Works/Bad Water

I'm going to have to tell this in a hurry. I'm leaving wet marks on the paper where my hand drags across it.

Excuse me if I skip around. I should begin with finding out about Carl. No. The desert. I should begin with Danielle coming back from the desert.

Danielle is - was - my oldest friend from college. Carl was my boyfriend. I hate the word "boyfriend." It sounds like something tenth-graders have. Carl was my lover. We lived together for eight years. We never cheated. At least, I know I didn't and I don't think Carl did.

Until Danielle came back from the desert.

Danielle was an archaeologist. Not much work for those. If you're one of the hot shots you get your face in the magazines; if you're not, you basically ride on the coattails of the big names, signing on for digs with them as a lackey, hoping to scrape out the time and money to work on your pet project on the side.

Danielle didn't have a pet project. She went to school to get a husband. She didn't get the husband and she would never admit that's why she went. Not even to me. Danielle wasn't ugly and she wasn't exactly mean, but she had a voice and a personality that sometimes made even her friends want to slap her into next week.

Danielle was in the Mojave for three weeks. I don't know what the expedition was for. She never bothered to talk about those things to me. We went out for dinner the night after she came back. I opened the door to let her in and I gasped.

"What happened to you?" I said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean - it's just that -"

"I look like hell. Don't worry," she said hoarsely, "you can say it. I do. I got separated from the party in a sandstorm. Three days. No food or water."

"Oh, my God. You must nearly have died! How did they find you? Did you have to go to a hospital? Sit down! You look like you're about to fall over. We need to get dinner in you."

She sat on the sofa and smiled without looking happy. That's a special trick of hers. "You can go without food. It's the water that'll kill you. But I found some. Lucky for me, huh?"

"I feel like I should offer you something to eat just so you can make it to the restaurant," I said, trying to make it sound light. Really, she looked bad. It wasn't just that she was so thin. Her skin was pale and it looked, I don't know, artificial. Like she'd been trying to cover it with makeup. Maybe she just had on too much blush.

"I'm not as bad off as I look," she said, "don't worry. By the way, where's Carl?"

"Carl's out of town," I said. "How come?"

"I just thought maybe he was coming to have dinner with us."

Carl had never liked Danielle, and she knew it. Carl always found an excuse not to go out with us, and why would it have been any different that time?

I worried when she barely ate anything at dinner; in fact, I'm not sure she ate anything; she just pushed food around on her plate. But I figured she wouldn't want me to say anything else about it. When I saw her a week later, she looked much better, so I stopped worrying. She was back to her regular shape - which had been skinny to begin with. In fact, she looked like she'd filled out a little.

I don't think anything weird happened that evening. Oh, no, wait. Danielle was watching men. She always did that, she'd have every male in the room scoped out five minutes after she sat down. But this time I noticed - "Hey, am I missing something?" I said to her quietly.

"What?" She turned to look back at me.

"That guy. The one you were just preoccupied with. The one you've spent most of the last hour staring at."

"What about him?" She grinned. "Can't I look?"

"Well, sure - but, um - he's not your usual type, is he? I mean -"

"What?"

"He's - he's - well, don't you usually like the wiry ones?" I couldn't say it gracefully. This guy was huge. I don't mean in a good way. I'm not being a bitch here; Carl had love handles, but this guy .... He had a belly out to the table and a double chin at least. Seriously obese.

"He'd last a long time," she said.

She didn't explain it. She came back to our conversation, didn't mention it again, and didn't stare at him for the rest of the time we were there.

I think it was a few days later I ran into Fred. Danielle and I went to college with Fred; a really nice guy. Never seemed really interested in sex, or I might have been living with him instead of Carl. I always - well, hell, I always wondered if he was gay, and to be honest, when I saw him that day I think I made the noise I did because my first thought was that he had AIDS. He looked worse than Danielle had. Where the skin wasn't clinging so tightly you could see his bones, it was hanging in loose folds with nothing underneath. His eyes were so far sunken into his head that I couldn't tell what color they were anymore.

"My God, Fred." I'd seen him a month before. He'd looked completely normal. Handsome.

"Pretty bad, huh? I've been sick," he said. "Look, I'm on my way to somewhere. Give me a call and we'll get together and I'll tell you about it," and he dashed off.

Three days later he was dead. Danielle called me with the news. I nearly dropped the phone.

I didn't know anyone else at the funeral; it made me really nervous. "Danielle," I whispered.

"What?" Danielle hadn't seemed to be tuning in to Planet Earth much lately.

"Who's the blonde woman?"

"The one glaring at me?"

"Oh, good, it's not my imagination."

"That's Fred's sister. I think."

"Why is she glaring at you?"

She shrugged. I studied the blonde - and she saw me and gave me the same look she'd been giving Danielle. Utter hate. I felt guilty all of a sudden, and I didn't even know what I was being accused of. I turned to say something else to Danielle and I stopped myself. Because Danielle was smiling. Really. Not like a corners-of-the-mouth smile, and not a very nice smile either. I remember thinking, no wonder the blonde was mad!

I didn't want to talk to Danielle after that; I was glad we'd come in separate cars. When I got home, I pushed Carl onto the bed and I popped two buttons on his shirt in my hurry to get it off.

"Damn. What got into you?" I remember him asking afterward.

I miss Fred. Fred was a good person.

Danielle had definitely put on weight the next time I saw her. Her hips and breasts were filling out and her skin was almost shiny. Something about her face, too - "Danielle -"

"Hmm?"

"Um. Never mind." We're enlightened and all, but there's still never a good way to say, "Are you pregnant?" When she was ready to tell me, she'd tell me.

