It All Gets Worse…

Compiled and EditedCompiled and Edited by Steven Solomon © 1992

Compiled and Edited by Steven Solomon © 1992

by Steven Solomon © 1992

November 29th, 1955


Dear Doktor,


I am again incarcerated. They say that I will hang at sunrise. How I come to this unhappy station is a rather long story. As I may have but few moments prior to my forceful eviction from this shabby, cold-water flat that we call Life, I will summarize.


It is now almost a month since parting ways with the people of the jungle. My departure from those facinating studies compelled as I ran into a bit of a situation with a local Chieftan, a contemptable and jealous man of small mind and large ego. Oh, there was that question as to how one of his wives gave birth to a child with green eyes, but that's another matter and one which I haven't the time to discuss.


In any case, I found myself once again at large and in pursuit of The Quest. I will tell you that there was a high degree of applicable neurobiologic technique gained in my association with the ancients of the rain-forest; methods of voluntary control of the parasympathetic nervous system, the induction of profound trance states amenable to superhuman feats of mental and physical function, and natural drugs that let a man shtup for days on end. Frankly, the timing of my exodus from the forest was not all that unhappy. I was actually becoming anxious to delve again into The Research, this time applying all that I had learned of both the ancient and the modern sciences.


Well, naturally, I was going to need specimens with which to work. For this, I arranged a false identity and an after-hours cleaning job at the morgue in the quaint priory of Laoag. The coroner's facilities were perhaps better suited to sausage-making than the best of today's forensic medicine, but what the heck. I pretty much had free run of the place from eleven at night to seven in the morning, and more fresh glands than you could shake a brain-stem at.


Laoag is your typical, bustling, third-world, back-water port. The corporeal proceeds of grisly industrial mishaps, lethal bar fights, maritime misadventures involving extreme drunkeness, and murdered prostitutes are provided aplenty. Yes, the whole situation seemed to be swell, everything going just fine. One evening, I was getting ready to boil up the heads of two Burmese sailors who had somehow got themselves locked in a refrigerated hold under several tons of Malay Yellowfin. While the corpses were blue, somewhat flattened and frozen stiff in a touching picture of amorous repose, their craniums seemed in fine shape.


There I was, I was sharpening my skull-saw, eager to get at the glandular goodies within those iced noggins, when the door flew open and the police just came barging in. Apparently the wife of one of my first specimens, the unlucky victim of a runaway rick-shaw, had noticed her hubby was not wearing the top of his head as he lay for viewing prior to inhumation (a barbaric custom!). So, one thing apparently led to another and pretty soon the cops had me fingered. I was surrounded by goons with guns, and they were asking questions like "what deed you do weeth the brain of Seenior Cruz?". Naturally, I denied everything.


They put me in front of the District Judge the very next morning, after taking great pleasure in beating me with gusto and aplomb throughout the intervening hours. For a while there, they tortured me with methods that they evidently considered quite creative. The part that I liked the best was the electrical shock to my groin. The technology is crude, but the tremendous stimulation provided is quite satisfying. To my disappointment, they withheld the water and electricity after I couldn't stop giggling.


Anyhow, the judge summarily found me guilty on a number of counts of which I am, naturally, perfectly innocent. I never actually killed anybody, you know. Nor am I a spy for the revolutionaries. As for the drugs, the government didn't even know they'd been invented until now, so how could they be illegal? Finally, I have never, never, shtoped a dead person- well, okay, so I thought about it. That's not illegal, is it?


It doesn't matter. They're gonna hang me. The sky is beginning to glow with the purple bruise of first sun. I hear my jailers down the hall. They've been drinking all night and are eager to see me twist at the end of that rope. Outside, the crowd is gathering as the church bells ring. The curtain will soon fall on this theater of dreams and I will exit the stage before the cheers and catcalls of the masses, the good citizen's of Laoag come to see the notorious cannibal take his last bow. It is my time to die… perhaps.


Teetering on the precipice,


Anton Saurian