RUBBING HIS CLAMMY HANDS Shepherd watched his bird solicit an unknown john. Shepherd saw his macerated dolt coquettishly twirl the john's expensive tie around her emaciated fingers. The dolt was good, too bloody good. The john was smiling, no laughing and ambivalently trying to escape the dolt's salacious eyes. With a flash of meretricious pap the john was filled with looping prurience. And bingo there it was the showing of the prophylactic, just like an invitation to a party. Shepherd ebulliently licked his lips, rubbed his sack and did a quick one two. His gait was confident, sly, unctuous. It didn't take much inveigling to get the john to shadow her, for he followed like a puppy dog to the tenebrous hole. Up above them, elevated upon a wall Shepherd looked down as his dolt and the john partook in a short confab dealing with fiscal issues and time. She had a gob on her, always cussing, she couldn't open her mouth without some derogatory remark spilling out. She said those four letter words like nobody else, they were like Stanley knives, they lacerated they did. When she said shag, the john always swallowed his adam's apple and his gut would reverberate. And the word knob upon her tongue could shine a brass knob with hallucinating celerity. She dropped to her knees and on the way down dexterously pulled down the john's trousers. Shepherd had seen enough. He leapt from the wall.

Ours is a strange time. One almost starts to believe in the continuating circles of Vico. One gets the feeling that one is living, existing in a bank once again and what does Luke have Jesus say: To him who has, more will be given. Thus what is imprinted with ink upon the recto and verso is more important than blood, sweat and tears. Yes we are living in a bank and Vico was right. What is meant by this bold statement is that an analogy has been made with the art work of Hogarth, for it was he that elucidated the workings of the first bank, no not the first bank but one of a series of banks. We are now spending our time amongst the avaricious, doxies, junkies, sycophants, if you do not believe me, open your window, every street is now called Gin and on that street is a plethora of mothers tossing their babies from towerblocks and the ubiquitous emaciated junky is watching impassively. Yes, the epoch that has trapped us is the epoch of the bank, as it was when the empyreal Hogarth breathed in the fetor of the streets.


JUST LIKE A DOCTOR is obsessed with bacteria and germs so was Shepherd. He was impeccably clean. Once in the hot soapy bath he had his dolt wash his back and behind his ears. After the bath he would drink gin and read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This was a bad mix for Shepherd almost, without fail, would slip into the doldrums of dysphoria. After the bath he couldn't converse with the dolt because she had filled herself up with junk and was comatosed on the floor, pissing her pants, drooling, asking her daddy to forgive her.


SHEPHERD was a sybarite. No matter how much he possessed he still needed more. He was a product of the age. A corrupt age will produce a Nero, and if the ground is wet, clammy, fundamentally a tepid quagmire, mushrooms, fungi will sprout, it is inevitable. Though these two simulacra were diametrically opposite to each other the nexus was too strong to part them. Of course she called him a sponge, a bastard, a waster and dreamed of smothering him while he slept off his gin, she still needed him. And yes he still wanted to get shut of her, he had planned it with meticulous precision, but what mitigated his plans was the need he had of her. She was the key to the bank's vault and he was the door.

You're a boil on me arse! she would bellow.

You're the cheese in my foreskin, he would retort.

Shepherd suffered from a perennial debilitating fear of penile cancer. Men with foreskins were four times more likely to get penile cancer than those circumcised. This fact perturbed Shepherd. But the thought of being circumcised was more exacerbating than penile cancer. Shepherd like all men feared the knife.


ONE DOES NOT NEED to read Burton to know that gin is a drink for the melancholic. Thus through his tears did Shepherd see the dolt and when she said, rather brazenly, I'll do you good, I'll put a shine on your knob, Shepherd heard the key in his door turning. And so this strange symbiotic relationship corrivated.

Now in the movies when a bottle is smacked against the head the bottle always smashes, but in real life the bottle usually bounces off the head, sometimes the bottle does indeed smash, but more than likely there will be a thud and the bottle will stay intact, now it is again arbitrary if the owner of the head falls or not, sometimes the victim falls, but on other occasions the owner is still standing, though perplexed and discombobulated. Now how do two lazy good for nothings enjoy the fruits of this world, how are they able to sit in a boozer all day and all night, lunting nicotine clouds, playing the fruit machines nonchalantly, drinking gin and tonics, being the djs and even philanthropically buying the rounds in for other boozers?


THE DOLT WAS TWIRLING the tie and being all coquettish with those cooing lipstick blowers. The suit was lasciviously slobbering all over her white petite paps. There was much to and fro during this juncture of the tête-à-tête, as though the suit enjoyed the little cul de sac they ventured into, the word play, the double entendres, though these were superfluous and went with alacrity over the dolt's head. The suit demanded that the dolt say those four letter words and when she complied his glassy orbs fulgurated and he had to swab his clammy brow. And so she led him to that tenebrous hole. Up above them, elevated upon a wall Shepherd looked down as his dolt and the suit partook in a verbose confab dealing with fiscal issues and time. The suit loved the gob on her, he wanted more cussing, for her to be more caustic with her derogatory words. She said those four letter words like nobody else, they were like Stanley knives, they lacerated they did. When she said shag, the john always swallowed his adam's apple and his gut would reverberate. And the word knob upon her tongue could shine a brass knob with hallucinating celerity. She dropped to her knees and on the way down dexterously pulled down the john's trousers. Shepherd had seen enough. He leapt from the wall and brought down an empty bottle upon the balding pate. The bottle didn't smash, the suit did not topple over. With blood flowing from his head the suit turned and looked at Shepherd as though Shepherd had just performed fellatio upon him. Before the suit could react the dolt emasculated the suit with a chomp of her stained teeth.


WE NOW LIVE IN AN AGE where a gamble is both fatuous and unnecessary. The bank epitomizes this ethos and so Shepherd proclaimed that a bottle would never be employed again. Together they traipsed to the local shop and with the banker's mind they purchased a Stanley knife for less than a five pound note. It was a fine investment.

How many they had dispatched cannot be computed, though two most definitely got away. Shepherd missed the windpipe on one and the other the laceration was superficial. But up above the dolt and the john, elevated upon a wall sat Shepherd with his Stanley knife out ready and while the dolt and john partook in a short confab dealing with fiscal issues and time Shepherd would wait until the john's back was facing the darkness and the dolt was pressing against the wall. Sometimes Shepherd waited until the dolt had dropped to her knees and had the john's penis in her mouth for we now live in an age where a gamble is both fatuous and unnecessary. And so he would leap from the wall and surreptitiously sneak up to the john and with breathtaking alacrity slit the throat.


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