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 ^{(it's beta!)}

The Orient was such a place of mystery.

Oh, said the,

Damn but darling its all there if you just look." So I looked and would you bet on my reaction? It was a dead armadillo on my doorstep for crying loud.

So I slapped her silly then crazy then insane.

And then I said to

And then I said, "You don't understand, you powerless vixen, that my father was killed by armadillos. I was 7! Are you insane?"

So he stood on the front porch looking at rusty red cement crying into his calloused hands silently as a deaf man.

Yessir, he was always my salt & sandpaper man.

Every morning I would wake up and

Lungfish can breathe outside of water and their abilities are probable links to the ascent of man. So mankind (or humanity, if you prefer) looks upon evolution as a ladder leading to himself (itself), the summit.

O, cried brother hippopotamus, I

digress and not for the last time.

The salamander sisters walked seven in a row down the path to the door of Glass Porcupine Manor. They reached the door and (taking care not to walk under the ladder) knocked three times, on wood. There was no answer and they all marched away like seven tiny girlish brigadiers who were each in her own way terrified of armadillos.

"Their curved backs are warm and hard, like old cookies you put in the microwave. You press on it and it will give way, but not like you think. The outside stays firm, the inside compresses. Like stroking a damned giant, hairy wasp. Only these things are liable to kill you." Harold was in awe, but horrified, by the idea of touching the things, and had moved to Canada to avoid them, though it seemed that they had followed him all the way. "Sure bear a grudge, don't they?"

Segmented. Another connection fell into place for Lauren, who studied the issue with great interest.

It is not in the nonsense, drivel, mystery, etc that The Glass Porcupine holds its masses. No, it is in the minds of men. The reason obsessionism never took hold on the public consciousness was because the only truly obsessionist work was a product of occult ritual. Or at least this is asserted by various notable professors of the subject, most important of which is Dr. Amos Zaman Moses. After deducing the nature of the beast (not the book, never the book), he was so horrified that he killed the animal (if it can be called that) and tried to destroy all evidence of its existence. He failed, and James Dorsatum years later would assemble his research into mankind's greatest literary achievement. Untranslateable, pretranslated. Pretenders to the Dorsatum crown abound (Goldfish Bowl, Hitler's Rejection Letter), but none come near. They are as kangaroos jumping in meadows at dusk, each jump high but not nearly as high as the sun. Indeed, as The Glass Porcupine devours more of a man (or does the man give himself willingly, if there is an exchange at all?) the man becomes more and more certain of its occult and forbidden nature. Surely no human could build this? Write this? But no man could have built the atom bomb. No. Truly the beast remains: black jellyflesh, coal eyes, ivory teeth and all the trappings of 8000 years of nightmares. And as the beast so must The Glass Porcupine.

And he lived under a waterfall, and ate naught but lily blossoms, did the man who divined these things.