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THE

TICKET

THAT

EXPLODED

posed little time

so I’ll say

“good night”

“see the

action, B.J.?”

It is a long trip. We are the only riders. So that is how we have come to know each other so well that the sound of his voice and his image flickering over the tape recorder are as familiar to me as the movement of my intestines the sound of my breathing the beating of my heart. Not that we love or even like each other. In fact murder is never out of my eyes when I look at him. And murder is never out of his eyes when he looks at me. Murder under a carbide lamp in Puyo rain outside it’s a mighty wet place drinking aguardiente with tea and canella to cut that kerosene taste he called me a drunken son of a bitch and there it was across the table raw and bloody as a fresh used knife . . sitting torpid and quiescent in a canvas chair after reading last month’s Sunday comics “the jokes” he called them and read every word it sometimes took him a full hour by a tidal river in Mexico slow murder in his eyes maybe ten fifteen years later I see the move he made then he was a good amateur chess player it took up most of his time actually but he had plenty of that. I offered to play him once he looked at me and smiled and said: “You wouldn’t stand a chance with me.”

His smile was the most unattractive thing about him or at least it was one of the unattractive things about him it split his face open and something quite alien like a predatory mollusk looked out different well I took his queen in the first few minutes of play by making completely random moves. He won the game without his queen. I had made my point and lost interest. Panama under the ceiling fans, on the cold winds of Chimborazo, across the rubble of Lima, steaming up from the mud streets of Esmeraldas that flat synthetic vulgar CIA voice of his . . basically he was completely hard and self-seeking and thought entirely in terms of position and advantage an effective but severely limited intelligence. Thinking on any other level simply did not interest him. He was by the way very cruel but not addicted to the practice of cruelty. He was cruel if the opportunity presented itself. Then he smiled his eyes narrowed and his sharp little ferret teeth showed between his thin lips which were a blue purple color in a smooth yellow face. But then who am I to be critical few things in my own past I’d just as soon forget . .

What I am getting at is we do not like each other we simply find ourselves on the same ship sharing the same cabin and often the same bed welded together by a million shared meals and belches by the movement of intestines and the sound of breathing (he snored abominably. I turn him on his side or stomach to shut him up. He wakes and smiles in the dark room muttering “Don’t get ideas”) by the beating of our hearts. In fact his voice has been spliced in 24 times per second with the sound of my breathing and the beating of my heart so that my body is convinced that my breathing and heart will stop if his voice stops.

“Well,” he would say with his winsome smile, “it does give a certain position of advantage.”

My attempts to murder him were usually direct . . knife . . gun . . in some one elses hand of course I had no intention of getting into social difficulties . . car accident . . drowning . . once a shark surfaced in my mind as he plunged from a boat into the tidal river . . I will go to his aid and clutch his torn dying body in my arms like a vise he will be too weak from loss of blood to fight me off and my face will be his last picture. He always planned that his face should be my last picture and his plan called for Cinerama film sequences featuring the Garden of Delights shows all kinds masturbation and self-abuse young boys need it special its all electric and very technical you sit down anywhere some sex wheel sidles up your ass or clamps onto your spine centers and the electronic gallows will just kill you on a conveyor belt the Director there bellowing orders:

“I want you to shit and piss all over yourself when you see the gallows. Synchronize your castor oil will you? And give the pitiless hang boy an imploring look for Chrisakes he’s your ass hole buddy about to hang you and that’s the drama of it . . .”

“It’s a sick picture B.J.”

Well it seems this rotten young prince gives off whiffs of decay when he moves but he doesn’t move much as a rule has eyes for one of the prisoners wants him for his very own fish boy but the younger generators are on the way. Partisans have seized a wing of the studio and called in the Red Guards . . . “Now what do you boys feel about a situation like this? Well go on express yourselves . . This is a progressive school . . These youths of image and association now at entrance to the garden carrying banners of interlanguage . . Her fourth-grade class screamed in terror when I looked at the ‘dogs’ and I looked at the pavement decided the pavement was safer . . Attack enemy over instrument like pinball . . Shift tilt STOP the GOD film. Frame by frame take a good look boys . .”

“They got this awful mollusk eats the hanged boys body and soul in the orgasm and they love being eaten because of this liquefying gook it secretes and rubs all over them but maybe I’m talking too much about private things.”

“You boys going to stand still for this? Being slobbered down and shit out by an alien mollusk? Join the army and see the world I remember this one patrol had been liberating a river town and picked up the Sex Skin habit. This Sex Skin is a critter found in the rivers here wraps all around you like a second skin eats you slow and good . . Well these boys had the Sex Skin burned off by the sun crossing the plain they could just crawl when they reached the post quivering sores they was half eaten mostly shit and pieces of them falling off so I called the captain and he said best thing was bash their skulls in and bury them in the privy where he hoped the smell might pass unnoticed but there was stink in congress about ‘unsung heroes’ and the President himself nailed a purple heart to that privy you can still see where the old privy used to be other side of those thistles there . .

