PHANTASMONOGAMY: A SOLUTION OF SALACITY
By Quillon42
It was another, different day, here in the wintergreen and wisteria wings of Wyntech…but the shit going down was certainly not the same as it had always been.
All six remaining employees of this ostensible megacorporation, which threatened to tower over the troposphere with a medicinal designed to do away with surplus body mass and somber blue moods…that hapless hexagon of pharm personnel was now exposed to a curiosity of carnage which none of these Nineties ninnies had ever encountered in their mercilessly-style-starved years.
Expecting the usual backdrops of mint and mulberry, the incoming stiffs were scandalized to find instead a diorama of dread and death. As it turned out, bloated bastard Bob Arnold had gone from bullying to butchered in the course of one late shift, a knife by the name of X-Acto, of all instruments, had extracted the essence out of that horrid husk of a human, lacerated the lout, bled everything from him from blubber to bluster. Insult topped injury as well, as the mook's mouth was discovered stapled shut besides—industrially and many times over.
Just as the workday was about to be called on account of atrocity by Tom, who was the shepherding supervisor to the lewd, lurid lambs under his charge,
[BLAM BLAM BLAMMM]
and everyone on the prurient pharm machine's payroll stopped in their tacky-ass tracks, to stare at the shut door to the occultish office of one Paul Allen Warner.
Minutes previous, a petulant exchange between said Paul and a probing policewoman who wanted nothing less than for justice to be served, on all accounts applicable.
Here in this permutation of the phantasmagala events, the pharmacological foreman had been guilty of just a crumb of a crime more than what he was responsible for in the main rendition of this tale. Upon taking closer note of the taxidermized animal arranged near to the door:
"You know, you…
"You're that guy…the one who…"
And then Detective Allie Powell took it upon herself to undo, right then and there, the most deviant miscreant of sexual mischief in that entire, sordid suite:
"I DON'T SUFFER BASTARDS WHO'RE ALL IN THA BESTIALITY, FOOL!"
Then an abrupt elevation of the gumshoe's gun, and three BLAM(MM)s later resulted in the resignation, ever so abrupt, of the appalling Wyntecher known as Paul Warner from his pivotal position.
Not until hours later did a Therese-teased, Jocilyn-jostled Curtis Craig emerge back upon the pillmaker's premises, the tallish tool tiring from the miring maelstrom of sexual tensions tethering him, and he wishing for some alone time, even in the after hours, all in his cluttered cubicle. It seemed that the man couldn't even be left alone in his apartment anymore, what with the S&M-simpatico Banning Babe barging in there as well. Too many brushes with those blondes, as well as fervent flirtation with Trevor, and even a bit of unsettling erotic undercurrent with his therapist, that Susan Sarandon stunt-double Dr. Rikki Harburg…all of it was too much for the technical writer to wrangle at the moment.
Yet even settling into his workstation proved insufficient for the suffering corporate slave. It was without question that the young man was a bit more than dipped into depression at present; for sure he needed something to put everything into perspective. Looking into the lair of the laid-low Allen Warner might help formulate such a frame, Curtis figured, given the giant there who had fallen of late. As such, the yuppie yahoo ventured towards the boss's chamber for said vantage.
All about the office was tape of the cautionary kind, courtesy of the local authorities. Through the swatches of swarth-and-sunshine-shaded plastic the canny Craig noted nothing of import at first, naught that was remarkable: the usual computer, the mundane desk…even the gasp-inducing goat by the door were all things which the white-collar lemming had lain his eyes upon in the past.
Then there was the matter of the identification card, apparently abandoned by heedless hoodlums working for that enforceress most punitive, she by the name of Powell…
[SLSSCK SLSSCK]
Some swipes later, with the top-clearance badge of that Wolf of Wyntech known as Warner, and Curtis found himself confronted with all the whatsits and whatchamacallits of Project Threshold, properly tucked all underground and out of the way of low-level prying eyes.
At first, incognizant of the import of this place, the worried writer of technicals allowed himself a soulful stretch of exhalations, he ever so overjoyed to have encountered a place that was even more of an escape than the cubicle in which he first cowered this evening. Absently the young man sat at the switchboard nearby, he staring with a blank expression at the steel platform on the other side of the glass partition…he wondering what kind of clinical trials must have been conducted down here all this time…
And it had been then, just as Curtis was even about to align himself with the whimsies of sleep, yielding to the swoon of slumber right there at the control panel…
[WHOOOOOSSSSSHHHHH]
and the clueless keyboard-clatterer awoke keenly with a start…
…then almost launched from his seat of lazy lingering upon looking at the haggard horror hovering down to his place at these platinum platforms.
It appeared to be the personification of the vile vomit that a skeleton itself would spit out. With battered branches for arms, shoulder coverings eked out of some kind of cosmic coral reef, and a mud mask manipulated out of mucus, this thing was propagated from some protoplasm of pusillanimity. What commandeered Curtis's attention more than anything were the marionettish wires clinging from said mollusky manifestation upon the entity's upper body—the sinister strings wavering tautly in the airspace but leading ultimately up to no mooring above.
Impulses of confusion and consternation curdled within Craig. He didn't know what to make of this cruel creature who just happened abruptly upon his seemingly safe haven of steel.
