1

The apprentice empty ones walked in a line through the Temple of Emptiness. Ten stood in front of Leslie, awaiting their sacrament. Purple pews circled the room. Incense burned. A masked figure in red stood on the dais in the center of the chapel, somehow still sustaining the one low note he’d been sounding for the entire time Leslie had been standing in line. Coupled with the tik-tik music that played all over Lavender, the tone held by the masked figure was a suicidal dirge to Leslie’s ears.

Another unmasked empty one, one of Leslie’s masters, stood to the left of the thing they were all there to see … to touch, to become empty. The unmasked empty one bellowed through the chapel: “It will empty all of the empties! Wipe clean any surface, no matter how dirty!” Leslie had heard this before in the three-hour lectures he had attended every day for the past thirty.

Another apprentice touched the slick surface of the Eraser. The unmasked empty one giving the sermon pulled up the hood of the apprentice who had just held it, ensuring their face was concealed, then sent them out of the chapel.

“Though the Eraser may tempt, you may not look back upon the past or seek to take sacrament more than once. Before today, you were a full cup. Your face is to remain concealed while leaving the temple, for you have no face. You are empty. If one should look upon your face while you leave, you fill them up with the burden of your past, and you will take your penance and submit to the thirty day trial once again,” said the empty one.

Leslie itched his ass and adjusted his robe. It did nothing to ease the soreness.

Tik-tik the music went, making the time seem longer, the inevitable task set before Leslie that much further away and that much more of a bad fucking idea.

“For thirty days, you have tried to leave behind what you have been for what is and will be. You that stand here on Lavender today, in the Temple of Emptiness, will be empty ones as I am, as you have sought to be. But seek no more, for, in Emptiness—there is nothing to be sought,” said the empty one, raising the hood of yet another who had touched the Eraser.

The procession moved one pace forward, and Leslie started sweating. Shit. Only nine left, he thought. He wiped his brow and looked ahead to try and see the thing he’d come here to touch—to feel—to empty him out. He wondered if his rectum would stop feeling so uncomfortable if he became an empty one today. Supposed to empty you. Maybe that means I’ll shit myself; sometimes that does the trick, he thought.

Leslie had never touched it, this was to be his first time, but he had heard about it. He’d heard plenty about it, oh yes. The empty ones worshipped the thing, and Leslie sometimes wondered if they didn’t get aroused underneath those red robes while lecturing.

“You think you can empty yourselves fully without? Then you have not touched it, felt its effortless emptying. Only then will you truly be able to call yourself an empty one!”

One more step forward, Leslie thought. Eight of his peers remained in front of him. He adjusted his robe again, clenching a bit between his ass cheeks to see if that would help.

It did not.

Tik-tik. Leslie was unsure why that music played all over this Voiddamned planet. Between that, the low note that the masked empty one continuously held, and his agitated anus, he was going a bit mad. He’d grown accustomed to the music playing all eighteen cycles a day, every day, but now it had made its way out of the background and into the forefront of his awareness. How do they stand it? Leslie wondered. He supposed the Eraser truly must make one empty if they could live on a planet that played this chaos tune all day long without losing their minds. Maybe that’s the point. That is what they preach, after all, losing one’s mind.

Another step, and … Leslie was next.

The continuous low note was loud in his left ear as the masked empty one continued his drone. The apprentice in front of Leslie was holding the rectangular Eraser and staring at its slick, black surface. His eyes widened, and then he was hooded and sent on.

The empty one gestured Leslie forward. Leslie looked at the masked empty one that held the low note, then stepped away from the sound hesitantly; the low note had been a comfort in its proximity to his left ear, as it had washed out the disconcerting tik-tik music. The unmasked empty one next to the Eraser’s platform held a hand out as if to help Leslie up the one step leading to it. Leslie took the hand.

The empty one nodded to the Eraser. Leslie looked at it; the Eraser was a rectangular tablet the length of Leslie’s forearm and just a bit larger than his head in width. Its smooth, black surface reflected the thrumming lamps that hung high above on the chapel’s vaulted ceiling; it also reflected Leslie’s face in a hazy, dull way. He had no hair, and his skin was pale. There were dark circles underneath his eyes. He looked older and thinner than he had thirty days ago. His nose, at least, was the same large and slightly crooked thing that it had been, and his eyes were still the same icy blue. Leslie picked up the Eraser.

