taking notes and thrice thank you, OMG, that Holy Inquisition can’t read our idle thoughts or else my ass and stuff would feel the heat…

* * *

20

…it’s not a throe, the pain, it is past pangs or cramps, beyond scorching lashes and smarting throbs, it kills with it stillness and constancy, kills yet let me not die, keeps embedded in torture vice, squeezed in mold of no escape for one hair’s width, it does know its trade, the pain…

…yet in spite of executioner's acute deftness by and by it grows duller, the pain, we split, pain an’ me, not one whole already, me and pain, though it stays by me, irredeemably, it hurts no less than before, but it’s not part of me any more…

… some thinnest sheath or shroud, some flimsy membrane of numbness separates us, me and pain, and this sparsest of swaddles in between us keeps me off, keeps me separate, keeps me a-hover above it, gives me some space to grow into I… who am I?

I am what I am what I am… I am what I fell besides and beside the pain, ever-present pain… do I feel? what I feel?..

… it’s darkness, pitch-black darkness around, I feel how thickly viscous it is… dead black darkness… I feel sounds of water, hollow lapping, soft gurgling of water in the dark…

and now I have to do it, I know it hurts but I have to dare a try at one desperate heedless thrust thru the pain whose part I am not, I have to check if what I feel besides thick darkness is there, so… now!! oooooooooo!.

Thru pain and tears in eyes with the lids pulled up, in flows the light, inundates, a sea of light and I see how beautiful it is, this face of Moon craning over me so close, full, high-cheeked, right above my eyes open wide thru the throe…

So saw I how good it was, the mellow light streaming down, shed by her, sad, omniscient, reaching for me, fixed in agony, flowing face-to-face.

So created she me back, by the light off her face nearing ever closer to me lost in pain but found, and my mouth, distorted by pain wailing out for all to hear it possessed me, now moaned in gratitude to the light giver, Moon. And good it was…

* * *

21

‘Who are they?’ Asked V, ‘The federals? Same guys who had arrested you?’

‘They are not federals, they are from the Institution which has nothing to do with the government’.

‘Who do they work for then?’

‘The global superstructure layered above any governments on the earth’.

‘Again? The old good cud about Masons, huh? Conspiracy Theory to impress high school kids? Come on!’

‘The stuff is not compulsory… May I have a glass of water?’ 2ic sat down on the coach.

V brought a bottle of mineral water from the fridge. 2ic made a couple of gulps.

‘Some awkward question, V, I just can’t help it, have kept it back for too long. My apologies in advance’.

‘What a delicate approach! You stir most dark suspicions, is it you, my friend? Fire it off, anyway’.

‘Well… damn, it’s hard… Well, why did you break up? You were so obviously in.. well, special to each other’.

‘The word is “love”, dude. Yes, I was in, the split was not my idea. Looks like she wished to feel happy for which end she needs to set some one free. It does not matter whom, me or Fluffy.’

‘I don’t dig it, man. Who’s Fluffy? Are you high?’

‘Never mind. Just a slip of tongue. How are you, by the by?’

‘Wanna know, huh? Thanks, I’m fine except for there’s neither 2ic, nor Alec Taylor Jr. No, no more!. Look!’ He got onto his feet and, slightly careening, yanked apart the sides of his unzipped Windbreaker.

Horrified, watched V the frightful sight. Instead of the jovial plump sybarite he knew, a stick-man stood before him, uneven pleats developed in the shirt hung plumb down his front.

‘See, eh?’ said 2ic. He grabbed the only bump under his shirt fabric, a kinda argyle sack sagging from his waist, to sway and wobble it clockwise and back.

‘O, no!’ exclaimed V shocked yet understanding the sack was the surplus skin, still uncontracted sheath that a couple of months back contained the thick belly of his gourmet friend. ‘How come, buddy? Tell me all’.

‘All? It might hurt, man’.

‘Alright, I’m not too squeamish. Tell me’.

‘I am deprived of eating. Chewing, swallowing are there, I can stuff my stomach full but it brings no joy, does not make me happy as I used to be. So why eating? I can nibble a snack here, a snack there, if I remember, during the day, and no lustful night raids to the fridge. I’ve neither appetite no hunger’.

‘O boy! O boy! But why?’

‘Too much of a shock, I reckon, had I to live thru lately’. 2ic coughed in hesitation and moved his stare over to the corner before to go on.

‘We met a year after you broke up. A chance meeting in the street. She suggested to drop into a cafe. Who would reject so a gorgeous woman! A friendly chat and then I saw – she’s flirting in earnest! My head swerved. Well, you know. “In old Japan,” said I, “Some poor devil, a penniless samurai could arrange a date with the top-notch geisha to be paid for by his dear life”.

“I’m not so versed in Japan’s history,” she answered. “What about a one-night stand paid with a friendly favor?”

‘What favor?’

“The details on the morning after”.

‘What’s there to explain? We’re from the same pod… In the morning she wanted me to run an errand and pass her message to you: “V’s been the best