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You’re freshly dead You haven’t been found I’m the first to see!

I ached to touch his foot, his leg, to be sure it was Roy! Thoughts of the papier-h my head

I inched my hand out to touch … but then …

Over by his desk was the sculpture platforreatest work, the Beast, the Monster froht Derby, the Creature ent in churches beyond the wall and across a street

Someone had taken a ballpeen hammer and struck it a dozen blows The face, the head, the skull, were banged and smashed until only a shapeless mound remained

Jesus God, I whispered

Was this the final crime that made Roy self-destroy?

Or had the destroyer, waiting in the shadows, struck Roy unaware aed him on the air?

I trembled I stopped

For I heard the stage door spring wide

I pulled off my shoes and ran, quietly, to hide

26

It was the surgeon-h-noon abortionist, the needle-pushing defrocked high-priest doctor

Doc Phillips glided into the light on the far side of the stage, glancing about, seeing the ruin, then finding the hanged body above, he nodded, as if this death were an everyday cala the ruined cities as if they were e and irrelevant trash

Seeing this, I coughed up a curse I clapped my hand to my mouth and jerked back in shadow