How I Decide to be You is Perfectly Understandable

“I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan’s death.”

―William S. Burroughs

Part I

The Greek, They Called Him

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was chain-smoking. I had paced a trail to oblivion in the floor of the apartment.

I had a “score” lined up. I got my tattered coat and headed out into the cold.

The guy “holding” for me lived nearby in one of the tenements. He was a Mexican they called the Greek. I didn’t know his real name. I just called him the Greek.

He opened the door for me.

“William Lee,” he said. “Always a pleasure.”

He led me into the apartment, which was always roasting and filled with plants. Dead flower petals covered the floor. Against one wall was a canvas on an easel, a paint palette on the floor, and a paint-splattered cloth under the whole set-up.

“So you’re here to pick up?” The Greek sat on the armchair and didn’t move. I took the money from my pocket and held it out.

Certain signs must be used when dealing with the people I associate with. By keeping a tight grip on my money I was letting the Greek know that I wouldn’t part with it until the product was in my hand.

The Greek grumbled and got up. He went to a chest and opened it. He pulled out belts and stoppers, a banjo in three parts, old cotton balls yet to be sucked dry, until he finally produced it.

He handed the gun to me.

“.38 Special, used by stick-up artists and the law. Popular amongst Gatekeepers for maintaining their properties.”

“Gatekeepers” was a term used for those rich folk who barricade themselves away in gated communities and live in fear of a proletariat revolt.

I held the gun in my hand and handed the Greek the money. Images flashed across my mind in neon. I could take this gun and blast right through the fabric of reality, see what is beyond the veil, a swirling mass of lights and colour that occlude perception and description.

The Greek brought me back to this universe. He was looping a belt around his arm and gingerly tapping a needle full of “junk” against the skin of his arm, creating tiny pinpricks as he searched for a vein.

“Care to join me?”

I considered it but shook my head. I hadn’t touched heroin yet and didn’t want to start before I had fully become an artist. Otherwise I’d just be a washed-up junky.

Junk and guns were in the Burroughs’ playbook. I had the gun. I’d smoked some “pot” and had once had a “pill” placed on my tongue in a satanist Communion parody. My parents were Protestant but I knew such sacrilege would infuriate them. Not that I’d seen them since leaving home.

Downtown was a dump run by an alcoholic with no business sense. Therefore it was the perfect place for the scum of the earth to converge. Gamblers, addicts and wifebeaters all flocked here.

The place also attracted college students looking to take a walk on the wild side for a night. They usually were the loudest, coming in in large groups and having long, heated discussions in order to situate themselves in the place. If they couldn’t beat out the other patrons on life experience, then they would beat the place into submission with academic jargon.

Even though I was closest in age to them I never talked to them. Colleges are all about fostering social etiquette and teaching young people to bootlick their way to the top. I’d tried laying down a “routine” to them on this topic once and they had merely stared back dumbly, refusing to allow me to puncture their wall of self-importance. I hated and pitied those kids in equal measure.

There was one I didn’t hate. Though I didn’t love her; love is a virus that binds you to others. Love is implanted in the mind through romcom movies and other manipulative forms of control. The relationship between love and reality is tenuous and uncontrollable. The words spoken by love do not reflect reality and are not forever which is why I had decided upon coming to the city that I would devote my life to art.

Joan and I had “screwed” a few times. She kept one eye covered by her hair. She was part of the third-level factory too, but she didn’t seem it. Didn’t sound it. She kept to her handful of friends, drinking and laughing, not trying too hard to be heard.

Then I heard her name from someone laying down a loud Joan Adams what the hell are you doing here? routine. My heart jolted. Excitement burst in me like a mushroom cloud. Joan.

Burroughs’ wife was called Joan. He shot her in a game of William Tell. This pivotal moment he ascribed to his career as an artist. He wrote thereafter to escape a malevolent spirit seeking to possess him. All his writings were escape by confession. I would like to confess too.