The tik-tik song of Lavender started playing in his head louder than it ever had over any of Lavender’s speakers. The music obliterated everything that was in his mind. Leslie felt that if he held onto this thing much longer, he’d forget why he was even here.

A mantrum started repeating itself in his mind, but he’d never heard it before. The mantrum felt like … it wanted to be used, to be spoken in his mind to attune the Inner Vibrations. He set the Eraser down, and the tik-tik, along with the strange mantrum, disappeared. Do the other apprentices hear the mantrum? Was that just me because I’m a thrummer? Leslie thought. The unmasked empty one looked at him with no emotion, but did not move to raise Leslie’s hood. Leslie had not held the Eraser long enough, and he knew it. He felt inside of his robe for the fold of cloth that contained his can of disco freeze. The empty ones had searched him, of course, upon admittance into the thirty day trial, but they did not perform a full cavity search. Leslie gave his asshole one last itch, his robe one last adjustment. He thumbed the top of the can where he’d need to press down to activate the strange gas inside. He looked the silent empty one in the eyes.

“You’re a Voidless idiot,” Leslie said, then spat in the empty one’s face, grabbing the Eraser with one of his hands, careful to keep a layer of his robe between his skin and the Eraser, and he jumped over the platform. Facing everyone in the chapel, he pulled the disco freeze out of his robe. Leslie had already set the radius; it could go long or wide, or somewhere in the middle, reaching out forty feet in front and to the sides of whoever activated it. Leslie had it set for the latter. The gas inside the can was said to be of the Low Vibrations, packed by thrummers, and he’d acquired the can from an underground vibration shop on Jubilee Street, where one could find such things for the right price.

Leslie pushed down on the button on top of the can and aimed the sprayer at the apprentices and the empty ones. Everyone in the chapel immediately froze. And Leslie felt like he might collapse. Fuck! He thought, tottering as if he were holding something very heavy. I didn’t think that it would be that intense. The disco freeze required Low Vibrations from a thrummer to make the trapped vibrations within the can work. Leslie shook a bit, and his mind felt as though a dark cloud had drifted into it, all feelings and thoughts quite negative. It’s just the disco freeze, nothing more, he told himself, but that did not stop his sudden belief that he was an utter failure. It even inspired memories to exacerbate his misery. He shook his head and continued.

The unmasked empty one that Leslie had spit on was frozen in midair, leaping toward Leslie; the masked empty one no longer droned. Leslie made for the exit of the chapel, throwing his hood up over his head as he went. He would have just under five tiks before everyone in the chapel unfroze and came after him, sounding the alarm over the Lavender speakers. Might be nice to have something besides fucking tik-tik coming out of them for a change, Leslie thought. He walked past two white-robed figures that stood in the foyer with black, bat-like wings spreading out behind them. Rakshasas … I need to be careful.

Leslie dared not touch the vibrations now, lest the Rakshasas sense him. He slowly walked out of the foyer and into the streets of Leere, the only city on Lavender, named after the prophesied savior of the Hate, the Hate’s Seventh Son, Leere. He would be death to the dreams of all, wearing death on His face. Leere would have no eyes to see to grant favor to one reality or the other, only seeing His own One Dream.

Figures in red robes and white robes colored the streets of Leere, the purveyors of this oppressive idea, that all beliefs should be placed under one banner. The people in red were apprentice empty ones or empty ones, and those in white were the Rakshasas. All heads were bald, and it was hard to tell the difference between male and female.

The buildings were all white, grey, or black, and most shot straight up from the ground in hard right angles except for the Temple of Emptiness and the Tower of Hate; these buildings were the tallest in the city and slanted up like mountains. Behind Leslie, the Temple of Emptiness reached up almost nine hundred feet, and he knew the Tower of Hate was even taller than that. There was hardly any unnecessary decoration in the city except for the red-colored outline of what looked like a goat’s skull and horns on every building. Leslie walked fast down the steps of the Temple of Emptiness, hoping desperately that the sesnickie would be where they’d agreed to meet. If not, these past thirty days will have been as helpful as a pile of pilgrim shit, Leslie thought. He picked up his robes so he wouldn’t trip, then turned left.

