Runni had the runs but squeezed her cheeks all the harder. A deep voice was heard in the room.
"I wish I could help but I'm just a philosopher. An overrated one actually and the pay sucked."
It was Thoreau's painting that was talking. That freaked everyone out but Runni, so they all fled.
"So what should I do, Mr. ThinkMeister???"
"Paint a doctor or something out of guts, bitch!", he retorted.

"You've got to be kidding me," Runni responded. "A:
I'm a guy, and B: I've never used anything lower than snot."

[begin soap opera pause]



[/end pause]

"Oh!", he emoted. "I didn't know there was a director here. I think I might assume he's pretending."

The director quickly examined the cue cards and realized they were the discarded ones from an alternate script that had Runni confused about her gender and short term amnesia about working with Snoddy's guts.
She quickly thought of the first medical person she could and painted them...

Runni failed to realize what would come out..

"Facts are stupid things!", he/she/it, named Runni, roared.

The final outcome of this spectacle, might depend on how well Depends sell
during the next half of the game.

"I shall take nor give no quarter!", became the rallying cry of the dependent
upon Depends faction.

Meanwhile...back at the tissue factory...Snoddy lurked.

...and not without a purpose. His visits to the rhinopractor had convinced him that his third nostril was a blessing, not a curse, so he'd resolved to rid the world of anything that could be used to make good snot into waste-paper.

With Snoddy hemorrhaging from a lacerated liver and gasping for air due to a collapsed lung, Runni decided to take Thoreau's advice and paint a doctor. But who would she summon? Marcus Welby? Dr. Huxtable? Doogie Howser? Quincy? House? Dr. Dre?

Finally, after too much consideration, she decided on Dr. Who. She painted him because even though he may not be able to medically help Snoddy, at least he could transport her from the scene of the crime and away from this confusing world where nothing made sense anymore.

The hybrid progeny of Dr. Moreau and Dr. Who, had been silently,
and patiently waiting in the wings, ever at the ready to spring forth when needed;

they showered those in need with pastel oils..acrylics...watercolors.

It was time for visions to manifest.

Standing ankle-deep in Snoddy's entrails, there wasn't anyone more "in need" than Runni. The mysterious benefactors were indeed generous... but the charcoal pencils were in short supply! Should such malfeasance go unpunished?

"Now that's grist for the mill", mumbled Runni while gathering the art supplies.

As soon as he was complete, Dr. Who spoke and immediately engaged Thoreau in an argument. In the distance, Runni heard sirens that were rapidly drawing near. Obviously, the cops were on to her macabre choice of media. With no hesitation, she quickly painted herself, then picked up a scalpel and cut her own throat, from ear to ear. Now a living canvas, Runni looked down at her lifeless body; at the pool of blood that surrounded her and she thought, ...

"I hope this was all just a silly, silly dream."

But it was not. The cops came in, viewed the paintings of Dr. Who, Thoreau, and Runni, and declared the dead bodies of Runni and Snoddy as murder-suicides. Snoddy, always the innovator, had already discovered that when he painted himself secretly before all this out of guts, his portrait would come alive and come off of the canvas, and he would simply pick up the white canvas from whence he came and carry on.

It is only now we find the courage to take a closer look.

No! Much closer!

Closer even still!

Peer down into the abyss my friends ... examine these depths!

The ghastly contorted planarian faces writhing in the goo are somehow familiar. Slithering ... tearing ... melding .... regenerating ... microscopic screams.

A cruel metamorphosis.

But not to worry. Nothing a decent plumber couldn't rectify.

When the plumber appeared, so did his crack.
The resurrected could not so much marvel as chuckle, although he managed to fix their problems.
Playing by the rules didn't seem to be working.
Runni and Snoddy ran off into the distance.

Runni stopped. "I don't want to live here!" So she reached in Snoddy's abdomen, squished up some guts with her hand, and quickly painted a landscape to her liking on her canvass. They both jumped into the painting and were in the new environment. She really should've titled the painting because they wound up in North Korea...

At first Runni was alarmed, but then she realized that she had never seen a Stalinist dictatorship close up, so what the hell. But Snoddy didn't share her cavalier attitude. Snoddy knew that they were in grave danger. In fact, he knew that the whole world was in peril. Snoddy knew that the secret of his guts could not fall into the hands of Kim Jong-il.

Being Americans, Korea quickly became boring to them. There's only so much kim chee you can eat and visions of M*A*S*H you can stand before your attention span is exhausted. And there's only so much guts a human can spare before totally shutting down physically. So before leaving Korea, the two were able to pick up some electronic body parts that were illegal everywhere else...especially the LiverTek 2000. So Runni painted, sparingly, a place she had always wanted to go...India...

Unfortunately, also, once they got there, they were involved in a strange rickshaw accident and both ended up broken in various places.
Immortal, as all imaginaries are, they got up and carried on, unbroken.

They were however, left in stitches.
Clutching their collective abdomens, hand in limb,they chortled down the path,
strewn with the flotsam of bionic accoutrement.

The flashing neon sign lit their way.

The youth hostel biosphere's sign, flashed, "vacancy."

"Welcome!" said the doorman, which reminded both of them strangely of a spider, "won't you come in and give me something to eat...I mean, have something to eat...I mean make yourselves at home, have a nice nap, I'll suck your juices. I mean, have a nice snack, sucking mine. Ummmm.."

