SOUND BY CHER PHONER. EDITED BY ICARUS WING.

"Mandy, I love you!" shouted the Beetle. He was hugging her to his chest. Her hands were playing over his lap. I loved her too.

Felt like my cock was on fire.

Mandy had found Icarus. She'd gone back to Seb's flat. Found him in. Forced the knowledge out of him. Don't ask how. The use of hands and mouth. Something like that. No matter. The game was on.

THANK YOU FOR DREAMING WITH CHIMERA. SPONSORED BY VAZINTERNATIONAL THE UNIVERSAL LUBRICANT. FOR LIFE'S STICKY MOMENTS. NOT TO BE USED FOR ILLEGAL PURPOSES.

Try telling that to the Beetle.

This intense desire for love was in me, fired by the shimmy. I pulled the feather from my lips, watching it go cream in my fingers.

I too wanted to fuck the universe. If not that, then a woman would do. Any woman. Christ! Even a dog would do. That's a good shimmy for you. Makes you into a god. A god of love. Even me.

"Oh Christ!" breathed Mandy, full of want. "I'm soaking."

"And I've got a snake in my dick!" said the Beetle. "Let's get out of here."

THE CHIMERA CORPORATION. SHARING THE DREAM.

Icarus didn't talk much. Hardly any. He was fat like a pig and he could hardly squeeze into that darkroom with the rest of us tight-packed in there as well. He poured shimmy mist through a viewer, eyes open for good bits.

"You got some good stuff for us?" the Beetle said to him. I could feel the Beetle's arousal, through the talk, and my own, matching him. And Mandy's.

The small room was dripping, lit by a red light. Sex was everywhere.

No response from the shimmyographer. He just kept blowing that spool. His studio was right back of the auditorium, and through the projection ducts I could see the last stragglers leaving their seats. Karli was whining from behind the door, where I'd tied her up to a Grecian pillar. "That was a hot shimmy, Icarus. It sure got me going." We left Beetle to do the talking. Mandy was glued to the way that Icarus was mixing the rushes. Speed-driven thrills, yards of dream flesh blurring into orgasm. Ribbons of sex. Wet dreams. Visions of loveliness. Ultra-come.

Like sitting inside somebody's head. Whilst they were masturbating.

Me, I had my eye on the glass tank above the mixing desk. A violet and green shape lay curling there, rolling out its tongue like an offering.

Keep that tongue to yourself, snakebreath.

The Beetle was speaking; "Seb told us you'd got some English Voodoo. That right?"

Icarus pushed the feather further into the deck.

My left ankle started to ache and throb, like it had a hard-on, remembering the twin bite of the fangs.

"Don't know any Seb," Icarus said.

"That's funny, because he knows you."

"Must have been mistaken."

"That's a nice specimen you got there," said the Beetle, nodding towards the tank. "You see this?" He was stroking the snakehead pinned in his lapel. Icarus didn't even look up from the smoke. "Caught that fucker myself," Beetle continued. Trapped him in a door. Cut his head off." He paused for effect, but the editor was busy with the roller; looked like he'd found something. The Beetle turned to me. "You see that snake in the tank, Scribb?" he asked.

I nodded, not taking my eyes off the slithering bitch.

"That's one big fucker, yeah, Scribb?"

Just watching the tank, my eyes caught on the violet and the green, and the slow undulating body. Must have been all of twelve foot long.

Beetle turned back to Icarus. "You wouldn't want that big fucker to get loose."

Icarus looked up at him, just for a second. "That's my best snake," he said, and then lowered his face back to the dream mist.

"What you got?" asked Mandy.

Icarus looked over at Mandy. "Come see," he said.

Mandy bent low, putting her eyes to the viewer. She looked in there, close up, for maybe a full minute. During that time the dreamsnake did a complete reef-knot of movement. Each slither brought another bead of sweat to my flesh. My left leg was stinging.

"Nothing," said Mandy, finally. "Can't see nothing."

"You need to look close, real close," Icarus said.

"It's just smoke."

"You ain't got the juice, girl. Not like me." And something real bad came to me then. Icarus was telling us that he had some Vurt in him. Christ knows, must have been a tiny amount; you wouldn't guess it to look at him, but maybe that's how he did this job. But the bad thing was this -- maybe I could steal this fat guy and force him into a swapback. Maybe I didn't need the Thing after all, but then he waddled over to the snake cage and I saw just how useless that guy was. He was worthless. No use. Way below Desdemona. Way below Hobart's Constant.

"It's just smoke!" Mandy was saying. "There's nothing there."

"I'm turning mist into Vurt. That's my job. Not even that, this time. I'm just cutting bits out. Chopping out the bad bits, making it suitable. I'm making it legal. That's my job. It's not much of a job is it?"

No answer to that. None at all. We all just waited, in the silence, whilst the shimmyographer focused in on the errant scene.

"That is one big snake," announced the Beetle. "You really wouldn't want that snake to get loose. Would you?" He made it sound like a threat. A bad threat. The Beetle was good at that. Icarus wasn't fazed. He reached up and clicked one catch on the tank, then the other. The lid raised up slow and sexy, like a breath exhaling. The dreamsnake unwrapped itself eagerly. I stepped back slightly, just slightly, trying to control myself. My leg hurt was stinging.

"Is there something wrong with the boy?" asked Icarus.

"Ignore him," said Mandy. Tell us what you see."

The shimmyographer jerked the mist to a frozen standstill. "There she is!" he announced. "Offending article. You see, Chimera send these Vurts out to the provinces, but we're just getting the bad cuts. There's stuff still in there. Non legal. I gotta check every second. It's a fucker's job, and I'm doing it. This looks like mist to you. To me it's a dream, somebody's dream, and you can't show everything. It spoils it. People want love. This bit here, the hero's stabbing his father with a kebab skewer. Through the eye. You just can't show that. Not in a Pornovurt. It's a passion killer. Cut that fucker!"

Icarus reached inside of the tank and grabbed the dreamsnake by the neck. It writhed around like a whiplash crack, but he had it between his fingers, and with the other hand he reached for a small ball hammer. He pushed it into a jar of paste, coating the hammer head with sap.

This was the squeezed-out flowers of the snakeweed, the only known cure for dreamsnake bite. It grew on the plains of Utanka, an obscure high-level Vurt, available only to the cognoscenti. Icarus gently tapped the ball of the hammer on the top of the snake's head. The head proceeded to droop, as the slit eyes glazed over.

We watched as that snake took a vicious bite out of the dream. He lifted it away from the mist, and the two streams of smoke coalesced into a new state, a clean state. "That's better," Icarus said. "Feels clean now." He stepped closer to me. There were tiny yellow flecks in his eyes, which seemed to glow brighter as he held the snake up to my face. I stumbled back, knocking against a feather bank. Streams of mist were pouring out of it, choking the room.

"What's wrong, young man?" Icarus asked. "Don't you like snakes?"

"Get it off me!" I screamed.

Icarus waved the snake in front of my nose. "I'm in control," he said. "I'm the boss of snakes."

"Scribble had an unfortunate incident," the Beetle told Icarus. "Some years ago now. Just can't get over it."

"He was bit by one?"

"Yes."

"I knew it. You've got the Vurt inside you, boy."

"Not me --"

"They always deny it at first."