EYE COLLECTOR

Prince Prance had a favorite store, Eye Collector. A small, overstuffed closet of a storefront, packed with every object, color and sound imagined and forgotten.

Passing jeweled lamp, swatch watch, alien radio, and handheld mirror Prance pushed his way into the racks of musty clothing so deep as to find worlds and wombs among the folds of sprawling dresses, hats and mats. Whole families tucked into the pocket of a giant’s pantsuit or an ogres overalls, sheltering siblings who had not seen the sun their entire life, feasting on crumbs pulled from suitcases some 4000 years old, made of stretched neanderthal skin on bone frame. Blankets and bedsheets that released smells ancient, foreign and impenetrable blocked certain stringing paths. Books covered with markings and patterns that had lost all meaning to any living thing collapsed into themselves, a thriving compost of dead language.

Tunneling into a pile of action figures, (He-man, Thundercats, Micronauts, Musclemen) Prance found a skull encrusted door that opened to a huge lake-filled cavern packed with candles all unique. They glowed, flickered, licked and glared from faces of strange shaped flame.

An orchestra of musical instruments played themselves on an island in the flooded chamber’s center accompanied by a beat of drips on pots.

A man so ancient as to predate time sat in a rickety timber boat.

“Play me a song as pretty as that one,” he gestured to the instruments, “and I’ll grant you the secret of eternal life”

Prince Prance excavated himself from the troves and hurried home to his hovel, hidden among brambles behind a building quite forgotten in a part of town fell off the map.

He pulled out his casio and his cassette 4-track.

“I’ve got to record some good shit tonight!”

SPECIAL IS WHAT HAPPENED

Nobody believed that it was because Yabo plunged his focused tool into a fool’s scrawled map that the Gargantuan Who Was Eating Life and Land split asunder and fell to the earth. Most likely it was merely a coincidence that in the moment his article pierced the paper a crack appeared in the monstrosities face, followed its smile, and ripped off its head from that gracious grin up.

When Yabo-Five finally ditched the other 9 Yabos and found Ramrak Ran, RRR was living in a small first floor apartment with his new wife Teresa and their child, Special. The magnets on his refrigerator spelled it out, “Special is the best thing that ever happened”. RRR had changed his name to Gary Norman and he was happy and at peace. His job was not so creative that it tapped his strength yet not so physical that it sapped his strength. He designed tour brochures of certain historic areas in the city for a company called “Hidden Gems”.

“Uncovering things best kept secret for five years”

“Yabo, I want to thank you. I know it was you who caused the schism that granted me a new life of calm and focus. I know it was you who brought down the beast that was eating our future. I will remember you forever and if I have another child as we are planning, one of the twelve names on our list is Gabe which is spelled roughly like your own name.”

Gary Norman’s home was only a few blocks from the site of the Gargantuan’s corpse and Yabo decided to take a walk over using one of Hidden Gems hot-off-the-press brochures about the site as a guide.

The dripping form draped over five blocks of the financial district and reeked of a thousand open sewers filled with ten thousand shits of meat-eating man. It had attracted a gaggle of sightseekers. Noseplugs $2 a pair.

“The better to behold the beheaded behemoth”

Just after his arrival the festering form began to quake and boil. Nothing in the brochure could explain it.

Yabo stepped inside a storefront and watched from behind a pane of thick glass.

The colossal carcass ripped open, letting loose a frothing frenzy of manlike maggots. They tore through the onlookers, six-inch teeth devouring first clothing and then what was beneath.

CELLULAR REUNIFICATION

It was the day after the Gargantuan fell, and the 500,000 inhabitants of Grave City-One headed for cover. Yabo-Five walked with the other seven Yabos down a dusty hallway deep underground kicking up clouds of clipped toenails, hair, skin, eyelashes, dried blood. ,They were seven years apart in age and walked seven feet between them. Had their shoes been size seven a heavenly straw would have appeared to suck them into the ether.

Finding a cell phone in the pocket of Yabo-Four, Five called Prince Prance at the Temple Tantrum. Prance was manning a gathering of Discoids, selling new manna based energy bars to their fiendish appetites. Five got the answering machine….

“don’t call me in the morning,

don’t call me in the afternoon.

Don’t call me in the evening,

Don’t call me in the night.

If you can find a different time,

Like in between the lines,

Call me whenever you like.”

He didn’t bother leaving a message, Prance was an impatient man, and Yabo was bleeding self indulgence.

Yabo-Six looked sick, grey under the eyes. Tongue pale and foamy. White dried spit on his lips. Six had little to say with his gravel of a voice.

Yabo-Two complained of being hungry.

Yabo-Seven walked tall and seemed focused on something up ahead.

Steam glistened from a floor vent in an alcove. they laid down amidst the vapor in the bed of discarded electric bills.

A motorized cat purred by, its solar panel perky and flitting.

Yabo-One was missing.

“Good fucking riddance. One less yesturday to think about, my past has left me behind….”

“hey Three, you try and call Prance”

three rings later and it picks up……. A low gurgle, a distant giggle and a distinctive popping sound. The stamping of tiny feet?