Part II

The Assassination of Joan Adams by the Artist William Lee

William Lee found a cubicle and splattered vomit over the bowl. He had only eaten some ham and cheese, and the cheese slices had been drenched in spilt milk. The dairy smell attacked his stomach until Lee was left dryheaving, his body convulsing.

Lee stood in front of the fingersmeared mirror. Two handprints framed him. Purple light flickered. Lee slid in and out of reality. Behind Lee in the doorless cubicle, a shitting man reached for paper and slid a hand beneath himself.

William Lee had dark circles under his eyes. After a moment, the bathroom was empty, the fizz of the bulb and the ghost of the toilet flush his only company. The gun was a cold cancer. Lee pulled it out of his waistband and aimed into the mirror. His reflection flickered and was replaced with the future, the Ugly Spirit with his leering face teeth like spotlights eyes like holes punched into a dark room.

William Lee stepped out into the cold. The patrons were slowly stumbling out. William Lee hung about by the bins in the alley and lit a cigarette. The dark heart of the alley figures hunched against the wind sent goosebumps rippling over Lee’s skin.

William Lee listened to the talking mumbling come-ons of the people hanging around the front. Lots of voices not Joan’s. The gun pulsed cold hard against his groin.

Finally William Lee heard Joan’s voice. Most people had cleared out by now. William Lee flattened himself against the wall and peered around the corner. Joan was talking to a guy taller than her. They were giving each other a coquettish what do you want to do now? routine. They decided to go back to hers.

Lee waited for them to clear a bit of the street before he stepped out under the lamplight and followed them. He lit a cigarette keeping the glowing tip cupped and followed the tiny figures walking steadily towards the river.

The river was a murky mess, filled with shopping carts traffic cones used condoms. The smell of sewage punctured the air.

It began to snow. A young man came up to William Lee.

“These are dangerous streets. Let me escort you home.” His sharkteeth glinted under the streetlight. Half his face was covered in a purple birthmark.

“I’m OK,” Lee replied, and considered lifting his shirt and flashing the butt of the gun. He decided against it. He didn’t care about impressing this boy.

The boy named a price. William Lee ignored him. Joan and her companion had crossed the bridge and were climbing up the stone steps of the apartment block overlooking the river.

“The Ugly Spirit comes out when it snows.”

Lee stopped and turned and looked at the boy. The boy shivered in the cold.

“Here’s hoping.”

William Lee ran across the bridge and up the stone steps and scanned the names on the postboxes. J. Adams was on the third floor.

Lee chased up the stairs. He slipped on a piss puddle and grabbed the banister. The gun bounced around in his waistband. The place was old, without CCTV or heating.

Lee came to the third floor and stepped out onto the corridor. It was lit with sconces. Lee pulled the gun gingerly out of his pants and shoved it into the sleeve of his coat.

Behind the door, he heard laughing. There was the click of a lighter. Lee gulped. Whatever barrier kept his bowels from gushing free felt close to bursting. He tightened his anus and knocked on the door.

There was the sound of movement. The door swung open. Joan’s companion stood in the doorway, tall broad-shouldered the kind of guy who’s easygoing one of the guys easy to love. Through the gap in the door Lee saw Joan seraphic confused up on her knees on the couch, leaning her elbows on the backboard. “Who is it?”

“Just some guy,” her friend said. Lee noticed the guy’s shoes were off. His feet were bony and the toenails had been clipped into slits. Lee held his forearm across his chest to prevent the gun sliding out.

“I’m looking for Joan,” Lee said. He hadn’t prepared a script. He had expected to lay down a con off the top of his head.

“There’s no Joan here,” the guy said.

“Jean?” Joan asked. She stood up and walked around the couch and stood in the space between the door and the couch. On the coffee-table was a single joint bleeding into an ashtray. Joan also had no shoes on.

The spirit that lived in her pressed against her skin, lighting it from the inside with neon-purple deathlight. Her face flitted out of existence, replaced with the deathskull of the spirit luminous hungry eager to be released.

“I’m Jean?” Joan said. She took a step forward. “Have we met?”

