Soonview
Now and again, eccentrics from throughout Soonview came to Humiliation House. There they watched Pempus and Bilesnox, the couple that designed the structure, humiliate each other.
Built into Humiliation House’s exterior were all kinds of humiliation aids: an Atomic Wedgie Cornice, a Toilet Seat Canopy, an Indignity Balcony, a Disgrace Column, a Mortification Acroterium, and even a feature called Falling Sewage.
Most Soonview residents found Humiliation House and its goings-on purposeless and revolting. Though small, the audiences that did come were diverse. The well-to-do were easy to spot—they wore on their heads the glowing beak of the rare bird called the sceptern.
One day, just behind Humiliation House, a hill suddenly formed in this otherwise very flat region of Soonview. The hill was not glaring, but it was certainly noticeable.
*
Nostos City
Architectural critics called Wispell Headquarters in Nostos City the architect’s magnum opus, a triumph of grace and form. Wispell, a cosmetics company, even gave the architect his own scent. Façade, they named it.
*
Soonview
All the scepterns migrated to the top of the new hill; the birds wanted to live at the highest possible point.
Some enterprising Soonview residents started sceptern farms. They bred scepterns with genetically modified enormous beaks . . . so enormous that the birds could hardly hold up their heads. Then the farmers released the birds for the highest bidder to shoot.
The curious continued their treks to Humiliation House to watch Pempus and Bilesnox humiliate each other. And the beaks extending above the audience grew in size and in number.
During their free time, Pempus and Bilesnox found more and more sceptern carcasses at the base of the new hill near Humiliation House. Their beaks had been torn off before their bodies were discarded.
*
Nostos City
The architect took his son to the famed Wispell Headquarters. The boy marveled at a spellbinding façade and at convoluted corridors that twisted and turned and widened and narrowed.
When the architect talked to an admirer in the building, the boy ventured out on his own. At the end of one corridor, the boy found a door that said, “TEST.” He went inside. Rabbits and dogs cowered in cages. People in lab coats dripped perfumes and creams into the animals’ eyes, and forced them to ingest fragrant liquids.
*
Soonview
The sceptern carcasses continued to accumulate outside Humiliation House. And during performances, more and even larger beaks appeared among the audiences.
One night, just before he dumped the Lipolanche over Pempus, Bilesnox put on a beak. It was larger and more beautiful than any of those within the audience. And just before Pempus stripped Bilesnox, then tossed him into the Rejecting Pool, she put on a similarly superior beak.
After the show, an audience member with a much smaller beak asked Pempus and Bilesnox about the distinguished beaks they wore. They told him they were not sceptern beaks, but rather a “rarefied” material.
*
Nostos City
That night, the boy took his father’s bottle of Façade. The boy brought the bottle back to his bedroom, where he placed it under a rug. It made a bump. The bump was not glaring, but it was certainly noticeable.
A designer and naturalist, Loren Johnson creates solutions that critique and build on how people experience nature, the spaces they inhabit, and particularly how architecture frames or expands their view of their environments. His graduate thesis project examined multifaceted relationships between the biogenic and anthropogenic environments. Loren has pursued authentic expressions of architecture in many forms, and enjoys expanding his passions in a wide variety of media.
Douglas J. Ogurek is the pseudonym for a writer living somewhere on Earth. Though banned on Mars, his fiction appears in more than fifty Earth publications. Ogurek founded the controversial literary subgenre known as unsplatterpunk, which uses splatterpunk conventions (e.g., extreme violence, gore, taboo subject matter) to deliver a positive message. He guest-edited the UNSPLATTERPUNK! trilogy, published by Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. Ogurek reviews films at that same magazine. Recent longer works include young adult novel Branch Turner vs the Currants (World Castle Publishing) and horror/suspense novella Encounter at an Abandoned Church (Scarlet Leaf Publishing). More at www.douglasjogurek.weebly.com. Twitter: @unsplatter
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