, she will ruin you not; be reasonably murdered by her flames. Let your soul be pierced down until you know no more homes, or nations, or languages. Lie and sleep by her naked words, unceasingly secret, yet harmless. Ay, she will.”
Mantisse nodded mutely.
Mark paused, distracted by the flaming witch. He no longer knew if he was singing of Steorroa or the burning witch. He thought, "Very clearly, a three hundred present can persuade. But now I stand reduced and favorless, she breaks my senses cold. Her razor sharp beauty excites my fancy. Desolate, yet home. See there, the clouds congeal, and I feel I can word no more. Close my eyes and breathe the smoke. What’s the paradigm that underlies all the solutions? Melancholy trickles through my mind."
Mark saw Mantisse’s eyes darkened in sarcastic diffidence. Then he turned again to look at the burning witch and said aloud, “Who is she, old Man-tisse?” And the answered trickled like water through his body. 
“My daughter, Shiele. Also a witch, also judged and condemned, as is the custom of our place, to burn in perpetual flames.” Mantisse chirped.
“What is she supposed to be? Even more admirable than her flammable books... I mean looks. Her body, at closest scrutiny, does resemble the dreaming Africa that is so attractive to all. But there should be one more detail missing, her face ought to bear a singular schema... What’s the word I’m looking for? I mean, she sleeps not, instead she endures the storm.  She soaks it all in, as if it were some kind of challenge, braving the droning broils and massacres of memories.”
“Weren’t you talking about a singular opportunity that promised me great wealth? Or am I not following?” Mantisse ventured
“True, true. We know the abyss. So, since your purpose is not only marital and Steorra’s ugliness only throws you into wild conjectures I’ll tell you a true secret of her past. As you know, in the distant past this lands were swarmed by people with vast wealth and unrestrained power.” Mark’s eyes flared with a strange fire and he lifted his lyre and strummed in rhythms that only bodies are able understand. 
Mantisse did know the abyss' history, so he followed Mark’s crooked song with deep wonder. Without missing any detail, he imagined the ancient people wandering the abyss; and a distant glimpse of our naked ancestors waiting in an ambush.
“This sinister staircase, in a distant time, was populated, as you know, by swarms of paranoids, inverts and degenerates of all kinds.” Mark said in a tremulous voice.
“Those noble times, what of them now? The people went wrong and have flown to their own miserable ends. What’s left now? Just an empty vastness and your ancient whore!”
“But does the cathedral of Mantisse's mind keep knowledge of the vast undergrounds these people dug? There are many tales about them, and scarcely do they agree upon any point. All the important details seem to dwell in the shades. Yet in one point they do agree: that the ancients stuffed the entrails of the stairs with their vast treasures and wealth.” Mark said.
As Mark sang, fiery Shiele excited the shades. Somber tapestries tangled over the wall and adjacent rocks. The worn lyre brought relief to Mark’s grieving chest.
 “Tortured Steorra left the judges' sentences when unexpectedly reality broke inside her head: a visionary message told her to build a machine of runic rhymes, a weapon to end it all, a final solution, a machine that Ends. She craved to satisfy her vision and searched all corners for the fruits of her aspirations. As she maneuvered among the plotting neurotics, she decided to hide herself deep into their underground. Then she would be able to build a machine that could reveal all their secrets.”
“Thus she trapped herself, alone, in the vast winding tunnels and vaults of the underground. Her temporary tomb was amply provisioned and containeth all sorts of props appropriate to her project. It was there, under the labyrinthine ribs of the underground that she worked and hummed to herself. Never speaking, only her electric imagination blazing in the dark.”
A gust of wind enlivened the flames of Shiele.
“And such was her way, of course, her first efforts were fruitless. She didn’t cry then. Still, she built upon her experiences. Trapped by her vision, she worked and worked as if she was expecting her first kiss from a divinity. Daily too, she wrote new and exact reports in gaudy writing detailing all her discoveries and advancements. In her progress, the reports grew longer and longer until they took as much time as the work on the machine itself. Steorra was consumed by her vision.”
“What are these?” Mantisse interrupted. “The occurrences of a romancer? First extreme compliments and boring words, what will you tell next? A story of a one-eyed whore who sheds one tear at a time? Or other, similar anomalies? Please Mark, don’t rattle with your meanings.”
As Mantisse spoke, Mark looked at Shiele. The blazing witch, her flirtyfying passions deliciously confounded him. Her goodlooking, wellwhipped countenance arose incoherence in him.
“In search for heavy profits,” Mark continued, “one day, seven men entered the wild arabesque of the underground.  Famished for a treasure to pay them dear, the intruders pushed forth. At some point, they caught a glance of a singularly erratic tract (dust seemed to grow there). It was the forgotten cloaca where Stoerra labored furiously trying to realize her vision. All those lonely centuries have seen the rise and fall of her enemies, what did her work mattered now? Still, her mind went on working, whipping her senses forth.”
