Chants of innocuous dreams. Juxtaposed worlds full of images. Nowhere to store these moments but vestigial ingrown pockets. Resultant miniscule sacs swollen with residual blood. Echoes of a thousand Nippon years rasping in my ears. I awake in Queen Himiko’s tomb.

My organs are drowning in fermented Shinto animal juice. She tells me to take another hit from the receptacle. Gulp it, sip it, suck it down down good – like a desperate creature that needs to be fully expunged.

The reverberation of her voice resounds in my piss-fit skull. She is the harbinger of inner vision. A foreign angel dripping in the entrails of chromakey nebula. My transitory body is lying on a heaped pile of dirt. An earthen aperture claims the form I once was.

Press it down down good through the simulated layers of a mirage. Any tangible trace of my remains thermally sealed. Excess essence floats on deaf air. I am forever encased in barren clay. Queen Himiko whispers to my amygdala in the darkness. Her message to me audially clear: A little luck, uncertain luck, certain disaster – you must accept your fate.

Sights of tattered lanterns. Billowing rays of neon light. I find myself on the concrete pavement next to the booth. Like the spontaneous pool of salaryman vomit beside me, some things that occur in the city at night are better left unknown.

——-

Dale Brett is a writer and artist from Melbourne, Australia. 
He is interested in exploring the melancholic malaise and technological ennui of the 21st century. His work has been featured on Burning House Press, Back Patio Press, Surfaces, Silent Auctions and many others. Hypertextual artifacts found @_blackzodiac.

Banner image by James Knight