Open/Closed
From Plastic Tub
Text by William Flintrock. 1963.
The open gate fornicators led the way, of course. It was their natural duty. The closed gate fornicators lay dormant for years yet, sweating in simulated piles of amber. Waiting for the development of new and more versatile sexual technologies. So the open gate fornicators led the way. And so it was.
On the third day of the march to the Sea, the Emperor sent a messenger to the head of the column. The bloated imbecile carried a not scrawled in a hasty hand and the words were accompanied by strange, distracted doodles.
"Tell the commissar that by morning his daughter will be bleeding."
The head of the column burst into gentle tears at the Beauty of it .. he quickly knelt, attaching pen to paper for reply.
"Is the emperor in good spirits today, lackey?", he asked.
The lackey did not hear, he was half-drunk on youth and sand. It had been three long days.
"Is the emperor in good spirits I ask you . . . "
The lackey smiled and then fell beneath a flurry of agitated blows. Nothing was solved. Another messenger was commissioned and the reply sent:
"His daughter gives blood to the ground for her gate being opened." Such was the traditional response.
By noon the emperor was naked and rolling in immense bowls of fruit. It was his nature to demean those around him for amusement and today was no exception. He pushed and prodded and puked and farted. All into the heaving, plodding face of an old man, besotten with illness and dearth -- "Jingoists! All of you!" -- the old man would cry, straining at the rather crudely manufactured pillory.
Across the river, on the fourth day, the head of the column of the open gate fornicators fell into the mud, sleeping. This was the sign they had been awaiting. All along the four thousand mile mass of humanity, tired limbs lay down to rest and bulging eyes slipped inot gyrating pulse-disks. In one great swooping motion, the entire lot fell to sleeping. The sounds of their slumber was akin to the shaking of the mountains.
"So then as the intention given, and having been given, was thus attended to, and having thus been attended to, it was henceforth the misery of the closed gate fornicators to arouse to the dreadful aclanging of the dreadful bell that niggled and sniggered in the recesses of their preservation banks, so thus having been awakened they all did shift drowsily, and thus shifted, they did also rub thier tired eyes slowly as thier less than childish children had and deliberately, until, hence, was it known to them that they had made the march."
The open gate fornicators rose from their restive slumber. They had collectively slep for fifteen years. Upon waking, the Emperor, still swaddled in the inkstains of delight, immediately dispatced his hawk to the frontline, dangling a small note from it's ancient beak. The head of the column, still groggy and wiping sleep from his eyes, read the words written there with a fearful appearance. He gasped. He was seen to rush frantically about.
