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Waves of unknown stench fill the room, searing the lungs, grabbing the stomach.... Schafer wrings his hands sobbing: "Clarence! How can you do this to me?? Ingrates!! Every one of them ingrates!' The Conferents start back muttering in dismay: "I'm afraid Schafer has gone a bit too far...." "I sounded a word of warning...." "Brilliant chap Schafer... but..." "Man will do anything for publicity...." "Gentlemen, this unspeakable and in every sense il- legitimate child of Doctor Schafer's perverted brain must not see the light.... Our duty to the human race is clear...." "Man he done seen the light," said one of the Negro Bearers. "We must stomp out the Un-American crittah,' says a fat, frog-faced Southern doctor who has been drink- ing corn out of a mason jar. He advances drunkenly, then halts, appalled by the formidable size and menac- ing aspect of the centipede.... "Fetch gasoline!" he bellows. "We gotta burn the son of a bitch like an uppity Nigra!" "I'm not sticking my neck out, me," says a cool hip young doctor high on LSD25.... "Why a smart D.A. could..." Fadeout. "Order in The Court1" D.A.:"Gentlemen of the jury, these 'learned gentle- men' claim that the innocent human creature they have so wantonly slain suddenly turned himself into a huge black centipede and it was 'their duty to the human race' to destroy this monster before it could, by any means at its disposal, perpetrate its kind.... "Are we to gulp down this tissue of horse shit! Are we to take these glib lies like a greased and nameless asshole? Where is this wondrous centipede? " 'We have destroyed it,' they say smugly.... And I would like to remind you, Gentlemen and Hermaphro- dites of the Jury, that this Great Beast" -- he points to Doctor Schafer -- "has, on several previous occasions, appeared in this court charged with the unspeakable crime of brain rape.... In plain English" -- he pounds the rail of the jury box, his voice rises to a scream -- "in plain English, Gentlemen, forcible lobotomy...." The Jury gasps..., One dies of a heart attack.... Three fall to the floor writhing in orgasms of pruri- ence.... The D.A. points dramatically: "He it is.... He and no other who has reduced whole provinces of our fair land to a state bordering on the far side of idiocy.... He it is who has filled great warehouses with row on row, tier on tier of helpless creatures who must have their every want attended.... 'The Drones' he calls them with a cynical leer of pure educated evil.... Gentlemen, I say to you that the wanton murder of Clarence Cowie must not go unavenged: This foul crime shrieks like a wounded faggot for justice at least!" The centipede is rushing about in agitation. "Man, that mother fucker's hungry," screams one of the Bearers. "I'm getting out of here, me. |
