“Can you hear me, Mother Goose?”

 

It’s dark in the basement beneath Castello Carrapazo, so much so that closing your eyes would be impossible to notice. But sight was something he didn’t need for the next part; Painter Nazayho knew the symbol’s serpent shape like the bridge of his nose. The air was thick in there. Low ceilings and dense sheetrock walls corralled humidity from his exhales, gulag style.

 

The cliff bound Castello had been abandoned for centuries. It was a nomad fortress, numerous royal families had come and went along with their blink of an eye empires, leaving footstep shadows to keep the dust tides company. The dead city of Ybao Moa had no ruler, no riches, no dreams. It lay in the threshold region of Western Sahara, and its capital building was for those passing through limbo. Its people were stuck, too weak or too scared to leave, afraid of sand reavers and dune storms on the other side of the ridge. Better to sit in squalor near the sea, at least there was some solace in the horizon at the edge of the ocean. No dream lived in the minds of the people, but the faintest idea of one lay in the image of the sun setting into the blue.

 

There was a haunting in the silent unscrewing of the urn covers, rhythmic cadence of vase mouths unleashing cinder scent into the hostage humidity. Thirteen urns, thirteen capsules of stories turned to slag by remorseless conflagration. The urns were unsealed one by one, ready to spew their contents into the design burned in the back of his mind. It was all for her. All for what was taken. All for the communion.

 

She had become a mannequin; catatonic snow white in a waking oblivion, her skin a vanta-white mirror, her eyes gutter voids to the emptiness behind. To grab a brush and send a drop of ink onto her would turn dermis into canvas; she would take on the color, passive pigment tanning from a muted rainbow long gone. To stare at the tabula rasa that was once his lover sent no signals to heart nor mind. No rage, no sadness, no hope. This was mirror coma, there was nothing left beyond fleeting memory echo.

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She had been taken, taken along with the idea inside her. It was not right, not yet manifest in that seventh month, still premature and requiring more intricacies. A half-baked thought swimming around the womb cradle, a promise of projected prosperity for the Painter's wife, a distant shore of laughs and first steps and first words and new dreams to be had. From thin air, into thin air. Made gone. Sent away. Rendered not. Ideas go somewhere we have no concept for, just like they come to us in the first place. But the brush yields not art without vessel, medium, delivery system, so the Painter ventured to find his color in the fertile plains of human story. Except that stories in the city of Ybao Moa did not last past early childhood, devoured by the dreamless horizon and the fear beyond the ridge.

 

In the deep, in the dark, child ashes fall like rain from cloud vases, birthing dust deltas that sprouted sediment river vines. A labyrinth of snake charm lambadas, crossing necks of a thousand hydras made from human dirt. The symbol from nowhere, the dream design that would bring resurrection in the bowels of Castello Carrapazo; this was the work of the Painter, one raised from thirteen lost souls, or what remained of them.

 

These lost souls went quietly. They did not understand. Did not understand the blank visage, did not understand the blind folded treks, did not understand the matchstick ascension. Their wide-open eyes went with the flames. Flesh stench of childhoods not to be had, pruned from the grand tapestry, carried by heavy smoke across the vents and cracks of the Castello. Fumes born of culled golden ages became an atmosphere enveloping the Painter, a breeze resting over the fraternal ash beach that covered the floor. These were the children no one looked for. These were the futures eaten by Ybao Moa and her artist angel of death in the basement of the nomad fortress.

 

It was ready. The urns were empty, the grid was set, this symbol of ash a new face for the basement floor. He followed one of the many slag necks he had laid back to the center of the design, kneeling amidst the humid haze of stale air and residue reek. In that moment, he thought of his wife, not of the lack behind her eyes, but the lack within her womb. The night he lost them both, something drifted into his dreamless sleep. Something crawled down from nothing and left tracks in his eyes and message in his ear; an anti-song made with instruments meant for the deaf.

 

“-A-”

“-RAB-”

“-ESQUE-”

 

Head bowed, the Painter’s exhales became louder and faster, a triptych pulse loop emerging between his breaths, a recital of the null-speech.

 

“-A-”

“-RAB-”

“-ESQUE-”

 

Into the black came a low hum from his throat, belting out a beckon along each cycle.

 

“rrrRAMmmm”

“kkkKAZzzz”

“vvvVOLLAGggg”

 

These were the names given to what had left the tracks, what had marked his mind on that fateful evening. These were the calls for communion, the revelation.

 

“rrrRAMmmm”

“kkkKAZzzz”

“vvvVOLLAGggg”

 

This was an invitation for mighty annihilation from Ram-Kaz-Vollag, Mama Razor, the Nightmare Nothing Jocasta, Mother Goose of Ybao Moa.

 

“MA.”

 

And the air stopped moving.

 

“TARR.”

 

And the breaths stopped coming.

 

“GHUHZ.”

 

And the black shuddered before becoming more.

 

“Can you hear me, Mother Goose?”

 

And then silence.

 

Yes.

 

-

 

The basement was no more, the Painter could not feel himself kneeling. Utero refraction bounced off porcelain periphery; all senses rendered zero, blind deaf and dumb in the white space womb. But her voice was ebony, and it cut through the womb with talons.

