Last Words

They say it can't be done. They say the last man who tried, died. They say that his was a particularly gruesome end, and but the latest in a long line of failed attempts. They describe in gory detail his very last moments of life: the gasping, the grasping, a rasping from twixt his buttocks. They say he went further than his predecessors had, that before being driven mad he had come to know the futility of his task. And that in a final instance of clarity before calamity came about - blood and all its odours and of his organs too, as though already rotted yet still wearing one left shoe - he said something for once, for all, true. That he said, they say, and the day was done for him, he took them to a lasting place and left them on the way.