and dilapidated air of a declining frontier post or an abandoned carnival.
'The town of Puerto Joselito, dreary enough in its physical aspect, exudes a suffocating fog of smoldering rancid evil as if the town and inhabitants were slowly sinking in wastes and garbage. I found these people deep in the vilest superstitions and practices.
'Various forms of ritual execution are practiced here. These gooks have an aphrodisiac so powerful as to cause death in a total blood spasm leaving the empty body cold and white as marble. This substance is secreted by the Species Xiucutl Crustanus, a flying scorpion, during its lethal mating season in the course of which all male Xiucutl die maddened by the substance and will fly on any male creature infecting with its deadly sperm. In one ceremony the condemned are painted as gold, silver, copper and marble statues, then inoculated with Xiucutl sperm their convulsions are channeled by invisible control wires into exquisite ballets and freeze into garden fountains and park pedestals. And this is one of many ceremonies revolving on the Ceremonial Calendar kept by the Purified Ones and the Earth Mother.
'The Purified One selects a youth each month and he is walled into a crystal cubicle molded on cervical vertebrae. On the walls of the cubicle, sex programs are cut in cuneiforms and the walls revolve on silent hydraulic pressures. At the end of the month the youth is carried through the street on a flower float and cere-nominally hanged in the limestone ball court, it being thought that all human dross passes from the Purified One to die in the youth at the moment of orgasm and death.
Before the youth is hanged he must give his public consent, and if he cannot be brought to consent he hangs the Purified One and takes over his functions. The Purified Ones are officially immortal with monthly injections of youth substance.' Quote Green-Baum Early Explorer.
Carl's outboard vibrated in a haze of rusty oil, bit a jagged piece out of the dugout canoe and sank, in iridescent brown water. Somewhere in the distance the muffled jelly sound of underwater dynamite: ('The natives are fishing'), howler monkeys like wind through leaves. The dugout twisted slowly and stopped, touching a ruined jetty. Carl got out with his Nordic rucksack and walked to the square on high ground. He felt a touch on his shoulder light as wind. A man in moldy grey police tunic and red flannel underwear one bare foot swollen and fibrous like old wood covered with white fungus, his eyes mahogany color flickered as the watcher moved in and out. He gasped out the word 'Control' and slipped to the ground. A man in grey hospital pajamas eating handfuls of dirt and trailing green spit crawled over to Carl and pulled at his pants cuff. Another moves forward on brittle legs breaking little puffs of bone meal. His eyes lit up a stem glare went out in smell of burning metal. From all sides they came pawing hissing spitting: '
'What is all this scandal?' The Comandante in clean khaki was standing on a platform overlooking the square. Above him was an elaborate multileveled building of bamboo. His shirt was open on a brown chest smooth as old ivory. A little pistol in red leather cover crawled slowly across his skin leaving an iridescent trail of slime.
'You must forgive my staff if they do not quite measure up to your German ideal of spit and polish.
. . backward. . . uninstructed. . . each living all alone and cultivating his little virus patch. . . They have absolutely nothing to do and the solitude. . .' He tapped his forehead. His face melted and changed under the flickering arc lights.
'But there must be thirty of them about,' said Carl.
The Comandante gave him a sharp look. 'They are synchronized of course. They can not see or even infer each other so all think he is only police officer on post. Their lines you
'And some of them are already dead. This is awkward since they are not legally responsible. We try to bury them on time even if they retain intact protest reflex. Like Gonzalez the Earth Eater. We bury him three times.' The Comandante held up three fingers sprouting long white tendrils.
'Always he eat way out. And now if you will excuse me the soccer scores are coming in from the Capital. One must pretend an interest.'
The Comandante had aged from remote crossroads of Time crawled into a metal locker and shut the door whimpering with fears, emerged in a moldy green jockstrap his body painted I-red, U-green.
The Assistant flared out of a broom closet high on ammonia with a green goatee and marble face.
He removed Carl's clothes in a series of locks and throws. Carl could feel his body move to the muscle orders. The Assistant put a pail over his head and screamed away into distant hammers.
The Comandante spread jelly over Carl's naked paralyzed body. The Comandante was molding a woman. Carl could feel his body draining into the woman mold. His genitals dissolving, tits swelling as the Comandante penetrated applying a few touches to face and hair—(Jissom across the mud wall in the dawn sound of barking dogs and running water—) Down there the Comandante going through his incantations around Carl's empty body. The body rose presenting an erection, masturbates in front of the Comandante. Penis flesh spreads through his body bursting in orgasm explosions granite cocks ejaculate lava under a black cloud boiling with monster crustaceans. Cold grey undersea eyes and hands touched Carl's body. The Comandante flipped him over with sucker hands and fastened his disk mouth to Carl's asshole. He was lying in a hammock of green hair, penis-flesh hammers bursting his body. Hairs licked his rectum, spiraling tendrils scraping pleasure centers, Carl's body emptied in orgasm after orgasm, bones lit up green through flesh dissolved into the disk mouth with a fluid plop. He quivers red now in boneless spasms, pink waves through his body at touch of the green hairs.
The Comandante stripped Carl's body and smeared on green jelly nipples that pulled the flesh up and in. Carl's genitals wither to dry shit he sweeps clear with a little whisk broom to white flesh and black shiny pubic hairs. The Comandante parts the hairs and makes Incision with a little curved knife. Now he is modeling a face from the picture of his
'And now, how you say, 'the sound effects.'' He puts on a record of her voice, Carl's lips follow and the female substance breathed in the words.
'Oh love of my
'Most distasteful thing I ever stand still for.' Carl made words in the air without a throat, without a tongue. 'I hope there is a
The Comandante looked at him with annoyance: 'You could wait in the office please.'
He came out putting on his tunic and strapping on a Luger.
'A drugstore? Yes I
