2
The head percussionist gently massaged the snares with brushes and the bass trembled as Twism lay on his deathbed. Zoe had first noticed his failing health when one of the jalepeno lights burned out without immediate replacement.

It only grew worse as time went by. Twism started regularly attending city council meetings and began dressing like former presidents. There was no more snap left in him, no more pop. Even Twism's vile neighbor Donny had forgiven him his trespasses of times long before and brought him green carnations and a Caesar salad, for which Twism granted him a Presidential pardon. This and the city council meetings filled Donny with anxiety about what was to come next in the terrible nightmare, for even he understood that Twism and Zoe were not meant for the outside world.

Zoe, naturally, seized the salad without delay and sifted out the cucumbers. The skins were taken to the bathroom and the salad was thoughtfully disposed of in the usual way. She fed the flowers to Molly, the college coed botany major they picked up while on safari in Ventura one year earlier.

Zoe seemed to take over in the snap and pop departments where Twism left off; the crackle, however, stayed with him until the bitter end. Her amateurish rugsliding techniques and bizarre scatting entertained him. He also liked seeing his children home again, but they had left their own children at home as they were expecting either- ore even both- of their parents to expose themselves at various times during the holiday weekend, which could be very traumatic to small children who had yet to understand how the world worked within the walls of the flat.

The children had gone to the lounge for a while when Twism's time finally came. Zoe had put on her coal miner's outfit and brought out the foreign exchange student that they kept in the closet with towels and the catapult. Twism, dressed as Abraham Lincoln, sat up in his chair and straightened his stovepipe hat.

The foreign exchange student was named Rosanna Deux. She was dressed in a French maid's outfit and wore finger cymbals on her knees. Although she didn't know what was going to happen, she was not afraid.

Zoe circled her three times, took out her pocketwatch and showed it to Rosanna, and then bit off the girl's left pinky finger. Rosanna shrieked and fell to the floor, crashing her knee cymbals together just once before having the most life-threatening orgasm she had ever known. The carpet in that spot would never be the same again.

Zoe swiveled around, spat out the finger, and curtsied to the sounds of Amish audiences cheering wildly. The spotlight on her faded and the curtain dropped. Twism died with a smile on his face, and Zoe went to get a sandwich after wrapping him in an American flag and putting him in the ground.

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3
Zoe had three paper lanterns and the ashes of a very small dog named Reginald placed meticulously on each corner of their coffee table (rectangular and squat, of cherry construction with an ebony inlay,). She was dressed in a Houston Astros' uniform bathed in emerald light which erupted from the bowtie room, inside of which Twism was busy meditating.

Reginald wasn't their dog; he was just a loaner from the neighbors who lived next door before Donny. Zoe would have returned the dog while they were still living there except for the fact that he was more alive when they asked her to watch him for the long weekend than he was by the end of the weekend. Zoe wasn't worried at the time, though; she just conveniently forgot who this 'Reginald" character was and waited for the neighbors to move away.

It was not as long a wait as one might expect.

Returning the ashes to Donny was absolutely out of the question. Even as contemptible a person as Zoe was (and she certainly was that,), not even she could judge the scope of Donny's evil. In her eyes, he was just nefarious enough to 'accidentally' mistake Reginald for pepper, and she believed that no matter how much of a bad dog Reginald may have been, he didn't deserve to spend his last constituted moments sharing stomach space with Donny's eggs.

Twism and Zoe had a dog of their own at one point. It was Christmas time and the paramedics were not very kind. Zoe preferred not to think about it and went to the kitchen to prepare a cup to tepid green tea.

Twism emerged from the bowtie room in a smoking jacket and pith helmet. He wore a false mustache with handlebar ends and clenched a monocle between his cheek and eyebrow. Feeling both mellow and posh, he lit a cigar and sat on the tatami mat with the design of engaging Zoe in some idle chitchat.