Runni and Snoddy decided to refuse this invitation, and ran, screaming, into the next painting

They found themselves in a relative waste-land:
Once-new posts had given way to the passage of time and all fences had fallen.
Using her imagination, Runni painted a picture of paradise, but this time using more natural materials, like clay. Soon they were there...

lying in a field of clay, smoking cigars in the nude, looking up at the aqua-tinged sky.

Suddenly, a diapered emu ran right past them, startling Runni and Snoddy out of their smoke-induced stupor. They scratched their heads for some time, trying to get the emu feathers that had mixed with the clay out of their hair.

They failed, and realized their hair had BECOME feathers.
Before freaking out, they decided to have sex as birds, because neither had properly experienced a cloaca, previously. When finished, Runni had a funny feeling, and decided it was time to paint a nest... Snoddy thought he'd better cooperate, and provided mucus, as a binder.

It was at this point that this contributor (TC) had to stop and thank the previous contributor for forcing him to look up the word cloaca. TC had always wondered how "birds do it" but had never taken time to research it, being more concerned when he might "do it" next. It also begged the question of how bees and educated fleas did it, so again, thank you, as I will research that too. Maybe. Or not. Anyway....

...Even after experiencing the cloacal kiss and this new aviary way of life, Snoddy reminisced about his life before art. How he had complained about his dull job in a cubicle and how he yearned for some of the safety it had nevertheless provided. On the other hand, he could fly now! That was better than any huge 401K, any worldly pleasure he had heretofore experienced!...

Perhaps best of all, they had become bird-brains, and forgotten how to paint new realities, or even the need to do so. Then the day arrived when runni's huge clutch of eggs began to hatch...

Suddenly, Jesus appeared in runni's toast and said...

"Glad Hosannas to thee! Fear not, for behold the devine genesis of the new Menudo!"

And there were many glad Hosannas.

The two love birds had built their aerie atop a local business owner's building there in Paradise. His name was Plee, and he bought previously owned toupee's and resold them. "Plee's Used Rugs" was just one of many odd going concerns there in Paradise. Of course, the business was just a front for a lucrative Ecstasy trade, which was the logical drug of choice in Paradise.

Of Runni & Snoddy's offspring, half took the ecstatic link to temporary paradise, half of the other half sought carnal pleasures exclusively, half of the remaining one-quarter went existentialist and roosted, and contemplated their egg-borne navels, half of those remaining resorted to cannabalism and resolved part of their sibling rivalry problems, etc.,etc.,etc...

When it came down to the final two, they were Snoddy and Runni as they had been, only better. Runni gleefully snatched some guts and painted a fair representation of Paris...

The two stepped into the canvas and were immediately sitting at an outdoor cafe on the Champs Elysees at dusk, sipping Bordeaux. Runni was feeling savoir faire and laissez faire while Snoddy felt Claire Faire, a young woman who just happened to be passing by. Snoddy with his wine buzz just sat and contemplated all things French......Toast...Fries...Kissing...Ticklers....Mustard....

They noticed simultaneously that all these things had to do with tongues, and started using them.

As their tongues swirled, probed and slathered violently, a new evolution had occured between the two. Mental telepathy mixed with the ability to create with their minds had enhanced the ability to paint new realities from viscera. As they sucked face publicly, none of the local Frenchies took notice. But then the "all things French" took a disturbing twist. The "picture" of Charles De Gaulle came into Snoddy's mind. It travelled quickly to Runni's head. They both became De Gaulle simultaneously. Charles De Gaulle making out with himself at the outdoor cafe. This still didn't impress the Frenchies passing and sitting nearby, as the French are a bored people who had already thought of everything under the sun. But it impressed as well as momentarily disgusted Snoddy and Runni...

They decided that if they were truly going to "see" Paris, they would have to do it with their tongues. Runni and Snoddy decided to have their eyelids and nostrils sewn shut and their ears plugged. Like serpents, they slid along the streets of Paris flicking their tongues to "feel" the sights, sounds, smells, and textures of France.

Within minutes, they both died of massive bacterial infections. After all, this was Paris.

Death was definitely an inconvenience and buzz killer. But the two continued their adventure, although much, much more slowly of course. Decomposition, a concept that should only happen to people like Barry Manilow or Marvin Hamlisch, was next. It was most distasteful. But it did have its advantages. It kept them from winding up on the buffet at the "Foo King Chinese Restaurant".

The joint next door was less discriminating, and after being eaten by others, Runni and Snoddy felt refreshed, and able to carry on. They chartered a plane to Dover, hoping to take an excursion to see the giant phallus on a nearby hillside.
-----Added 31/8/2008 at 01 : 10 : 58-----
The joint next door was less discriminatimg, and after being eaten by others, Runni & Snoddy felt refreshed, and able to carry on. They chartered a plane to Dover, hoping to take an excursion to see the giant phallus on a nearby hillside.

As they entered the plane, they both felt a strange feeling. It was as if they had been there before. Some called it deja vu, but Snoddy thought of it as Deja voodoo, and he quickly glanced around to see who else was on the plane. Runni, thought no more of the deja vu. Her mind was preoccupied with the giant phallus. She had never seen a giant phallus.

Quickly preoccupied, she thought of a different medium.