“Now that should show you fellows something of the situation out here and the problems we have to face . . take the case of a young soldier who tried to rescue his buddy from a Sex Skin and it grew onto him and now his buddy turns from him in disgust . . anyone would you understand and that’s not the worst of it it’s knowing at any second your buddy may be took by the alien virus it’s happened cruel idiot smile over the corn flakes . . You gasp and reach for a side arm looking after your own soul like a good Catholic . . too late . . your nerve centers are paralyzed by the dreaded Bor-Bor he has slipped into your Nescafé . . He’s going to eat you slow and nasty . . This situation here has given rise to what the head shrinkers call ‘ideas of persecution’ among our personnel and a marked slump in morale . . As I write this I have barricaded myself in the ward room against the 2nd Lieutenant who claims he is ‘God’s little hang boy sent special to me’ that fucking shave tail I can hear him out there whimpering and slobbering and the Colonel is jacking off in front of the window pointing to a Gemini Sex Skin. The Captain’s corpse hangs naked at the flagpole. I am the only sane man left on the post. I know now when it is too late what we are up against: a biologic weapon that reduces healthy clean-minded men to abject slobbering inhuman things undoubtedly of virus origins. I have decided to kill myself rather than fall into their hands. I am sure the padre would approve if he knew how things are out here. Don’t know how much longer I can hold out. oxygen reserves almost exhausted. I am reading a science fiction book called The Ticket That Exploded. The story is close enough to what is going on here so now and again I make myself believe this ward room is just a scene in an old book far away and long ago might as well be that for all the support I’m getting from Base Headquarters.”

“You see the action, B.J.? All these patrols cut off light-years behind enemy lines trying to get through some fat-assed gum-chewing comic-reading Technical Sergeant to Base Headquarters and there is no Base Headquarters everything is coming apart like a rotten undervest . . but the show goes on . . love . . romance . . stories that rip your heart out and eat it . . Now how’s this for an angle? Are you listening B.J.? This clean-living decent heavy metal kid and a cold glamorous agent from the Green Galaxy has been sent out to destroy him with a Sex Skin but she falls for the kid and she can’t do it and she can’t go back to her own people because of the unspeakable tortures meted out to those who fail on a Mission so they take off together in a Gemini space capsule perhaps to wander forever in trackless space or perhaps?”

winds

of time

The room was on the roof of a ruined warehouse swept by winds of time through the open window trailing grey veils of curtain sounds and ectoplasmic flakes of old newspapers and newsreels swirling over the smooth concrete floor and under the bare iron frame of the dusty bed — the mattress twisted and molded by absent ­tenants — ghost rectums, spectral masturbating afternoons reflected in the tarnished mirror — The boy who owned this room stood naked, remote mineral silence like a blue mist in his eyes — sound and image flakes swirled round him and dusted his metal skin with grey powder — The other green boy dropped his pants and moved in swirls of poisonous color vapor, breathing the alien medium through sensitive purple gills lined with erectile hairs pulsing telepathic communications — The head was smaller than the neck and tapered to a point — A silver globe floated in front of him — The two beings approached each other wary and tentative — The green boy’s penis, which was the same purple color as his gills, rose and vibrated into the heavy metal substance of the other — The two beings twisted free of human coordinates rectums merging in a rusty swamp smell — spurts of semen fell through the blue twilight of the room like opal chips — The air was full of flicker ghosts who move with the speed of light through orgasms of the world — ­tentative beings taking form for a few seconds in copulations of light — Mineral silence through the two bodies stuck together in a smell of KY and rectal mucus fell apart in time currents swept back into human form — At first he could not remember — winds of time through curtain sounds — blue eyes blurred and twisted absent ­bodies — The blue metal boy naked now flooded back into his memory as the green boy-girl dropped spaceship controls in swirls of poisonous color — The blue boy reached out like an icy draught through the other ­apparatus — They twisted together paralyzed — He and Bradly grinding against each other in pressure seats, while heavy metal substance guided their ship through the sickening twist of human cloud belts — galaxy X chartering a rusty swamp smell — Their calculations went out in a smell of ozone — opal chip neighborhood of the flicker ghosts who travel the far flung edge of Galaxy X hover and land through ­orgasm — flickering form of his companion naked in copulation space suit that clung to his muscular blue silence — smell of KY and rectal mucus in eddies of translucent green light — his body flushed with spectral presences like fish of brilliant colors flashing through clear water — tentative beings that took form and color from the creatures skin membrane of light — pulsing veins crisscrossed the two bodies stuck together in slow motion time currents — lips of tentative faces, rectums merging structure one body in translucent green flesh —

Bradly’s left arm went numb and the tingling paralysis spread down his left side — He felt crushing weight of the Green Octopus who was there to block any composite being and maintain her flesh monopoly of birth and death — Her idiot camp followers drew him into the Garden of Delights — back into human flesh — The Garden of Delights is a vast tingling numbness surrounded by ovens of white-hot metal lattice with sloped funnels like a fish trap — Outside the oven funnels is a ruined area of sex booths, Turkish baths and transient hotels — orgasm addicts stacked in rubbish heaps like muttering ­burlap — phantom sex guides flashing dirty movies — sound of fear — dark street life of a place forgotten — “It might take a little while.” The Garden of Delights . . GOD . . Remember my old C.O. standing there with a hangman’s noose in his hands . . “You see this noose, Lee? This is a weapon . . an enemy weapon.”

