The wounds opened Hortag; the wounds opened Theust.

In their individual hells they watched the demons pour; the demons tear, making it all the same, less work required - less architectural rearrangement in Hortag; less, again, in Theust; this planet a flavour of more obscene organ degeneration; this retaining a certain overabundance of corridors that imposed upon you mad demonic, and utilitarian sexual mania; this planet a slightly different flavour of nightmare - this planet a little less goodness/a little less reality, even left in the souls that were replaced by the fake ones that replaced them.

Massimo watched, weeping. The demons poured into Hortag; his own people, as destroyed as they already had been, Old Works – worse, they were rendered worse, it was even worse - as much as he could not believe it: New Works was even worse.

He knew - he had been one of them - that in the dreamunits of Hortag - inside themselves - in their souls, he knew that they retained something like – it had only needed reawakening; it had only needed something – one accidental flash of beauty to reignite, anything, good - through it all/despite it all, something human; something real

- anything that for a moment could -

Out the eyes of a girl, it happened, that despite everything – every kind of disgusting conditioning imaginable, despite all that; everything, retained the ability – despite – despite - all that had been done/to her - to love, and to show that love, even amid -

even amid the most obscene and endlessly repeated

soul-violations.

Despite being –

despite the endless jeering cavalcade of rape -

She loved him/and she'd shown him that.

And despite – he had never seen... of her – again.

He hadn't - he'd never be able to return that -

It was Clua-Sryh – he'd never seen her; that thing had never been returned, no indication that he understood that or that he too, he felt, he -

this was all he wanted or aimed for; all he wanted to achieve, to be, at his best, to reach toward/to be capable of something as true, and as beautiful, as the exchanging of that thing that she'd given him with – something equally of his own, as precious, of his own.

He -

He could -

But -

And then he saw her.

again

And then he saw her again.

A wound opened on a plane of migrating dreamunits, coloured jackets, directing themselves unconsciously towards the television tube for their schedule emptying, of life, of love, of liquids, of anything they possessed that -

they were on their way across the blank, grey-brown, plane, between the tubes, between the various zones in which they would be induced to empty themselves.

The wound opened, and the demons poured out.

And among them he saw her.

Saw her alive.

Saw her – still – saw her somehow - not older, in fact not - unaged - this group – it was – then

Brought forward by the wound itself she was rendered timeless; captured at her most abundantly beautiful, in order to – this: – make whatever this was even more painful. In proportion to that beauty that never decreased; that was never for an instant diminished; never changed -

yet unaged, he saw the beauty undefiled pour out of her; saw her flashing golden hair, among the rest of the identityless flock that surrounded,

her,

saw her -

Saw her and the capacity of what she contained; saw her alive. Despite – how had she retained it?

Life? Anything? - How had they not destroyed her. How could that vision burn still with the capacity to love? - How was her soul visible from a country away; how – how had she retained... anything... hers?

How, upon a planet, between a three planet civilisation of - had she –

despite what her dreams did – how had she never become, that which even he himself in this moment realised he was only a more sophisticated version of – how had she never – surrendered -

Become a dreamunit herself.

The demon seized her.

Hands upon her throat. A giant Demon Sly. One eye, poured nothing-love and finally parodic non-existence; of the love of nothing; of the tearing out of reality of anything worthwhile/virtuous or good; of the final sneering spiteful layer of hatred

that tore hope out of any kind of possible transcendent existence:

the final eye that said hate yourself, and love only nothing - love yourself only in proportion to the willingness to destroy that which yearns inside you to be whole.

She screamed, and fought, and kicked him and spat, and tore his flesh with her finger nails, and whipped her body around him in a desperate effort to flee; to get away; to do something, anything but – get -

He held her aloft by the throat and poured

, from that eye – he poured something inside her.

Massimo, pleading for non-existence, unable to see – forced to see, wishing to forget, eradicated his own memories; the Wound staring directly into him, forced his eyes wide, forced it all into him. He transmitted these images direct from the eviscerated planes of Hortag itself, directly inside his body.

And then.