Episode description[edit | edit source]
You, who have been sending me poisoned letters: I have determined your address. You sit forward, tongue wets your lips, you wait for the news of my demise after each letter you send but no, I deny you that, I speak at the lectures and hang my hat in the cloakroom of the chophouse and you rage and gnash and pick up your poison pen to write again. Grind those fat bugs down into the ichor that would kill a horse with one flared nostril scent. Not I. I cannot be killed by poisons. Coward, you should have learned that by now and come at me with a hammer but too late. For I know your address.
So I write a letter of my own. In the manner of you, my hated enemy, who has tried so hard to walk me blind to the grave, this letter is also poisoned. Consider it instructive: you are about to learn how a true poisoner operates and this will be very neat information for your next and final three turns of the clock. You are already thinking of the antidote. No such antidote exists. You are already feeling a pinching behind your eyes. Perhaps you think the lamps burn brighter and the room is smaller. It is. It will close on you like a sharp toothed mouth.
The poison in this letter is contained within a word. O letter writer, undone by your reading, infected as your eyes scanned over it. Perhaps you reread it once, twice, roving through ancient paragraphs like a drowning man gasping for air. And each time another great rush of the poison. Down, down, for I am not a reckless artist and I bury my coffins deep.
Three paragraphs should work the trick and you are fading now. So I will tell you that my craft is thus: I could have killed you with the single word, inked lead block capital on stiff card but instead I take the time to let you know that I have you, that your game is done, that you waded in the shallows and believed you plumbed the depths. I set my words on paper, O letter writer. Read them and die.
L. 1883.
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