[Pt. 4 of ongoing text]
I don’t remember exactly where we left off in the previous chapter, but I think we were eating fish. So now you can go ahead and begin this present chapter, dear gentle reader, by causing our hero (whom you and I are jointly influencing, possessing, and acting as) to eat some fish.
I’ll just turn the reins over to you, and let you operate the control panel, because I believe that it is enjoyable to consume flesh while within the body of a literary character, and I want you to have that experience: Taste with her mouth.
So now our hero lifts the fish with her hands and inhales its savory scent. She sinks her fangs into it. A fish is also served to each of her (our) spouses — the mother Mary, who is stunningly young, and her adult daughter Teresa (played by an actress who, in the real world, is actually older than the one playing Mary) — and they eat as well. The fish tastes good.
Here is an instant replay of one detail of the inside view above: Our character takes the fish in her hands, and she holds it. We (or you, rather, since I let you use our body for this brief scene) feel its texture thru the nerves in her fingers. Then we bite the fish. Our mouth now studies the taste of the fish, which fires up sensations in our mind by way of our tongue. (Lo, the tongue is a little member, yet it boasts great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindles!) Also our fangs suck up its juices. But the tongue is arguably the most provocative agent among our members — it can listen AND speak (I’m referring to its double role of both devouring and declaiming, whereas fangs just suck) — it gives one a body-buzz, and sets aflame the course of nature; and this combustion comes straight out of Hell: it is wholly delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which only look like torment and insanity to inexperienced Angels who are aggressively second-rate.
As the scene continues, we learn that our hero and her wives enjoy eating every available kind of flesh: of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, whether or not they have been tamed or cooked.
We even like to eat poison.
So here we are, at the table, with the wait staff watching us: They’ve never seen anyone take to so much substance with so much relish. We all go on eating with our hands: lifting up the cuisine, inhaling its aroma; then biting and savoring it. And, as I explained earlier, the daughter and the mother that we married at the drive-thru accompany us at this feast: they eat with greatest appetite each of these foods that we end up ordering, and poison too.
Yes, we eat all substances, from nutritious to poisonous. Three women at a table in a restaurant surrounded by the waiting staff. The manager looks on as well, and so does the owner, smiling with pride. The only characters of our psalm who are not happy, so far, are the poison’s parents, who are disappointed that their offspring did not attend college. “If only our poison had gone to a decent school,” (the dead, tainted parents argue in spirit-form,) “it would have been blessed with a livable income plus a house with bigger boundaries, and not have caused our species to screech to a halt.”
And we eat them as well, the poison’s parents, despite their fleshlessness (recall that they are long deceased, at this point) so as to mute their noise of lamenting.
But now the other husband of our brides (and father to one) appears at the entryway of the eatery. So this close relative to our female spouses comes closer and closer. He climbs over the wait staff and wedges himself betwixt the women of his heart: at his right hand sits the dame that he vowed to stand by forever, and, on the left, the mere effusion of his proper loins. (These phrases that we wrote here are just fancy ways to refer to his wife and his daughter.) Yes, this man pulls up a chair and joins us at our feast. And we are compassionate to this stranger. We treat him courteously and share our fish with him. For all are welcome here; nobody gives a fuck.
And it comes to pass, as soon as the husband is seated, that the waiting staff brings in twenty-nine more companions to accompany us. These are all the other people who wanted a dinner date with our literary character, after they heard about how strong our conversational skills are. For when the evil husband of our wives was lurking past the rest of the city’s population in the streets, on his way to the restaurant, the loathsome things that he kept unintentionally muttering about us “betrayers” served as the best word-of-mouth advertising for our dining experience. In other words, unlike most of the kings in the parables attributed to Jesus, we have no problem finding guests to attend our wedding feast. Even the current husband eats two well-cooked fish. Along with seven sticks of garlic bread.
Now, if you don’t mind, O gentle reader, I myself shall take control of our protagonist for a while.
At this point, I stand up and make sure that my corset did not shift place enough to expose more than half my bosom; then I point at some random person among the multitude and say: “I will now put forth a riddle unto you: if you can certainly find out and declare its solution to me within the seven days of this feast, then I will award you thirty caesars. (You will then be able to cast down the payment and hang yourself. Just trust me on this one.) But if you fail to devise an answer that seems pleasing, then all these people here who are enjoying our wedding feast will voluntarily change their raiment in front of us.”
And this random fellow in the crowd replies, “Put forth thy riddle, that I may hear it. Howbeit, I do not yet agree to thy terms; for I believe that thou art only attempting to belittle me in front of this gathering, so that I may appear foolish in front of my wife and our daughter here, who claim to have downgraded me to the temporary position of ‘boyfriend’, as they are now YOUR brides, and ye are enjoying your honeymoon as we speak. You even seem to be consummating your vows half-clandestinely in public, before us this evening, under the table.”
