The Book of Godom & Somorrah tells the story of the gods and goddess who reside in the celestial realm of Thorn Prick Peak and how they brought about the creation of the universe and the planet earth.

The oldest book from the Western Hemisphere, The Book of Godom and Somorrah follows the lives of the gods and goddesses on Thorn Prick Peak as they go about in a frenzy creating time, the universe, and a nation of fleas bent on propagating a Union of Satanic Assassins. Written in cuneiform chicken scratch by scribes before their time and discovered on the thirteenth floor of an inaccessible box canyon, the text has been rendered into English by both the nomadic and sedentary scholars of The Orbitology.

Here in CHAPTER TEN they describe the formation of a nation of fleas called Flea Isle and the arrival of an omniscient flea named Sky Flakes. CHAPTER TEN begins:

Yo, a purple flatulence raced across the sky. Let loose by Bukowski Tulip, it settled down through the cool spring air of Thorn Prick Peak like a rain of blossoms from a Bradford pear tree to warm the hearts of the other gods and goddesses. Such a divine fragrance inspired Mahler McAss to compose another symphony in honor of 2019 and his profound paranoia about the coming of a deep freeze. Goatfish Bruce mocked the symphony calling it too ethereal to be packaged and sold. It can’t be worn or displayed on the body, he said in one of his high tones. Besides, everybody knows that Mosquito Joe would never permit such a freeze, deep or petite. Why, the mere mention of a frost would be anathema.

And Mosquito Joe spoke of the sudden appearance of a form of life in a dream that had risen up from a mountain of data. Let it be but half the existence of Dog&Pony;, said Mosquito Joe, and let it be shiny and black and be but a dog. Let the cur be worshiped by a form of life less than one millionth the size of the average dog and let these millions be called fleas who shall suck its blood, decreed Dog&Pony.; And give these fleas the wings of gnats so that they may be cursed with a power beyond their grasp. Let these wings shimmer and dazzle those who look upon them, said Bug Eyes, issuing her proclamation with all the bang and glare she could muster. Every tin trailer and galvanized outhouse glistened and echoed in the celestial trailer park on Thorn Prick Peak and the deities stood by in silence momentarily amazed.

And, sigh, the moment passed and Bitter Kitten sealed the fate of every flea when she proclaimed that fleas shall scratch out each other’s eyes at the sound of a dozen wings fluttering, and Bitter Kitten laughed hysterically. But as they develop a taste for finer, richer, thicker, bluer blood the flea will ignore the sound of a dozen wings beating, countered Foie Gras, unsealing the fate of every flea. They shall hear nothing but the prompting of their own appetites and the hush hush of their pores and portals. They shall clip their wings, sang Peachy Keen in a voice sweeter than the juice of juices. The clipping will be the sign of true devotion to a better tomorrow. And the relentless pursuit of riches, intoned One Stone. Let these fleas be of simple minds and not speak of the cosmic ennui lurking within the mass of every possession and the craving to possess the speed of light in every burst of orgasmic oblivion. Let them not know of not and let not lurk behind every fear, raged Sigmund Uterus. He called upon the Three Orifices to issue clammy Slogans and sodden insights and direct them into the tender minds of fleas who make passes at their mother’s asses. And the Congregation of the Bored was pleased.

Then Molly Swine spoke of the beauty of bloodletting and blood sucking and the visionary promise of the endless flow of blood to sate the flea’s insatiable appetite for blood. The flea shall ban together and form a more perfect Union of Satanic Assassins to hunt down those of no count and eliminate them for their own good, said Barbecue Bush. What a great idea, chimed in Gladhand Weasel, who then endowed the flea with the talents to assassinate by proxy and by praise. Let the words France and French morph into acronyms with special meanings for no counts. Huge, roared Sain’t UV, let there be huge monuments to the success of the flea, and the Congregation of the Bored turned a blind eye to the empty boasts of Sain’t UV. Yet he endowed the fleas with a false sense of security by creating a zillion different life forms to amuse and torment the flea. Only Afro Froggy spoke of the love the flea shall feel for its little pets and the cuddling of their excrements into plastic bags. There they may store their souls, she cooed. Madonna Slug grew bored with all the talk of souls and called for the their replacement by fame and fortune. And Wampum Cow called for bigger skies and tastier clouds and Whine Seller did nothing but complain and Dodo Comeback reminded everyone of the power of The Invisibles to inspire insanity among the fleas, one sign of which shall be the prohibition of the banana. Its cultivation, importation, distribution, sale and consumption shall be condemned. And Sidewinder Sue rustled his papers and proclaimed that the rights of the sugar beetles, though they shall be known as the palmetto, shall not be infringed.

Yo, Reindeer Fool came dancing by and every which way he turned and swayed his movements beguiled the other gods and goddesses. They marveled at the oil of banana spraying away from his fine body. It spritzed from his every pore and glistened like rainy sunshine upon his hide. And as he shimmied and swayed, an image gradually emerged from the coagulation of banana oil, and the image was declared to be a vision sprung from the mountain of data in Mosquito Joe’s dream. At first, it seemed to be nothing but a great blue sea. Then swimming up from the depths of the sea a black male dog danced upon the waves and his ejaculates fell upon the water like the ejaculates of time that had leapt from the Howling Worm and fell upon the universe. And rising up from the white puddles of ejaculates a chain of tiny islands came into being and the black dog shook the fleas from his fur and the fleas fluttered down and settled the islands. And Bukowski Tulip called the string of islands a fleabag nation and Annie Dullard declared the story of the fleas to be a mirage, and like all visions, it came to be told across lips that never moved and settled in the mind as easily as a banana cream pie could be pitched into Cockroach Anna’s face. And the gods and goddesses returned to their trailers on Thorn Prick Peak and amused themselves by staring into the eternal static, from which a very unusual flea was sprung. And Congregation of the Bored was pleased.