Zoe stood in the kitchen and brooded over her and Twism's apparent lack of sufficient enough maturity to lodge and entertain a puppy, let quite alone a child! She was rather bothered by Twism's idea of two days before, and was perturbed even more so by his consistent air of nonchalance since that time. Although she enjoyed intercourse with Twism very much, the inclusion of procreative intentions really dried Zoe right up and took the zing out of the entire affair. She was tormented most by the nightmarishly prodigious amount of bodily goo involved in the act of childbirth itself, all of which would be expelled from an environment which she preferred to think of as not being associated with a prodigious amount of bodily goo.

The pot of water boiled over. The night had the potential to be long and uncomfortable.

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4
Twism was out of time just as he began. The Chinese food from the night before, yet unrefrigerated, was starting to smell from outside the front door. Zoe had less to do with it all than Twism had originally thought. If anyone were to blame, it would have to be Oslo, the entirely misled delivery boy.
* * *
Twism had been exchanging glances with the small visitor for about an hour. Each time they met each other's gaze, one would lose his concentration and look away, but Twism nonetheless felt that some progress was being made.

Zoe was in the kitchen gnawing on cactus in a diligent effort to develop some "gumption," which- according to their neighbors upon receipt of their dog Reginald- she would need in order to maintain the proper amount of dominance over him for his weekend visit. They were peculiar people, and Zoe made it her charge to have as little to do with them as possible.
She was still reflecting on it when Oslo came to their door. Reginald and Twism were locked in a stare at the time, so Zoe put down the soldering iron and answered it herself.
Oslo was Chinese and he held a couple boxes of food in his hands, presumably Chinese as well. Reginald randomly barked and Twism fell backwards out of his chair; Oslo and Zoe quietly engaged in an unexpected staring contest.

For almost a full minute, the only sound in the room was Reginald's cacophonous yelping Then a funny thing happened: Oslo handed the food to Zoe and bolted back down the hallway which led to their door. She watched him closely as he nimbly leaped over the bag of lightbulbs, skillfully rounded the corner and fell down the stairs.

The Chinese food was marked "Bernie." Zoe placed it on the floor exactly where Oslo had been standing and closed the door, expecting that soon he- or perhaps Bernie- would be back to pick it up.
* * *
It was still there the next morning, and began to make its presence known just as Twism ran out of time. It was frustrating, but just the same Twism liked the suspense, so he turned the hourglass once again to see how fast he could put his clothes back on. It was great fun to him, he could time himself all day, except for the fact that the process involved a few difficult maneuvers which required him to thump audibly on the floor, thereby disturbing the coffee socialism going on one floor down.

The coffee socialists were certainly a damnable and short tempered crowd if ever there were one, eternally doubting the true randomness of a solitaire deal and wielding their own monogrammed clubs and sticks in case the need for an angry mob should break out without notice. Twism had antagonized them to the point of complete emotional deforestation only about four thousand times since moving in above their dive of choice, but each time they made it to his and Zoe's front door they would forget their purpose, dismiss the entire trip as a false alarm and then mildly retreat, congratulating each other on their readiness for skirmish. Of all the factions Twism had ever come across, theirs' was perhaps his most favorite attention span.

Zoe emerged from the shower with a piece of terry cloth wrapped around her head, using a corner of it to protect her nose from the smell. Even through the towel it gave her goose bumps on her hips and lower back. Surviving the day wasn't going to be easy if Oslo or Bernie didn't hurry back soon.

Reginald was excited about something.
* * *
Ten hours later, twilight was upon the flat and so Zoe abandoned the catapult for a while. Work like that really required sunlight anyway, as a delicate hand alone couldn't protect it entirely from faulty soldering. She spat chunks of cactus into the trash and sauntered towards the bathroom with the intention of filling it with steam.

Twism and Reginald huddled under the couch together taking shots of chandelier cleaner, one reviled by the stench and the other excited by about it.

