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On Jupiter, beneath swirling storms of crimson and gold, there lived a mouth that was not a mouth. Not human, not anything anyone could name. It opened, and in its cavernous, wet darkness, thousands of unhuman mouth lice writhed. This mouth, WONDER “Cleaning The Duckbill Gasket” c90, hummed and licked the thick, greasy street grime that floated through the ionized clouds, dragging sludge across its fleshy lips for 1,231,453,220 years.
The lice licked with precision, cleaning, tasting, feeding. They ate dead tissue, living tissue, scraps of food stuck between unhuman teeth, bodily fluids, cosmic grime, fragments of comet dust. As they fed, they produced toxins, attracting bacteria that released compounds that made the tissues soft, easier for lice to burrow, to gnaw, to chew endlessly.
On Jupiter, in the roiling, crimson-gold storms, the unhuman mouth stretched wider than moons, hungering and endless. WONDER “Cleaning The Duckbill Gasket” c90 lay within it, cassette humming in rhythm with the gnawing. Inside the cavern, unhuman mouth lice twisted and writhed, licking street grime that drifted through ionized clouds. They had been licking for 1,231,453,220 years—and they would not stop.
The grime itself seemed alive. It tasted of rust, iron, decomposed moons, fragments of frozen comets, and every lick recorded memories of centuries. It thickened in response, forming sticky, shifting patterns across the fleshy cavern walls of the mouth. Each lick left a trail, each gnaw left a song. Lice sang in unison, tiny high-pitched harmonics vibrating through the cassette, Side A hissing, Side B gnawing, sculpture-like lips flexing with every note.
The lice followed precise life cycles. Eggs glued to blood-sucking mosquitoes hatched in the grime. Larvae burrowed into soft folds of tissue, secreting toxins that softened walls, making every bite easier, every lick sweeter. Five to ten weeks passed like a single second, then pupae emerged, buried in the grime, matured into adult flies, returned to the mouth, and the licking began anew. Multiply, repeat, infinite loop.
Over millennia, the mouth itself grew aware. It flexed, contracted, expanded, learning the taste of grime, the rhythm of larvae, the patterns of chewing and gnawing. It hummed back at the cassette, which recorded not just sound, but intent. The sculpture of lips, teeth, and cavernous tissue became a living instrument, vibrating with 1,231,453,220 years of sonic memory.
Grime thickened, remembering every larval passage. Lice evolved. Flesh fly larvae grew long, narrow heads, reddish-pink bodies; botfly larvae curled into cylindrical spines, ringed and blunted, wriggling in concert. Horse botflies burrowed in grotesque harmony. Their chewing echoed like tiny pianos across the cavern, and the mouth hummed in resonance, almost sentient, almost hungry for itself.
Cassette Side A hissed, Side B gnawed. The insert rattled. The sculpture scraped itself against the grime. The lice, the grime, the mouth, the cassette—they merged into a single organism of sound, taste, motion, and thought. Licking became art, gnawing became music, grime became canvas, and the mouth conducted the symphony.
Time lost all meaning. Years folded into decades, centuries into millennia, millennia into eons. The grime remembered every note, every lick, every larval passage. Pupae hatched, matured, burrowed, returned. Lice evolved, lengthened, spined, twisted, singing in unison. The mouth hummed, hummed, hummed, until the storms themselves seemed to pause in awe.
And still, the licking continued. Grime thickened, whispering, “More. More.” The cassette captured centuries in minutes, millennia in hours. Larvae multiplied, gnawed, burrowed. The mouth flexed, aware, humming. Sculpture shifted, alive. Insert rattled, alive. Licking, gnawing, burrowing, recording, humming, infinite.
1,231,453,220 years.
The grime had texture, taste, memory. Each lick hummed in rhythm with the cassette inside the mouth, Cleaning The Duckbill Gasket c90, which somehow recorded the sound of centuries of licking, gnawing, and scraping. Side A hissed; Side B gnawed quietly. Lice moved in choreography: circular, spiral, gnaw, lick, chew, repeat.
The life cycle of these mouth larvae was precise, horrifying, endless. Eggs glued to blood-sucking insects—mosquitoes born in Jupiter’s red clouds—landed in the mouth. The immature botflies burrowed in soft, wrinkled tissue, feeding for five to ten weeks, consuming, liquefying, secreting toxins. Emerging, they buried themselves in the slurry of Jupiter’s grime, pupating, maturing into adult flies, only to return to the mouth. And still, the licking continued.
Years folded over themselves. Storms blew across the planet, whipping dust and debris into the cavernous lips. Lice sang. Mouth hummed. Licking persisted. The grime tasted sweet, metallic, acidic. The cassette rattled, insert folded, sculpture shifted—if one could call lips a sculpture. Every lick a note, every gnaw a chord, and the mouth, somehow alive, somehow aware, sang.
Time lost meaning. 1,231,453,220 years felt like an afternoon. Grime coated everything. Lice multiplied. Tissues softened, burrowed, gnawed, liquefied. Pupae hatched, matured, returned to the mouth. Side A hisses, Side B gnaws. The mouth hummed with satisfaction, unhuman and endless.
And so the lice continued, licking, gnawing, burrowing, singing, cleaning the duckbill gasket of Jupiter, forever, until the storms themselves grew tired of the sound, and the grime whispered, begging for release that never came.