That was in 1962. In the years that followed I contacted a number of undergrounds with various aims methods and organizational setups among which was an equivocal group of assassins called the “White Hunters.” Were they white supremacists or an anti-white movement far ahead of the Black Muslims? The extreme right or far left of the Chinese? Representatives of Hassan i Sabbah or the White Goddess? No one knew and in this uncertainty lay the particular terror they inspired. The District Supervisor received me in a paneled room with fireplace, a country house it would seem rain outside a misty landscape. After motioning me to a deep leather armchair the D.S. walked around behind me talking in a voice without accent or inflection, a voice that no one could connect to the speaker or recognize on hearing it again. The man who used that voice had no native language. He had learned the use of an alien tool. The words floated in the air behind him as he walked.

“In this organization, Mr Lee, we do not encourage togetherness, esprit de corps. We do not give our agents the impression of belonging. As you know most existing organizations stress such primitive reactions as unquestioning obedience. Their agents become addicted to orders. You will receive orders of course and in some cases you will be well-advised not to carry out the orders you receive. On the other hand your failure to obey certain orders could expose you to dangers of which you can have at this point in your training no conception. There are worse things than death Mr Lee for example to live under the conditions your enemies will endeavor to impose. And the members of all existing organizations are at some point your enemy. You will learn to know where this point is if you survive. You will receive your instructions in many ways. From books, street signs, films, in some cases from agents who purport to be and may actually be members of the organization. There is no certainty. Those who need certainty are of no interest to this department. This is in point of fact a non-organization the aim of which is to immunize our agents against fear despair and death. We intend to break the birth-death cycle. As you know inoculation is the weapon of choice against virus and inoculation can only be effected through exposure . . . exposure to the pleasures offered under enemy conditions: a computerized Garden of Delights: exposure to the pain posed as an alternative . . you remember the ovens I think . . exposure to despair: ‘The end is the beginning born knowing’ the unforgivable sin of despair. You attempted to be God that is to intervene and failed utterly . . . Exposure to death: sad shrinking face . . he had come a long way for something not exchanged born for something knowing not exchanged. He died during the night.”

A series of oblique references: “Zurich Saturday morning meet the so convenient Webber family at the B.P. Auto Stop. Hear realize that B.P. is not only and you’ll find them buying everything from organization Shannon believe they can tape recorded at 23 Mount St it is that’s what I thought and there’s a little boy that’s been reproduced in a lot of books hasn’t it? He has a plate camera is it going to be published in Vogue? Part of the city’s Friday child loving Tuesday for that matter oh really St. Louis Encephalitis of birth and nickname that’s the only time 19 have died but the disease quickly spread. What in Germany? He had been meaning Sexexcellency Sally Rand cunning Navy pilot Alan B. Weld two acts for three saints in outer space proudly registered in Phoenix was it are you sure that’s right infectious night biter Mo. 18 I’m going to answer the doorbell definitely definitely the first time in thirty years Houston’s outbreak the first time in who said Atlantic City? I was supposed to have done the sets for it and B. was supposed to acquire the virus from birds yeah then I think they paid a dollar for infectious disease processing the actual film but the disease quietly spread to all West Texas beauty unscheduled in outer space . . ‘You mean you did it yourself you didn’t have your assistant do it?’ . . ‘Nope just spreading epidemic of St Vacine maybe we should’ . . ‘How long did it take you to process this photo to squirt at anything that flew dyeing and all that it’s all part of the city’s sudden healthy people infectious beauty disease spreading epidemic of immune humans . . Half an hour? St. Louis Mo. giving hope you mean it’s not finished yet? This photo the stripper exuberance its going to fade away? You should have that have a page fading away Time September—(a number not clear)—It is a musical family . . parachute just in case . . I can now drink reservoirs of the disease is that a new play to get at the source spray everything? I heard Friday’s child loving a registered stripper nicknamed Conny oh are you going to remember this later that last of the last ditches like you came through the door in his moon suit maybe he’s there? Oh no . . It’s getting too spooky I’m getting the spinal cord and brain a male with female laughter they have this script he just dropped it like that they always start hissing it’s all part of the game of war infants pay the price female laughter just came out of Time Starlet Weld Tuesday what? That’s beautiful that is fogged out in distance there should be somebody so called actually this is how the old saw “I think sex is healthy” just two stoned Germans naturally did the same long shuffle . . That’s the clock if you set it two hours in advance the last of the last like we are in London a sentence words together in and out you know Manic Goddess 18 of 19 was done the painting was done never look at a model uninhibited disease by us astonishing we had done it without ever having a model starlet trapped in the sentence with full stop young painter are models myself look have you been there already?’”

