1

  The Hate rounded the corner as a sea of red. Leslie reached for the sesnickie.

  “So long, you sorry fucks!” Leslie cried as he climbed using thick handfuls of white fur.

  Leslie threw down his last can of disco freeze, and as it hit the ground, the members of the Hate froze. Leslie shook violently at the repeated use of the nasty shit and had to pause halfway up the sesnickie’s side.

  You’re no Goddamned good. You smell like asshole. She’ll never want you—you’re the shit brother, aren’t you? Aren’t you? AREN’T YOU?

  NO!

  He had seen no other way but to use the cans, but it was one fuck of a rough trip. He looked at the Hate now, frozen, their leathery transmogrifiers pointing at him.

  Guns made of skin, Leslie thought, and that cheered him up a bit. I’ll show you a fleshy rifle, you brainwashed fucks.

  But the effects of the disco freeze assaulted him again, and the thought lost its luster.

  Leslie yanked hard on the sesnickie’s white mane for one last hoist, nearly dropping the Eraser from his armpit in the effort.

  Pip’s pointed ears twitched.

  “Watch the hair, bunnyfucker,” the sesnickie said in Leslie’s mind.

  “She was a hare,” Leslie said.

  “Right.”

  “You know she was a hare.”

  “Fine. Harefucker.”

  “And I didn’t fuck her,” Leslie said.

  “Said every harefucker I ever knew.”

  “Her name was Deborah, and …” Leslie paused. “How many harefuckers do you know?”

  “Just the one.”

  “Oh, for fucks sake,” Leslie groaned.

  The sesnickie gave a noncommittal shake of their mane. “Whatever gets you through the disco freeze. Didn’t Fiona warn you about that—”

  “Quiet!” Leslie snapped, trying to clear his mind with the mantrum.

  As he chanted, Leslie pictured that other place as if he were already there, feeling its vibrations and the associations he had with it to gin up the right frequency, like tuning to the right channel on a stereo. A memory of Fiona urging Leslie not to use the disco freeze swam up unbidden, and Leslie cursed at it until it swam away.

  The tik-tik music of Lavender, along with the frozen forms of the Hate (which would unfreeze any minute now), and the low vibrational pull from the disco freeze that felt like a bad stomachache, were making it difficult for Leslie to focus on the mantrum.

  Fiona swam back for a nag. Disco freeze is for the incompetent, Leslie. It’s a trick. You’re better than that.

  Aum balamb-bom-bai, he chanted in his mind. Come on, you dick sneeze! Aum balamb-bom-bai. Aum balamb-bom-bai. Leslie felt warm, almost sleepy as he and the sesnickie began to Move, shifting slightly, their colors fading.

  The stargazer lilies, the shadow wood, the Manor House, Aum balamb-bom-bai, Leslie thought.

  But then … a different set of images came to him, something he’d never seen before, a kind of feeling more than a thought, a hollow nagging, like something left undone, unsaid. It pulled at him in the middle of the Move, and a mantrum slithered in—something he’d never heard before, never felt. It was … unfathomable. He looked down at the Eraser in his hands. He tried to resist, but it was a lust he could not think his way out of. This close, this true. Just … just a touch. Then we bring it to Alfred. Fix his brain. Don’t want to use it on him without ensuring it works. A distant piece of him screamed to drop it, to wait, to do anything else but attune this mantrum, but the pull was too powerful, and Leslie too weak. He started to utter the new mantrum under his breath, when, almost entirely on impulse, he brought a piece of cloth from his robe between his skin and the Eraser.

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  What the fuck was that? he thought. Have to be more careful. He started the Moving mantrum over in his head, and thankfully it did not take long to get back in sync with Pip.

  The Hate stirred. An empty one raised their transmogrifier up and pointed it at Leslie’s serene face, firing just as he completed his Move.

  2

  Leslie rematerialized in a familiar room on a familiar mound of white fur—and, as he looked down—within a not so familiar body. “Trans-fucking-mogrified,” he observed. Luckily, what he’d taken from the Temple of Emptiness had stayed in his lap through the Move—a lap that no longer had a cock and balls in the middle of it. Well at least the Hate had a sense of humor. He quickly took inventory of body parts. He had orange fur all over his body except on his belly which was white. His legs bent backward, and he had paws the color of mud.

