Voices from somewhere, near-automated, reversed words very clear though and even accentuated: the image advancing on crutches,  wrapped in sweat drenched bandages, I will take another photo, delighted four legs entangled lean yellow supporting, with two on a trolley and interesting stop. First shot from the ramp, in the presence of high resolution monitors,  for all willing to see, revolting old people in cardigans, dripping Dick's water, doing unspeakable things with their soiled zippers.What next?Bold face italics for the word ointment. Slate's artificial language listening to meat, addictive and rendered in Mexican actor fat, sacred for swimming  pools, now that it is mentioned: number five was suddenly taken off the screen, because he had drowned. Which raises the question, whether we have changed after all these years or whether the taste of the ointment?I could have reported it earlier (a mere twitch of reflexes), blurred identity kits of the victims bolting, tattooed parts grafted from lamp shade to lamp shade, newsreel footage showing a man poking a rod through bars and  terrorising a caged human animal. His delight spread over several frames, as resistance started to fade. Somebody had shoved a rope through the nose of a  pregnant mother. There were horses waiting with broken legs and pigs in blind  terror unloaded by smiling natives, a golem hoisted to the roof of a  petrol station, together with his beautiful lover. Images are what they are, but not now please. During the oppressing summer heat Slate longed for skating in the old city's ice rinks, super white glut girls with bassoons up their arses acting as errand boys.How can the truth be transformed, without corrupting it into a compromise? The ointment chosen too hastily, while the  nurse clenched it in desperation? Why did I kick it? Why  did it distort under me, knocking parts out of the frame, as it snapped away from its enclosure? Three rapid eye movements towards Slate with the hose pressed against his abdomen, fanned by  a nice warm farting drone, what in India is known as the 'horizon note'.The calamity of this month is the oppressive heat and looming decay. Bed spreads stinking to heaven, nobody able to hold it upright for longer than another man's technique, let alone keeping the linen clean under the circumstances. Slow armpit afternoons! I have come to the point,  not to write it down anymore, now that real ointment is spread over me. I merely watch it instead of consuming it. Despite stringent cleaning rules imposed by the department, a high amount of filth, stink  and muck will alwayscling to the folded layers. Slate and I pasted together, not that it is harmful to either of us. Slate was on his way down south to investigate drowning  number five when it happened. He told me that he had experienced a strange sensation during the spread of the ointment. Only a very thin layer of civilised behaviour was able to tolerate, what he could jerk out in great quantities. The question remained, whether Slate had faced it long enough to become a victim himself, because he never  tried to  hide the circumstances. He loved it to be soiled to the extent, that it turned automatically into something  pungent, something which still hits me today as the flat  earth tolerated. He had the habit of sticking pins in a soggy bar of soap: "I  will... run another bath for you!"Now that it is mentioned, before I'll remove it again, now that it rests on itself,  I am going to pause, before it is wiped off the screen again: waiting in the company of gold under no punishment.Slate had a way of suppressing details about drowning number five by covering  up for those, who ruled over him. Surveillance cameras as calendar memories. A giant two-way mirror, concealed within the  dimensions of an ordinary shop window in one of the back streets of the city and arranged in such a way, that it reflected not only the image of Slate stumbling towards his demise, but replaying a clearly audible slicing noise, after the shot had popped out from what appeared to be elongated  and made  of something flexible, jagged on the edges to not only hurt him, but to kill him: sharp metal flanked and assigned to the decline of a man, who constantly had laid waste to the  country side, by undermining the plot to weaken the heel of good literature.Slate could jump through a lane of dead skin.His spiralling thoughts about social regression and gibberish, slur of ammonite eyes grilled with fascination towards any sort of human endeavour.The swing of his cruelty drifted. He giggled while the victims were pushed in the pool. Wet corpses as templates for one of the forgotten Bog people, with ultra fast speed changed into the host on a monitor, converted into something edible as long as it didn't change its meaning and wouldn't deteriorate to a mere back drop of strong religious believes. Slate examined it with his eyes closed, his tongue rolled it and shaped it, dislocated it from his teeth by pushing and shoving it forward and backward, squeezed it