Leafing through the GOD files . . Ref. The Big Survey page 71: “Monday May 9” chills light fever . . my brain feels like all the connections are burnt out . . electric sex prickles . . The Garden of Delights kinda run down now charred wooden beams blue and pink tinsel dirty pictures flapping in the wind smell of coal gas . . heavy darkness of underexposed film has settled in that gloomy valley . . The body of a hanged man the rope around his neck is laying across the trap of a wooden gallows . . Carl standing there . .

“You led me into this ambush?”

He laughed and threw himself back on a bunk tossing his legs in the air, “What and me so young and genial?” a male with female laughter.

I walked away from him in disgust. Two guards were there one named “Rose.” “Rose” was the more communicative and friendly and I asked him about the hanged man I had seen. He shrugged . . “Thought he would learn something . . his pants . . the plague.”

I had walked up a slight incline. The garden was built in a valley quite bare except for scrub and vines. The whole place presented the sordid and run-down appearance of an abandoned carnival.

“Who planned all this?” I asked.

The other guard answered: “Maybe it was him,” pointing to Carl. “He will show you his country card in the end and the end is you hang on Tuesday.”

Furniture stacked up for storage or removal and I find an old Webley .455 revolver in a dusty desk drawer. Standing there with the gun in my hand and Carl laughed again. The first bullet smashed into a beam a quarter-inch from his neck. Wood splinters spattered the young cheek with red dots. He rubbed a hand across his face and looked at the blood. He stopped laughing and looked at me his mouth a little open. At the second shot a jet of black liquid from the gun hit him in the mouth. His face turned black and old and he sagged against the beam muttering: “sleeping pills.”

“genial”? hummm an odd word to use . . Ah here we are . . ref. East Beach File page 156: “This is a novel presented in a series of oblique references . . shave? . . did he? . . an amputation . . three young burglars one wearing a black overcoat stopped on the stairs by two English detectives . . One of the thieves is nicknamed Genial . .”

I put through a call to Scotland Yard . . “Inspector Murdock please.”

“Who shall I say is calling sir?”

“Klinker.”

“Just ‘Klinker’ sir?”

“That’s all.”

“Oh hello Lee what can I do for you?”

“Anybody in your files nicknamed ‘Genial’?”

“Hold on I’ll check . . .” I put in another six pence waiting. “Yes here we are . . name Terrence Weld . . age 20 . . 5 feet 11 inches . . ten stone . . hair sandy . . eyes green . . known M.P. . . arrested three times suspected of breaking and entering . . no convictions . . .”

“How did he get that nickname?”

“smooth talker . . cool . . laughs a lot . . well genial on the surface at least.”

“I see . . anything else?”

“Well yes . . about two years ago a chap named Harrison John Harrison hanged himself in the barn of his country place near Sandhill . . Harrison was living with young Weld at the time . . Weld was picked up in Harrison’s car . . That’s how it came to our attention . . needless to say no charges . .”

“Needless to say . . Was Weld staying with Harrison in his country place at the time of Harrison’s death?”

“No he was in London.”

“Nothing to connect him with Harrison’s death?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“Anything unusual about Harrison’s suicide?”

“Well yes . . He’d rigged up a gallows with a drop . . must have taken half an hour to build.”

“Anything else?”

pause . . cough . . “The body was completely naked.”

“You’re sure he was alone at the time?”

“Quite sure . . It’s a small town . . easy to check.”

“And his clothes . . all in a heap?”

“Neatly folded.”

“And the tools he used?”

“Each tool returned to its place . . the barn was used as a workshop . . Carpentry was one of Harrison’s hobbies.”

“Did Harrison own a tape recorder?”

“How should I know? If you’re all that interested I can give you a number to call in the S.B.”

“Seems odd they should be interested in a routine suicide.”

“A lot of the things they do seem odd to the rest of us. I do know they spent some time on the case . . Ask for Extension 12 . . Mr Taylor.”

I could tell by the way he repeated the name Mr Taylor knew who I was.

“Yes Mr Lee?”

“I’d like some information about a man named Harrison who killed himself two years ago . . country place near Sandhill . .”

“I remember the case . . rather not talk over the phone . . Can you meet me this evening in the Chandos Bar? around six?”

Mr Taylor was dressed in a light-blue suit the shoulders so broad as to give an impression of deformity . . ­little scar where a harelip had been corrected . . red face . . light-blue eyes. We found a quiet corner. Mr Taylor ordered a Scotch Old Fashioned.

