Titans of Chaos

The columns and spouts of mud then changed. Their inner natures altered. With the suddennessand meaningless-ness of a dream, they all turned into trees. The tall fountains grew bark andsolidified; the explosion of lava and red spray at the top turned green, became leafy and cool, andbegan rustling.

And we were in another landscape, a fairy-forest, dreamlike, cool and soft. The one ugly thing in agrove of delicate cherry trees was the grounded, keel-broken boat, lying half on her side, halfburied in rock and grass.

I rotated another face into existence. It was quicker than wiping the hot goo out of the eyes of myold face. This one was only about an eighth of an inch different: slightly thinner, highercheekbones.

I could see Victor. He was only about two yards away from us in the blue direction. The chaosstorm was still around him. I saw the acid and writhing mud entering his open chest cavity,entering his mouth and nostrils. He was choking.

I jumped and caught him in my energy-shaped limbs. I yanked him back into the red direction,and we both fell to the deck in a slosh of chaotic goo, flame, and freezing mud. Since the deck wascanted over at forty-five degrees, the slop slid down along the deck boards, dripping in a brownfan of filth off the starboard rail.

Victor's torso and trunk had elongated, and his arms had melted off or had been subsumed intohis body. His flesh slid through my fingers, running red. Again, he was slipping from my hands.

Again, he was caught up against the starboard rail. Parts of him floated through the bars of therail and fell to the grass below. I cannot express the ugly horror of it. My boyfriend had turned tosludge.

The chaos-stuff followed him in from the other scene. His legs were shining with blue energywhere I had not quite pulled him all the way back into our dimension, and sluices and rivers offiery slush were crawling after him, slithering across the deck.

Something in the way the slime moved was disquieting; it did not flow like mud or lava. It wasmore like a nest of centipedes, scuttling on many hair-tiny legs.

There was a hole in midspace, about a yard above our tilted deck. Chaos frothed and crawled andgushed and bubbled in each direction, globes and blobs of fiery mud cascading outward in asphere, falling in sloppy streams to the deck, gurgling over the smoldering deck planks, floppingand hissing over the side in long muddy icicles.