AN EXCERPT FROM 1981

I left the forest and walked along the narrow street between the tall white walls.  A ladder, still wet from the rain, was the only intrusion in the otherwise empty and endless street.  I had no other option, but whether or not that influenced my decision I do not know, and I climbed the ladder.  I entered a large room that was filled with plump working women.  A row of them stood working, with their arms engulfed to their shoulders in sockets in the wall.  The sockets had gloves attached.  A similar arrangement to that used by scientists when handling radioactive material - except that these women could not see what they were doing.  They believed themselves to be cracking large coconut-type fruits and the milk was running into a trough which ran along the wall, where, at the end, the fluid was collected in urns.  There were other women who collected the fluid and others who drank it around a table.  All the women seemed to spend some time doing each activity.  As time went on I began to detect hints of a concept much vaster than the apparent system I observed.  I sensed something monstrous, something devious and malicious.  I listened more and more to the women's chatter and slowly the concept became clearer.  There was some insidious essence behind the wall.  A heinous writhing being.  What the women were cracking was the skulls of their own children to satisfy this hideous monster's appetite.  The fluid was provided in order to support the illusion and to sustain the women.  The monster delighted in being fed the blood of children by their unwitting mothers.  I tried to explain but was rebuked.  I realised that all my knowledge of this situation had come from the women's chatter.  The hidden lie was within their own minds.  I thought on this and began to realise that in order to maintain the flow of food the women could not admit to themselves their activity as they would have to stop, and deep in the unreachable depths of their minds was the imperative defence that they could not possibly cease to perform this ritual and allow their children to live, as it would be a greater tragedy for them to experience such a wretched and debased existence.