A statue of Leere stood at the bottom of the steps, about nine feet tall, with a red cloak covering all but the gaunt goat face and horns that peaked out underneath a hood. In Leere’s black left hand, he held the Eraser; in his right was a skeleton key. Leslie always thought the key looked like a deformed child with eyes and a face on the handle. Leere’s left foot was in front, and the right … well, there was no right foot. The Hate sculpted every groove intentionally; the Necrolore would have no right foot to put forward, only that which was left after the One Dream had become the only reality. Musings of madmen, he thought, though still it was an unsettling sight, and Leslie was happy to see it for the last time.

Another thing he wouldn’t miss was the purplish-grey sky of Lavender that gave Leslie a slight visual buzzing of disquiet to go along with the audible tik-tik that made his mind feel as if the two stimuli were knives pressing into it. He shivered at the thought, but it was also frigid on Lavender. Dandelion will be in its Summer One season when I get back, thank the Void, he thought. The two planets orbited each other, sharing a sun, and Lavender was getting the least of its warming rays currently.

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As Leslie walked down the alley between the Temple of Emptiness and the Laboratory—a small, square building that supposedly reached more than two thousand feet below the ground—he heard loud shouts and shuffling footsteps to his left. The Hate were coming down the steps.

“The Eraser! They took the Eraser!”

Shit.

Leslie started running and thumbed his last can of disco freeze. He’d have to wait for the perfect moment to use it, up ahead and around the corner as he’d planned. They were approaching fast, he could hear them, but he didn’t dare look back. Pip, you ugly fuck, you’d better be where we agreed to meet. Pip was supposed to be traveling from Dandelion to pick Leslie up and take him back. Back where the sun shines and back where my friends are and … where she was. She was his brother’s wife, but things like that could hardly change how one felt toward a woman. The empty ones behind him were shooting transmogrifiers at him now; he could tell by the feeyoop sound they made. Leslie moved back and forth to avoid being hit by the reaching cyclones of warped air.

2

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 on the long, white-fur back of the sesnickie and threw down his last can of disco freeze, having hit the button on top on his way up Pip’s back. Pip took up the entire width of the alleyway, which was about fifteen feet in total, and Pip still had to bend their body a bit to fit.

As soon as the disco freeze hit the ground, the members of the Hate froze, some in mid-draw of their transmogrifiers. Leslie shook violently at the repeated use of disco freeze. You’re no Voiddamned good. You smell like shit. She’ll never want you—you’re the shit brother. NO! He had seen no other way but to use the cans on the Hate, but Voids was it a rough trip. He looked at the Hate now, frozen, their transmogrifiers pointing at him.

I would have been as good as a pile of pilgrim shit had they hit me with one of those fuckin’ things, Leslie thought as the sesnickie began to rise from a crouching position. I might have been pilgrim shit, for that matter. I’ll never understand why the Rakshasas use a weapon made from their own bodies—and made by their enemies, no less. Can’t blame the Drakes for their economical use of the things, though.

Biting his lip in an attempt to soldier through the effects of the disco freeze, Leslie grabbed two handfuls of the sesnickie’s white mane and relished in the feel of it; it had been too long since he’d felt this soft hair. Pip’s pointed ears twitched. Voids but I’m never using that shit again. Fiona was right.

“Hello, Leslie,” a voice said in Leslie’s mind. It was a masculine voice, an intelligent one, and very kind. It sounded old, but this was just how Leslie perceived the sesnickie: a wise, old man, their white mane a beard and the two long barbels that trailed down from their snout a mustache. Leslie knew that sesnickie had no gender, but this is how communication worked with them; if Leslie thought they would sound a certain way, that’s how he heard them when they talked.

“Hello, Pip!” Leslie said, straining to keep the vibrational depression he was dealing with out of his voice. Pip grumbled as Leslie patted their neck. Thick-neck-ie, he thought distractedly. “Alright, Pip, time to get out quick or eat shit. Pilgrim shit.” Leslie tried to clear his mind with the mantrum he’d used many times before. All animals were attuned to the Inner Vibrations, but the sesnickie were especially. It took believable calm and confidence to get your vibrations thrumming at the right frequency for a sesnickie to be able to Move with you.

As he chanted, Leslie pictured the place as if he were already there, feeling its vibrations and the associations he had with it, thinking the thoughts he’d thought there and feeling the feelings. It was essential to use these associations because they helped in the process of believing one was already at the place they were Moving to. Though the associations with a specific room differed somewhat between a sesnickie and their rider, any given location had a frequency, which was the part that had to line up between the two.