while avoiding to chew it completely. Then finally swallowed it: the son of god tasted like velvet.My bad memory had tried to intercept severalbursts of bad computation. The moment of truth was displayed between vegetable beds and hysteric family laughter. Death warrants and letters of appeal floated  forgotten on the surface of the pool. The time seemed right to expose  another tyrant. The tough guy suddenly was allowed to  weep. Not satisfied with the situation, bandaged and stinking to  heaven and consuming some night sleaze on the screen,  I saw him change from magenta to yellow. Slate became the size of my digits, apparently prone to mistakes,  while I had switched it off. He always demanded to be lubricated in a special way,  as soon as it started to fit his dimensions. Fingers, hands,  fore arms, removing the stink and garbage from the hardened gums, letting the victims lick duty stamps for their death warrants, giving them a sense of being  useful and needed, still part of a full functioning society, still crazy berserk and gone out of hand, had it not earlier?Waste of vellum! Never to snap meant allowing Slate's  epidermis as boundary between desire and sanctioning a cruel system. Slate's area of unbroken skin had bothered me right from the very beginning. I don't boast, to have masterminded the idea of penetrating his layers of tissue with a high pressure hose, rising as deus ex machina with a weapon in my hand, aiming at Slate, quite unattractive behind his frosted set of glasses and only endured for the length of my obsession for seeing him melt under the ointment.  Not only as part of the project, but also as  part of myself so to  speak and why not.Yes?Done up by make-up artists as an ice-cream covered tourist, polaroid dangling from his neck, Slate was hanging around the edge of swimming pools, lockjaw and squinting eyes, not that it  bothered. Letting images fade on the monitor smoothly, to spare them the trouble of having to eat it up will you, first image already mentioned, and then the second, moments before crashing through a shower of glass, a blood-covered geometrical shape pasted against the notion of dying with Kentucky fried chicken in his throat, suddenly wiped off the screen. Faint echo of erotic laughter for a single man, three rapid eye  movements towards Slate, freeze framed, materialising like basalt, spine tingling for all of us in the control room.To be protected by Slate meant to survive in the warmth of the system, whatever I might have said about him so far, secretly removed from the data base afterwards and not slipping. To test his short temper on the nurses' warmth and patience, barefoot and ready to get further undressed, I pulled the plug and merged it with his eagerness for the ointment. All of Kafka's bread lines forgotten in an instant, angry  green silos filling with lust, old people twitching under high pressure hoses, some eddies of halted resistance, then gliding silently into the pool. For aural awareness, try metal clickers.Yes?Next to the walls, where it glides easier,  oiled insects swatted in ecstasy, the victimsclawed to the tiles, an absurdity excusable bythe circumstances. Vitamin stained fluids begandripping over earth coloured washes  secreted  indesperation. One of the oldest stark naked, began todraw his personal S O S in the air, slowly andpainstakingly accurate, until it yelled through hiseyeballs: "I will... run another bath for you!"Had not typhoid silenced an entire race?Slate's image began seeping through hiscamouflage, caressing  his own skin betweenperiods of letting the cooling agent take effect. Shifting his body closer to the edge of the markings, I noticed the first of the rapid distortions. The nurses insisted, that it would lower resistance. Downstairs in the basement, a bad one for Baden Powell, blind buttercup canaries bouncing on the surface of dead flesh, radio full blast.Why didn't the hose remain inside me for longer? After all, I had chosen the sentence deliberately , not quite hallelujah,  yet safe with Slate's wife on a sofa, very pleasant in snatches of overheard  conversation with her as the dictator's lover: "With him I come easy!" Slate had kept his secret for too long: to see humans in outlines from behind frosted glasses. He blamed it on eye distortion, leave it to me. He had chosen to stay by himself in a bombed out hotel after his marathon trip down south, officially to investigate drowning number five, yet telling everybody, including his wife in a letter, that all spies in time live  out their usefulness and therefore should relax. The only persons fitting the description of mortal enemies, Slate and I in fact, were seen as solid evidence for the reintroduction of zero and one,  digits tattooed in human flesh, bulls eye slightly above the neck line, polaroid's love glue for connoisseurs, oh sweetheart, running dead mangos through soft explosions of coming, TV Tet-offensive and Vietcong scar tissue with spine tingling Russian caviar slopped up your's and forests torn out.Abnormal