“What the fuck is this?” Katherine said, pointing at the smoking cube on the wooden kitchen table.
“Pisthogue.” replied Cecilia.
“Where did you get it from?” Katherine said. Even though the temperature outside had been freezing all week, the kitchen was warm. The army-green windbreaker that Katherine had on squeaked as she dragged a chair to sit down at the table. She found herself not wanting to look at the thing currently taking up the majority of the table, instead choosing to look at the black curl of hair that escaped Cecilia’s hat. She wanted to tuck it in, or maybe pull it out further. She didn’t look at the pisthogue on the table. Wouldn’t. Cecilia stayed standing, and she didn’t look at it either.
“Stole it,” she said, “From the Assistant Governor to the Treasury of Collocation.” She failed to mention that she actually had seen Assistant Governor - or “AG” as they were called in the parlance- and he had been a corpse on the floor. Ants were already crawling into and out of the body, because ants, like dogs, are especially fond of antifreeze. The AG of Collocation believed that antifreeze had the miracle properties of immortality and carried a little bottle of the stuff to constantly dab on his skin, the folds on his eyelids, and sip when meetings ran long. His eyes were already gone, and Cecilia had not cared enough to look closer.
Katherine didn’t ask about the Assistant Governor any further, and so, she would find out when they ran into his puppeted corpse a week later. Instead, she asked “Do we keep it? Sell it? What does it do?”
Cecilia shrugged. “I didn’t really think when I took it. Tag said it was a pisthogue, so I grabbed it.”
Katherine grimaced. “Then this thing might be dangerous, no? That’s what those official papers we got last month seemed to think. Maybe we should just get rid of it.”
But even as she said the words, her internal organs lurched. The blood in her veins, arteries, and capillaries seemed to tilt towards the table, like the source of gravity had twisted from the earth to the pisthogue. She could feel it pressing and straining and subtle and persistent and undeniable.
It was undeniable. No one moved.
They stared at the pisthogue for 3 hours, 56 minutes, and 21.4 seconds as it subtly rotated, ionized, and warped the room’s identity in subtle slow motions. At 22.6 seconds, the two women shuddered and blinked in the way one does when the water in the shower shifts from hot to cold. Cecilia dazedly snatched the little machine and the room snapped back into normality- the couch dusty brown, the dirty dishes in the sink, and the squeaking complaint of the fan above. She placed it in her bag and the singing in both their flesh dimmed.
Of course, they were keeping it. Pisthougues were precious items to be treasured, and the foolish governor had lost this one, and it was theirs now.
Oh yes, it was theirs now.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I hope you all liked the excerpt of my book, “Salination Dump- on the Missouri Zone” which is a dramatized recount of the incident that formed the Missouri Crooked Zone, or as the locals call it- Ms. Easy. The book comes out in late September of this year. Of course, I have been having issues with the writing of the manuscript for several reasons. The figures who played large roles in the event all have specific retrograde amnesia, are warped beyond human understanding, or are unable to be reached by phone. The other issue is that the Missouri Crooked Zone is currently trying to erase itself through history, present, and future retroactively and anteriorly, and as such, it makes the manuscript difficult to write. Every day I wake more and more confused as to what I have been doing for the past months, and I myself have tried to destroy the manuscript by fire seven times so far before catching myself and freeing myself of psychic coercion. Only through truly damning amounts of mefloquine [anti-malarial medication that is infamous for giving people dreams] and several bear traps in my house to trap Watchers can this book be written. Anyways, look for “Salination Dump” on sale soon at your local bookstore- and I will be holding signings at certain cities as well. Those will be posted at a later date to my website. See you all soon!
THE STORY HAS NOW ENDED. Would you like to go back home?