“The seven men approached the vault, moving carefully through the narrow and irregular gothic scenery. Steorra received them as if she had been expecting them and said that the machine of ends was finished. She was simply writing her last report, and as soon as she could, she would be proud to demonstrate the capacity of her machine. A little trial, a small test, a tiny holocaust for the seven to witness.”
“Carefully, Steorra adjusted the gears of the machine. Most of them were very tiny, and bore a little tinted word in the middle. When it all seemed in order, she pulled a crooked lever and all the gears raced in a fright. The machine varoomed and clanged; plates and gears clashed and smashed against each other. Cables lashed in all directions, electric whips slashed the walls, and in short, Steorra's towering fantasy had failed. She rushed forward with a swarm of justifications, but the seven witnesses remained unmoved.”
“The end?” Mantisse chirped back.
“Confounded, they departed. The seven moused their way back to the surface, talking of dreams and gems: ‘Well this is just grand. We build all these tunnels and vaults following the greatest fashions, engraved with arabesques and marbled gods; aqueducts really, to carry shit from here to there.’ The seventh said.” Mark said. His natural bitterness had ruined the ending of the story.
“What’s the point of that? That Steorra has lain here ever since? She has no gems, just hollow fantasies. She worked herself ugly, is that it? No treasure then? Do you really expect me to invest in such an ugly slave? What’s the idea with the seven, where are they? No Mark, your song is too superficial, I’m not moved. Keep her in that shit-hole, it would make more sense than the words shooting out of your moth eating mouth.” Mantisse hissed.
But Mark wouldn’t listen. He could not keep his eyes away from Shiele. His mind raced with thoughts."Failed here we are, feeding on the heavy visions of the gemmed fragrances. How beautiful, her spangled shadow feeds on her body; the wild looking twilight of her eyes, there find your solace wandering imaginator. No more plots, trifles all.  She is a thing of beauty," Mark thought and tears came into his eyes. Mantisse was furious.
 “Her presence makes your mind shoot like an arrow. And as for your Steorra, She looks like a corpse turned inside out. She has waited there for so long that she’s petrified. A cold abortion costumed in pale worms. A constellation of garish scars. A hollow stomach, a famished stomach devouring years of sour memories. A slut, a slave, the dogs can eat her flesh. A chaos of unworded love. She tints my nightmares. Is she a woman or a rock that turns you on?” Mantisse hissed frantically.
“Maybe. I heard her speak once, while she slept. I think it was about the ocean and a funeral ship, the horizon stretching out like a sentence dividing two skies... a funeral arrow sailing west, slashing straight up and down... then the wind strumming the pyre, blazing, a whirl of flowers tinting the air with their incendiary fragrance... embers blossoming, flashing, falling: ashes on the waves, ashes on the waves, ashes on the, ashes on, ashes, ash,” Mark said.
“Stop, Stopstopstop. Enough of your nonsense! Lets us go...” Mantisse said to Shiele. They left.
Mark strummed a few notes on his lyre and began to whisper discordant verses, "In between the notes, distilled nights, in between the notes, still Steorra gazing, in spite of, even after caustic time she. Only a moment, then piles of memories, hunger, ruins."
Then Mark stood up, walked towards Steorra and said, “The vision my dear, you see, sometimes it is like a picture against a wall, only a bit skewed. But then you notice that it stretches out, it's not flat, it goes on... it’s the tremulous tune of the final death-ago, the melancholy music of the lady in twilight cloaks, stretching out, out, out like tears down your face. I’ll tell you everything, I... I drew her down to me so she could feel my hand... and all that it comes to is yes... going like mad and yes... but no not a moment more no... strike her first... and crash the lyre on her face... tear her body apart... dismembering out a scream show mother mistakes about it... striking first dismembered memories calls me the day... unfinished orgasm... mistakes Mark, miss-takes! Not moved you? Great butcher beast... slash her breasts... swung forgetting then from the navel piercing a savage arrow to the cornerless abyss thinks I don’t like those nightstorm ways? Handrunning hands and legs... a maze of ribs and chalked gore.... Motherfucking daughter pain her father was the same... Wedding razors feeding thinking quakes flash outright asunder wanted his wife fucked... Sweet demon? No sirrah... I would be sorry for her... Scream my bones shine naked, her arrowed lips up and down the air with fragrance... Embers blossom ashes over hell... ashes over the hopeless... flaming laughs... fall... fall misery fall.... No reason slash her head for no reason... severed head over the cliff... Crashcrash. Scattered her silent lips I quoted countless times... Lyre-love plague it was found addictive here... Things like that... monster... Worst word in the world... Hunger, hunger quivering hunger.... Blooming my mind... Made speak of...”
Mark ran towards the dilapidated wall and dashed his brains out. Dismal flowers.