As far as the rest of the building was concerned, there was most definitely a general cause for alarm. The jazz musicians had long since vacated, and even the coffee socialists had all gone for a stroll to catch some air, but the Amish found it all curiously pleasant. There was a peculiar haze in the hallway that one in the habit of making scientific observations would not find uncommon to instances of charred polymers and laundry detergent, smothered in sweet and sour sauce and subsequently trapped in an airlocked edifice.

Another hour floated by and then Zoe was out of the bathroom and ready to leave. Twism grabbed his white dinner jacket and the blue tie and they took the fire escape ladder down to the pavement. Zoe spied Reginald one last time before leaving to make sure he was behaving properly. He was happily chasing his tail on top of their new coffee table, recently liberated from the clutches of the socialists downstairs.

They returned the next morning to find the boxes of Chinese food shredded apart and eaten as well as half of the lightbulbs down the hall and some of the carpeting around their door. A saliva-like substance was clinging to the scissors protruding from their mailbox and and the smell of the night before had subsided to that of popcorn and grass clippings, the typical Sunday morning fare.

It was Twism who, at last, found Reginald; Zoe already knew what the outcome was and therefore didn't care if he was ever located. After all, he was a bad dog.

Zoe counted her locks of debutante hair from the previous night and put them with the rest.
The soldering iron needed some warming up.

6
Still without masks and dreams the dark woman withheld the key from the coffee socialists and kept her presence unknown to Twism and Zoe. She was a messenger of royalty, freshly arrived from a two year sortie into the Philippines, now without Bolivians.
* * *
The bubble of the percolator struck a rhythm and a slight rotation of the shoulders and hips crept across the indifferent assembly in the coffee shop. It was the Day Crowd, and some were seated and others rocked back and forth on their threadbare soles as the kids milled about on the pavement. The kids wasted no time on the greasy spoon. They broke open no
fire hydrants and ignored all of the tires, from which air should have been released.

The kids never did much of anything but trail behind them on their migratory route a cloud of midday lethargy. They knelt and stood, slouching in packs against the shady brown surface of the building, studying the slope of the bricks and lighting matches with their teeth for a few hours before moving on to another destination. The kids inspired crazy theories to
surface in Twism's mind, and they terrified Oslo, the delivery boy from the Chinese food restaurant.

But everything terrified Oslo, the delivery boy from the Chinese food restaurant. Oslo, in addition to being the delivery boy from the Chinese food restaurant, was a closet agoraphobic.

This was the way it went, or at least the way it made the most sense: Tension skipped generations, or- scientifically speaking- acted in a genetically based wave frequency which, as Twism was fortunate enough to observe, could be found to crest in the general age gripping of the coffee socialists and trough outside with the kids. But how could Twism gauge the truth in this belief without someone there to discuss and notarize its validity? His two groups of test cases were either too frustrated and high strung to listen to him or not high strung enough to care, and Zoe only wanted to talk about sex and catapults, seemingly.

Oslo also was known to develop paranoid delusions of conspiracy against him based on his eye contact with other people, for which he took two of the green pills every day with water.
* * *
The Bolivians adored her, enough so to leave their landlocked home and follow her- in canoe by moonlight, on trail by mule, and on Pan Am by redeye- to the fertile but brutal Philippines, where her next mission would be carried out. It was to be a three year mission; duty, however, beckoned her form the United States at just under two.

The dark woman was born in Alexandria and educated at Oxford, at the completion of which she was promised by her benefactor a management position at an up-and-coming car wash in America. But, though loyal and grateful as she was, she opted for the part time position with British Intelligence and now she had the key.