“It’s―” Lee fought down vomit. His mouth streamed, vomit bursting through gaps in clenched teeth. “It’s time for our William tuh― Tell routine.”

Lee raised his arm. Lee had his hand open, waiting for the gun to slide right into his hand, but it spilled out too fast and flew into the apartment.

Lee froze. The hall rippled. The spirit receded, leaving Joan’s face white panicstricken screaming with no sound.

Then it all burst. Joan rushed for the gun. She held it as though it were contagious. She threw it further into the room. It hit the wall with a thud. Her red hair masked her face. She grabbed for the phone and began to dial.

The guy reached for Lee. Lee evaded his grasp, the guy’s fingers clasping thin air. Lee ran to the end of the corridor, dodging the couple exiting the elevator. Taking the stairs three, four, five at a time, William Lee did not look back.

Part III

Journey to the End of the Night

I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves…

I spew like the most odious sputumus green bile into a snowy nuclear wasteland walkrun from the dull lampshades the jutty sconces the door behind which lies the artistic event of a century… Right away catch a glimpse of the face in the coffeeshop window, look at the ghost of myself fading in out in out pull at the reddy beneath the eyes back where they came from, nod at the Ivy League guy in the gabardine suit bloodstain of ketchup on the coat hung on the hook doing the honey I’m home routine tells her all about this moment what he would call an “event” I would call nothing… Served by the flirting waiters who squander an education, books they have pored into the cups of cuckolds…

Keep on walking with the pigs the heat the death of art on my heels any minute now flash me bluered badges glinting cellbars the breath of my cellmate a sinister little heybaby cockroach scuttle across the floor…

Cop car glides by, the gimmick is duck down behind one of the parked cars before their beady swirling lavalamp eyes can fix on me cough and splutter on hands and knees…

Wait for the cop car to go on walking with quick little steps, art has been rendered null and void within me gaping swallowing everything of value, thoughts and images and opening lines sucked into a black hole that opens up in the wall of an apartment block… A man steps out of the quickmade alley his deathskull unable to be focused on me with his beady eyes, empty eyes that trap light reflect nothing.

The man stands in the opening of the vaginal alley dripping with the innards of the city, black gunk will penetrate you any way it can, loop around your fingers and enter beneath your hangnail, fight its way into your mouth, work its way into your cells, lay something which will hatch in 40 years when you are driving on an empty countryroad wife and kids dozing by the time your journey is over you are changed.

“I am the Ugly Spirit.” Holds up one dirty finger proof that he is who he says he, was there ever any doubt?

The alley is the ring around freedom sitting in the middle twentyfive thousand stories and counting, the Ugly Spirit points and I ask, “is that where we are going?”

Step into the elevator walls oozing black gunk snaps at me doglike, slithers down the walls centipede style, wraps around the arms and legs of the Ugly Spirit draws strength from it, lazy now fattened by the Ugly Spirit leaves me be, curls and purrs.

Penthouse suite in the clouds, well past the belt of pollution so through the window the stars burn cold holes in the sky… The city below is eaten by slush, every Italian bootstep and German tyre grinding the snow into the nothingness the black gunk eager to swallow up every portion of this world that does not conform to its own diseased image, the perfection of art found in that antinomian voracious ticking away a Geiger counter seeking its own perfection.

The Ugly Spirit sits me down on an armchair sucks my body in, hands me a fizzing glass of something, drink it down politely, refuse nothing, that will be done by the world wants you to be a healthy cell in a sick body, a vessel from which it can draw strength…

The Ugly Spirit tips the bottom of the glass into my mouth with a centipede smiling, “all of it, good boy”, bubbles fighting to be free of my throat, revolting against the natural order swimming up in a downward trajectory.

“I can show you exactly what you want to see.”

The caper was the inevitable explosion of noise guts blood all up the walls – until then it was a case of waiting patiently – entrusted with the safekeeping of this knowledge I sat on the armchair my glass on my lap tiny bubbles seeping out onto my crotch – make the report.