“John Harrison was 28 at the time of his death . . He was fairly well off . . flat in Paddington . . country place . . interested in the occult . . wrote bad poetry . . painted bad pictures . . good at carpentry though . . made his own furniture.”

“Did he own a tape recorder?”

“Yes he owned three tape recorders arranged with extension leads so he could play or record from one to the other. They were in the Paddington flat.”

“You heard his tapes?”

He drank half his drink. “Yes I heard his tapes and read his diary. He seems to have been obsessed with hanging . . the sexual aspects you understand.”

“That is not so unusual . . when you consider the extensions . .”

He finished his drink. “No it’s not so unusual and that is precisely what concerns this department.”

“Did you interview a young man named Terrence Weld in this connection?”

“Young ‘Genial’? Yes I interviewed that specimen.”

“He was genial?”

“Impeccably so. I considered him directly responsible for Harrison’s death. When I told him so he said

“‘What and me so young?’

“Exactly. And then he laughed.”

“Interesting sound.”

“Very.”

“You recorded it?”

“Of course.”

“Rather stupid on his part wouldn’t you say so?”

“Not stupid exactly. He simply doesn’t think the way we do. Perhaps he can’t help laughing like that even when it would seem to be very much to his disadvantage to do so.”

“I would suggest that ‘Genial’ is that laugh . . only existence ‘Genial’ has.”

“Infectious laughter what? Yes he’s a disease . . a virus. There have been other cases. We try to keep it out of the papers.”

“And cases that no one hears about? Perhaps the operation has been brought to the point where actual hanging is no longer necessary . . death attributed to natural causes . . or the victim is taken over by the virus . . ‘Genial’ himself may well have been ‘hanged.’”

“I’d thought of that of course. What we are dealing with here is a biologic weapon used by what powers and for what precise purpose we don’t know yet.”

“Also an ideal weapon for individual assassinations. Any reason why anyone might have wanted Harrison out of the way?”

“None whatever. He simply was not important. I concluded that his death was purely experimental.”

“Was ‘Genial’ paid off?”

“It would seem so. He went to America shortly after I talked with him.”

“Still there?”

“No he’s back in London.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“Yes. He didn’t recognize me . . on junk and barbiturates . . looks ten years older . . down for the count I’d say . . But any one ‘Genial’ isn’t important plenty more where he came from: out of a tape recorder.”

“You made copies of Harrison’s tapes?”

“Yes. Play them for you if you like.”

Taylor’s flat was compact carpeted . . a desk a typewriter two filing cabinets a long table by the window with four tape recorders connected by extension leads. He pointed to the recorders . . “I got the idea from Harrison’s setup.”

“Did Harrison install the recorders himself?”

“No he was good at carpentry but had a blind spot so far as machinery goes especially electrical equipment. ‘Genial’ wired the machines for him.”

He put on a tape. “The voices of Harrison and ‘Genial’ alternated. They both recorded a short text then the two tapes were cut into short sections and spliced in together. This produces a strong erotic reaction. Curiously enough the content of the tape doesn’t seem to affect the result. In fact the same sexual effect can be produced by splicing in street recordings recorded by two subjects separately.”

two voices reading one cruel mocking the other muffled and broken by comparison alternated at short intervals conveyed a sensation of charged electric intimacy easy vulgar and therefore disgusting.

“Now listen to this.” The words were smudged together. They snarled and whined and barked. It was as if the words themselves were called in question and forced to give up their hidden meanings. “Inched tape . . the same recording you just heard pulled back and forth across the head . . You can get the same effect by switching a recording on and off at very short intervals. Listen carefully and you will hear words that were not in the original text: ‘do it-do it-do it . . yes I will will will do it do it do it . . really really really do it do it do it . . neck neck neck . . oh yes oh yes oh yes . .’

“You heard?”

“Oh yes oh yes oh yes.” (I reflected it would be interesting to inch a speech in the U.N., Congress, Parliament, or wherever and play back a few seconds later. You can run a government without police if your conditioning program is tight enough but you can’t run a government without bull shit.) “Yes I heard.”

“Here’s another one from the same original tape alternating Harrison and ‘Genial’ 24 times per second. I suspect this was the tape that dropped Harrison.”

A familiar sound I had heard it for years barely audible . . loud and clear now a muttering hypnotic cadence. He shut the machine off.

“The sound track illuminates the image . . ‘Genial’s’ image in this case . . almost tactile . . Well there it is . . biologists talk about creating life in a test tube . . all they need is a few tape recorders: ‘Genial 23’ at your service sir . . a virus of course . . The sound track is the only existence it has no one hears him he is not there except as a potential like the spheres and crystals that show up under an electron microscope: Cold Sore . . Rabies . . Yellow Fever . . St. Louis Encephalitis . . just spheres and crystals until they find another host . . just an arrangement of iron molecules on a tape until ‘Genial 23’ takes another queen . . . of course parasitic life is the easiest form to create . . . I wonder if . . .”