“I’m going to take that as a yes.” I say. “You have therefore just provided your legal signature and sealed your fate. In other words: by simply engaging in this meal with us, you agree to the terms of my New Covenant. And additional conditions apply: For instance, you hereby allow that only Jesus could ever fulfill such exacting demands as I have laid out for the Laws of this contest; thus only HE (who is my favorite invisible man) wins the thirty caesar coins. And only HE gets to hang himself from a tree.” I glare for twelve minutes. “Does that make sense?”
The man stands up and slowly reaches forth toward me and removes my opera glove and then uses it to slap his own face forty times.
(“Very smart,” I remark in undertone to the female whom I’m caressing, after the man who just slapped himself finishes slapping himself.)
“Is that more to your satisfaction, Tyrant?” he sez. Then he returns my glove and I slide it back on to make sure it’s every bit as stylish and elegant as it was before he removed it.
“I’m glad you asked,” I answer. “Now, here’s the riddle…”
Then I deliver my next few lines like I’m a magus performing a trick. And of course the man fails to guess the correct line of dialogue that I desire for him to say; so all the people in the restaurant are required to change their outfits, right there in front of the studio audience; thus the watchers get to continue observing the onstage events from their seats in the outer darkness.
And it comes to pass, after seven days of eating in this eatery, that the manager of the joint steps forward and makes her way thru the multitudes who have joined our wedding feast, and she stops before our character (when I say “our character,” I mean the female hero in the story whom you and I, O my dear and gentle reader, are controlling as a tag-team, like when a pair of clowns engender a two-piece horse-suit), and the manager sez:
“I dared to approach you on behalf of the Owner of this Immaculate Establishment. I’m only the overseer. The man was just wondering something. Here’s his question: How long do you plan on continuing to invade this Fish & Bread Superstore? Also, do you think it would be possible to entice either you or your wives to declare unto us the solution to your riddle?—because, if you leave upper management wondering for too long about the mysterious allure of a work of art, we will shoot thee with guns. And we will wet-blanket thy nighttime forest’s fire.”
I now give the controls of our character back to you, O reader. And you end up turning the damsel’s head menacingly toward this jerk who just now threatened her with torments, and you move her to say:
“The forest of the night is always burning — that’s its natural state; and we slew its final Tyger in the prior episode. So what’s your point, Richard? Why don’t you tell the Owner to address us in person.”
So the sole proprietor, Saul, shuffles over and sez: “I’m only concerned because you’ve been here for countless days now, and you keep eating all of our poisoned fish, but you haven’t either died or paid your bill yet.”
“Ah,” we shake our head (you and I decide this jointly, on impulse), “so, settling the bill is your favorite part of lovemaking?”
The owner starts to stammer out an answer, but we interrupt: “Don’t you enjoy what you do?”
He starts to weep. “Thou dost but hate me,” he cries, “and respectest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto these children, my paying customers, and hast refused to let me in on the lucrative secret; and this hath resulted in a loss of power on my side of the equation. Or at least I feel like it has. Plus I’m jealous of thy mother-bride and daughter-bride, and those among the congregation here who I fear shall soon become thy future-brides — ye make my morality feel soggy and outdated.”
And he weeps before us for seven more days, thus we decide to continue to feast.
“I’ll eat these fish while the supply lasts!” I make our hero shout. “It is true that they are bow-hunted carp, and not very tasty, but I will keep on eating them.”
I actually have no idea what type of fish they keep serving us — and they’re really delicious — but I just said that they’re carp and added the compound “bow-hunted” because we met one of our neighbors while out on a walk yesterday, and he said that he recently went bow-hunting in his friend’s sailboat, and they caught a whole bunch of carp; and when I asked him if they ate them, he said “No, we do this only for sport: although you can eat carp, I don’t think they taste very good.” So this exchange worked its way into our scripture.
And it comes to pass after the seventh day of the owner of the Fish Eatery’s weeping spell, that one of the harlots of our party took pity on the fool, and she lay sore upon him: and she told him her answer to our riddle for the sake of the children of his people. But this guess was incorrect. However, the twain did end up conceiving a child on the occasion.
So when I glanced up from the piece of fish that I was eating, I said: “Excuse me, Sir or Madam, but it looks as if you plowed with one of my heifers there, yet you still did not discover the solution to our sweepstakes.” Tho, at this point, even I had forgotten how the riddle was originally worded.
And the Spirit of the LORD came into the room and turned its head this way and that. Then it left again and went downtown, and stole thirty coins from that place, and took this spoil, and it came back and bought a change of garments for whoever could expound the riddle falsely. For its lust was kindled, and it wanted a new type of father, which it thought that it could achieve by clothing my harlots in the garb of prudent clansmen; but this backfired, because the cut of the skirts of their uniforms, being distinctly tailored for menfolk, served only to showcase my harem’s feminine assets. So, to cheer up the Spirit of the LORD, we fed it the thugs who had sat down nearby to intimidate us during our feast; and they were discharged unto the thing to become its body. And the report that we kept on file here at the agency sez that it worked to the bone these extras as human shields.
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