They began to file into the Anything Goes Zone – a cavalcade of freaks users abusers each one a cell too sick to be assimilated – intestines a mass of sparking wires – one whole set of teeth between the lot of them – some sit and some stand – the Ugly Spirit introduces me to everyone present as they stream in – there is Johnny the Red, socalled because he murders communists – there is Missus Benway the physician’s wife with her crotch of lead – Peter the Pederast who takes up the collection at Sunday mass – the toothless Crone who speaks in vowels – each one escapes control by way of drugs sex violence anything goes in the Anything Goes Zone – Joan the temptress whose hair is on fire.

The Ugly Spirit brings in the dog on all fours hairless belly tiny scrotum shrivelled – Joan puts a record screeches what they call music the sound of mechanical torture a billion cybernetic organisms clinging to their last shreds of humanity cry out tear strips of flesh off their titanium bones – bluecollar soundtrack – the Crone gets up dances mushedup sunkenapple face – writhing against the snow flakes splayed against the window – streaming streetlight – the Crone sings along in the register of pain the key of e.

The Crone: AAAAeeeeeUUUUuuuuu, gums chattering together, lemony spit spilling out of her mouth – eyes sunken back into her brain, her central nervous system receding by the moment.

The Ugly Spirit pets the doggy and lets him loose – the dog circles beneath his eyes – pads the room – cases the joint – there is no clock – I check my watch – the numbers spin loose – it is 12.03, it is 2.51, it is 6.25.

The dog’s teeth are stalactites/mites – dangle rubberily from his mouth – furry tongue laps at a pool soaked into the carpet – his chain rattles with every neckpulse.

The dog spots me a newcomer – comes over pants tries to hop up on me front legs grazing – push away – comes whimpering, comes on with a why don’t you like me routine – nuzzles my cock lurch a little – don’t stop stops.

Peter the Pederast with the cocaine nose whistles – scampers over panting wagging the plastic tail – tonguetip grazes the purple nipple – keep going keep going – milkspurts onto the carpet.

Johnny the Red: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? The Crone: aaaUUUUUuuuu.

The dog barked to see such fun – dog chew a biscuit – crumbs all over the carpet.

The Ugly Spirit: This is art art is not the happenings within your cranium the firing of electrons art is the doing is the practical application of all you see and all you know in one singularity, the black hole is an artistic event as it contains the psychic scars of the universe. every single megaton of nuclear damage is manifested in the black hole.

Peter the Pederast: Would you care for a bump?

Rows of powder stacked up on glass – white mountain ranges – travelcard bleeds dust – the magic words have been uttered – control has been assumed – body rises and approaches – one finger clamping one nostril sucks it all up – rolled up note shitstinking worms wriggle.

“They eat your brain.”

Worms invade – writhe about in the nasal cavity – dripdrip of congestion eddying at the back of the throat – worms plug into the cerebellum – light up pinball machine – shitsmell fades – can smell the gooey pinkey pulsing brain.

They roll the doggy onto his back and pull out Y2K jelly (a peculiar form of petrochemical warfare, a numbing agent absorbed through the skin attacks the central nervous system, a series of bioneurological suggestions convinces the body that the apocalypse is imminent, producing a state of existential numbness; an inability to feel anything, used primarily by the CIA on the people of the United States in order to create a void within them which they will fill with junk food dating apps TVs subscriptions the dopamine release of conformity, also quite popular as a daterape drug).

Massages the dog’s penis – smears greenishbrownish jelly all over it – veins running down the magnificently hard and large cock create symbols of disorder – jarring symbols burn make me look away – petrochemical petroglyphs – runes and esoteric symbols of a Dionysian order –major dogcock stands to attention – a brown triangle on the underside – the foreskin pulls back – a huge bulbous allseeing glans – thunderclap from the window – snow hitting the glass – the Ugly Spirit disrobes – his blemishfree skin makes stretchmarked lovehandles tingle in shame – beesting of pain, Johnny the Red has stubbed a cigarette out on my arm welded to the arm of the armchair watching the Ugly Spirit slowly gently lower a needle in the dog’s slitty meatus – everyone watches enraptured now – Johnny bleeds ash – the cock burps – next comes an opened hairpin – cross my legs – dropped in compass style – dog is smiling teeth bared – face cannot contain it, smile spills out over the floor.

