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DadHoc ST:
Set on 24/12/2022
The Trod to Trenton passes over the hedge river, rushing pregnant with winter water. Grandly lit with flickering tube lights meant to mimic neon but filled with fireflies or similar creatures, is a sign reading: SHACKAMAXON FUCKS THE WORLD SUCKS.
Most come across the more conventional bridge suggesting instead that TRENTON MAKES THE WORLD TAKES and sneak in the door through the wire works's disabled access ramp to the restrooms. Whatever the route taken, however, eventually one reaches the East Side Market.
Roomba the robot is lurching about on their gears and belts, whirring and clanging and desperately trying to herd the cats. The cats aren't figurative, they're literal, and they all have more than one head, and they're all wreaking havoc by leaping onto tables and over stalls.
Situation normal, really.
A vardo parked nearby has a hob out front, draped decoratively almost Peter Pan style across a settee placed on the wagon's back. They are knitting, all bundled up in a parka, and chuckling at they mayhem around them. A wave is offered to new arrivals, since Roomba is busy literally herding the cats.
Ylva:
Ylva wanders into the Market through the Trod, she is doing her best to stay Hedgeside even if its frustrating her.
Her eyes watch the cat herding and the cats themselves with a smile on her face. Definitely a little bit of 'I wonder what those taste like' passing through her brain.
She waves to the Hob out front with her left hand and a few tails.
Her outfit today is her regular short skirt, fishnets, knee high boots and jacket but today she is wearing the 'Submissive and Bleedable' singlet because it was really cute.
DadHoc ST:
A large blind goat goes wobbling through after Roomba and the cats, a giant frog-like hob indifferently astride its goat mouth. It lazily licks its eyeball as it rides past Ylva, hellbent for leather on the tail of one of the cats. There's a crash of sheet metal and a clang and whirling hiss as something round and metal spends its rotational momentum to rattle to the floor.
The hob in the Vardo back just keeps smiling about it all, "Is that so?" They ask, indicating Ylva's shirt with a big smile. "We should be friends, then. What brings you all this way?"
Ylva:
She chuckles the shirt having the intended effect of breaking the ice.
"Well that really depends on how this goes." There is a pause. A stutter of nerves. "Got something to sell, thought you might be in the market as it were."
DadHoc ST:
"We buy, we sell, we trade. No tampering with the automotons. No sealing. No dealing in unwilling flesh. No fighting. Nazi Punks Fuck Off, no red and white accessories. Be out by sundown. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." The hob sets down their knitting and looks back to Ylva with more interest, beckoning her forward with a delicate, lovely hand. "What is it you're seeking to offload, luv. Give us a whisper." They tap their elfin ears lightly, drawing back their lovely, luxurious blond hair, making offer of their ... we'll go with ear, sure.
Ylva:
She counts off the things on her fingers nodding each time. A little muttered no to accompany each thing.
Stepping forward she mutters into their ear. "How do you feel about Kiths?"
DadHoc ST:
"Not my cup of tea, luv," they answer kindly, shaking their head in the negative. When you ask vague questions around here, you tend to get vague answers. The Spinner looks back to Ylva with a rosy cheeked smile, a little nasal note to indicate 'you're welcome', and then focus returns to their knitting.
The goat with a frog on it is now standing on a cat. So that's one down. The goat noisily bleats once, apropos of absolutely nothing.
Roomba has tracked down most of them, and has sprouted several redundant arms to hold all the cats it's caught up to now. The final cat collides with Ylva's ankles to a sudden explosion of mrowling and a puff of cat feathers.
Ylva:
"I want to sell my Kith, Gristlegrinder flavor. Who do I have to talk to?"
She smiles at the cat then hisses at the one that collides with her.
DadHoc ST:
It mrowls hysterically, and goes careening off again with renewed energy to a whole new round of crashing. Roomba wheels past, then backs up slowly to stare Ylva in the eyes with its weird absurd mechanical face, swings one of its empty hands up to point at its eyes, then at Ylva, then at its eyes, then zips away again after the cat, still holding several of the cats in the air. They all start mrowling like bagpipes as the chase resumes.
The Spinner nods heir lovely head over towards a tank of pink liquid, bubbling and burbling. Just. An oval glass tank. Filled with that goop. And a pair of eyeballs, held in suspension. "Not who, luv. What."
Ylva:
Ylva matches that stare unblinking with a little tilt of her head.
"Fair enough. Thanks."
At which point she wanders over to the Goop tank? and waves at it once she is next to it. "Hi?"
DadHoc ST:
When Ylva leaves the Auric Spinner behind and approaches the tank of the Gloop, the two severed and disembodied eyes slowly wobble about to face Ylva. Not quite in alignment either vertically or horizontally. It doesn't look like a face, is the point. The hi is answered by a single large bubble appearing in the tank, rising slowly up the fluid stack, and breaking out the top with a wet, farty ploop of jelly.
And then the idea of a response comes. "Can I help you?"
Ylva:
She watches the eyeballs and the bubble with an interested look. A tilted canine expression.
"I want to sell my Kith. Was sent this way."
