"I'm back to the dirt I started with...a peasant!"

- Arthur Rimbaud, "Farewell", A Season In Hell

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by Edward Lacie

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The End

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Greg Baysans has escaped! I am left with nothing!

Jim Post has kicked me out onto the streets.

No ransom, no dead body, no value to the explications I've spent a year writing.

Let me start telling those sob-stories of self-pity:

Once, if memory serves me right, my life aspired to banquets where every whim was accomodated on an island in a sea of fine wine.

One evening I took Hope in my arms - the bitch bit me - so I raped her.

And braced myself for punishment.

Then ran away! Left the Devil Worshippers behind and began a miserable life putting Eden-feasts behind me.

I've burned the bridge of human salvation. I'm the instinct a lion uses to maul a lamb.

I've committed only crimes that result in the death penalty. I want to suck the barrels of the guns that make up my firing squad! I invented AIDS and African famine, Squalor my vital deity. I've lain in mud in gutters and dried myself in the gas of Skid Row. I've played the Fool everyone seems eager to take advantage of and it's given me this insanity.

Back in Spring I laughed the laugh of the dumb.

Now that it's Fall and I'm ready to have myself committed, I've decided to remember the days when feasts seemed so imminent I could smell them. I want my appetite back.

The secret is Charity! (Now I know I'm dreaming.)

"You can just laugh, hyena," taunts the Demon Muse Rimbaud who once sold me my drugs. "Seek death with every breath you've got. Consume everything with your greed. Explore all Seven Deadly Sins."

"Been there, done that," I respond. The look he gives me tells me he's disappointed. I'll have to try to gain his favor by telling some stories from my hey-day. Since he doesn't like fancy literary devices, I'll have to present them directly from my journal, the diary of a Damned Soul.

HIV Blood

From my Teutonic background all that's left in me is blue eyes and HIV, a narrow brain and awkwardness in competition. My clothes are no more evolved than theirs. Instead of butter, I use daily hair gels when I can afford them.

The Teutons were the most animalistic thrill-seekers of their time.

From them I inherit: idolatry, and love of sacrilege - lechery! anger! especially the ever popular dishonesty! laziness! (Great stuff that lechery!)

I have an extreme case of ergascophobia. Bosses and supervisors cause an allergic reaction in me. The hand that holds the pen is as valuable as that on the production line. (What a century for hands!)

Jim slaps me to my senses and offers me want ads. I close here.