Pianokey teeth Johnny the Red hands his keys – they go down – Peter the Pederast brings a fork from somewhere – a knife – the hole gets wider, a voracious eating hole gapes – a bankcard goes down a cartoon baguette bulging out the cock from the inside – sideways pen, the base of the cock gulping hungry breathless.

Missus Benway masturbating on the couch with the plutonium: good doggy – big laugh – the Ugly Spirit with a headless toothbrush – the room goes hush – Missus Benway comes in a frantic green explosion of irradiated juices – they flow free factory effluent and make a puddle on the ground – with some encouragement the dog limps over cock trailing a radar array – I watch for the Ugly Spirit to lower the toothbrush into the penis of the dog but he does no such thing – the only sound in the room is the hum of the dog’s tongue licking up every milligram of Chernobyl waste – the toothbrush is put into my hand and the Transgression Gimmick is explained.

The Transgression Gimmick: foisting the action of entropy upon interia that is the inherent passivity of living, a state and fate worse than death, the destruction of all things far preferable to the stagnation that comes with too much track.

The Ugly Spirit: the Transgression Gimmick ensures the viability of all art, to transgress is to permeate every single cell of the recipient, to imbue them with your world without them having to step foot outside; the only option.

The Ugly Spirit closes my fingers round the toothbrush tip glinting razor blade sharp – the dog comes over and puts his hands on my lap begs for the treat of life – all eyes on me waiting for the gimmick to take place.

Reach for the rotary phone beside me, dial – “Hello, Cosmodemonic taxi service” –give the spiel: I need a taxi – he laughs wheezes chokes hangs up – The toothbrush shakes in and then out of my hand – rolls in a sea of irradiation – the dog thanks me sighs.

The Ugly Spirit: oh well grabs the toothbrush from the floor puts a smile on the dog’s neck – the Crone is laughing if that is indeed what it can be described as laughing – Peter the Pederast racks up another whopper of a line – the dog takes a year to hit the ground.

The Ugly Spirit: you need to relax.

Dogcrotch explodes jissom everywhere – the inevitable explosion – spurting into the air – waterfountain gush – note it all down for my final report.

Dangerous pissurge brings me down the hall – try doors left right see into rooms that smell of burnt cum ashtray bottoms yellow paint the slow death in an oncology ward – open a door and see Joan on the bed – red hair fanning out beneath her – her hand on her pussy – in her pussy – digging into it for the ultimate kick that must be somewhere in there – she presses the pleasure button back arches looks at me does not take it away – does not look at me with love – a don’t join in look – her eyes spell out the shame that should be on her face and is instead on mine – shut the door.

In the bathroom mirror dark holes have consumed my face – worms eat through the skin – touch and feel nothing – the glass touches my face – the mirror does not lie – turn away and drain myself into the toilet – bowl is shitstreaked brown.

In the hall Joan comes to me clothed – she gives me the same again, the I’m not Joan routine, and tells me to go.

“They’re going to hurt you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

She nods – go to put one hand on the handle – let myself back into the Anything Goes Zone – she comes down on me – nails bite into my skin – draws blood – I run.

Agent Lee’s cover blown he rides the elevator down smell of engine oil piss the numbers dinging floor by excruciating floor, rumblings of Anything Goes torture subsiding, a cavalcade of sunken whitenostrilhaired necksmile faces whizzing through his head like bullets from a gun.

cold bites into Agent Lee flickers out into the snow making himself small to dodge the black gunk eager to catch him now leaving the alley and turning at the mouth of the alley to look up at the monolith the apex of which contains the Anything Goes Zone and though Agent Lee left inconspicuously psychically projecting a routine about constipation or diarrhoea or something similar he sees the dark figure looking down from the tower from the glass window.

