William S. Burroughs
Mr. Hart Couldn’t Hear the Word Death
Ah well, Mr. Hart isn't trying to be a nice guy any longer. It is - he decides - uphill and rather unrewarding work. Mr. Hart sets out to be death. He learns to kill through his newspapers. And he teaches his editors the tricks, as they crawl up his ladder. "Now, you just move this tenement bar over here and burn some more niggers." Chuckling over roasted babies, car accidents and riots, like a Southern lawman feeling his nigger notches

Mr. Hart has to be inhuman, 'cos humans are mortal. And Mr. Hart is addicted to immortality. He's addicted to an immortality, predicated on the mortality of others. Gooks, niggers, wogs, human dogs... And feeling his own contempt for these apes affords him a mineral calm. He's addicted to a certain brain frequency, a little high blue-note feel, so good that feeling, he does swim in it forever and ever. And this cool blue frequency comes from making hands tremble and sweat. From feeling the dear meritorious poor wriggle and slobber under his boots. From making people ugly, and grinding their faces in it. From knowing he can squash an editor like a bug! And seein' his editor knew it. See the action B.J. This soul searching tycoon with this, uh, dark side to his character

Mr. Hart, Death will not serve a stranger who cannot prove his title. A Gringo who fears the very word and sets up a house rule that the word 'death' may not be pronounced in his presence

"Hey! Look at all them dead bodies." Audrey points with his left hand as Virus B-23, surfacing the remote seas of past time, rages through cities of the world like a topping forest fire

Last take. Mr. Hart's deserted, ruined, mansion. Graffiti on the walls. 'Ah Pook was here.'

'Here lived a stupid, vulgar, son of a bitch, who thought he could hire Death as a company cop.'

[Voice from audience: "Yes Sir."]