Anti-ideological rant calling experience water and belief... ice.
Rajiv keeps trying to convince me it's the best hotel in India: the orgy of biters, the
bowls of twitching fingers. But it's only the oracular spirits that really impress me...
CAUTION: CREEPY FINGERS
Chapter 8 of UNICORN TAG, though it can stand alone.
A packet of magic soupmix sends me upstairs to a secret wizards' lab.
They've summoned a demon they can't handle: the furious Black Unicorn...
A man obsessed with blood and death disturbs me, but I have to admit I share his interests...
Next the blood comes home; a surgeon wants to flay my tongue...
Next, witch-children rebel against a bloody flossing ritual and fly away on broomsticks...
I'm gigantic, stretching from Ceylon to Tibet. Grass grows from my navel to heaven.
Worms crawl on me. Birds flock to me and change color. I climb a mountain of dung...
CAUTION: PIOUS MISINTERPRETATIONS
Our gods demand sacrifices. I let Mother mutilate me so I'd be unfit. But the priests turn out to be blind...
CAUTION: YOU CAN FEEL PAIN IN DREAMS
A girl with a magic swimsuit flashes me, as her Iranian fundamentalist aunt glares from beyond the veil...
CAUTION: NUDITY? OR ILLUSION?
I'm on vacation, but cultists lick my feet--then turn on me, casting stones. But they miss.
So I wander the steppe for centuries, until I come to the City of Texas...
Everyone's joining the Cult of Blindness. My mother signed up. I'm tempted; it's
the only way to find a decent date in this town. But this fat gatekeeper objects...
I infiltrate the Cult of Cake. Novices drool over chocolate frosting
and hand over their life savings. It's a pyramid scheme! A food...
CAUTION: TRUMP REFERENCES; HIDEOUS PUN
I find the feminist principle "the personal is political" leads to some alarming consequences for privacy...
CAUTION: POLITICS
Okinawa in the far future, when the world is run by dogs. Except they worship us, and we aren't there...
I was on one of those package dream-tours--an hour here, a scene there. But then in Patagonia...
CAUTION: CREEPING PAGANISM
Night. Heads shaved, in loose-fitting gray robes, the young men swing from eave to eave. Two lose their grips.
Hard fall. Blood. Assistants call ambulances. Others swing on, house to house, before dawn...
1: I'm starving in a lush valley; a cult claims all the food, the water, even the air.
2: I'm drowning in a cage but find a corner with water I can breathe--just barely.
3: I'm a merman with a wise friend who hints I need to leave those who starve & drown me...
CAUTION: DOMESTIC BATTERING (OFFSTAGE)
Dream-elephants slowly bring John to terms with the early loss of his dad--and lead him out of a cult he's outgrown..
The goddess of the Cult of Clutter catches a little thief, and tastes her to see if she’s worthy...
I'm in medieval England on a mission from God, but I meet a Priestess on a mission from...well, we argue.
I'm a priestess standing on a stone terrace, holding a ritual axe. Before me kneels a sacrifice to the Goddess...
My part in the revolution in Guinea-Bissau: substantial, but not exactly planned. I just wanted out...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
My friend Dawn drags me to a cultish workshop. But I fall asleep! Or is
that bad? The Financial Guru awards me $1250 for spiritual napping...
CAUTION: RIDICULOUS UNTIL...
A CIA man trying to infiltrate a revolutionary group flunks a lie-detector test, so the Headshrinker...
CAUTION: REAL HEADSHRINKER
A huge bridge spans the Pacific; my depth perception reaches miles instead of mere yards.
A crowd worships a guru hidden in a tent on a pier. I don't trust him! He has hidden in tent...
CAUTION: THE JONESTOWN MASSACRE
Jacob dreams of angels climbing to heaven. He meets God, who promises
the Holy Land to him and his tribe. Jacob uncritically accepts...
DREAM 1: A man wearing long white underwear shoots me down with a machine gun.
DAY: Long John Nebel interviews me; his Freudian friend calls me a penis-envying woman.
DREAM 2: Long John and his buddy umpire a rough baseball game. Definitely not cricket...
CAUTION: SEXISM, FREUDIANS, PUNS
Our dream-group's dreams had a lot of imagery in common: circles, groups, meditation. I fused them into this piece...
At the end of my long, tiresome tour of Hell, it's feeding time in the cage of the Manson cult...
CAUTION: SO MEAT REALLY IS MURDER!
I meet a cult worshiping a mermaid who just wallows in a puddle, teaching
her followers absolutely nothing; she just wants admiration for her looks...
CAUTION: CARTOON BREASTS
Natalius dreamed that angels whipped him for joining a heretic cult, and woke to find welts on his back...
Keats met two winged lovers nesting in the woods: Eros and Psyche, the last Olympians, worshipless...
As I bike home at night, strange doings--a rat is sacrificed; gemstones delivered;
an astronaut shows glowing alien objects; a second rat becomes a... firefighter?
Cultists must wear a burqa and confess their sins daily. So why's their beach such a pickup scene?
CAUTION: NUDITY UNDER FISHNETS
A friend nags me to be lookout as he steals a cult's papers. I know it'll end in murder, but foresight paralyzes me!
In a videogame that keeps freezing unplayably, I find a button calling up a secret screen of second chances...
I'm lost in a grim basement, but two kids show me a cobwebbed glass door you can walk through like air...
I dreamed the Stealth Bomber wasn't a machine, but a gigantic Owl-god. And Stealth was worshiped...
CAUTION: CREEPING PACIFISM
Repeated attempts to move a gigantic, sacred, saucerlike stone all failed; but now,
with the world's biggest cranes, we get it on a truck. It crawls past adoring crowds...
I dream my friend Suvy introduces me to a man who just took a class I'm considering.
Weeks later she introduces me to him--but just as in my dream, he feels a bit insipid...
I'm a tiger from Planet Cat, visiting Earth to run in San Francisco's "Bay to Breakers" race.
I knew racial tensions were high, but why is William S. Burroughs out to kill me? Oh. Because...
Okay, say evolution is driven by things (I don't care what) besides natural selection. How could you tell?
My family home's invaded by ancient Egyptian architects. So
I put on my unicorn mask and eavesdrop on their plans...
In our cult, we lie in vats of goo till we grow wings. But we're feared more than we knew...
CAUTION: SPECIST LYNCH MOB, NUDE IN SCHOOL, LESBIAN FEELINGS, OBSCENE CARROT
Trapped in a blend of Joan of Arcadia and The Tempest Tales, I'm tired of being the pratfall sidekick...
Half-mad with fear, I massacre a cult, till my gun manifests stigmata: a gory miracle.
Then I'm a cultist, resisting the Voice of God pushing all us mortals to murder in His name.
I woke up haunted, and wondered for weeks what this was about... until the Waco Massacre.
CAUTION: CREEPY VIOLENCE, CREEPY GOD, CREEPY PREDICTION
The messiah of a suicide cult prepares to ritually sacrifice me. Then a miracle occurs! But... whose?
My cat dissolves in the shower. I follow her to a telepathic world. I want to stay, but can I?...