It wasn't more than five inches in length, and made of what, at one point in time, looked like silver. In her eyes it was in dire need of a bath in jewelry cleaner, although warm soapy water would probably do, the dark woman spent much of the day scraping dirt off of it with her thumbnail and nursing a bottle of guava nectar while hiding in a department store
cafeteria. The section closest to her advertised men's hats at thirty percent savings over normal everyday low prices when purchased with a credit card issued by that particular store.
* * *
Zoe was mad about catapults. She always had been, and now wanted to construct one in the flat. The prospect was terribly arousing for some reason, although her lingering sense of decency made her question whether or not it was selfish and inconsiderate of the feelings of their neighbors to undertake such a loudly constructive task. She had moved in with Twism only a month before, and thusly knew none of the building's other inhabitants yet, but was compelled nonetheless. Ideas popped into head concerning the project without cessation, but just as often would vacate and make room for other ideas, so Zoe, who with without paper or pencil more often than with, was forced to record her notions on and with whatever was available at the time. What would ultimately be the final design for the device developed
out of a sketch done with blue nail polish on a fresh, unused pair of white cotton panties. Zoe was mortified at what she had done in her creative inattentiveness, so a copy was made and the panties went into a regular cycle of usage without delay.

As if things weren't difficult enough already, Oslo was also clinically diagnosed as an obsessive-compulsive workaholic, for which he took pills three times a day of the same shade of blue, coincidentally, as the nail polish. However, the hours of the pharmacy were very unpredictable in those days.

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7
Two plants hung in upside-down styled terra cotta ziggurat planters from the ceiling of the bathroom, which- according to Zoe, who had placed them there- were very beneficial to the prosperity of the plant inasmuch that gravity would have a multi-tiered effect on the shape of the pots and, her beliefs being what they were on the opposing forces of nature, would
subsequently create a ziggurat shaped gravity-free zone on the topside of the planters to the boundaries of which the plants would expand and flourish but never cross. Such was the necessity, as per Twism's requirement.

The hanging planters, along with Molly, were prizes reaped from the splendid ten day safari in Ventura, and were made of Kauaian red clay gathered from the most consistently wet square mile of land on the face of the planet. Polynesian ceramicists of Russian lineage (Red Mudmasons, as they were called in the heyday of their craft,) sculpted their shape and texture as they were with the intent to appeal to not only those of mathematical affinity but also to the domesticated natives of the Central American jungles, not to mention the growing number of agri-theologists in southern California. Zoe believed herself to be all three of these things.

Twism was a different breed.

Twism vowed early to never interact with plantlife- aside from watermelons, of course, but that was a different story. This was due to a recurring nightmare of his youth in which the world meets its doom when a plant is foolishly introduced into the weightless vacuum of space and grows uncontrollably- free entirely of human cultivation. Therefore, any
gravity-free plant zone around Twism had to be strictly regulated by physical law and only given scant watering. Such was the necessity, as per his requirement.

It was his aging condition, Zoe guessed, which made him so wary. Only the hanging planters were new additions; the plants themselves had been there for years, growing in small pots along with the Bolivian sevenleaf on the back of the toilet. Nonetheless, Twism chose not to enter the bathroom, even when being enticed by a showering Zoe, who often preferred company for such an activity.

So Zoe watered the plants every day, kept the bathroom humid and warm, and gave all three plants positive verbal reinforcement. She encouraged them to grow up strong and centralized so that soon they would no, longer need the brass chains upon which they were suspended, although mostly it was all fleece. The last time she had had enough confidence in a hanging plant to remove the chains, the planter merely crashed to the floor and broke; the plant died.

The triplet sounds of planter impact, subsequent shriek and heavier impact- as heard from below in the coffee shop- induced a smile of familiarity in at least three born again agri-theologists who remembered fainting after their first floral accident. Like them, Zoe was
embarrassed and disillusioned with the whole philosophy. She abandoned it long enough to figure out that naturally the plants couldn't engage in self-suspension since they were so young at the time and the planter was rounded on the bottom, and like the born again 'ag-theists' (as they were called in the heyday of their religion,), soon returned to the faith after
correcting her fallacies. A good rule to live by is, "Never invest in a planter more aerodynamically superior than a block wall." So the ziggurat shape was perfect: all of its bottom surfaces were parallel to the ground and its topside growing zone was of a good shape and volume.

Zoe could not concentrate any longer. She abhorred the ambiance of the bow tie room just as much as Twism abhorred the plants, but she was willing to subject herself to that kind of discomfort in order to maintain a proper balance of her spirituality.