social behaviour, so unclad a religion to practice salvation. According to people in charge, whole districts doodled their boredom in orifices in front of the cross, until it hardened and got hot. Bedridden old people were forced to copulate while singing hymns, hence the rattling of medicine bottles as small replicas of the atom bomb. During a funeral, attended in casual Hawaiian shirts  and letting it dangle openly to the knee, between the debris of soggy corpses and half idiotic children, least able to take the brunt of insults, holy wafers were put through a mincer for easier distribution. The Lord was suddenly accepted as nutritious: non-vibratious it was easier to read.Slate's puzzled face, the awful moment of choking on black-sour soup long before Kentucky, proving the theory of life and death wrong by merely shifting it through ennobling pain. Regurgitating his exotic trips, the wild ones down south, bring me a chair, he opened the lid in front of us as the audience and revealed the ingenious master plan. Slices of torture, the breaking point hidden under tremendous piano clusters, Russian prisoners skinned alive in Afghanistan, bodies collapsing, won't take a  moment, etude de casserole, so badly needed to stay alive, sucking the grid of repressed desires, like carpets lifted too early, midnight the wedding of choice.Was it merging? Had I forgotten? Sucking chamois leather wrapped gladly around lavatory soap, with Slate's wife near moist ashtrays in ecstasy, trying to get rid of the itch running from her atomic leg sores so familiar fine fine, two lashes furious frantic over her thighs, while bemoaning the race of the gladiators, you've seen the  movie of course. What made her so attractive and revolting at the same time, melting in  tropical heat on a difficult sofa? Slate was smashing his calcified hose with a bang, while his wife lifted us compassionately, letting us read it. Erotic literature in braille like an ambush  gone wrong, spreading it all over us, hot ointment in the realm of a high pitched Neanderthal, marking the tiles in the morgue, still twitching from human sacrifices, mixing it golden brown with some onions and garlic, thereby accepting the view of the average family in front  of the screen: "I will... run another bath for you!"Bodies aching towards the climax, darts driven into the sheen of a hairless stone. Look at the screen: soldiers with spades decapitating the wounded on Highway 4, one figure still bolting. Three rapid eye movements towards Slate, against all odds and cultural decline on this flat earth tolerated,  millions  still lucky relaxed proud, padded shoulders for indoor cowboys and a cod piece made from stiff leather, buy now.What kept me alert and motivated was the fact, that I was the only one very well then. A calm assessment via my outstretched arm, an imagined line towards the bulls eye on Slate's forehead, ignoring his frosted glasses and his beauty imbedded in an unusual set of fine spectacles. For me he was a curiosity, non-vocal in fiction, carefully lifting his bandages, sucking away his ointment, nine lives indeed as a cat, which set him apart from average sizes to say the  least. Why  was I  encouraged, that he carried his hose outwardly? What forced me to notice it at all? Objects of desire undergo faults in the making: his anal warm finger not done with mirrors, to satisfy him and clear up the mess once and for all. Slate threw sparks. Catapulting himself into a sumptuous lilo race with the dead in the swimming pool, Slate, against all physical laws of handling the eye dropper properly, was saying that it felt good to slip from the outside back to the inside, one thousand  rounds per minute in dots and blotches, no waste by filling  this in.For days I was trying, still in the best interest of Slate, to establish an overall harmonious bed of roses, allowing obscenities to be scribbled on whiteboards, quite vague, never spelling anything out other than portraying frankly nothing more to say to you, come on, be reasonable. I'll tell you how it was perceived by the Department. Slate was implementing the same decrepit philosophy towards his victims, as long as everything was kept under wraps and out of normal hearing range: bang!  No idea, how he curved it. Ballistics?Group characteristics will always overrule  individual ones. Slate made a movement with his hand as if saying why not. With the added misfortune of having potentially decomposing swimmers floating around, not yet stacked in rows as naked obscenity, still clutching their meager  belongings, suitcases, family photos, they had become the kind of little children again, forced to remain quiet while being intimidated, their sad faces began slowly dripping from open jars.Slate had underestimated my perseverance.Exceptional events were coming my way, erasing any doubt about drowning number five.  