Standing on the roof of a building near the port, I see the most horrible scene. Angry hipster youths cutting heads off indiscriminately, drool dripping out of their pierced lips. There are police informers being burned alive in the streets, the police sometimes helping and other times marching in as tear gas is sprayed from a small crop duster. I should have never done the deed, the old lice grow new friends, and now there’s track marks in my arm. Wasn’t the Baroline that did it, but I can say that it led me to do it.

So I find myself now, here on this roof, overlooking a long damn hallway of corruption. Another guy, he says to me, “God damn if that don’t beat all. Talked to an intellectual the other day. Had a dry look to him and I knew that it wasn’t refuge he sought but an audience. The audience was the refuge. Well he pulled out a paper, some foreign country’s propaganda machine, and immediately points out an article on heart transplants.

“He’s very agitated and says, ‘See the mortality rates? Why, this is practically a third world country and they’ve got us beat. It’s the people like Dr. Stevenson that are ruining the thing.’ Well I’d had enough right there to make up my mind so I slapped him over the head with a beer bottle. Fucking thing didn’t even break, but part of his skull caved in. Flap off skin hanging over his eye and I’m amazed this fucking bottle didn’t break.

“So right away I’m over to the bartender to get it square. I tell him that the guy made a pass at me. Well I’m in the wrong bar it turns out because that’s the owner’s brother. Honest to God, no fooling. Just what he told me. So now the policia is going to come and I’m gonna go to jail unless I can make this right. First thing I do is buy everyone in the house a drink. I want these bastards to love me when I make my move. But the bartender knows I’m up to something and has switched out the bottles. He’s serving booze that’s only 15 proof! Can you believe that?”
Now he’s found the vein he’s been probing for and sets up the needle. I’m pretty sure he’s going to die because he’s got no H in this shot. He’s convinced he’s dropped piles of it here over his years and so every white fleck in the carpet is a grain. Now he’s cooked up this shot of drywall and found the vein. I don’t say anything to him about the stupidity of his plan because I know he’s good for a few dollars if he kicks.

“Now the bartender’s screwed me. He’s got the people turned against me for getting weak liquor served. And on my tab! Yeah, I can see I’m outmatched here, but I’ve got a plan. I get down on my hands and knees and start barking like a dog. I’m thinking if this thing goes to trial then I can claim insanity in addition to the sexual advance. And if you’re crazy as a shithouse loon, then a sexual come on might just push you over the edge. In addition to this, I’m documenting the bar in my mind so I can call the smart bartender in on his own suit.

“But it goes for two hours like this and no policia. I’m suspicious as hell because I saw the bartender make a call. He’s either called the policia or the owner to tell what happened. If it’s the owner, I’m a dead man. And if it’s the policia, it’s even worse. Because that means they’re waiting for me to come out. If I go out there then I’m a dead man. They’re gonna do their tricks and the explanation will be ‘injured resisting detainment’.

“The intellectual comes back around after a bit and asks me if I’d like to have a drink with him. He’s having trouble seeing and complains of a headache. So I tell him, ‘You don’t remember what happened?’ and he says he does not. Well I’m gonna fix the whole rig right then so I tell him the bartender hit him with a bottle. I know that everyone else will back me up because they’re angry at the bartender for the bad round.”
He pauses and exhales slowly. Then he begins again.
“You know, that was the year of the great drought and you couldn’t buy a beer in any bar on the continent. And a tariff system kept the liquor out. Not prohibition exactly, just some kind of bad crop. Everything died, even the insects. Insects don’t die. I’ll tell you a story about insects, they’re atheists. They don’t believe in a God or a devil or anything else. They believe in mating and eating and shitting. That’s it, that’s all they want to do. So I say we be more like insects.”

Over the city view I see a great fire raise up in the water. Too much pollution and the water around the island has caught fire. Nobody pays attention to this though you’d think, this place, last stop for humanity, this would worry everyone greatly. There’s cripples galloping down the street in their unique shuffle, pushing Down Syndrome illegitimate children out of the way, cracking people over the head in frustration at their body’s own shutdown, refusal to work properly.

Another shooter drowns out the first one with, “Can you accept that vaccination is a form of mind control? I ask this because we seem to all be intelligent people. But how many vaccinations have we received in our life? How much has fortune hinged on what we say, what we do? I knew a man initiated into an Indian tribe and became one of their feared death warriors. Quite unlike anything we’re used to here, I must say, though probably not. Whores are turning up dead all over the city and everyone keeps their mouths shut.

“But this Indian tribe I was telling you about, they’re descended from the Mayans. The Mayans were the Mexican tribe that believed in blood sacrifice. It’s estimated that they murdered over 30,000 before disappearing, sometimes several hundred in one day. They’re also known to have invented the game of basketball, though their ball was a rock tossed with a slingshot lacrosse type thing and the hoops were vertical rather than horizontal.

“But imagine that society, imagine thinking that any day they’d just grab you off the street and cut your throat in front of a whole civilization. Those Nazis were on to something with cremation of the Jews. Leaves no trace, just turns to ash. They might have wiped out the Jews of Europe and nobody would know. There would be suspicions but they could have put up that line about them being in camps forever. But you’ve got to consider how different the world would be had they actually won it all. That’s all I’m saying, imagine it for a second. You can’t do it, can you? Because this place is freedom and freedom has no place under a Nazi rule.

“Incidentally, the French do not shave their armpits. I have it on good authority that one reason they do this is to prevent mass rape should they be invaded again. But I say fuck rape or women at all when you have a whole nation of virgin boys who do not speak your language. Is there anything sexier?”
“Yes,” the other one interrupts. “The sexiest thing in the world is a dropper full of the good stuff.”
“Ah, yes,” the other agrees, “but where does it fit into what I was saying? I was giving an example of boys over girls and you bring in the effects of H on an intravenous injection. Or was I wrong in assuming that? Because as I see it you’re substituting trout for oranges, as my grandmother used to say. My grandmother, she was a woman knew how to hold a man down. Grandfather won some medals and came home to find he couldn’t even get to watch the end of the game before he had to mow the lawn.”
“I don’t want to hear about your grandmother.”
“She didn’t shave either, though she was not French.”
“Well my mother shaved everything on her body and she shaved me and I’m not fucking French either. My mother beat me with a broomstick for taking a dollar from her purse for candy so I called on my father to help me out and he beat me even worse. I slit their throats that night and my mother survived it. She was in the hospital for ages while I was in some foster home. The policia dragged in some guy and pinned the rap on him.

“But, Christ, the blood was on my hands. I washed them a thousand times a day. Just remember watching the news coverage, the guy on the stand. He’s got his hair combed for the first time in his life and he’s wearing a Salvation Army suit that he didn’t buy, that doesn’t fit quite. You know the guy because it was big news and everyone watched it. My parents were very rich and I knew that at a young age, which is why I stole the dollar in the first place. “So this guy’s up on the stand sweating and crying that he didn’t do it and the prosecution gets up to question and the guy just yells at him. He yells, ‘Where is your decency? What have you done with your decency? Would your own mother still be around to hug you if you had not done this before?’ So this guy had a past conviction and was slapped with a whole list of new crimes. Shit, he was responsible for every throat gashing in three states if you believe the papers.”

The angry hordes below are quieting down so I suggest we rob a pharmacy. We vote on it and all agree. So into wretched twilight unhappiness, gold brown enema territory. With teeth open, awake like crushed diamonds, a million pinpricks, and fourteen virgin inches left. We spoke with the knife and gun and needle and our message was, “Wouldn’t you?”