Jogging with Roussel 5

Flora Crinis-Sane had fallen asleep soundly on the evening of February 7, after jogging home from Ages Reticular spa, showering, and having a lovely glass of Laville Haut-Brion  Blanc from the well stocked cellar of M. Konfians, and relaxing for some 46 minutes with M. Konfians in his own spa watching an old American film about an aging fashion model with a strangely robotic face living in a quaint beach cottage along the New England coastline who now collected seashells on which she painted symbols so as to use them as chess pieces in a game with a young poet who came to visit her once a week whose slight speech impediment she found charming in a poet. Her dream that night was particularly clear, what one might call a lucid dream. In the dream, Flora was a young man named Angelo Essermos, an agent for a multi-national corporate conglomerate named  Ispolzuette and Hernesque, Inc. sent to the small country of Eisnark which comprised the isthmus that bisected the upper horns of Lake Constance in Northern Switzerland ostensibly to buy six properties which the company had expressed an interest  in. After speaking to his immediate superior, a woman named Nedda Skariovsky, on a hard gelatinized video tablet which he kept in a grey velvet sack designed to look like a young boy’s trousers, Angelo set out to contact a woman named Manette, a local real-estate agent for the firm Terne and Toluene, Esqs. After that, the dream seemed to shift, and become a dream within a dream; Angelo had brushed his teeth with a toothbrush that looked as if it were made from ivory, but with a clever bristle cassette the color of acid turquoise. After putting on his pajamas, he laid down to sleep in a comfortable chalet, a light snow now falling, looking slightly orange through the window in the security light set high in the pitched roof’s peak. He dreamed that night of being the Pythia of Delphi, herself readying for sleep in an elegant cave-like simulacrum of well-made but primitive furnishings. One glance in the mirror, and Angelo realized he was none other than Nedda Skariovsky. In the nude, now, Flora-Angelo-Nedda crawled into the deep furs of the bed, and looked at the last flickering of the orange flame of the oil lamp as it guttered out. In her dream, the Pythia awoke to a strange feeling as if her nipples were erect, but also separate entities, and were moving, or sliding down into her armpits which were glowing. When each nipple reached its destination, the Pythia felt a small prick, like a tiny thorn entering her armpit. Then the nipples began to grow and harden into ivory handles which extended down and out making them accessible to her hands. At one point, she knew she must grasp the nipple handles. As she pushed against them she felt a surge of intense pleasure and relief, but also an existential discomfort, as if she was simultaneously remembering and forgetting something she could not quite put her finger on. As the handles were pushed further down, a glowing line began to form across the chest of the Pythia, until all at once, the entire top of her torso popped off like a cap revealing a beautiful luminous pink transparent fungi animal, an Arcimboldoesque conglomerate held together by spidery black wires, or veins which somehow she intuited as a word, as a physical hologram of living letters which somehow spelled:

Éloignez-vous de mes manes.

When Flora awoke the next morning, Mordan was bringing in fresh peaches and ice-cream for breakfast, and glasses of Champagne. There was a small grey velvet jewelry box on the tray. It was open revealing a lovely engagement ring with an enormous pale pink diamond surrounded by rays of emeralds and rubies like a tiny twinkling floral star. Mordan was chuckling. Flora felt disturbed and confused. Mordan laughed, then, “BFF’s forevah?” Flora stuck her finger in the icecream, and said nothing but “Mud..”