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In those days of grey terror the Reptiles dart about faster and faster, scream past each other at supersonic speed, their flexible skulls flapping in black winds of insect agony. The Dream Police disintegrate in globs of rotten ectoplasm swept away by an old junky, coughing and spitting in the sick morning. The Mugwump Man comes with alabaster jars of fluid and the Reptiles get smoothed out. The air is once again still and clear as glycerine. The Sailor spotted his Reptile. He drifted over and ordered a green syrup. The Reptile had a little, round disk mouth of brown gristle, expressionless green eyes almost covered by a thin membrane of eyelid. The Sailor waited an hour before the creature picked up his presence. "Any eggs for Fats?" he asked, his words stirring through the Reptile's fan hairs. It took two hours for the Reptile to raise three pink transparent fingers covered with black fuzz. Several Meat Eaters lay in vomit, too weak to move. (The Black Meat is like a tainted cheese, overpower- ingly delicious and nauseating so that the eaters eat and vomit and eat again until they fall exhausted.) A painted youth slithered in and seized one of the great black claws sending the sweet, sick smell curling through the cafe. HOSPITAL Disintoxication Notes. Paranoia of early withdrawal. . Everything looks blue.... Flesh dead, doughy, toneless. Withdrawal Nightmares. A mirror-lined cafe. Empty. ...Waiting for something.... A man appears in a side door.... A slight, short Arab dressed in a brown jellaba with grey beard and grey face... There is a pitcher of boiling acid in my hand.... Seized by a convulsion of urgency, I throw it in his face.... Everyone looks like a drug addict.... Take a little walk in the hospital patio.... In my absence someone has used my scissors, they are stained with some sticky, red brown gick.... No doubt that little bitch of a criada trimming her rag. Horrible-looking Europeans clutter up the stairs, in- tercept the nurse when I need my medicine, empty piss into the basin when I am washing, occupy the toilet for hours on end -- probably fishing for a finger stall of diamonds they have stashed up their asshole.... In fact the whole clan of Europeans has moved in next to me....The old mother is having an operation, and her daughter move right in to see the old gash receive proper service. Strange visitors, presumably relatives... One of them wears as glasses those gad- gets jewelers screw into their eyes to examine stones. |