Her train of thought derailed as she heard Donny's door get yanked open. She knew that soon it would slam and that shortly thereafter would come the vicious knocking upon their own door.

Donny was younger than Twism and Zoe, and he seemed to seek understanding through frustration. He was so loud! Sometimes Zoe wanted to hit him with a baseball bat in order to relieve some of his tension for him, but would that make her any better than him? Would she top that action by relieving her own tension with the baseball bat?

One time Twism had resorted to battle with Donny armed with sporting equipment. It had not been a baseball bat, though; Twism preferred the duality of the well placed defense and precise attacking force of a badminton racket and croquet mallet. He had triumphed, but Donny, through his broken face, had called Twism a "stupid limey" and it tore him to
pieces. Twism never engaged in sport again.

The yelling and pounding had meshed into an almost soothing white noise. Zoe passed through the kitchen and grabbed a stalk of celery on her way to the front door. As she approached the door, she allowed her robe to drop from her body. Recently, Zoe had changed her hairstyle to a brief bob of auburn and she felt that it worked very well with her height and shape. Twism was very fond of it as well.

Zoe opened the door wide, bit off a piece of celery, spat it in Donny's face, and shut the door.

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8
The back end of the house had kind of a dancehall, a long covered deck patio which was sometimes used for banquets and contest judging. Tonight it was used for dancing and inebriation and was dimly lit by thirty paper lanterns strung up close to the eaves and beams. Mostly they were white with red characters depicting the same ideas one might find on small, hardpacked sugar valentine hearts, things like "true love" and "cute girl" and "I promise" and "our secret."

But the primary curiosity was not the dreamlike sources of light- such as the lanterns or fog shrouded torch spires on the field perimeter in the distance or orange-red specks of cigarette fire floating immediately past in the darkly moonlit hands of grinning strangers with wildly submarine hair and shiny, black, diamond pupils of dime size- as much as Twism's
uncertainty as far as how he was comprehending the translation of the lanterns' fortunes without any previous study of Japanese characters. He craned his neck back and read more, becoming consistently more intrigued by the amount of knowledge coming to him from a simple, unpainted patio roof.

There was music around Twism and people dancing with it. Although it all seemed very otherworldly and slowly serene and simultaneously swelling, he couldn't really sit and listen to the music and feel its deeper meaning, as his friends had instructed him, and was therefore very unprepared when Cherry Lane, who had been standing next to Twism unnoticed for a full minute, stood on tiptoes and kissed his Adam's apple.

Twism, startled, shifted his attention from the words painted in light above him to the girl standing before him. She slowly drew back, and he noticed the tilt her head kept after withdrawing and the shape of her lips and the size of her breasts and the look in her perfectly set, almond eyes- in that order.

She seemed ready to speak almost. He smiled and she whispered to him above the joyous din (making Twism smile even more because he was actually listening to her faintly spoken words and truly feeling their deeper meaning above the brutal cacophony of the background,) that she had come from the fire pit and that he should walk back there with her to get out of all the noise and smoke and light.

Twism had forgotten about the fire pit; it was a place he had already been to. Scanning the nebulous horizon, he found it there where he had left it. It had such strangely familiar qualities, and- as he and Cherry grew closer to it- grew brighter and larger and called out to him even more. The pit itself was housed in a large wooden octagonal hut with five benches and as many blankets and gaping, unscreened windows and doors. But what did it want with Twism? He knew what Cherry Lane wanted, but why did the fire call to him so? It was at the top of a brief hill- why hadn't Twism remembered that? He and Cherry were presently nearing the top.
* * *
The resurfacing practice worked better than Twism had expected it would, and might next time be able to be applied outside the bow tie room, even. He paused in that line of thought and changed his mind. "Emergencies Only" would be a better practice as far as outside trances were concerned. It was a safe place to meditate, to think of the past, especially
because there were no more than two shades of blue in its architecture and interior design. Stolen display racks perched on pillars of blue quartzite material (salt encased in glass, if one were to ask of Zoe her opinion,) which were, at best, translucent but with immeasurable depth. There were five total with respective display racks. This pentagon, eternally bound
within the octagonal chamber, was Twism's idea of geometric diversity.

