3 — Shayna Gibson

It had been a long time since Mar­vin had been banned from the library, but he didn’t enjoy think­ing about the inci­dent.  He knew that if he was to sur­vive the mon­keys in this mas­sively scorched crater of non­sen­si­cal nos­tal­gia, he would have to learn to ignore the now delu­sional nor­malcy of yes­ter­day.  He had already learned how to ignore the chants that haunted his dreams; easy, no sleep, no night­mares.  Easy. Espresso. Ancient Ital­ian mean­ing ‘to ease and com­pli­cate in a man­ner most pleas­ing and effective.’

Perhaps the gen­er­a­tion of Peaceandlove’s fem­i­nism would not have gone so hor­rif­i­cally awry if pop­u­lar cul­ture had not allowed its pup­peteers to sway its min­ions into first inse­cu­rity, fol­lowed by stomach-curdling doubt, and then remorse and inex­plic­a­ble guilt for exist­ing, feel­ing, think­ing, and occa­sion­ally believing…

…In things like self-help books and crys­tals, magic-mirrors, and make-believe romance. The FFPM had fol­lowed the let­ters of The Elders to a Type-A anal-retentive T, in per­fect down­dogs with organic every­thing fuel­ing their sweaty, fla­gel­lated, guilt-mutilated egos.

These very egos were one day so dis­placed in the col­lec­tive West­ern Fan­tasy of ori­en­tal­ized cal­lis­then­ics, that their incense sud­denly mixed with the smell of burn­ing pla­centa, as evil itself, attempt­ing to escape the impos­si­ble per­fec­tion of raw, vegan, enlight­ened lady­ness bore itself from them in one fell birth.

The library pic­tographs Mar­vin found when Peace­andlove left to use the restroom had given him a boner…
A boner he still didn’t understand.

The result had been the dec­i­ma­tion of con­tem­po­rary civ­i­liza­tion. Days after the smoke and rub­ble cleared, the women of the FFPM, naked, near-death, and dirty walked out of the rub­ble: the only liv­ing beings in a five-hundred mile radius. Since then the women had split up. Of the eleven orig­i­nal high-priestesses of the FFPM, two had taken their own lives, one had dis­ap­peared com­pletely and the rest had been checked into var­i­ous men­tal insti­tu­tions. Peace­andlove and her sistren Lark were assist­ing in the recov­ery of the beasts that fol­lowed the explo­sion. Mar­vin was delighted at first, until Peace­andlove insisted on con­stantly ram­bling about Venu­sian Land­ing Strips which he thought sounded like some kind of fancy pubic-styling. Her scream­ing night-terrors were his sec­ond least favorite thing about Peace­andlove (though he was some­what aroused by the straps she asked him to lace for her at bed­time to keep her in bed through­out the night.)