So he does make it through his first obstacle as an escapee, but being an impatient demi-god, Joseph lands (Mercatorianly) right in a vast gulf as profound as the Serbonian bog. He grips the receding air with his angelic fingers, tearing at the clothing of time (theoretically aging), trying to pull himself back out as star clusters, quasars, quirks, googolplexies, infinets, meteors, planets, asteroid girdles, engagement rings, flying saucers, alien outposts, space debris, a vacuum cleaner, doppler effects, newtonian laws, galilean oversights, copernican apologetics, hubblian rainbows, ptolemiac chronicles, a slew of Arabian theories, besselian measurements, herschelian swatches, einsteinian twins, and hawkingish evaporations are pulled into the gaping fangs of forever more. The force is immeasurable, tightening its vacuous noose, abominable, big, grand, all those things, but Joseph and his magical winged feet cling to a non-existing molar, refusing to be swallowed and refusing to become food for the galactic juices of perpetuity’s full tummy. He finally grabs hold of a soda-pop can, then a plastic wrapper from a discarded candy bar, then a whole bag of garbage, its shudderingly horrific plastic darkness holding steady in the end, he digs his fingers into the bag, breathing in the smells of rotting produce, coffee grounds, leftovers from the last supper, and pulls with all of his might. Light! Glorious, life giving, mother of all, light! Joseph hangs over the side of the abyss, his feet still dangling into the hollow void, resting…
“Oh, you’ve come back to us,” a distorted radio voice says. “We didn’t think we’d ever see you again.” She is a maiden that fair princes would have fought dragons for, a woman so tempting wicked witches couldn’t keep them away, a femme fatale with the gaze of fuzzy logician, a nose like a buttered crumb, a mouth with discharged lips that make her appear to be pouting. She is wearing a men’s dress suit, the full sports jacket hangs off her frame, the long trousers bunching up at the bottom of her legs, the too large black shined shoes giving her the appearance of a cat in men’s boots, the gray button-up vest with her clear sternum underneath, the faint shadow of her chest, a large, out-dated bowler cap on her head, miscellaneous strands of black hair writhe in the wind.
“Pardon me?” Joseph says.
“Why don’t you get in line?”
“What for?”
“Well, you’ve come back to us.”
“I’m going the other way.”
Standing behind the vision in the business suit Joseph can see a long line of ragged wandering ghosts of men, haggard, sycophant women in shredded clothing, some with dirty, rotten children hanging onto their hands, trailing behind them with teddy bears and traveling games click, clacking, whistling, speaking. They all have swords dangling over their heads, hanging from their own personal cloud, which holds a piece of thread tied to the handle of the sword. It is ghastly. Joseph lifts up his wand in a menacing way, preparing to fend off the temptress and she smiles cynically back at him.
“What are you doing?” she asks innocently, mockingly. She removes the large sports coat and throws it over her shoulder.
“You can take off whatever you want, yes, I see you’re not wearing anything under that vest of yours, I know what you’re insinuating, but we both know it’s not going to happen, this is all a set-up to get me to come back from whence I came. This is all a mistake of the probability of set membership.”
“Erinyes? Could you come over here?” she called in a consumed voice. More women in men’s clothing moved towards Joseph’s position, their large patent leather shoes clapping on top of water, their hips swaying provocatively, there is something about women in men’s clothes, a whole gaggle of leering women undressing him with their eyes. Joseph surveys the enemy army, the back of hands running up their bodies, tongues protruding out of luscious lips, circling in phantom fellatio, simulated masturbation fingers wrinkling trousers, winks with all sorts of allusions to kama sutra images, horny whistles, eyebrows raised in feigned orgasms, and one woman wearing nothing but a dry-cleaned white cotton shirt who steps away from the crowd and runs the palms of her hands up clear brown thighs, gyrates her hips, arches her tongue as if gesturing for Joseph to come to her, a fillet in her hair capturing the curls so they hang behind her ears, she sways her falciform body as she moves toward him.
“What do you want? Leave me alone,” Joseph tries, stepping back, his heels already hanging over the abyss.
“You know what we want, we want to help you.”
“I was told the guardians were formidable, but I had no idea. I was picturing some sort of hunchbacked sphinx or perhaps a phoenix but this is infinitely cleverer. The men’s clothes, you can’t change them, can you? You have to keep your clothes the same. You know that we men have strange fantasies about it, so it works. If I was a woman, though, you’d suddenly be male, wouldn’t you? Well, I’m not falling for it, no sir e bob. You want me, you’ll have to fight me, none of this erection magic, it won’t work on me.”
The woman dancing moves closer, turns her back to Joseph and slowly lifts up the tails of her white shirt. “Why don’t you give Herapee a spanking? She’s being very naughty.”
“Yes, hit me, I’m a very bad girl.”
With this, Joseph makes his move. He alters his facial expression to that of a lust-bag, mimicking the look of men he’s seen in strip clubs, and gestures with his index finger for her to come to him. The woman swaddles over, unbuttoning the shirt from the neck down, revealing perfect skin.
“Bend over,” he commands and she spins on one toe.
“Yes,” she whispers, bending over before him and lifting her shirt over her waist.
His hand whips through the air and barks against her backside, causing the skin to ripple and her to take a few steps forward, she utters a hideous peal.
“How do you like that?” Joseph demands. “That goes for the rest of ya, too. I don’t play games, you want a spanking, I’m going to smack you so hard you’ll be a transsexual.”
“More, more…” the woman replies, backing up to him, arching her back and spreading herself open with her fingers. “More.”