“If one could make a good ‘Genial’? I don’t know. Experiments along this line are indicated . . .”

(“You see the angle, B.J.? a nice virus . . beautiful symptoms . . a long trip combining the best features of junk hash LSD yage . . those who return have gained a radiant superhuman beauty . . !”)

“Was ‘Genial’ staying in the Paddington flat at the time of Harrison’s suicide?”

“No. He left Harrison a month before Harrison’s death. Apparently Harrison offered him all the money he could raise to come back and live with him but ‘Genial’ refused. He was living with a young man, name was Cunningham . . Robert Cunningham . . splicing themselves in together . . so long as the spliced tape finds an outlet in actual sex contact it acts as an aphrodisiac . . nothing more . . But when a susceptible subject is spliced in with someone who is not there then it acts as a destructive virus . . the perfect murder weapon with a built-in alibi. ‘Genial’ was not there at the time. He never is.”

“‘Genial’ didn’t work this out for himself.”

“Hardly . . This is obviously one aspect of a big picture . . what looks like a carefully worked out blueprint for invasion of the planet . . Anyone who keeps his bloody eyes open doesn’t need a Harley St psychiatrist to tell him that destructive elements enter into so-called normal sex relations: the desire to dominate, to kill, to take over and eat the partner . . these impulses are normally held in check by counter impulses . . what the virus puts out of action is the regulatory centers in the nervous system . . We know now how it is done at least this particular operation . . We don’t know who is doing it or how to stop them. Every time we catch up with someone like ‘Genial’ we capture a tape recorder . . ­usually with the tapes already wiped off . . .”

“You must have some idea.”

“We do . . You know about the Logos group?? . . claim to have reduced human behavior to a predictable science controlled by the appropriate word combos. They have a system of therapy they call ‘clearing.’ You ‘run’ traumatic material which they call ‘engrams’ until it loses emotional connotation through repetition and is then refiled as neutral memory. When all the ‘engrams’ have been run and deactivated the subject becomes a ‘clear’ . . It would seem that a technique a tool is good or bad according to who uses it and for what purposes. This tool is especially liable to abuse. In many cases they become ‘clear’ by unloading their ‘engram’ tapes on somebody else. These ‘engram’ tapes are living organisms viruses in fact . . This does give a certain position of advantage . . any opposition crippled by ‘engram’ tapes . . the ‘clears’ burning with a pure cold flame of self-interest a glittering image that lights up clearer and clearer as it fragments other image and ingests the dismembered fragments . . Yes we know the front men and women in this organization but they are no more than that . . a façade . . tape recorders . . the operators are not there . .”

“Program empty body what?” I got up to leave. “Where can I find ‘Genial’?”

“Boots any midnight. You won’t get anything out of him. He doesn’t remember.”

The guard was wearing a white life jacket — He led Bradly to a conical room with bare plaster walls — On the green mattress cover lay a human skin half inflated like a rubber toy with erect penis — There was a metal valve at base of the spine —

“First we must write the ticket,” said the guard (Sound of liquid typewriters plopping into gelatine) —

The guard was helping him into skin pants that burned like erogenous acid — His skin hairs slipped into the skin hairs of the sheath with little tingling shocks — The guard molded the skin in place shaping thighs and back, tucking the skin along the divide line below his nose — He clicked the metal valve into Bradly’s spine — Exquisite toothache pain shot through nerves and bones — His body burned as if lashed with stinging sex nettles — The guard moved around him with little chirps and giggles — He goosed the rectum trailing like an empty condom deep into Bradly’s ass — The penis spurted again and again as the guard tucked the burning sex skin into the divide line and smoothed it down along the perineum, hairs crackling through erogenous purple flesh — His body glowed a translucent pink steaming off a musty smell —

“Skin like that very hot for three weeks and then —” the guard snickered — “wearing the Happy Cloak . . Happy Cloak addicts lasted about two years on the average. The thing was a biological adaptation of an organism found in the Venusian seas. It had been illegally developed after its potentialities were first realized. In its native state it got its prey by touching it. After that neuro-contact had been established the prey was quite satisfied to be ingested you remember they make happy cloaks from a submarine thing that subdues its prey through a neuro-contact and eats it alive — only the victim doesn’t want to get away once it has sampled the pleasures of the cloak. It was a beautiful garment a living white like the white of a pearl, shivering softly with rippling lights, stirring with a terrible ecstatic movement of its own as the lethal symbiosis was established” . . quoted from Fury by Henry Kuttner Mayflower Dell paperbacks, Kingsbourne House, 229231 High Holborn, London WC1 . .

