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.. night table litter of candy boxes, cigarette butts cas- cading out of three ashtrays, mosaic of sleepless nights and sudden food needs of the kicking addict nursing his baby flesh.... The Vigilante is prosecuted in Federal Court under a lynch bill and winds up in a Federal Nut House spe- cially designed for the containment of ghosts: precise, prosaic impact of objects... washstand... door... toilet... bars... there they are... this is it... all lines cut... nothing beyond... Dead End... And the Dead End in every face.... The physical changes were slow at first, then jumped forward in black chunks, falling through his slack tissue, washing away the human lines.... In his place of total darkness mouth and eyes are one organ that leaps for- ward to snap with transparent teeth... but no organ is constant as regards either function or position... sex organs sprout anywhere... rectums open, defecate and close... the entire organism changes color and con- sistency in split-second adjustments.... The Rube is a social liability with his attacks as he calls them. The Mark Inside was coming up on him and that's a rumble nobody can cool; outside Philly he jumps out to con a prowl car and the fuzz takes one look at his face and bust all of us. Seventy-two hours and five sick junkies in the cell with us. Now not wishing to break out my stash in front of these hungry coolies, it takes maneuvering and laying of gold on the turnkey before we are in a separate cell. Provident junkies, known as squirrels, keep stashes against a bust. Every time I take a shot I let a few drops fall into my vest pocket, the lining is stiff with stuff. I had a plastic dropper in my shoe and a safety-pin stuck in my belt. You know how this pin and dropper routine is put down: "She seized a safety pin caked with blood and rust, gouged a great hole in her leg which seemed to hang open like an obscene, festering mouth waiting for unspeakable congress with the dropper which she now plunged out of sight into the gaping wound. But her hideous galvanized need (hunger of insects in dry places) has broken the dropper off deep in the flesh of her ravaged thigh (looking rather like a poster on soil erosion). But what does she care? She does not even bother to remove the splintered glass, looking down at her bloody haunch with the cold blank eyes of a meat trader. |