Agent Lee takes to the streets dodging the mob and the cops the forces of control and the forces of entropy on missions to seize him stop him reaching

Agent Lee tumbles behind a car, the sound of Transgression Gimmick filling the empty street, the flash of a toothbrush in the moonlight, a Cerberus manned by the Ugly Spirit mowing everything in sight, hungry gnawing obsequious cars, sound of radiomusic crushed by the massive paws.

Agent Lee dives into the nearest alley, screech of brakes, the vowelcry of the Crone the spotter the scout sighting him communicating in her Palaeolithic language, giving a wordless ‘He’s here’ gesture with a single wizened gnarled treetrunk finger.

The Ugly Spirit: The Transgression Gimmick is the ultimate work of art the severing of connection to the universe’s entropy a coupling a work of blood and sweat and semen and the mechanical forces of oppression, id est metal plastic.

The Cerberus bears down on Agent Lee a coming for you chant emanating from its eggy radiator grille whose goose is well and truly cooked, sees flashes of hotel lobbies hand in hand with father sees college dorms sees boys and girls avoiding his bed, jumps at the last minute into a sideside alley sending the outofcontrol Cerberus into the chainlinked electric eels which send the passengers flying into the alley facedown in the piss shit rain old needles unfurled cummy condoms burger wrappers solitary cracked underfoot Xmas bauble.

Lee doggystyles it away feeling the claws of the Ugly Spirit on his cerebellum worm stream gush his nose, cold underhand slush, on the street finally under the burning orange mechanical sun the system of control wherein we see only what is illuminated that is what is chosen for us to see the Italian restaurant the music studio in the dark the happyending massage parlour the corner of Lexington where money and packets change hands the stretch of street where the politician’s limo pulls up and hijacks vaginas on the daily, beneath the underpass built to give the journalists who report back to the opposing party a vantage point from which to snapsnap the manila envelope in turn finding its way onto the desk of the heartless manipulators who answer to the nexus of control the corporate overlords who channel their money into the lives of everyone.

Toe of a boot a mushroom cloud of pain, brainworm resistance hiss, steady knee and elbow movements which only make it worse the sole of a boot cracks fingers of the right hand, the Ugly Spirit shows Agent Lee the sacrificial knife of the Transgression Gimmick, emblem of the Anything Goes Zone, Agent Lee collapsing facefirst into the snow, sound of pigs a crescendo of impending doom, redblue pulses pushes the Ugly Spirit and friends in/out of reality, the smell of Y2K jelly getting stronger with every lapse into darkness and weaker with every flash of fuzzlight until it is gone they are gone.

Agent Lee feels the arms beneath him the strong fatherly smell of Hauser and O’ Brien, the brainworms slide through his body escape through his anus in large gelatinous clumps wriggle into the gutters filled with leaves, Agent Lee smells the entropy and sniffs deeply from the pits and the neck of Hauser who levels a punch into William Lee’s stomach don’t worry it will all go down in the report, sputumus hack of limepuke, car in waves, report spilling onto the leather, Ivy League slushboys watching in fascination as Agent Lee his forehead chilling against the window passes, truly an “event” they will relate to their wives or husbands, they won’t be Joan for you William Lee croaks, let rain the resistance hisses of mushroom cloud music, the vowelsound of my struggle, “disappear into the redblue void.”

Part IV

Paternalism

Dr. Filth beckons. I remove the mammaries from the trunk. Dr. Filth massages them for a moment, two silicone nipples erect beneath his gentle fingers. He applies them to the hollow space behind the patient’s knees. He raises a hand and holds it in the air; I press a scalpel against his waiting palm. His hand closes around it. He leans over the patient and slices twice into each nipple, creating a cross that extends from one end of the areola to the other. The patient smiles.

I plug Dr. Filth up to the tank. His eyes roll back. I do not let go of his hard feet until I hear the first stuttering snore, the rip of a chainsaw.

