THE SIXTY-FOURTH PAGE

My early morning considerations were made as I ate my toast and oatmeal and bacon and thought about the gentler arts of corporal discipline: the humiliations, public and private; poisons, diuretic and incapacitating; bone-breaking accidents, maulings, and minor mutilations, which were probably just as difficult and dangerous to administer as the broader corporal punishments which called for the direct and active devices: speeding cars, fatal poisons, guns, knives, ropes ‘n razor wire.

My heart bolted within me as I contemplated the messiness of the corporal and its attendant lack of order and control. My schemes would not be easily executed because such measures went against the grain and I was not a practiced hand. Squeamishness must be put aside.

I had been hurt, perhaps damaged forever, and I could never again publish under my own name. The first novel was but a fading blip in computer memory, but the visible failure of the second book was registered on the screen in every independent bookshop, chain operation, and internet seller in the world. Beware. System Freeze. Beware. Do Not Buy Books By This Loser. They would never order another book written by the sullied author.