Bradly was in a delirium where any sex thought immediately took three-dimensional form through a maze of Turkish baths and sex cubicles fitted with hammocks and swings and mattresses vibrating to a shrill insect frequency that danced in nerves and teeth and bones — “a thin singing shrillness that touched the nerves as well as the ears and made them vibrate ecstatically to the same beat” . . quote from Fury by Henry Kuttner page 143. The sex phantoms of all his wet dreams and masturbating afternoons surrounded him licking kissing feeling — From time to time he drank a heavy sweet translucent fluid brought by the guard — The liquid left a burning metal taste in his mouth — His lips and tongue swelled perforated by erogenous silver sores — The skin glowed phosphorescent pink purple suffused by a cold menthol burn so sensitive he went into orgasm at a current of air while uncontrolled diarrhea exploded down his thighs — The guard collected all his sperm in a pulsing neon cylinder — Through transparent walls he could see hundreds of other prisoners in cubicles of a vast hive milked for semen by the white-coated guards — The sperm collected was passed to central bank — Sometimes the prisoners were allowed contact and stuck together melting and welding in sex positions of soft rubber — At the center of this pulsing translucent hive was a gallows where the prisoners were hanged after being milked for three weeks — He could see the terminal cases carried to the gallows, bodies wasted to transparent mummy flesh over soft phosphorescent bones — Necks broken by the weight of suspension and the soft bones spurted out in orgasm leaving a deflated skin collected by the guards to be used on the next shift of prisoners — Mind and body blurred with pleasure some part of his being was still talking to the switchblade concealed under his mattress, feeling for it with numb erogenous fingers — One night he slipped into a forgotten nightmare of his childhood — A large black poodle was standing by his bed — The dog dissolved in smoke and out of the smoke arose a dummy being five feet tall — The dummy had a thin delicate face of green wax and long yellow fingernails —

“Poo Poo,” he screamed in terror trying desperately to reach his knife — but his motor centers were ­paralyzed — This had happened before — “i told you i would come back” — Poo Poo put a long yellow corpse fingernail on his forehead vaulted over his body and lay down beside him — He could move now and began clawing at the dummy — Poo Poo snickered and traced three long scratches on Bradly’s neck —

“You’re dead, Poo Poo! dead! dead! dead!” Bradly screamed trying to pull the dummy head off —

“Perhaps i am — And you are too unless you get out of here — i’ve come to warn you — Out of present time past the crab guards on dirty pictures? — There’s a Chinese boy in the next cubicle and Iam is just down the hall — He’s very technical you know — And use this — i’m going now” —

He faded out leaving a faint impression on the green mattress cover — The room was full of milky light — (Departed have left mixture of dawn and dream) — There was a little bamboo flute on the bed beside Bradly — He put it to his lips and heard Poo Poo speak from an old rag in one corner — “Not now — Later” —

He contacted the Chinese boy who had smuggled in a transistor radio — They made plans quickly and when the guard came with the heavy liquid turned on the metal static and stabbed the switchblade deep into insect nerve centers — The guard fell twisting and flipping white juice from his ruptured abdomen — Bradly picked up the guard’s gun and released the other ­prisoners — Most of them were too far gone to move but others they revived with static and formed a division of combat troops — Bradly showed the guard’s weapon to Iam —

“How do you work this fucker?” —

Iam examined the mechanism with long fingers precise as tooled metal — explained it was a camera gun with telescopic lens equipped to take and project a moving picture vibrating the image at supersonic speed — He attached the radio to the camera gun so that the static synchronized with the vibrations — Bradly had the gun ready in his hand as they zigzagged out of the hive rushing the metal points of the ovens — Guard towers opened up with magnetic spirals and Bradly lost half his men before he could hit the central control tower and deactivate the mechanical gun turrets — (His troops had one ­advantage — All the guards and weapons of the enemy were operated by machine control and they had no actual fighters on the location) — Zigzagging he opened up with camera gun and static — Towers and ovens went up in a nitrous blast of burning film — A great rent tore the whole structure of the garden to the blue sky beyond — He put the flute to his lips and blue notes of Pan trickled down from the remote mountain village of his childhood — The prisoners heard the pipes and streamed out of the garden — The sperm tanks drained into streets of image forming thunderbolts of plasma that exploded The Garden of Delights in a flash of silver light — The Green Pine Inn is on a bluff over the river . . a lawn with chairs and tables stretches down to the edge of the bluff. The family is sitting on a screened porch fried chicken hot biscuits iced tea on the table. At one end of the table opposite his father is a boy about 18 dressed in a blue suit . . a slash of red on each cheekbone. He is looking across the valley.

The Demolition Squad has arrived. The G.O.D. is being pulled down and stacked into piles for burning. A lean leather-faced man with pale grey eyes looks sourly at a broken gallows covered with pink tinsel. A tape recorder gasps, shits, pisses, strangles and ejaculates at his feet. He listens his face impassive. He swings his heavy metal tipped boot. The noise stops. He leans forward and picks up a piece of twisted film streaked with excrement and holds it up to the late afternoon sun. He lets his arm drop and the film twists from his fingers. He glances around. “All set I guess.”