Whether the victims had begged for their lives ordisplayed a willingness to be pushed in the water to get it over with, it didn't. It sounded too good to be true, more like show me how you did it. When it became, what Slate thought of it in the moment of  collapse, I made it a historic part of his denial, namely barefoot and up in the air, Slate's wife giving support while being  whipped into her third screeching bravo: "Yes!", she moaned. As long as Slate's hose remained dirty and filled to the  brim, I was able to leak documents and details about his  marital breakdown, straight from real life into the corridors of TV and broadcasting. That stinking fish had  been served by his wife on Tuesdays, a deliberate hostile stance towards  normal habits of wedlock, that is to say, using erotic laughter as something assigned to a single man only, monotonous  perhaps for the general public, but creamy enough to suddenly  make Slate react in a way never heard before: "Don't rush it!", he urged.His wife tried very hard, but not now please. To massage it for the tourist dollar, she convinced herself, that Slate's trouble with his hose  would remain a problem forever to be near you, damn it, he always held it the wrong way, pushed it either too deep or back to front, upside down, lucky relaxedproud, all the same to me, but not now please. The weeks dragged on. With his wife not around one day and elevated to the level of super tightness, Slate encouraged some change and opened up to the sound of a new ring modulator. Suspended in his loose strappings, elaborate scarification  marks  from the use of divine S-hooks highly visible, bless you honey, hyperventilating on a three meter springboard and garnished with sexual fetish all over his abdomen (a can of John West sardines in tomatoe sauce), two Smith & Westons spinning on his index fingers, how do you like that, he jumped in the pool and began kneading the dead and the near dead with his bare hands as something not done to the forgotten Bog people, I owe them that much and why not?

Can pleasure point to a paddy wagon?Bashing on its side to frighten the victim?The department blamed me for fanning it in all directions at once, without concept and feel for structure, never coming to the point, using literature as some kind of surplus skin grafted aimlessly, slapping atomic craters on the legs of Slate's wife done by make-up artists, therefore invalid,  not really resembling open sores, which they weren't of course in the first place.Forgotten suitcases as formulas of oxidation, sound of tactile. Fondling huge air sacks silently underwater and later a bit clicking, Slate finally agreed to be freshly anointed, oh, quite filthy really, even some semblance of sprouting fungi between highly polished ball bearings, the metal adapted to the warmth of his mouth, merged with the terrible sound of water, gushing from high pressure hoses in the pool: his vulgarity edging towards craft.Being driven in huge numbers to the site, which had been enhanced quite cunningly and adapted to the beliefs and IQ.s of present tribes, masses of indoor cowboys began kneeling and praying in front of huge monitors to connect to the world and cleanse the colon. Hence padding and strapping, hence chicken and beer and the reintroduction of the cod piece already mentioned, Slate's wife voluptuously shuttling between close-up lenses, her vibratory sound of atomic wind lust roaring from giant speakers, first note of the scale in solmisation held for over an hour, oiled  insects swatted on her legendary rump, to fill all holy lamps in the land, where the host opted as velvet Hamburger for starving children, his tormented face the favourite darling of Western culture, guarding against all kinds of bubonic plague, blinking on the highway of trust withhis underlings as his speechless angels.Numerous attempts had been made, to settle it once and for all, especially for those in the front row, where it glides easier. Hands  shaped like permanent fists, sausage fingers like poisonous mud, soft explosions in parchment wounds, where the divine S-hooks clawed into flesh, thirty orange, thirty one orange  black, thirty four orange green, thirty five orange grey, forty green, forty one green black, ready for a miracle, a  vomit filled oxygen mask as a last soft embrace, and three farts later a detailed inquiry about the race of the gladiators,  while being turned over like a half cooked chicken, you've seen the movie of course, forty one green black, fresh biting and more laceration, wedged among curious bystanders and sturdy prototypes of clergymen with a carefully measured AMEN, encouraging the early stages of the third degree, which was perceived as being nearer to god and quite close to aching.Slate's wife took over with broad arm clusters slammed down on the piano, adhering  to strict rules despite the intensity of the impact and the quirkiness of her rolling motion, just try metal clickers once  more, will you?Her objective: hell on earth! The image of Slate on the screen, arching in desperation, right in the middle of a sex change, new set of ball bearings clenched in both fists despite the full stack of polaroids, the Spanish