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

Aum balamb-bom-bai, he chanted in his mind. Come on, you fuck! Aum balamb-bom-bai. Aum balamb-bom-bai. Leslie began to feel the warm, almost sleepy feeling of nothingness envelope him. Thank the Void. Leslie knew the sesnickie’s eyes were dilating, and the two began to Move. Though normal humans could Move with a sesnickie, It was easier to do this with a thrummer because they were more accustomed to using the Inner Vibrations. With non-thrummers, the sesnickie would have to send many images, scents and sounds into the brain of their rider until they were both vibrating at the same frequency.

They shifted slightly—not necessarily moving visibly, but changing in form, their colors fading. The stargazer lilies, the shadow wood, the Manor House, Aum balamb-bom-bai, Leslie thought, focusing the images in his mind more intensely as the Move progressed.

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-between Leslie and the Moving mantrum, 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 Carter. Fix his brain. Don’t want to use it on him without ensuring it works, he thought. 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.

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 were starting to stir. Leslie and the sesnickie hadn’t completed the Move yet; it took about twenty clicks once the Inner Vibrations were aligned. An empty one raised their transmogrifier up and pointed it at Leslie’s serene face, firing right as he completed his Move, and Leslie and Pip disappeared.

3

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 backwards and he had paws the color of mud.

Keeping the Eraser in his armpit, Leslie slid down the sesnickie’s side, made difficult by the awkwardness of his new body. He had been transmogrified before so this wasn’t terribly alarming, but new bodies did take some getting used to. 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 marble. It was odd; Leslie did not think it had been so heavy as that, to fall without a bounce and make such a loud noise. He stared at it for a moment, wondering if he should maybe pick it up to ensure it was really still alright, but decided against the notion and instead sat on his haunches to begin the process of getting his body back to its original state.

The room around Leslie and Pip was called the meditaz: a large chamber with rows of thick marble pillars that held lit candles in iron sconces on 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 of the meditaz.

“Leslieee, welcome back! How was your time with the Hate? Pleasant, I am sure. Always did have a good sense of humor, the Hate.” The voice hesitated then let out an echoing guffaw. “It appears my words ring true! They transmogrified your cock and balls clean off!” The voice began to giggle again which was amplified by the cavernous room they were in. 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. He now looked like your everyday redhead with too much body hair and features too pointed. “Hello, Quint. I see you haven’t changed much; same long beard, crusty face, and shit jokes. Now that we’re done with that, would you like to stare at my cock some more?” Leslie said.

“Or lack thereof?” Quint said, raising an eyebrow and continuing to stare in the least welcome of directions. 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 in all the time he’d known him.

Quint looked down to the ground at the black rectangle. “So 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, looking magnanimously between Leslie’s thighs.

“Not that, you fuck. The Eraser,” Leslie said as he folded his hands back in his lap and slipped into the mantrum once again. This was a growth mantrum, different than what Leslie had used to Move with Pip from Lavender.

Om shindi-andi-ah

Om shindi-andi-ah

Om shindi-andi-ah

As Leslie slowly chanted to himself and took on 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 Carter. 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.

Leslie heard their footsteps as they began walking down a row of pillars toward the soft glow of the common room. Pip breathed out in exasperation. “Please, Pip. Try to refrain from breathing. I’m sure Putnam will be grateful he doesn’t have to light any more Voidforsaken …” Quint’s voice trailed off as he and Pip walked down the steps and into the common room, away from the isolated silence of the meditaz.

4

After a cycle, Leslie came back to his body and his normal, non-mantrum thoughts. I have to piss, was his first thought. His second was: Why didn’t they turn me into pilgrim shit? I guess the Eraser could have gotten stuck in the pile? They did go on and on about the fuckin’ thing: ‘it will empty all of the empties,’ esoteric mumbo jumbo. But they probably didn’t want it in a pile of shit. There was something odd about it though. The Hate were so protective of it. Why would they just let him get away with it? If they’d turned him into something else that did not have arms or a lap, the Eraser could have dropped to the ground and they’d still have it.

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 his thumb and forefinger, looked up, exhaled, then bent back down to pick up the Eraser.

Tik-tik

Tik-tik

It was not an easily forgotten piece of music. Leslie itched his ass once more, then set off to meet the others.