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Emotion 365: The Land of Disgust, the Capitol of Annihilation

Disgust smells of rot, mold, and blood. Corpses — smashed, torn, and bloated — lie strewn along the road. In the taverns, gnarly men with paunches, warts, and crooked noses drink sour beer and eat salty, gray stews with chunks of jellied meats out of wooden bowls. 

“Only the worst live in Disgust, but everyone visits,” says the Guide. 

Tour groups gawk at the fly-covered dismembered heads stuck on spikes on the path to Disgust. Black-winged bearded vultures with long grey talons perch on the crossroads and tear meats from the bellies of hanging sufferers. They wait in the tavern windows. The old men toss them chunks of meat. An oily gray sky hangs over Disgust. It grows red at night. Visitors can’t inhale the smog long. 

 “It poisons the lungs,” the Guide says offering the sensitive gas masks. “And if you stay too long you lose all sensibility. What repulses you now, becomes mundane later.” 

Some lands send teachers to help the young of Disgust, but they cannot stay long. Few children escape. 

The Obsidian Mansion Annihilation sits on the top of a hill. Bodies hang along the walkway leading up to the capitol building. Outside is a long shallow thin rectangular black pond. It goes on and on into the distance. Smooth black stones line the sides of the pond. 

As visitors approach the Mansion Annihilation the water first comes up to their ankles, then their knees, and then they must suddenly swim in a bottomless pool. 

In the deepest depths of Annihilation lives a tentacled monster. It eats drowned visitors and lines its nest with stones from their pockets. 

Inside the manion, the walls are matte black. The chairs are made of stone. A formless ghost, easily offended, greets the visitors who arrive wet on the doorstep. The Ghost King of Annihilation offers no comfort. 

"It’s better to ask for aid from Yargxil (the water monster) than to seek succor from the King of Annihilation," Miss Emeline Traveler advises, while Miss Doe Friend shudders.

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