fly fan spreading it gently(which was not permissible at the  time), explicit scenes of derailing steam trains for English masturbators especially flown in, and I, paddling with him or her, trying to avoid the demands of the centrefold, chained to the crudeness of amassive dildo tilted in anticipation for a more precise direction, to massage it a bit deeper so to speak, Slate as decoy for a giant plot against literature, sure you could ask, why didn't I get it fixed in the first place?According to Slate it came down to careful timing, above all supervision. Violin folded movements in a critical chess match played  against himself, 64 squares on a waxed mat stared at with real animation, oh daddy. As Slate had to realise sooner or later, death doesn't symbolise anything except the approach of mere betrayal, throbbing it off mildly dozing, a rectal hand drawing the naked truth in the air, while pissing in the  kitchen sink. The final analysis was made in a bike store, between spilled gear oil,  chained to waiting flesh with the  rest of the severed portions, one finger high up his/her arsehole, eight millimetre stuff flickering on stacked seats and frames, warm in the ease of searching.Slate was prepared to accept it as eagerness of those willing to pay with their lives and spread it all over him, sticky warm ointment as part of the family view, respecting every direct hit towards the falling rates as something other than mere equilibrium: "I will... run another bath for you!" One modern minute man accidentally shifted nearer to thee in an exciting atmosphere of modern literature stifled by forcing it through the mincer and tempt Slate into believing, that he was able to solve problems like drowning number five. What he had planned during and after the periods of sucking was nothing but sweating it out in a loud costume. Reversal of key commands to let the species sigh as a whole. Signals of a cornered animal. Yet such was the difference between the two approaches, that the  department quickly intervened. On the one hand  you saw him grasping a little hand held shower and dribble lukewarm water over the shit and the stink, even soothing the frightened victims with sentences such as "There we go...", on the other hand he displayed an ice cold brutality by using high pressure hoses to get rid of the most stubborn muck. Slate had decided to introduce something never done before, namely to design his victims in the moment of mastering their trail of demise,  by mixing their mud of hysterical laughter with the wonderful aspects of drowning alone.Slate had wiped out his own family by usinghis bebop of motor! He once told me that his father had fallen asleep, while pissing in the kitchen sink. A remnant of unresolved working class habits. Needless to say, that it was sledged on the screen as a three piece berserk. With Slate's wife as black sour soup udder, as mama so fair and so gentle, large door slammed shut over curled varicose veins, suddenly  straightened by fine atomic wind lust, surely, there was  room to move, there was music: the single man's soul trapped in a symphony.To hesitate any longer meant to uncouple it. Relaxing with a slide show? How are they drowning?As soon as they started to tremble in stagnant water, tiny  silver cataracts contracted with muted energy, the mob was only too willing to cheer. I turned  around and supported myself with both arms in front of the monitor like a hesitant man on crutches being photographed: I felt like an angel slumped at the breakfast table, taking a gun apart.  Asterisk of blind radar. Had Slate matched my canvas? Watching him collapse in broad  daylight, exaggerated convulsions in a sea of millions of pixels, his limbs plowing through a shower of glass, resembling the classical Orphean mercury dip, his bones grinding, his tendons  snapping like rubber bands, his eyes dangling from sockets electrically black between his timid calls for mercy. A last one given tothe Baden Powell disease, then dropped from a great height onto something out of sight,  Mexican actor fat and Dick's water boiling in unison to carry the image forward, splashed in bright laughter as humming tune,  reversing in shrieking school corridors, through the teacher's hallways as coded message of utter despair:  "I will... run another bath for you..."Doing  again unspeakable things with your zipper? For years  trapped in the wrong stinking body and connected to the wrong kind of drip? Corrupted by a traditional musical education? Try metal clickers for heavens sake! Then go for a swim!That's how we arranged it, isn't it?I did monitor it for month and eventually recognised my chance: Slate's spilled blood as ablue movie between her legs. The autopsy of his inner billboard close to an insult, to suck it long enough before it would collapse and never trying to be smarter than your local god. It easily could have been autumn, a long road therefore, partially healed over. Abusing language to question its own remoteness, I chose it as something going straight