SNUFF (h.s.)

Chapter 31

Totem

Nora was sitting on the cobbled lane surrounded by lantern spikes with skulls. She was holding an iguana in her hands. Her brows, lashes and hair were silver blonde and long, her bangs winded each time she blinked. She was looking at him with a grey gaze. Nobody can tame the seas but the moon, and I am the Moon Goddess. Nothing is freed and liberated.

Behind her there was a large totem. He gazed at the carved azure eagle, a figure with fangs made of a lizard's skin and eyes wide open to remember each stranger and drifter. The totem was standing on the back of a turtle. That turtle was big enough for Harry to lay on her shell and wander across the Californian shore. Azure hawks, azure butterflies, azure conches, azure breeches, azure feathers. Nora gave him a compass made of blossom petals to find the way of the desert.

To arrive there he had to cross a bizarre path. The blotter was tingling his tongue as he rested on one leg, then the other. He wonders if the mesh was steady ready. Who had the idea to stuff the skull lanterns in front of the gorillas? My, how you've grown. He inspected the black, muscular, hairy bodies. He mimicked their posture, his uncovered arms stiffen and his naked stomach hollows under the vest. He doesn't seem to have the necessary thew to take' em on.

He walks to the next gorilla, a petit fella. Harry watches the quiet chum fitting in sixteen squares of mash. Sixteen in total count. A gorilla like you managed to wedge in a tic-tac-toe and some small change. Good gracious. He tried to calculate the times he'd have to trip out-skip out-freak out in order to put the pieces together but decided to leave it for another noon. Nora approaches. Harry inspects her hair as if he's trying to prove to the gorillas that he's capable of finding lice himself just fine. Your hair aren't silver blonde now, why? I never had blonde hair. And where are the skull lanterns? What lanterns?

They were standing for one thousand and eight hundred seconds staring at the gorillas, then at the orangutans, later on at the monkeys. They ain't colorful, I don't see them very small or as a matter of fact plastic like the ones they put on your ice cream at "The Olympians". There's a reason for that, you know. What is it partner? Harry was groping and lifting her bangs. Her forehead seemed flat and long, he was astonished to find something underneath, all these years he must have been convinced that she had an empty space hidden that he now had discovered. Nora's forehead was no different from the eucalyptus trunks over there.

They walked to the trees. In each step of Nora's Harry listened the waist chain chime and watched her hips lift first, her calves fast, her heels last like a stray leopard. What concerned Nora was the trunk. She caressed, fondled, she carved. She moved her fingertips in circles on the long green lines trying to taste them. They're like ribbons, you see? She feels the lilac lines, the hanging blue belts. You could paint me like this, Harry. Oh, yes I could.

She was resting her head on the rough bark. She smiled when the ants thought she was the tree and climbed over. A micro moving erratic black trail like train wagons started to form on her sunburnt skin. The ants follow a march she can hear in her head as they pass by. Her face must be a barren butte and despite their exploration upwards, they don't rest at all. They're carrying tarts on their backs, fruits and biscuits, sandwiches with an olive on a toothpick, trillion treats but they won't find her carrying anything – unless they have an eye for her motley pachyderms.

The ants were straight shooters, no funny business. They crossed her rugged mug and traveled to the peak of the tree. Harry kept groping her hair but never found any of the ants hidden or supposedly lost in her strands. You won't fool me, that's for sure. You must have come this way before, haven't you? And if you've crossed Nora's face more than once, then you must have a convincing reason, I tell you that. She reassured him this was their first and last journey. She watched the colors flicker on the trunk. You must paint me exactly like that – she points with two fingers at specific shades – you can blend the colors with your hands. That, he replies, would be slipshod of me.