Men step forward sloshing pails of gasoline. The foreman throws a match and steps back. Other fires are starting here and there across the valley the smoke hanging black and motionless in the still September air. The Demolition Squad is walking up the hill to their truck . . a clank of tools. The two garden guards, who have been waiting there for a lift to town, get in . . a grinding of gears . . sound of a distant motor. Behind them in a darkening valley the Garden of Delights is scattered piles of smoldering rubbish . . . scrub and vines grow through blackened tape recorders where goats graze and lizards bask in the afternoon sun. G.O.D. is the smell of burning leaves in cobblestone streets a rustle of darkness and wires frayed sounds of a distant city.

The Guard named Rose sitting on a bench in the back of a swaying truck with the silent demolition men. He does not know where he is going or what he will do when he gets there . . . “getting old . . watchman in a warehouse . . museum guard maybe . .”

I stopped at a newsstand on Shaftesbury Avenue and bought a copy of Encounter contemplating under Eros the feat of prose abstracted to a point where no image track occurs.

(The concomitance or rather juxtaposition with this relentlessly successful though diagrammatic schemata by sexualizing syntactically delinquent analogous metaphor)

It was 11:50 PM when I stepped into the entrance of Boots and there was “Genial” standing outside blue neon on his face you thought of diseased metal when you looked at him a face burning in slow cold fires.

(desperately effete negation of societal values fecundate with orifices perspective and the ambivalent smugness of unavowed totalitarianism.)

I knew why he was standing there. He didn’t have the ready to fill his script. He was waiting for somebody he could touch.

(foundering in disproportionate exasperation he doesn’t even achieve the irrelevant honesty of hysteria but rather an uneasy somnolence counterpointed by the infantile exposure of fragmentary suburban genitalia.)

“Need bread for your script, man?”

He turned and looked at me decided I wasn’t the heat and nodded. I passed him a quid. “That should buy six jacks. I’ll see you outside.”

He nodded again went in and sat down in the script line.

(ironically the format is banal to its heart of pulp ambivalently flailing noneffectual tentacles of verbal diarrhea)

I waited half an hour of word sludge.

(confirming the existence of their creator their periodically jolted lives starved of direction or vector by the recognizable official negative analogues banal “privatisation” being the most reliable)

“You can fix at my place if you like.”

I could tell he had no place of his own. He just nodded and we got in a cab. I had to wake him up when we got there and help him up the stairs. He’d been hitting the goof balls waiting on his script. I deposited him in a chair. He slumped forward and his tongue lolled out. He opened one eye and looked at me.

“Don’t I know you from some place?”

“Right back where we started from born knowing.”

His eyes touched me inside. He smiled twisting a Sammy scarf in his dirty fingers.

“You should have let me finish the job instead of leaving it half done.”

(species spawning for such a purpose to ask reputably informed complacent “What is it for?” Accessibility is I feel to beg the question.)

“I’m immune now remember.”

“Yes thanks to me.”

“Thanks ‘Genial.’”

“So what did it get you?” He pointed to the mirror. “Look at you . . burnt out used up . . .”

(to traduce or transfigure and reduce a man’s pulsating multiplicity to untranslatable inchoate word for latent consensus of “otherness”)

“And look at you ‘Genial’ . . . sex scar tissue on anyone I ever asked alive or dead I should know.”

(Mr S. who latterly became something the point is simply the contradictions of an inherent territory prophet stridently inclined to gritty acceptances depending on banal illiterate process of perceptive engagement)

I found “Genial” in the police shed on top of the hill. He was sitting on a bench his face blank as an empty screen. A police sergeant behind a desk squinted through cigarette smoke. “Much trouble this one,” he pointed to “Genial,” “papers muy malo no en ordenes . .”

“He has a passport?”

“Oh yes but the date here and the date here no corresponde . . muy malo . . perhaps the passport is false . . it will have to be sent to the Capitol of course . .”

He watched my hand and checked the denomination of the note I was slipping under the frayed green blotter.

He picked up the passport and leafed through it. “Oh yes . . here is the date of entry . . Yes everything quite in order . . your passport señor . .”

“Genial” stood there with the passport in his hand . . “Come along ‘Genial.’” I put a hand under his arm and led him out onto the road.

“Adiós señores.”

“Adiós.”

I guided “Genial” with one hand under an elbow. He weighed no more than his clothes. We sat down under a tree worn smooth by others who sat there before or after time switched the tracks through a field of little white flowers by the ruined signal tower. We remember the days as long procession of the secret police always everywhere in different form. Outside Guayaquil sat on a river bank and saw a big lizard cross the mud flats dotted with melon rind thrown from passing canoes. It was the end of the line. My death across his face faded through the soccer scores the urinal and the bicycle races . . faded into Iam’s face at the Green Inn looking across the valley.