in the firing line: lost body salt deposited in marble like patterns on Slate's dirty hotel pillow down south, one of the hazards of living in the tropics, I would not advise it.The project demanded to undress in a hurry. Slate felt encouraged to play his game as his private razor, devouring Muzak in the privacy of his giant bathroom. Unless every cell joined in, could density repair the mat of its failing? Festival of the tube, the eye dropper full of Zyclon-B. With a total of no answers he reached out like dying a bit locally or comparing the size of bruises. He squirted the solution in the swimming pool, three big drops, one small one, two big ones, three small ones, plus another big one for good measure. Because victims might slide, what would these sentences give him? Knowing very little about literature, he chose never to falter or to totter, rather hurry to chop it off, so to speak, a sweet erection hailing  black sour soup, resilient but firm and cooling what had to be channelled in a mixture forboth comfort  and support and also to get it tight enough and close enough to the tiles, where it glides easier.Dreaming termites in an expanding hill under a restaurant. Slate had never hesitated to shift it close to the cooling agent, because he knew, how much his loose skin  bothered me. The smell of dead hair connected his instruments. To rid myself from the miserable sight would have meant, to  confirm Slate's method of turning over to the left side as the more suitable one, in the  same sense as saying, I don't need it anymore, because it leans over. I therefore can only try to describe the exact spot, where we eventually found it, full length nailed  to the impression of slouch, letting it dangle to the knees at the funeral already mentioned. Some careless religious brush strokes had embedded an ordinary house fly under giant letters of acrylic paint on a bill board, which simply said: HE IS  COMING...Words are mere husks, nothing but hickory alarm for Slate's ointment, pushed to the edge of literature with a rolling motion like lava squirting through Venetian blinds, advanced towards accidental collision with language as heightened alert for the elders with pursed lips, timid and looking ridiculous with their open zippers. Each time Slate came, he rose up  with a hollow sound, then froze in a loop of breaking glass, difficult on the sofa, swatting flies with  both hands in the moment of naming it for himself.Was it possible to ignore and desert him before his actual death, his body finally having turned boring, yet still  buoyant and ready for distillation? Due to his habit acquired  from too many lifts, he eventually squeezed it out  sparingly, but it remained upright. Contrary to the rules of  modern living with toilet ducks and feeling save in the comfort of a bank robbery and a five hundred thousand dollar reward, Slate got his wife's attention by describing one of the suspects: "Listen to this honey,  he's got a big nose!"Slate wanted it pumped up and as tight as possible, ignoring flashes of the victims non-comprehension, sheer terror before flushed off the screen. The professionalism of the real trooper made it not too strenuous for Slate to handle the situation. Oiled insect in slurred movements and  constrained hoops before being trapped under religious brush strokes, the swimming pool one day started draining itself like magic, the last bit of deadly water swirling round the drainage hole as bridge to a spinning gun barrel against failing manhood or coming too early to dinner. From a comfortable kneeling position I enjoyed watching the disintegration of a giant, Slate to be done with once and for all. The opening of the barrel sucked and cooled with my burning lips, not so much to blast Slate's brain out for no good reasons, but that it had become pointless and a complete failure, as soon as it had entered language by implying not now and  certainly not for me.I had tried too often to untangle the mess,  always without any real success. Moments before actually collapsing, ripping the skin off his back bones, agony  wrapped around the bullet, loops of white noise and brutal arm clusters on the piano merging with his begging for mercy, I seriously began to question, whether it all was  a  mere saying or had been added on?Compassion makes all the difference. The hoisted golem, upside down with his beautiful lover under the roof of a petrol station. Polaroid snapping hooks of erotic laughter aregripping my spine (bring me a chair). The stench is slowly dissipating by shifting it closer to the fan and by performing Slate's body position in the phase of his collapse. His death scream came adjacent to bang, ouch,  plonk, plop, splash, squash. Squeezed through the multi grid of arousal, my tongue was finally netting the evidence of drowning number five. Nothing but a soggy piece of soap with inserted pins and exhaling: " Out... out... everybody for himself..."

Foot note:  'Slate' was written 1984 -1986 and firstpublished in 'lean yellow supporting' in 1996