THE ONGOING MYSTERY OF MILL ON THE FLOSS (Part One : "Small Potatoes")

There was a man once. Not an old man, not a young man. A very sick man. He had this disease, incurable disease. There wasn’t even any medication to ease the pain. He had no idea if he was going to die from one minute to the next. He’d lie there gazing up at these patterns of light on the ceiling. It was like his whole life was shadow-playing itself out on the ceiling. But it never went black, never totally black. Even when he was asleep, his dreams kicked in, and there always seemed to be a little sunshine between the cracks. And he never had any nightmares, as if his disease had exhausted all his nightmares..

Anyway, every Wednesday the nurse would visit, the Visiting Nurse, she would visit to change his sheets, plump his pillows, fluff his eiderdown and empty his bed-pan, extra-large for a weekly fill-up, make him as comfortable as it was possible to be. That was the best she could do, she told him, “that’s the best anybody can do!” And this was the only time he felt ashamed of himself, he felt so terribly ashamed of himself. One day he told her, “I feel so terribly ashamed of myself!” Well, she looked at him through these clinically refulgent eyes, tapped him pointedly on the forehead and told him he was thinking too much, “you’re thinking too much”, she said, “you have to try not to think too much!”

Suddenly he rose up from the bed, grabbed her by the throat and started strangling her! She was so shocked, by the time she realized he was not going to let go she was already dead, her body turned into this limp, lifeless latex dishrag! And her eyeballs popped out of her head. He watched these eyeballs rolling around on the floor, till finally they came to rest next to the un-emptied bed-pan. And they were gazing up at him with such unprecedented disbelief…

And at that moment he knew he wasn’t going to die, he was going to live. And he wanted to live! He pulled her body up onto the bed and started taking off her uniform, cause he figured he’d be less conspicuous dressed like this than parading round the streets in his pajamas. He went off to the nearest police-station to confess his crime and accept his punishment. He told the desk-sergeant he must be mad, “I must be mad! I’m not sick anymore, but I must be mad, I’ve just strangled this woman to death for no particular reason!”

Well, the desk-sergeant is eyeing him up and down like for all the world he must be some deranged transvestite “General Hospital” fan in urgent need of psychiatric attention.. But when they go back to his apartment and they find this limp lifeless latex dish-rag next to this big pan of un-emptied feces, they clap him in leg-irons, slap the handcuffs on, throw him in jail and lock away the key! Ninety-nine years to life, he gets, without possibility of parole!

But he’s never felt healthier in his life. He lies there on his cot gazing up at these patterns of light on the ceiling.. like his whole life shadow-playing itself out on the ceiling of his cell. Only now it goes black, every now and then his life goes black, pitch black! And he starts having this recurring nightmare, a one-legged midget in camouflage and ballet-slipper keeps leaping out of his ass-hole and sexually tormenting him with a week-old French baguette!

He decides to write a book about his experience. Even though he knows nobody will ever read it. And nobody ever does. When he finally dies, and they come into his cell in their rubber-gloves, to clear out his body, they find this three thousand-ply-toilet-rolled-manuscript tentatively entitled “The Lesser of Two Evils”! Of course they toss it into the trash along with his toothbrush and spare underwear.

But whether it was coincidence, random chance, divine providence or merely cause and effect, no sooner had his opening lines gone up in smoke, this North Korean nuclear missile lands on New York and the whole city vanishes from the face of the earth! And the life’s work of one deranged if perfectly healthy homicidal maniac seems like small potatoes in the light of planetary apocalypse!