A memo comes through from Dr. Turner. A chronic case. Dr. Filth will not take it unless it goes beyond the nuts & bolts, scalpels & Metz, of usual hospital shenanigans.

I have to meet them first. The man’s first name is Mr, the woman’s is Mrs.; their surname is Leland. Their son is Willy. They stand to greet me as I come up from the basement. Willy remains seated. He does not register my presence. He stares through reality.

“He has our hearts broken,” Mrs. Leland says, and then Mr. Leland goes into a whole thing, finishing with, “and he stole my gun and lost it.”

I inspect Willy Leland.

“I’m a very wealthy man,” Mr. Leland says. “I can afford whatever price you name.”

Dr. Filth approaches surgery in much the same way a painter approaches a canvas, a sculptor approaches his wet ball of clay. Dr. Filth can go months between surgeries, leaving patients on a never-ending waiting list; or, seized by the muse, he can decide to operate that very day.

I bring the case to Dr. Filth and, luckily for the Lelands, he instructs me to immediately prep their son for surgery. I do not know what surgery Dr. Filth plans on undertaking. He could decide merely to extract a tooth, or begin a thoracic aortic dissection repair. I bring the boy to the preparation wing, leaving him on a bed by the entrance to the abattoir.

Willy Leland is the perfect patient: sits when I tell him to sit, says aaah with little trouble, allows me to fondle his testicles. He does everything unquestioningly.

Of course, the bureaucracy that disrupts the process of artistic discovery must take place, and the information is not forthcoming from their son. I take the questions to Mr. and Mrs. Leland. They respond with perfect answers.

“Any history of illness.”

“Nothing serious or reoccurring.”

“Allergies?”

“Mild hayfever.”

“We can fix that. STIs?”

They exchange a look. “None that we know of.”

“Any medication?”

“Benzodiazepine, as prescribed by his psychiatrist.”

I continue sketching the Lelands, Mr. Leland with a horsecock angrily performing cunnilingus on his wife, who has what is left of her amputated legs wrapped around his head.

“He won’t need those after the surgery.”

Mr. Leland owns a large hotel chain. He hands me a card and promises me a free stay if I can cure his son. Of everything, he enigmatically adds.

“And you would like Willy to be able to enter the family business?”

They look at me in amazement, as though we haven’t heard all this a thousand times. “Yes, yes, we’d love to have him.”

“Can you make that happen?” Mr. Leland asks.

From the bed, Willy groans. He grips the bedrails. His fingers leave dents in the metal. I force his lips apart and grip his tongue. It laps at my fingers, a warm fish. I administer a sedative and, once he slumps, turn back to his parents.

“In what capacity would you like him to work for you?”

“HR.”

“We can manage that. It will, however―”

“We can pay.”

“It will be an intense, invasive surgery.”

They take a moment. They always do, pretending they haven’t already made up their minds. Mrs. Leland plays at a gulp. Mr. Leland nods.

“Do it.”

Dr. Filth decides upon a nullification of the prefrontal cortex, scrambling it with the use of a mini conductor and a 100 volt generator, as well as a full reconfiguration of the anterior insular cortex.

Before surgery, I shave Dr. Filth: face, nostrils, ears, chest, belly, groin, anus. I clip the long hairs trailing from his testicles with a nail scissors. I cup his balls. One is lower than the other. I am sure to trace my finger gently over the scar that bisects the pair: one hanging low, red; the other tiny, hairless, smooth, taken from a 6-year-old car crash victim.

I rub Dr. Filth in lotion. His body glistens. His naked skin traps the white light. I slip a leather apron over him. I smooth it out and tie it at the back. With a finger, I prod the marble ass.

The apron crackles as Dr. Filth enters the abattoir. Behind the glass, Mr. and Mrs. Leland watch. They hold hands. They have complete faith in the medical system. In us.

Dr. Filth raises a hand. I take a cranial drill from the gleaming table and, in the moment before I hand it over, give the trigger a squeeze. The machine screams. The apron rustles. Willy Leland stares up at me as I hand the drill to the waiting doctor.