We packed up our gear in record time and hit the river. Stripped, and adopting an athletic posture like the tiger-skin man, we walk into the Monstrous fire. Folk had said the roads were lonely, said there was no human traffic, no human stirring, but the Monsters moved along the shadows, their skin covered with rashes and poison ivy.
We had built up a supply of ammunition, food, and blankets. We had stocked up on lots of crap like batteries and pet food and various things. While Monster fruits may be eaten whole, buying canned Monster is ill advised.
We thought we had enough to last, but we didn't realize the true challenge, being called out by a real human being who knows your name, being hailed from afar, across a howling winter rent by flames, then to see right through the Monsters, to see a clear fire glowing in their little eyes.
That's as bad as you're going to feel all day because right then the day turns to night and never back again.
Ah! the feeling of the sun, of the light on your skin, the soft breeze and the cool water on your face and then to remember, to wake up to the taste of vomit in in mouth. Never to wake up again to the clear morning, the birds singing, a breeze blowing, the green grass and the clouds walking across the sky.
Of course, there are plenty of Monster tents and hundreds of people picnicing on the grass around them.
On the slope of a little hill stand a dozen horses, gazing naïvely at the destruction. The scene is so tragic. It's a kind of poetry. People understand those kinds of things.
Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone. And then there's trashy beautiful and Monstrously beautiful, bones and all.
Then to turn around again, to wake up out of touch with the Monsters, with a lot of ugly in our hearts, soaked to the skin in the ugly Monstrous pitch of it all.
Later, the horses use their tentacles to suck our blood and fill their steel baskets with our juices. Their baked lips, with many a bloody crack, suck'd in the moisture, suck'd in the moisture, which like nectar stream'd. The horses leaping up in the air, that you might see the rolling muscles.