And so it came to pass that an omniscient flea came to dwell among the fleabag nation who possessed the many names of All Eyes and Love Pig and The Three Rs and Michael Mooney, but who now called himself Sky Flakes. His purpose, he knew, was to introduce the fleas to the New Peoples Church and to give them the taste of Southern Milk and teach them the mysteries of the Utter Dark. Sky Flakes arrived in the midst of a tropical downpour when no one could see more than three feet in front of his face. As the rain passed, the sweet smell of orchids rose up from the earth in great steam baths and Sky Flakes fluttered about in a trance of olfactory drunkenness taking deep drafts of the fragrant air into his lungs. And everywhere he leapt and flew the other fleas looked upon him as an apparition wrapped up in wings as big as clouds and glistening from the hundreds of eyes covering his body. And since they had never seen such a flea they fled the mere sight of him.

The numerous eyeballs and their optic nerves had been soldered into his flesh by his fellow inmates when he was imprisoned at a penitentiary in a foreign land. He had escaped during a long and bloody riot retaining the omniscience the hundreds of eyes endowed him with and now he must decide whether to conceal all but two of his eyes, and thereby make him acceptable to the other fleas, or to retain his omniscience by living only at night when most fleas were blind drunk and could care less how many eyes would be staring them in the face. He also noticed that almost all the fleas clipped their wings. Those who did not were regarded as eccentric and odd, and lived as bohemians or outlaws. By covering all but two of his eyeballs with his wings Sky Flakes became acceptable to the long wings, but something insidious began to take place. His all-knowing state began to fade and his very substance took on a translucent quality. Other fleas seemed to forget he was in their company and Sky Flakes felt lost. And the more he covered all but two of his eyes, the more his sense of purpose receded and he shrank back into himself.

If he clipped his wings and left his hundreds of eyes uncovered he would not lose his omniscience, but then no other flea could stand the sight of him and his mission to teach the fleas about the New Peoples Church would remain unfulfilled. If he covered all but two of his eyes, he would forget his sense of purpose and be content to live among the fleas drinking and carousing and baying at the full moon like a dog at four o’clock in the morning with his arms strung among the many arms of other revelers. But he knew omnisciently that almost no one could be trusted to drink and carouse without an ulterior motive. Because fleas were parasites, they had a knack for making a pretense at camaraderie or fellowship, when, in truth, they would rather be sucking blood, or home alone counting the buckets of blood they stored in their refrigerators. The flea had been taught since birth to close his or her heart, for an open heart stood in the way of accumulating more and better blood. That they truly yearned to suck the blood of the one and only black dog that had shaken them away from his elegant coat and onto the islands where they now dwelled, they daren’t ever know. It was the single not that would crush their sense of who they were; for no one evolved from, or was created whole from, the food they ate. Imagine a cat saying that it came from a smelly old fish head! Or that a cow evolved from a stack of hay! Or that a biped canine sprang whole and intact from a hot dog!

That the fleas worshiped the gods and goddesses of Thorn Prick Peak could not be denied; that they knew of the deeds and thoughts of the divine ones could not be ascertained since so many dismissed The Book of Godom and Somorrah, which detailed the lives of the divine ones, as so much gobbledygook, and attributed to the deities the behavior and feelings they thought most appropriate. Of the more than three hundred religious sects on Flea Isle, the most vocal, The Raptors, had condemned The Book of Godom and Somorrah as the work of Satan, the apocryphal son of Mosquito Joe, who infected fleas with worms. The Raptors held that there was but a one and true god, Dog&Pony;, and his son, Puppy Love, whose life, death, and resurrection was described in the New Dizzy Land Testament, a divinely inspired book written by The War Poets who envisioned the return of Puppy Love to come about on some French land that must be sanctified by eliminating even the mere hint of Satanic influence. Then everyone would ascend into heaven, a place quite superior to Thorn Prick Peak in that it possessed no bathrooms and no sex education classes. And no need for them since those bound to heaven shed all but their warm and fuzzy feelings. Which were not to be confused with the hot and sticky feelings celebrated at the Burning Flea Festival!

One night Sky Flakes met Citizen Rick and Cola Curly at the Sloppy Seconds Saloon. These two long wings told him that because of the flea’s devotion to The Seven Lies, all fleas either never lied or lied for a living. The Secretary of Fate, Henry Kissassinger, for example, told the most gracious and elegant lies. Even his gestures were signs of false compassion. Cola and Citizen said that since most long wings were already outcasts there was little need for them to lie. They were only too happy to rub their dirty deeds into his face, bragging of their low aspirations, their family values, and simple pleasures. Cola Curly smuggled laborers, money, bananas, intellectuals and French art into the fleabag islands and who but Citizen Rick saw to the distribution of the goods and laborers to the Upper Keys, as the small northeastern islands were called. The island on which they were living, Flea Isle, was the southern most and the richest in the world…