 

You are Nazayho, he who holds the spear.

I have answered your call.

 

He quivered for a moment. Success was something alien to the people of his nation. A newborn concept, stagnant, malformed, crippled by the threshold curse. But it was ecstasy nonetheless, ecstasy of communion, of action. In this cloud cage of sensory deprivation, he could not hear his own voice, but he spoke anyways.

 

“Hail the Night Queen. Black skin stork, regent of the ruin between my legs. Ancient queer goddess of the malevolent masculine. The signal from never has compelled me to summon thee.”

 

Ybao Moa is one of my many roosts. Every once in a while, one of her wanderers catches a glimpse of my descent, like you.

 

Dark wings and darker words hovered closer to the astral husk of the Painter. It was almost as if he could feel her lips but a breath away from his ear.

 

One does not call on Mama Razor for a passing praise.

What is it that you desire?

 

Though lungless in the void, the Painter feigned a deep inhale as he readied his request.

 

“When was the last time a child has been born in Ybao Moa? All the children I killed were runaways and discarded goods from the passing caravans. They were already lost before arriving here. I was the same. My wife was the same. We all came broken strays and remained as shells. Nothing has or will ever grow here in this pit.”

 

Ah, yes. You wanted the future.

 

“I would do anything to change that night. But there’s no way to change the nature of this place. Nothing happens in Limbo. That’s why I called you.”

 

You wish to regain this idea.

To have the future and bring your wife back.

 

The Painter paused again, overtaken by flashes of empty eyes, an empty womb. The truth was written on his lips before he even spoke.

 

“No. I never cared for her. She knew that the whole time, and she didn’t care for herself either. I wanted what was inside of her. What was taken from me.”

 

Do you really want to know what was taken from you?

What kind of idea had grown inside her stomach?

 

The silence was alive again. He had no ears, no eyes, no lips, no hands, but he could still feel. Still feel the glare of the black sun smile as the Night Queen left her parting gift in his mind, the final design. The charcoal looking glass, the window into what you never wanted to know.

 

The Painter saw The End. The End of Everything. The Omega Point at the curtain call behind infinity. The forever marathon of star deaths that vomited singularities. The Memory Hole where laughter dies. The Matter Sink where no one stands. The Labyrinth Bomb that eats while you are lost and hungry. The No Escape. Cosmic cries of shattered promises and genocide religions, entire species committing suicide to avoid the staring match with Eradicator Ultima, death throes of the Bulk Multiverse Superstructure. This was the destiny of the universe. This was the future. The Ever Black of stars-no-more. The Midnight Void when it’s always bedtime. The Never Be Known where he can’t remember. The Not See Again where his eyes are shut for good.

 

And in that moment, he understood.

 

There were never any colors to paint with.

 

There was never any way out of Ybao Moa.

 

And there was never anything taken from the womb of his wife. The future was there in that child, and its name was given along with its epitaph:

 

Nothing. Terminus. Finale. Silence.

 

-

 

The dark was back. Ash pools surrounded his knees. He tried to muscle a cough, to clear clogged sinuses, but his raw throat would not permit him. Communion was over. Time to leave the fortress bowels.

 

The Painter exited the depths of Castello Carrapazo only to find a hermit, shuffling through debris for anything to pawn. Nazayho approached the old man and posed him a question, struggling sentences through shredded tones.

 

“Does a just God dissolve tragedy on a whim? Must you get their attention first?”

 

The Hermit did not look up to the Painter’s face. He continued to scavenge, settling on a wooden doll. The doll was a soldier, carrying a lance atop a carved stag. As he wiped the dust from the eyes of the figurine, a thin scaly voice emerged:

 

“This is Ybao Moa, sir. God turned their back on this place long ago. The prayers spoken here fall on only deaf ears.”

 

The Hermit then threw the doll to the floor, proceeding into the Castello to continue his hunt for artifacts. The Painter was left on the concourse alone, besides the doll in the refuse. He picked up the doll, a final companion.

 

Siren calls of this last analysis were draped against the balcony. He took the bait, blank brain drifting towards the castle edge that hung over the cliff before the ocean and her horizon.

 

“Nothing happens in this place. And nothing has always been death.”

 

He screamed, but no sound surfaced. Blood filled the rim of his mouth as a dozen cuts opened around his throat. He had worn out his chords in the ritual, now almost mute. No one could hear him. No one would ever hear him. The sun projected its last beams before setting upon his face, and yet he was still in the dark, still stuck in bowel purgatorio.

 

And then the last thought. The last image. The last work. The emptiness behind her eyes. The nil. Action to end action. Action unto nothing. The success of Never. Did the city want a final triumph? A will to be broken, proof that something could birth nothing, only to tear it away at the last second? If nothing matters, then when does nothing losing its meaning? These were the crescendo queries that spiraled in the Painter’s mind as he looked into the heart of the half star under waves.

 

All of them went down off the balcony, down with the figurine into a merciless current. The sea claimed another story to her nadir, another half-baked reverie. The Painter stood there for a while, but that night there was no one to watch as the sun fell onto the horizon overlooking the dead city. There was no dreaming. All that remained was an after-image, of a broken man who wished he had not known.

 

An apostle of never, left alone with his patterns.

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