CANVAS TWO:
DON'T FEAR THE REAPER
For Richard Matheson
"Without me, people would still kill each other.
I close the eyes. I numb the pain. I help clean up the mess."
--Per Fagering
The next one came in tonight. August 29, 2002. Three days since the last entry on this tape recorder. This is Callaight County Pennsylvania Deputy Medical Examiner Schiya Myelnick, with exactly one half year of combined total experience under my belt and current decedent most probably Exhibit B in ...something.
I have no idea what. See also decdent Lazarus, John, no middle initial, on 08/27/02. Some of the letters are in the same font as the beginning paragraphs... limitations of existing language... of the right shoulder piece done very professionally on the back of tonight's star contestant at the Callaight County Mortuary.
A strapping six feet tall at seventeen, weighing in at about a buck sixty, we have John Doe. (No, not the singer from X. He's got more meat on him.)
Now, John Doe caused the staff at Lincoln High School a good deal of grief, today, but it wasn't really his fault. Some sort of administrative error.
Yes. Apparently he was up and walking around, dead. Dozens of witnesses. They had to call a special session of the Town Council to keep this all quiet. Took a lot of hush money.
I mean, it happens to the best of us. Still, we can all say we're glad he's...
No. That's the comic-book panels on his back. John Doe was burned alive by person or persons unknown, out in the woods by the old state hospital.
We're lucky to have saved the actual tattoos. The Stateties are still tracking a few Starry Wisdom fucks that live back along that road. But this story, on the few inches of skin not crisped by hot tar, it ...
Well, here. I'm not suppose to show these, but take a look ...
Sections of this installment originally appeared in Ballista #2, Paul Neads, ed.
http://www.mucusart.co.uk/ballista.htm
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Copyright © 2009 by Edward Morris
First Electronic Edition—published 2009
ISBN 978-0-9819882-9-0