She was short and had blue-black hair of debatable length. Her legs were strong, her breasts were firm, and her ambition was- for all practical purposes- nonexistent. Zoe was not her exact opposite, but did espouse the flipside of many of these qualities.

Cherry occupied Twism's time almost exactly one year before Zoe; about three months more than that before the dark woman (whose interaction with Twism truthfully filled little more than a businesslike capacity,), and was unknown to each. He didn't often think of her, and never really missed her, but sometimes did reflect on the time he and Cherry had together.

It was New Year's Eve; Twism wouldn't think of Cherry Lane again until Independence Day. The champagne piled and sat in anticipation of houseguests while Zoe, in vibrant beauty, casually primped their children and straightened her stockings. Twism's tie was dark for the occasion but matched his eyes perfectly.

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9
Twism leaned casually over the railing and stretched his arm into nothingness. Surely someone would lash out at him soon; he was poised in paranoid trepidation and was waiting for a shout or a flash of light or occurrence of attack.

After a few minutes of quaintly rustic silence, he almost started feeling silly. After all, these were not the type of literary Vikings he had encountered on previous sorties. These were refined folk with great mahogany support beams and pewter sconces in their midst.

There were also the curious hanging braziers far above him, even from his position on the second floor landing. They were suspended- each by a trio of blackened chains- ten feet from the unimaginable ceiling, some eighty or eighty-four feet above the marble floors and fifty yards across with gaping circular maws cut out of the roof for heat and smoke to escape. The light which remained cast a type of three-dimensional halo on the structure's entrails which made the wood dance as if pumped full of gilded, iridescent chlorophyll.
* * *
Twism and Zoe owned a complete set of Saarinen Tulip kitchen appliances with self-destruct mechanisms. On a particularly volatile evening at a cocktail party Twism threw before he had met Zoe, his migratory friend Reggie Vespucci told everyone an interesting story he had heard while traveling.

It seemed that somewhere there stood a dead glass city. Not unlike the empty museum or cathedral, it had no visitors ever but was constructed of such brilliant splendor that its bricks and beams and towers and steeples made the idea of truly universal beauty a tangible thing. Every building was a single piece of heat-blown art glass and every day at twilight they would spring to life when the sun was behind them. At night they seemed
also to live- backlit by an eerie aurora- but were possessive of the darkness contained within. Even though a perimeter of spotlights had been put in place at the city limits, nary an edifice was any more transparent than a pitcher of crude petrol.
* * *
At that point Reggie's date Cathy yawned and left the room to get some punch. She was an attractive girl but she would not drink with Reggie and his friends for any reason, ever. It was her strong belief that drunkenness was an act of the Devil and Reggie really only kept her around because she also believed (with nearly the same amount of conviction,) that
wearing undergarments put tension on the body's circulatory system and led eventually to high blood pressure and death.
* * *
He continued. It seemed that at the center of this city there was a great auditorium shaped like a clove of garlic. It was also a single piece of glass, but did not spring to life as all the others did at the introduction or lack of a natural light source. Instead, it was colored from the inside like a rain cloud all the time. It was a gigantic auditorium; it had shag carpeting and wonderful ballrooms and movie theaters on various floors. Nobody worked in the theaters.

Nobody ever came to visit, either. It had no name or origin. All that was known about this place was that those who entered it limits never came back and in fact were never seen again. The city was not a piece of property and belonged to no one, but was under a system of rule. Its rulers were three savages who lived in the garlic auditorium during the day and hunted for innocent victims to murder at night. No attack on them could be
made from a distance without damaging any of the structures, so they remained.

Vespucci concluded by pointing out that the savages within were no more than ideas of the city itself, manifested as a defense against the savages without.