Teeth and Tongue Landscape CHAPTER ONE The world is made out of meat. It is not dirt/rocks/water anymore. It is flesh -- warm, sweat-hairy flesh. A pop-twisting, pulsating, blubber ball of a planet, mutating into slick deformities, leaking oil-tar acids and tangy metals. It grows claws of bone material like trees out of the ground, spider-reaching into the green cloud world to a cold/broken heaven. I am lofty-running on the flesh dirt, pound-trampling bruises into its soft flab with my heels, no need for any shoes, rushing back from fishing at one of the wax-grease ponds behind Earth’s mountainous left ear. I must get back there as soon as my legs can take me. No time to even examine the fish that I have recently fished, no idea what species it even is. Well, maybe I can take a quick look. Just a peek: I have caught a plump mechanical fish, a cutter fish. It is both metal and meat. Edible, but very tricky to take apart. You need a screwdriver and wrench to disassemble the machine, to get to the food inside. I need to get back to the city as soon as possible. I have been all alone for over an hour and the lack of social interaction has turned me all shaky. I am nothing when I am alone. CHAPTER TWO I’m the only one in the city who eats the fish and animals living on the landscape. The others eat the meat of the Earth, plowing into it with rust-churning bulldozers, collecting flesh in the same manner they collected minerals from the sides of dirt mountains all those years ago. But I prefer to eat the cute wild animals. They are much more friendly to my tongue when being eaten. The city is just ahead: A small cluster of sky-towers, five of them -- cracks and black crab-vines creeping up and around their sides -- five concrete demon fingers reaching out of the ground. And four letters are leaking out of the sides of my face: H O M E I can relax now. I am home. I can even spell home backwards. It is one of the words I have chosen to remember after books and writing left civilization. I feel very comfortable at home. It is where all the people in the world live. I write it in the sweaty meat ground when I bend over to catch my breath from running, cutting the skin with a hook and watching the words bleed. Of course, I keep the towers (aka home) in the corner of my sight during the process of writing. I am so happy to be back. If it weren’t for the friendly-tasting fish that live so far away, I would never ever leave my home at all. CHAPTER THREE I step into town, pass a well that centers the five towers, used for pumping blood and juices from the Earth, used for our drinking, cleaning, feeding the white toe-odorous fruits that grow from the Earth’s hairs. There is nobody outside. The wind hush-flows against the buildings and hair gardens and patchwork automobiles. People are always inside these days, always hiding from the grotesque outdoors. I want to be inside with them. The sky is going from green into red as I enter the only asphalt street on the landscape. The atmosphere has changed as well as the Earth. It no longer goes from day to night, white to black. There is no nightfall or daybreak. It goes from a world of green to a world of red. Right now, redfall is upon us: The deep bloody red swirls into the light lime green, making it swamp-like, eating its fluffy texture away. The red is heavy, sagging low to the flesh-surface, making crackles and squishy sounds as I enter my home tower. Most people sleep during redtime. They are too intimidated to stay conscious. Its appearance is terribly distorted, rot- demonic. I can handle it most of the time, but it gets to me too every now and then. I am definitely more comfortable indoors. Within my home tower, I discover a dust-eerie silence. The silence slithering down from the stairs, curling around my ankles, slipping into my ears and mouth and nostrils. The place is inert. I tap the steps up to the second floor, wary-watching for signs of life. “Where is everyone?” I ask the sweaty walls, discarding my rod and cutter fish on a table-shaped tooth, the cutter fish squeak-flapping its metal fins. I enter the first room I come across -- all rooms look the same, with the same furniture inside, the same layout, the same familiar emotions -- but the person is not within. Vanished. An old woman who is usually cleaning her clothes in Earthsweat at this time everyday. Gone. I go to the other rooms, all of them empty. No sign of human life besides a strong aura of depression they left behind. And I have to hold myself up with a cane so that I don’t become dizzy and fall down the stairs. “What’s going on?” I scream at the silence. “Where did you take them?”