Slut Root

Tingles bloomed behind April O'Glock's ribs when she found 20 Schmocken Street for sale: a three-bedroom bungalow on a quarter acre in the bogan fringe of suburbia, with no prospect of gentrifying for two generations. It was the front and back yards, a moat of plain, flat, brown dirt that signalled April's preferred virtue of 'fuck gardening'. Twelve years of long shifts and frugality paid off the mortgage. Now April casts a love-lost gaze, inwards to that youthful folly, outwards to the stemless weeds, with horizontal 45cm leaves and five stalks of pale blue flowers of equal height, that cover her yards.

But as someone or another has sung, presumably, April 'will not give up on love'. She gives two weeks notice to her employer with a healthy bank account and an itch, which she intends to scratch later, for new employment. Two deep breaths before she plunges into Bunnings, getting lost and paralyzed near the bird netting for five mute minutes, fists in pockets and heart rate a little higher than usual, until a staff member approaches with an eyebrow raised 'Caaaan I help you?' April thusly acquires a shovel and sinks it into earth adjacent to the weed closest to the backdoor. She presses the shovel down and the plant lifts 15cm, revealing that the top of its woody root is shaped like a 10cm diameter human head now screaming:

'Sluuuut. Fucking sluuuuut. You fuckin looove it you fucking sluu-'

Despite being more closely related to the dandelion, Taraxacum Tuberosus is known as 'Slut Root' or 'Dull Man's Mandrake'. Subspecies of mandrake, the sort of interest to alchemists, have evolved a defensive mechanism where, upon being uprooted, the tuber releases pent gasses to produce potentially lethal sonic waves. Slut Root has evolved, parallel but unrelated, a tuber with similar properties, including a vaguely humanoid appearance, which serve to repel or repulse the uprooter. April instead splinters and mashes the Slut Root's 'head' with 14 stabs of the shovel.

A month later, April answers knocking on her front door to find a tall man, blonde with sparse 2cm beard, in jeans and grey t-shirt, who says: 'Hello, my name is Ryan. I live a few houses down, at 26. I believe that you have been -'

'Sluuuut.'

'- burning off for the past three days. It is not my concern what you do with your land. I use my -'

'Floooozy. Promiscous. Gaaaping.'

'- own property similarly. However, I've recently done a load of washing and the smoke coming from your land may get into my bedsheets and -'

'Time for smoko. Get some pooooole.'

'- and and what the shit is going on back there?'

April giggles: 'Do you have a sledge hammer?'

Ryan does. He sinks a pitchfork next to a Slut Root and pushes down whilst April pulls the plant up at the leaves. The Slut Root screams:

'Rooooastieee.'

Ryan reels back: 'The fuck?'

April swings sledgehammer over shoulder: 'Hiii-yah!'

The Slut Root's head turns to mush and April smiles into the distance, hair down and wild:  'Imagine a men-children, man-childs full car, the sort that always has a spoiler, and you can legally mangle those catcalling faces.'

'What are, what, ahhh those sentient?'

Smile puckering: 'I hadn't thought about that.'

They are not.

Ryan points at fire crackling near the shed: 'Is that one?'

'Petrol's cheap and I wanted to burn one while it was still screaming.'

'Just the one? It's been going for three days?'

'Yeah. It stopped screaming pretty quick. No fun.'

Ryan gazes over the backyard lush with green and pale blue: '50/50?'

Thinking: 'I am looking for a new job, but we need a market. How would we go legit with Big Coal's ScoMo in power?'

Ok, ok, maybe: 'What if I can find a black market?'

Sarcastic: 'I wouldn't dream of depriving big business of subsidies paid out of my hard earned taxes.'

Smiling: 'Cool. I'll need a few of these, uh, roots. Down payment. Investment.'

'Throw in a chainsaw and you've got a deal.'

Ryan hereby wants a market for Slut Root - therefore, a greater demand for Slut Root, in turn for more people to know about Slut Root, thereby a means of telling people about Slut Root or, more specifically, the Taimatsu Hakkō Ichiu. The Taimatsu Hakkō Ichiu had been developed by Akiko Tanizaki, fascist Japan's Leni Riefenstahl of pyrotechnics. The Taimatsu is eight dormant sets of aerial shell fireworks, dispersed globally but connected with a precursor to wi-fi known as 'magic'. The pulleys and levers jutting from each piece of the Taimatsu can be used to modify the resulting fireworks display - colours, words, ect. - which will also alter the display of the other seven pieces, so that all of the firework displays are the same, translations withstanding. An operating manual in ten languages comes attached.

