Cities of the Red Night

jar is passed to four Marine guards and rushed to a top-secret lab. A scientist looks through a microscope. He gives the OK sign.

Bouquets of roses rain on stage.

Red-letter headline: NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED.

Stop lights. Quarantine posts.

Soldiers with their pants sticking out at the flies clutch their throats and fall.

Newscaster: 'It is impossible to estimate the damage. Anything put out up to now is like drawing a figure out of the air.'

A diseased face with a slow idiot smile is projected onto the newscaster's face from a magic lantern....

'The world's population is now approximately what it was three hundred years ago.'

Boys on snowshoes reach the haman. Steam and naked bodies fade to a misty waterfront. Opium Jones is there with patches of frost on his face as the boys sign on in the ghostly cabin of The Great White.

Dinner at the Pembertons. Candlelight on faces that suggest madeup corpses. Only Noah, his boyish face flushed, looks alive. The conversation is enigmatic.

'Are they doing mummies to standard?'

'This is the aunt's language.'

'We still don't have the nouns.'

'You need black money.'

'A master's certificate to be sure....'

'Suitable crops.'

'Are you in salt?'

'Bring a halibut.'

'Ah good the sea.'

They all look at Noah, who blushes and looks down at his plate.

'Draw the spirits to the plata....'

'The family business ...'

'It probably belongs to the cucumbers.'

'Cheers here are the nondead.'

The boys are back on The Great White. A shout from the cabin boys brings them out on deck. Jerry, with a noose around his neck, grins a wolfish smile. Then he hands, as the western sky lights up with the green flash.

Captured by Pirates: Boys swarm over the rail with knives in their teeth. One with an enormous black beard down to his waist swings his cutlass at imaginary opponents with animal snarls and grunts and grimaces until the crew of The Great White rolls on the decks, pissing in their pants with laughter.

'Guarda costa ...' the boys mutter.

One puts a patch over one eye and scans the coast with an enormous wooden telescope.

Kiki fucks Jerry, pulling a red cashmere scarf tight around his neck and grinning into his face. As Jerry ejaculates, blood gushes from his nose.

Slowly, a room in an