Art by Norman E. Masters

The rose-colored flash of happiness pervaded him, and all about was tinted by the torturous strokes of the snake with a paint brush for a tail. And the mother coocoo cried from her perch on the clock, once, twice, thrice, so mournfully alone and sad. In loneliness she departed, murmuring softly to herself and taking shelter in her whirring cage; and the man was saddened.

In the corner a spider intricated a web of wondrousness that silvered and wove of itself. And the spider watched as the strands rewove themselves, and the man smiled at the grandeur of it as the web spelled out PEACE. And the snake with a paint brush for a tail colored the air around the web the blue that was of a robin's egg, or a still, still day when the clouds don't move for fear of upsetting the sky.

The clouds drifted in the window; and the shadow of his mother, rest in peace, waved from its airy perch of coalesced nothingness in a touching sentimental way that drew tears and love from the heart of the man; and the silver threads in the blue of the robin's egg or of a still, still day when the clouds don't move for fear of upsetting the sky shone through the misty clouds and the misty shadow of his mother, rest in peace; and the snake with the paint brush for a tail dripped the color of angel's eyes delicately across the thought. With a twinkling hush away they dissolved, so purely and bell-like that the walls resounded and the picture shook in misery.

The man earthwormed upon his belly across the couch with the little hairs that felt like a brush of the softest bristles, and gently kissed the eye of the girl-next-door-to-the-girl-next-door-to-the-girl-next-door-to-the... But the paint brush whose handle was really a snake painted her dead, and the-girl-next-door-to-the-girl-next-door-to-the-girl-next-to-the... ashed and in withered piled a heap.

And the man cried because he knew the dream from the flower seed had ended and he must return to unreality.

[pp. 5 - 6, NO-EYED MONSTER #11, Spring 1967]