Sloughing Off the Rot by Lance Carbuncle Page A

the table.
    John helped himself to the baby scruff goat and ribs from the earth pig and found them to be a delicious change from the dry, tough dirt-rats. He avoided dining on his own jizz-critters, as it just didn’t seem right to him. Santiago chugged his cider and motioned to a server-Chelloveck to fill his goblet again and again. On Santiago’s plate sat a mound of many meats – scruff goat, earth pig, jizz-critters. His appetite overwhelmed him and Santiago tore into the mound of many meats with zealous abandon. Chelloveck gnawed at a large leg bone of jizz-critter. When he had stripped the leg bare of meat, Chelloveck snapped the thick leg bone and sucked the marrow from it.
    “Bring more cider for our guests,” ordered Chelloveck to a server-Chelloveck. The ancient man gnawed at another piece of meat, getting just slightly more of the food in his mouth than on his beard.
    Server-Chellovecks handed out meat and unleavened flat bread and cider to all of the spectator-Chellovecks. And a great gluttonous feast ensued. Chellovecks attacked their food as if they had not eaten in weeks. They tore at the fresh meat and tossed the cleaned bones toward the center of the amphitheatre pit. Server-Chellovecks tossed grilled jizz-critters to the spectator-Chellovecks and filled all empty goblets with strong cider.
    As they dined, a thick, sturdy door along the pit’s wall opened and three Chellovecks marched to the center of the arena. The three men held horns that somewhat resembled their father’s ear trumpet. The horns twisted and turned in tight convolutions and ended in flared bells. Before the assembly stood the trumpet-Chellovecks, old and wrinkled, their dry skin looking as if it were coated in a thin covering of dust and cobwebs. They wore red turbans and over their togas they sported ephods of white, blue, scarlet and purple, and interwoven with gold thread.
    The middle-trumpet-Chelloveck raised the mouthpiece of his horn to his lips. He looked to the Chelloveck on his right and nodded and then did the same to the Chelloveck on his left. His foot tapped out a sick, slick rhythm, stirring up a small cloud of dust on the ground. And then his horn blew hot, spewing a torrent of unhinged notes that slammed into each other with reckless disregard, the result being a slurred and climbing trumpet scream that rent the air but still somehow held a compelling melody at its core. The Chellovecks on both sides stood and snapped their fingers to the beat of the bandleader’s foot. Right-side-trumpet-Chelloveck picked up on the gist of the screaming horn and started spitting scorching notes himself. And the two horns rose and fell and twisted their tunes around each other, with a
blum-blum-doo-dat-doo
honking out of one while a tremulous sustained
screeeeeeeee
soared above it. And left-side-trumpet-Chelloveck dug on the chaotic strain and he sprayed steaming arpeggios all over the groove with his
bloo-doo-doo-doo-dat, bloo-doo-doo-doo-dat, bloo-doo-doo-doo-dee-dah-di-dah-di-blah-dah
. And the Demon Zorn looked on, snapped his thin fingers, and smiled a pointy-toothed grin.
    As if drawn by the pied-piping Chellovecks, a stampede of all shapes and sizes of jizz-critters scrambled through the pit door and spilled into the arena in a massive wave of snarling, scratching, snipping and snapping beasts. The Chelloveck horn section continued to kick out the jams, stirring up a roiling tornado of intertwined musical lines. Physical manifestations of the notes, appearing as proper but mangled sheet music with the notes twisted in the tangled ledger lines, swirled in the cacophonous cyclone that spewed from the Chellovecks’ horns.
    And the music whipped the jizz-critters into a frenzy. The chimeric animals in the arena pounced on one another and tore at flesh, sucked at the blood from defeated beasts. Bovine creatures with unwieldy horns ran and tossed their thick heads about, goring all that stood in their way. Small simian creatures