I have tried to get him somehow back to civilization so that he can restore more normal values. But he is ill now, again gravely ill. I think it is in part due to the fact that NORML has abandoned him, I am sure of it.”
Mitzi had never before confronted a man like this before. Frankly, he was the most frightening thing he’d seen before. He was quite in awe of Katz, but so was Mitzi. Nut this was different: The quilted man could not see through to the misery that Katz was dispersing into this godless land. The man could only see Katz as a hero. This was all very, very scary. A young man like any in America, completely without the comprehension to feel, completely veiled by Katz’s apparent heroism. What a farce, but still, Mitzi was in hideous awe himself. He felt absurd for judging this ridiculous quilted man, but at he same time identified with him. He both loved and despised Katz; they both did.
Suddenly the scenery changed. The rubble had been cleared and around the cleared area was erected a fence of various odds and ends of re-barb, wire, telephone poles, etc. All of the assorted sharp stakes were sticking out from the cleared ground at different angles, and their shadows oddly were cast forward and backward; there was the fading light of station belonging to the quilted man, and from inside the motley fence was a dimming fluorescent light. The scene before Mitzi was horrifying enough, until he saw the heads.
Upon every other sharpened stake, there was jammed a head belonging to a native; or, rather, a head that used to belong to a native. Their bodies were nowhere to be found. As macabre as the whole sick vista before the crew was, none seemed exceedingly aghast. Dogbert and Virgil cowered as they had been since the battle, the Pilgrims seemed to clutch their books in the same way. The quilted man appeared enlivened by the thought of checking on Katz. The only other eyes were the vacant ones embedded in the shrinking heads of the natives, staring from atop their posts. The queerest thing – besides them being heads on a stake – was that all but one was facing inward towards Katz’s dwelling. As the quilted man opened to gate, Mitzi eyed the heads, suspicious of their meaning.
All of them, facing inward or outward, were smiling. Smiling! Their yellow and black teeth still decayed on their thrones, while their hair dangled below their ears in a nappy tangle. Some – the older ones – had skin that looked as if it were dehydrated leather, the more recently murdered still showed dried blood on the stake and around the chin. It was a macabre air that heavily flowed like magma through the makeshift courtyard, and Mitzi was singed incessantly not only by the magma, but by the smiling eyes of the decapitated natives.
Not a word was spoken as the wooden door was pried open.
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