  Keeping the Eraser in his armpit, Leslie slid down the sesnickie’s side, awkward in his new body. As Leslie’s paws met the cold marble, the Eraser slid from the grip of his armpit and dropped to the floor. Leslie gasped. If it breaks … The black tablet landed without a bounce and did not break, making one very loud thunk when it hit the floor.

  It was odd—Leslie was sure it hadn’t been so heavy as that, to fall without a bounce and such noise. He stared at it for a moment, wondering if he should maybe pick it up to ensure it was really alright, but decided against the notion and instead sat on his haunches to begin the process of getting his body back.

  Quint had named this room ‘the meditaz’, and Leslie was fairly certain the wizard had made the word up for the sole purpose of sounding clever. It was a large chamber with rows of thick marble pillars that held lit candles in iron sconces to each side. The candles on the pillars were kept burning at all hours by Putnam the manservant who changed them out when they burned too low. Pillows sat on the marble floor all along the chamber’s edge. Leslie had spent many hours in the dimly lit meditaz, listening for the vibrations of the universe and the mantrums that they manifested as. This is where he had sat two years ago on the Day of Contemplation and learned the very vibration he was about to attune.

  Leslie began chanting the mantrum and visualizing his body as it had been before the Hate had turned him into a fox. As his body started to reform, a familiar voice cut through the silence.

  “Leslie, welcome back! How was your time with the Hate? Pleasant, I’m sure. Always did have a good sense of humor, the Hate.” The voice hesitated then let out an echoing caw of laughter. “It appears my words ring true! They transmogrified your cock and balls clean off!” The cavernous meditaz amplified Quint’s following titters.

  Just then the sesnickie began to purr. “Ah, hello to you as well, Pip. And thank you for traveling to that dreadful planet Lavender to pick up our lovely Leslie, may Emptiness forever massage the area between his thighs. Although it seems there may be nothing there to massage …”

  Leslie paused in his transformation. “I see you haven’t changed much, Quint—same crusty beard, crusty face, crusty jokes. Now, would you like to stare at my cock some more, or can I get on with it?”

  “Or lack thereof?” Quint said, raising an eyebrow as he went on staring. Quint had bushy, grey-white eyebrows that sat atop wire, circle-rimmed glasses. His long hair, beard, and mustache combined into something like the mane of the sesnickie’s, surrounding his whole face in a pointy, tangled mess. Quint usually wore a blue cardigan over a white button-up tucked into grey slacks, and old man loafers that Leslie thought had never been replaced, or washed, or taken off, for that matter, in all the time he’d known the old wizard.

  Quint looked down to the ground at the black rectangle. “You managed it, eh?”

  “Yes indeed-y, now if you please, I’m trying to grow your favorite part of me back and then we can see if this thing works,” Leslie said.

  “I should hope it works!” Quint said with mock concern.

  “Not that, you fuck. The Eraser.” Leslie folded his hands back in his lap and slipped into the mantrum once again.

  Om shindi-andi-ah

  Om shindi-andi-ah

  Om shindi-andi-ah

  As Leslie slowly chanted himself back to his original form, Quint reached above his head and scratched the sesnickie under their chin.

  “You fucking stink. How bout a bath? I bought more Sly Grass if you want to smoke after dinner,” Quint said. Pip sniffed loudly in reply and nudged Quint with their head and the nearest candles flickered. “Now, now, Pip. It won’t be all that long before Leslie has a cock again and has eaten something reasonable. I’m hungry too, and I’d like to join you in Svargaloka before we try to use the Eraser on Alfred. Sly Grass after dinner.” They were having a conversation, Leslie knew, but Pip was keeping his contributions exclusively in Quint’s mind. Sometimes this bothered Leslie, but right now it was a welcome courtesy because he was having enough trouble focusing with one voice blathering on.

  4

  After an hour or so, Leslie came back to his body and his steady flow of generally unbothered, non-mantrum thoughts. I have to piss, was the first. His second was: Why didn’t they turn me into pilgrim shit? Or something as helpless, a fucking clover or something. They went on and on about the fuckin thing—‘it will empty all of the empties.’ Why let me get away?

  Leslie picked up the Eraser and he could hear the tik-tik music that played on the loudspeakers all over Lavender. He put it back down and looked around the room. The music stopped. He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger, looked up, exhaled, and though he was terrified to touch it—but also wanted nothing more than to touch it—he bent back down to carry it to his brother.

  Tik-tik

  Tik-tik