HERE IN THE ARMS OF ASSASSINS by Ken Gage ©2001

They had god in their eyes and guns in their hands. From out the frenzied darkness of a battle-hardened night, the weary stewed in silence -- and in sweat and blood and unvoiced cries to the Great Nothingness. "Please take us now or be forever cursed."

Only man with any medical ability was Dr. Karaoke, a noted tree surgeon from Belchertown, Pennsylvania. The torch of divine retribution was upon them.

The doctor layed his hands on a dead boy-soldier, "In all the luminous heavens and pulsating mangrove swamps, why him!" But then he remembered: silence is only frightening to people who are compulsive verbalizers.

Dr. Karaoke studied the hopeful faces of the fatally wounded around him. He put on a smile and a few of the damned even smiled back.

A little erasure here, some pen marks there and the doctor was a new man.

Dr. Benway launched himself into the congested waiting room and scanned each emergency patient with green saucer eyes. My god, it's a gold mine. He saw flashes of money everywhere -- in an amputation at the left shoulder; money gushed out of an abdominal gunshot wound; it even hung from an arrow lodged ear-to-ear through one fellow's head..."Okay, Mr. Martin, you've had your fun. Now get outta here!"

The doctor pointed out a particularly expensive case to the waiting room nurse and she nodded back. Dr. Benway cared like nobody could -- he was a medical breakthrough waiting to happen.

"Don't worry people. I graduated from the Top Notch Corral. You've all heard about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral no doubt. Well, before that, it was called the Pretty Good Corral. And before that...."

A real device of terror is information -- noise, print, light calculated to break your silence. William Harper Anderson, smartest man alive, closed his copy of The DeBoo Report.

"Exponential paranoia. It'll catch 'em every time. Voici le temps des assassins et le diable."