One piece of the Taimatsu had been smuggled into Australia, where it was supposed to activate upon Axis Japan's conquest of the Pacific. Other pyrotechnics stopped this from eventuating and the Taimatsu has been long forgotten, only recently found by Ignatius, Rasmus and Poppery, the former Knights of the Galaxy Klaxon. The three had spent a hermetic decade together, protecting their namesake Galaxy Klaxon until forsaking their duty in order to save their balls. They found that being apart from each other felt unwholesome, unnatural. Having spent significant time alongside a mythic artefact, they also discovered their unconscious habit of dowsing for items of magical value. Unable to find an employer with three vacant, closely working positions, the Knights instead:

·         Camped atop a bed of grass flattened by carnality between Quetzalcoatls, which is similar to basilisk sex if both basilisks are screamers. Two dozen Quetzalcoatl feathers had been shed during that enthusiastic romp. The Knights had traded the feathers to Amy, a bow hunter, for Floor Pizza, a large-sized pizza box which, if left on carpet for 21 hours, materialises three slices of Ima Funghi.

·         Wandered Paul's bush block until finding an Adler Shotgun modified to carry 90 rounds. Paul was initially pissed at the trespass but, upon calming down: 'Thanks for finding my gun. You want some bitcoin?'

·         Rented a boat and spent three days floating, carefree with fishing poles, above a sunk dinghy with an esky preserving two cartons of Dirty Granny. Renee: 'I have a quarter of El Dorado Green and a get-out-of-jail-free legal precedent. Take it.'

Ryan has heard about the 'three purple robed nutters living in the reserve near Brian's place' from the guys at the warehouse. That evening, Ryan visits the Knight of the Galaxy Klaxon, finding them huddled around and all sort of trying to teabag a small fire.

Ignatius: 'Rasmus, Poppery, let us sacrifice Floor Pizza for some shavings of heat.'

Poppery: 'That's our food.'

Rasmus: 'Lest our balls climb and, like the cat up the elm, hesitate in their descent?'

Ignatius, ironic: 'All for one, one for all.'

Poppery thinks for a moment: 'Shit.'

Ryan: 'Aaaare you guys looking for some firewood? I've got some real good stuff.'

Rasmus: 'Ho! Another roving merchant, in circumspect time.'

Poppery, thumb over shoulder: 'You looking for those fireworks? We burnt the manual, but I can show you the ropes.'

A deal is struck. Ryan and Poppery finagle with dials and levers until a suitable fireworks display is plotted. The long lever with big red knob is pressed down.

Antarctica: a sky dense with stars is instantly painted with red, green, blue and silver explosions. A hundred penguins flap, squawk and drop shit in the summer night.

De Geuechts-Truepvan de Paramaribo Circus performs to a home crowd. A clown-and-pie act is back-dropped by acrobats somersaulting with pails of water to two elephants, who take the water into their trunks and spray it onto a three metre tall bushfire. They outdo themselves: fireworks breach the canvas roof of a wooden trailer and colour the towering smoke.

Hiroki walks with head down, despondent at a coffee date gone stood-up, seriously contemplating the pros and cons of the French Foreign Legion. A grinding noise lifts his gaze: the tip of the Heiwa no Tou (Tower of Peace) has opened and launches fireworks that pop in sync with the rhythm of Dare, by Gorillaz. He looks up and down the path for other witnesses and meets the bright eyes of two smiling girls he is yet to meet. A conversation starter becomes readily obvious.

Seattle, WA: business as usual. The nearby Taimatsu had been dismantled and sold for scrap in '84.

Atop a hill in Rhineland-Palatinate, Frieda and Sofie stand slightly hunched and wide eyed. They shout back and forth in German: 'Do you see this?'  'Is this the acid?'  'Is this real?'  'Does that say "Slut Root"?'  'What is Slut Root?'

Naked on a bed dragged halfway onto a hotel balcony, Julielle hands a cigarette of Ghost Tobaco to Tony. (Aw yeah, he dead now. Tractor.) She notices sparkling over the desert beyond Dubai and squints to make out words.

'Excuse me?'

In southern Morocco, a Sahrawi man sits cross-legged by a pile of smoldering camel turds. His tribe is admiring an unexpected kinetic fresco, but he alone smokes a pipe of catnip and tobacco, glancing now and again to words and prices materialising on the Catnip Page. Sure enough, Slut Root is 'On the Shelf' and going for ₵$1 a kilo.