[b][i]—— Ximbic-8: Ximbic Central City: The Bulge[/i][/b]

Light-enlivened shadows trilled to Belacrazu's every utterance, a moribund paternoster that lilted, grated, and ensnared. Saccharine sounds commingled with minute motions, ephemeral as the flensing of dawn by the diurnal pendulum's dusk-sharpened edge, and stirred motes surreptitiously amalgamated in dappled silver bands buoyed by the alien's posterior plonk. Amid the effluvium, crimson and gold ribbons circumnavigated a lazy descent. Gracious e'er, he, Spencer's host, wended limb in a decanter-directed gesture, and offered:

[i]	"Pot-valor, client courageous?
	Whilst wrinkled organ moil,
	And glutamate-greased sere-wan ducts
	Perfect palaver peculiar?"[/i]

Answer anticipated, an ice-laden quintic mandelbulb of heavily-faceted phenakite careened into Spencer's sternum. From the midst protruded an ornately fluted onyx flagon, as otherworldly as an obelisk atop a shattered glacier. Still, within smoldered a promise of hidden hooch. An alien wink and a nod were ample evidence thereof; thus, vessel delicately lifted to his lips, Spencer drank the formidable unknown. Orgasm exploded on and clung to his tongue, all salty, sweet, viscous, and neat. Petrichor inundated his nostrils. Rigor bewitched his loins. Wooziness beset his skull.  Suddenly he was quite conscious of the elliptical geometry of the shop, itself rife with implausibly-sculpted trinkets. The influx of awareness nearly caused his collapse, but, shifted to a mucosal hassock, howwhich he knew not, Spencer remained upright, recalibrated, and suspiciously enjoined, [i]"Uh, so what'cha sell?"[/i]

Chest puffed, braided beard asway, and horns provocatively coiled, Belacrazu regally crooned,
 
[i]	"Mercurial,
	Experiential,
	Skin slipping,
	Mind twisting,
	Exploits extraordinaire!"[/i]

Strung archwild round the apothecary, gaze synchronized with Belacrazu's arm sweep, Spencer beheld on shelves overburdened and vibrantly-stained a variegated arrangement of flasks, bottles, and condoms. Some appeared ceremonial, like a suspiciously phallic calabash; others outright alien, as was the prismatic arrangement labeled [i]Flakon of Ekthidian Ganask[/i]; and a great many more were beyond his ken, although he imagined at least one vessel served as lacrymatory to an extant species of sentient cosmic persimmons. Nothing immediately suggested the implied virtual reality. It took a moment, then he connected two and two. Eyebrow's furrowed and mouth ajar as he digested the splendid scene, Spencer reduced his host's preposterous boast to noisy doubt, [i]"You sell drinkable memories?"[/i]

Irises florid as nacreous offal mesmerized Spencer's benighted pair. Unable to elsewhere gape, he felt his inner daemon lance his attenuating insult, the warranted gesture of which planted itself deep in his bowels; lest, of course, such sensation was merely an alchemical reaction from his alien imbibement. Flushed, shame somehow tore his gaze astray. Inability to pay for such an intrepid exchange ruminated briefly in his brain, then Belacrazu whimsically whispered:

[i]	"Two of thine, 
	Wed with wine,
	Best of the lot,
	For one of mine,
	A decadent plot.
	Merely think,
	Then piss in the pot."[/i]

Gist gotten, Spencer quaffed what remained in the gelid vessel then, vis-à-vis with pupils pertinacious, renewed within himself congealed tokens two: the former, a tournament where with heroism he maybe died; the latter, an orphaned childhood in which, amid war and poverty, he thought he thrived. Gone, for chimeric vivaciousness, was the apothecary, but behind each scene camped Belacrazu's cipher. Thus encouraged, illumined neurons bled acetylcholine into ganglionic canals, mementos petrified in ptyalin-partitioned dextrose patterns, secreted from parotid to urethra, and deposited from an instrument unclothed and clasped warm and rigid in his calloused grasp. Wait, no. That wasn't his hand. It felt like toffee draped in fur. He glanced down. Vibrant, twin jets diverged, by fate or crusted glans, from a worm coiled about a black woolen mitten where once was his member. He blinked in horrified curiosity, then pondered the way his liquefied sunshine glistened through a pallor of steam and settled into neon porosity. Soon the dual tides of piss were riven back into their respective streams and absorbed within antipathetically-arranged phials. 

[i]	"Chaos! Suspense!  
	Delusive juvenescence!
	Personal fable gilt in altruism's belied guise!
	Exchange equivalent, to words thine own,
	Take this, go forth and 'give a shit.'"[/i]

Dysmorphic conundrum paramount in his mind and words reduced to slurs, Spencer inexpertly articulated, [i]"Em I--errr melthing?"[/i] Either the chamber blurred or his vision filled with smoke, at which point he promptly lost consciousness.