LITMIR.BIZ

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don’t you pronounce the letter?” she asked.

      “We ain’t allowed! Not allowed! It’s aboo!” they shouted. “A c’ash will happen!”

      “But I say the letter and I don’t have a crash.”

      “You mana! Mana-tida!”

      “You see! And you wanted to brew me and eat me. Do you know what would have happened if you had?” Matilda was beginning to live into the role assigned to her. “There would have been a total crash!”

      On hearing these words, the wretches raised a howl clearly filled with reverential awe.

      “Who taught you to read gibberish? And what do you need it for?”

      “The Glamo'c taught us! Mana-glamo’c! Theah! Theah!” The grays began gesticulating in an animated fashion and pointing in the direction of the buildings.

      “We have to ‘ead gibb’ish, so that we will be full.We must not say the lette’. We not allowed to fight. We not allowed to eat each othe’. It’s aboo! We have to ‘ead gibb’ish.”

      “Right, but you are allowed to eat me?”

      “Not ou’ own. You not one of us.”

      “That’s not true. I am one of you!” said Matilda, thinking on her feet. In situations like this, you tend to think on your feet quite well. “I am your mana!”

      Before the glamrocks had time to react, the same trumpet noise sounded from afar. The sound was evidently a kind of signal for them because the savages became alarmed and started shouting.

      “Sac’ed hlevjun! We must take heo to sac’ed hlevjun!”

      “What hlevjun is that?” Matilda asked.

      “The glamo'c is there! Mana-glamo’c! We’ll show you! Let’s go!”

      Matilda was gripped with anxiety. If this glamorc was their leader then he might well have his own ideas about who was or wasn’t the real mana. And then the process of cooking and subsequently eating the synthetic maid might be resumed with renewed appetite.

      Matilda had no choice. She had not the slightest idea where she could run to. She had to go with them. So, the entire procession set off in the direction of the buildings.

      The Dead Head

      The glamrocks walked in silence encircling Matilda in a tight crowd but still keeping some distance from her. It was a strange sight. The gray figures with their wax faces and among them a blue blonde wearing a pink bow. It was a truly phantasmagorical procession consisting of a living doll surrounded by mannequins.

      You would never say of Matilda that she was just a barbie doll. Some people are pretty, and others are beautiful. It is the difference between form and content. Matilda was one of those people who just have something about them.

      But the main thing distinguishing her from the overall picture was not so much her colorful silhouette against the ‘black and white cinema’ background, so much as her life-force. Everything else including the gray figures was not so much dead as lifeless if one could put it that way. The other world probably looked much like this – not that different from our own – it was just different because it was ‘on the other side’. The question is, on the other side of what?

      That question remains unanswered for now. Matilda was not concerned about the physics of such phenomena right in this moment. Her mind was filled with anxious thoughts about what would happen next. By virtue of some fated coincidence, she had ended up in a foreign world and it was not yet clear how she might escape. She could see nothing on which to pin any hope. What should she expect from her sinister companions? She dared not imagine.

      The glamrocks’ faces expressed grim determination to find out for themselves something that could cost Matilda her life. Although the glamrocks were not touching Matilda, they looked at her with suspicion. One of those walking in front turned around, stuck out his tongue and cried out, “Synthetic maid!”, no doubt out of habit. But then he got a slap. The maid was supposed to be left untouched until it had finally been determined who she really was: ‘mana’ or simply an edible maid.

      Matilda’s situation was aggravated by the fact that she was desperate to go to the toilet. ‘At least I only want a number one for now’, she thought. ‘But there’s the thing. How to go about it? What sex are they, I wonder?’ She had not observed any outward indication of gender. And then she was struck by a terrible thought. They might not only eat her but abuse her body to their hearts’ content, who knows in what awful ways.

      She trotted along hurriedly in her platform shoes and stubbed her toe against a rock. The poor girl would have given anything to be back in her own world again. ‘I’ll never be capricious again.’ she thought. ‘I’ll be obedient in everything. I’ll never take off my wonderful bow ever again. I’ll do anything, just send me back!’

      Remembering the bow, she experienced again that same weird feeling in her back. It was not clear why, but it seemed to give her strength and for some reason caused Matilda to feel that she had the ability to control events. It was as if she could choose what came into being and what did not.

      She suddenly realized that she was separate from everything that surrounded her and all that was happening to her. She was the reality in which she found herself. She existed of herself, independently just as reality did. Matilda suddenly understood, not with her mind but with all her being, that here, she had ended up in a book and she was supposed to wander through the pages playing out the plot.

      It was like a movie, which you watch as you immerse yourself in a fictional reality. If you concede and give yourself over to what is happening, you have no other choice than to play the role assigned to you. But what if Matilda chose not to? What if she remained separate and the movie separate from her?

      ’Can this really be my reality?’ thought Matilda. ‘No, this is not my reality. Something is wrong. This kind of thing happens in dreams, but this is not a dream. Although what difference does it make, for God’s sake? Everything will be all right with me, whatever happens. I don’t know how, but I know I’ll be ok. I have no other choice. What other option is there? That’s what I’ve decided, period!’

      Immediately after this thought, something happened. To her surprise, Matilda noticed a slanting black strip flash from the sky down to the ground as if some unknown force had turned the page on reality. The gray ones seemed to pay no attention to it and continued their same grim procession as if nothing had happened. Matilda, however, suddenly felt much better and was confident that from now on everything would be all right.

      Meanwhile, they reached the buildings they had been heading towards. It was not a town or a village but something quite odd. Everywhere, there were simple, cubic houses with smooth, gray walls made from a material Matilda did not recognize. The houses were interspersed with empty recesses with the same cubic frame. And there were stairways everywhere, some leading up to the rooftops, others down into pits, and still others twisting senselessly and disappearing into nowhere. The fanciful intertwining of cubic structures and niches along with the many stairways created an absurd scene.

      By an indirect route, crossing from one stairway to another, they exited onto what looked to be the only open space, a square, in the middle of which stood a construction, no less strange than anything else in this peculiar place. The construction was a black monolith with an oval perimeter enclosed by protruding columns, which bent gently upwards to form a ribbed dome.

      By all appearances, this was the very same ‘sacred hlevjun’ although its sinister form was more reminiscent of a spaceship. The glamrocks could not have built such a structure themselves, or the rest of the city for that matter.

      In the same moment that the procession approached the megalith, the construction produced a startlingly powerful trumpet sound in a low tone, which permeated the surrounding space. As soon as the sound reached the glamrocks’ ears, they began to fuss and rushed inside. Matilda followed them with a mixture of curiosity and fear.

      The megalith had the same form inside as it did on the outside. The black pillars that extended outwards from the

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