DadHoc ST:
There's a tick at the back of the throat from the Spinner, and a little shake of the head. But there's so much mayhem going on around them all, that could be a remark on any of it.
A second bubble explodes into being in the bottom of the tank and slowly, slowly, every so annoyingly slowly bubbles and writhes its way through the jelly to the surface of the tank to burst out in another wet and shlorpy splatter.
And again, she's made to wait a while longer while the bubble's message reaches the mind.
"Do you. What will you give me to take it from you?"
Ylva:
Ylva looks a little bit confused at that. Of course it will want something. Fuck. She thought this would be easy. Markets, everything costs even giving them something.
A memory, an emotion. Fuck. Fuck all the things that are expensive. All that is holding her together.
Fuck.
"Ill give you the memory of the day my Polycule moved into our house and consummated it."
DadHoc ST:
The eyes in the tank hover slowly in the liquid. No bubbles are forming. The eyes lower their attention to the ground, as though thinking. Then up towards the sky, as though thinking. They wobble back and forth as though weighing and discounting options, and then they focus back in on Ylva.
Finally a tiny little air bubble appears in the gel. And being so small, oh it takes so long to climb up the side of the tank. At one point it splits, taking twice as long, before reuniting again nearer the top as the density lessens and the speed of the bubble increases. It pops out of the top with a sharp, high pittched little poit.
"Tilt back your head. Open your eyes. There may be some ... discomfort." Oh. "Breathe through the mouth."
Ylva:
Ylva looks super uncomfortable at this but tilts back her head and opens her eyes breathing through the mouth.
There is a constant running thought of. 'Oh heck, oh shit, did I just fuck up.' running in her mind.
DadHoc ST:
It's too late now. Running would now be stealing. Slowly, she can hear if not see the gloop climping the walls of the tank. She can't see how. It's probably a mery that she can't. But she will definitely feel it when the wet sticky slime slaps over the top of her face and forehead and begins working its way into her head via the nostrils, surging upwards and inwards not painfully but not gently, either.
And then the Gloop is in there, somehow holding on to her brainstem and rooting around in the attic and cupboards. No, no, no, no. Ahh. The gloop is an intruder, but is not intrusive. Her body may lurge and spasm and gag, and it may be uncomfortable in the strictest sense, but gloop makes it feel necessary. Gloop makes it feel like it will just be a moment. Gloop makes it feel like it might be sorry there isn't an other way. That's probably just to make the work easier, isn't it.
In through the door of the mind, into the door of the house. And then what's the point of describing it. The gloop begins taking the paint of the walls, the color out of the room, the sound and shape and warmth. Gloop takes out a toothbrush and gets into the corners and scrapes away the caked in, cooked on memory. Even that really good moment. Even that one. Fuck, what was it?
And then the gloop surveys its work and steps out like a janitor and shuts a door that collapses into dust.
"Now," comes the hoarse whispered thought, "now, for you."
Ylva:
Ylva cries a little bit as the Gloop does its thing, not at the discomfort or the urges of her body, not at the fact that there is a weird Gloop monster in her head and brain.
But her mind had wandered back to that memory. To the day that she, Astrid and Jenny had. What. Gotten their house. Yes. As the memory fades the tears come a little stronger.
Her fists clench in her pockets as it speaks.
DadHoc ST:
The gloop spasms and glows as it drinks in the memory, the new color of jelly coiling into the rest of the creature like osmotic consumption. That memory was mustard yellow. It's just a vague stain in the tank, now.
The sensation of cold jelly sliding down her brain towards her spinal cord is made to seem delicate and artful. Terribly sorry, miss. Can't be helped. Cute shirt, by the way. Did I mention that? It does a lot to make those electric spasms of unbidden thought energy no terrible inconvenience, really!
The Gloop finds a crack between what is and what was made to be, and worms inside that, too. It's not a real place, or a real thing, it's a thoroughly metaphysical chink in a very meraphysical wall. But the gloop surges into that, too, like water and ice breaking mountains, the Gloop fills on the things of Ylva that are Gristlegrinder. And the osmosis begins. The hunger begins to abate, but the mien too. Ylva is being unmade, and the making is being eaten, and while a canvas may be left behind, the mirror is absolutely going to be unfamiliar for a time.
When the Gloop finally detaches itself from her psyche and slurps fat and contented back into its tank, the finaly influx of jelly blurbles and growls as though possessed of a terrible hunger before splooting into silence at the surface of the tank.
Pale and slightly dehydrated but none the worse for wear, Ylva is left standing before the tank.
"Pleasure doing business with you. Go away."
Ylva:
Ylva stumbles away out of the Market towards her hollow. Towards 'home.'
Another muttered thanks to the Spinner as she passes out.
DadHoc ST:
The Spinner watches her stagger out with a sympathetic nod of her head. "Awhhhhh, luv. You never forget your first time, do ya?"
As Ylva retreats, Roomba is seen wheeling past once more, all cats herded and held in its metal claws.
"Th- th- th- thank you. Come aga-- aga-- aga-- See you soon." It wheels away again. Making it clear the madness here will never stop.
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