The ballad of goo goo

or

The Octopus

or

The banality at the end

In the beginning there was goo: mucous, raucous, and slow. Moving from here to là (la la la la la la).

When goo slows down her temperature rises and heated she either lifts up or dries out/she makes a bed for herself.

Soon things are living in the goo goo goo goo goo goo they themselves made of this same stuff/they have tubes to keep their goo inside them and in this way they crawl onto the earth.

Now we jump forward in time/the things that crawled out of the goo have eyes and ears and walk around on two legs wearing suits. The primordial ooze the goo is sick thick things boiled slimed mucked about. Everyday tasks are difficult to accomplish. Various solutions are proposed and rejected. Enormous ventilators in underground tunnels cities that float high in the atmosphere one idea that came to fruition was a train that never stops running. The movement of its passage whips the air around it into currents that the suit-wearing bipedals can breathe.

Being in the train tastes like nothing/there are smells. They managed to replicate smells and they pump them through stimulating our neurons and our limbic systems or thyroid so we don’t turn into vegetables. Yesterday morning it was peppermint to boost productivity/today everything smells of banana.

I walk from the front to the back of the car. A passageway lined with windows runs along one side/the other side is individual compartments. The windows are double panes of thick glass. The world outside is turbid cloudless unless there is a storm. Between the panes we grow microalgae: nostoc chlorella spirulina/to absorb the sunlight from outside shading and feeding us/so everything in the car is tinted green.

What I dreamed last night:

We (me and whom? A guy.) are being attacked by an insect that will not die when I try to squish it when I finally do it splits open and a more horrifying insect comes out.

I was six when I got on the train. At first we could move freely from car to car/then they told us it wasn’t safe. Now you need an authorization to cross from one to another. In the daytime the light in each car is different filtered red or green-blue depending on the type of algae/at night all the cars look the same.

I don’t tell anyone about the sound/it began three nights ago. I couldn’t sleep. The ventilation in my compartment is broken/I go into the hallway for some air. Everyone knows that nothing can live outside/nothing like us I mean. It was forbidden to be in the hallway after hours but as an e———— I have a certain amount of leeway. Suddenly a thud a thwack a thingamablubberglubglub as if something large had hit the train. Three nights later I hear it again. I am in my compartment this time fiddling with an a—— when thwack there it is at my window/impossible to see anything in that black landscape.

Then for a week I hear nothing/out of the ordinary I mean.

Tonight it’s there again. I’m in the corridor/I can’t sleep. Through the colored glass a glimmer of greenish light a full moon I can barely make out. Then Thwack! Crunch! Bam!

Gooey gooey gooey gooey gooey gooey gooey gooey

Gooey gooey gooey gooey gooey gooey gooey gooey. An enormous octopus hangs outside of the train floating in the soupy air like water riding the train one purplescentanbulent eye protruding touching tap tap tappaty on the window. Its eye presses to the glass I believe it may explode under the pressure as I think of ectoplasmic gel squirting over everything: a pestulent pustulent pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. But the explosion doesn’t come and the eye moves away/the train is silent until the next full moon when I walk the corridor and press my hands against the glass that separates us/me and the lone conscious being in the waste outside. Plop plop plop a suck of tentacles pierces the air like the muted shot of a gun plop plop plip bam!

In the dull lunar glow I make out her eye/round and rising. The rectangular window darkens filled with blue ink. A creaking sound on the ceiling. Her tentacle wrapped so tightly around the car I wonder if it will break. Then something at the glass. A hint of green-white reflects the moon/long and ivory her tooth. She plants it against the window and begins to scratch. Scritch scritch scritch scritch scritch scritch scritch

Scritch scritch scritch scritch scritch. I should call someone/do something. But I don’t. I stand there listening as the scratching goes on/without ever changing intensity or speed. Eventually a thin crack/and a sucking. The train shakes buckles under the strain. Slowly the window clears until the round dark stain of her can be seen/ringed by a halo of moon pew pew pew pew pew

Pew pew pew pewsssssshhhhhhhhhhhh/the pane empties. A low deep rumbling further down the train she has restarted the process. It’s the first time that I can see the landscape clearly/silver soup glistening under full moon/a treeless cloudless horizon rushing by. I want her to drain the train to suck out its life as we sucked the life out of the earth/a vain wish.

Someone in another car will notice her and they’ll sound an alarm so she’ll be taken car of. I stand at the now transparent window its outer plate of glass cracked jagged open to the harsh landscape. The sound of the shot when it comes/is no surprise. I stand there until the sun begins to rise and the compartment no longer shaded by water and spirulina begins to heat up. I try to make out if her body is still hanging onto the train but I can’t see further than the next car.

“Oh my god” the compartment door behind me opens. “What the fuck happened?” Another compartment then another. Faces I barely recognize as they stumble out together. We stand there blinking dumbly in the sunlight, unused to the heat and and the sound of the train without its thick protective layer of glass. Then a low deep buzzing and a collective movement of the head downward towards our t——— a sigh of relief and understanding as together we read the message/the cracked glass in the car is the result of a technical fault/nothing more. The others return to their compartments and everything the same the train rolls on.

I stand in the corridor and think about breaking the inner pane of glass smashing it letting the thick poisoned air rush in. I should break it but I don’t. I stand there until someone comes out into the corridor/I return to my compartment. Later that day they fix the glass.