"Wh…
"Who?…"
"I am someone who was like to bring about the very end of you, Curtis…
"But now, since I've had an opportunity to visit you a mite bit earlier, my boy…
"You're going to do some rather…dirty work for me. Help me make up for lost time."
Initially the altitudinous ignoramus was petrified at the putrid thing's address…was this inside-out alien going to enslave him? Entrap him, and then indenture the young man into an eternity of extensive servitude? Curtis would rather continue on indefinitely in a cubicle-sized universe with Jocilyn than undergo anything untoward with this terrifying troglodyte tottering menacingly before him now.
In this reality, as it would so turn out…Curtis was a bit more of a cozy coaxer when it came down to convincing another away from the morass of mass murder.
It was true, yea, that the Curtis Craig mentioned above and all along was actually, literally not his true self, but rather a mutated clone from the very Dimension X from which the aforementioned bone-and-coral puppet Hecatomb had harkened. Further it was the case that the real rendition of the technical drafter was mired in the selfsame alien Dimension—he wantonly deposited there by Paul Allen Warner in his childhood, as a strike against Curtis's scientist father—and that in fact the horrid Hecatomb was a manifestation of Craig's true self, a pernicious projection posed to depose the Earth-inhabiting clone Curtis who had been jiving with Jocilyn, trysting with Therese, and traversing a course of coquetry with Trevor all this time.
The existence-inhibited original—the one enmeshed in Dimension X—he wanted all those things, and he abhorred intensely that a counterfeit Craig had been out there living his life during the Seventies, the Eighties, and even the inelegant Nineties. As such, Curtis the Firstest had desired to do away ultimately with all of the people who put passion into the ersatz putz who was his imitation.
Thinking quickly, as it appeared that the Curtis-Firstest-created Hecatomb was about to lash out at Curtis the Second and scratch him out entirely, the clever clone piped up once more, propounding a solution to his original's issues regarding his deprivation of delights, as well as his own pickle concerning the surplus of prurience he was suffering of late.
"Look, man…you take me to your dimension...take me to your…me…and perhaps we can work something out, between all of us."
So it happened that the Hecatomb, regarding Curtis the Second very warily, hustled the man to his homeworld, and to Craig's other self. There, before the First could even begin to protest, and his mean marionetted manifestation motion to take down the technical writer, the latter leaned in and pursued yet another dalliance of deviant intimate activity, as was the norm in this unbecoming universe.
More specifically, in a move which could be considered more technically asexual than homosexual, the Second dashed in, doffed the mucoid membrane massed over the mug of his true self, and seemingly frenched the fuck out of that First instance of himself. Through doing so, the svelte schmuck let into the other an air fresher than his personal predecessor had breathed since he was a young boy, the cosmic CPR cleansing Curtis the Firstest not only of the evil alien air which had been infused into his system these last couple decades, but also imbuing him with the insight that a breath of unadulterated hope could hush through the other, stunted self. In other words, what went down in this minute was not a kiss out of lust or libido, but rather one of rescue and release.
After the Second disengaged the First, then, the latter had looked upon the former with a mien of appreciation rather than acrimony. The Wyntecher then whispered into the other's ear, told him of all the things he had missed while mucked out in the miasmic morass of Dimension X—but also of the palpably prurient things he could still do, if only he'd accompany himself back to Earth.
Excited to have another opportunity at existence, the First Curtis flung his arms out before him, forcing the hateful Hecatomb back into his own body. The puppet strings became literal poppy stems as the revenant receded, the coral reef armor a metaphorical coat of ripe affection for Curtis One to wear out into the real world.
In the end, indeed, matters became more than mended as people began to pair off quite promptly. Because there was literally more of Mister Craig to go around now, it was the most efficient of Wyntech workarounds ever to pass Curtis the First off to Jocilyn—an arrangement which worked out perfectly. The First had never known Earth beyond childhood, and the slightly-more-than-suffocating Joc was only more than overjoyed to have a fresh new version of her life's love to have all to herself, and to introduce to the rest of the world on her own terms.
(The rest of this expansive planet consisting, of course, only of the Wyntech Building itself, Curtis Two's apartment, Borderline, the Dreaming Tree, and Doctor Harburg's office).
The Second Coming of Craig, on the other hand, was now free to pursue other passions pushing his way. Therese would be trepanned with scandal upon finding that she would be tossed aside in favor of Trevor. As the bawdy and overly-brogued blonde watched Curtis Dos dancing off arm-in-arm with the man of his dreams, and saw Craig Uno to boot ushered off towards this world's remaining four buildings by his own new, smothering significant other, the sadomasochistic seductress slouched upon one of the shamrock cubicle walls…then considered that old codger Tom, on the other side of the paneling.
Sure, he would be a bit bland in the beginning, Therese thought as she nibbled her thumb absently yet suggestively…but on the other hand, his potential trajectory from tame to torrid, courtesy of her own carnal cajoling, could prove to be a project all the more thrilling to fulfill.
END OF STORY
(Response to Truemefista: If you don't like the story here, then go and write your own if you want something on here that you think is so worthy. I'm fine with constructive criticism in general, but insults are out of line.
While what I have typed here above is not bullshit, your bitching about the story is...and it's a dick move besides on your part.)