It couldn't have been a week later that the elevator doors opened on my floor and there was Danielle, standing on the other side.

"Oh! Er, hi," she said. "I was - just knocking on your door. I thought you'd have been home from work by now."

"I had errands," I said, "but I'm surprised Carl didn't answer the door. He should be there."

"Oh? Well, maybe he was asleep or something."

"So what's up?"

"It'll keep," she said, changing places with me on the elevator. "I'm late now. I had only stopped by for a second anyway. I'll tell you about it next time I see you!" She waved and the doors closed.

I walked down the hall and let myself in. "Carl?"

He was in the shower. He stepped out and jumped a little. "Sorry! Startled me. You can't hear anybody come in when you're in there."

"Did you hear someone knock on the front door a few minutes ago?"

"Nope. But I was either asleep or in the shower. I decided I needed a nap when I came home. Why? Did we miss something?"

"Just Danielle," I said. "I'll catch up with her tomorrow." I watched him as he moved into the bedroom, and then I realized what else was bothering me. I snuck up behind him and grabbed him, arms around him, and whispered, my lips next to his ear. "Tell me the truth," I teased. "You've been working out again, haven't you? And trying to keep it a secret. Naughty -"

He pulled away from my embrace and spun to face me. "What makes you say that?"

"Jesus, Carl. I didn't mean to - I'm sorry I spoiled your surprise. But it's pretty obvious. I mean, nothing wrong with the way you were before - but, you know, there's a difference."

He sighed. "Sorry to be so jumpy. Yeah, it was supposed to be a surprise, but I guess there wasn't much chance I could go too far without you guessing."

"Oh, honey," I said, hugging him again. "Suppose I were to drag you onto this bed right now and yank that towel off and lick you like a lollipop. Would that make you feel better?"

"Um. That - well - I wouldn't say no ...."

I just about floated to work the next day. That may have been why I forgot to call Danielle and ask her why she'd come by. And I didn't think about her for a couple of days, because the day after that, Carl disappeared.

He didn't come home from work. All night. I called the police. The next day I called his office. Had he come in today? No. Had he come in yesterday? In the morning. He'd left early.

He'd left early. What had he left to do? Had he been robbed? Hurt? Killed? I started calling the hospitals. Nothing.

I didn't call Danielle because she would have been close to the last person on earth Carl would have called if he'd been in trouble. I called some of our other friends, some of his friends. Still nothing.

I went through the routine for the next couple of days. I went to work and stared at the computer. I went home and stared at the television. I don't remember anything I did or saw, only the calls to the police several times a day. Anything yet? Nothing.

I don't even remember how many nights it was until the night I came home from work and things were missing. All his. Clothes, personal items. A suitcase.

I don't claim I reasoned it out. I didn't even realize I was driving to Danielle's until I was already halfway there. If he was with her - he was supposed to hate her - I was going to kick him all the way to the next town. I was going to tear his face off. Then hers.

When he answered the door, I forgot all my threats and promises.

"Oh, God," he said. I couldn't say anything.

He couldn't have weighed much over a hundred pounds. His face - it wasn't the person I had lived with for so long. His pants were tied with string to hold them around his waist.

"You shouldn't have come here," he said.

"How did this happen? What did she do to you?"

"Really. Go. This will be even worse if you stay -"

"Damn you!" I screamed, pushing him - and too late I realized I wasn't pushing a man Carl's size anymore. He flew over backward and fell on the floor like a pile of sticks. He groaned.

"Oh, no - Carl - I'm sorry -"

"What the hell's going on? Oh, no." Another man had come into the room.

"Michael?"

"Not you," he said. "Don't you know this is what she wants?"

Michael, like Fred, was a friend Danielle and I had in college. I hadn't seen him in ages. I hadn't even realized he was still in town. He'd lost a little weight, but it was definitely him. Lost weight -

"She's doing it to you too, isn't she?" I asked him. "Why are you here? You should leave before you end up like Carl - damn it -" Tears were running down my face.

"It's not that simple," said Danielle from the doorway. I turned and -

God. I can't forget that. I'd like to forget that.

Danielle was swollen. Three hundred pounds maybe, rounded all over, face like a perfect circle ... flesh wiggling in large masses all over her nude body as she walked toward me, each step sending ripples across her entire engorged surface.

She was a blue-white color, translucent. Light shone through her from the doorway. It reflected off her surface, reflecting in patterns of the spectrum everywhere she curved. It was like - like -

It was like looking at a woman made of soap bubbles. Except that the bubbles were very solid. And they were filled with liquid -

"Did you know," she said, grabbing me by the shoulders, "that the human body is mostly water? Michael, help me hold her. She's kicking."

"No, please -"

"Michael. Help me now." Another pair of hands on me. A sharp smell, strong. Wait - it was her. And I'd smelled it before on her, faintly. Of course, she'd had clothes on before.Like something I'd smelled in a garden once, but I was sure it wasn't a flower.

The smell was making me dizzy.

She hugged me, holding my arms against my body. I couldn't move. "Oh, I'm so glad you're here. I thought I was going to have to come get you. I was just waiting on Carl. I wanted to be able to tell you he was dead. Like I told you about Fred."

I kicked her. It was like kicking a waterbed. She smiled. "Poor thing. Of course it might be worse for you to see Carl like this. I don't think he'll last much longer, do you?"

"Why -" I started to shout. But when I opened my mouth, she leaned in, quicker than I thought she could move, and she kissed me. She kissed me firmly, pressing her lips so I could barely breathe, allowing her tongue lots of time to roll over my teeth and probe around them. I will gag, I thought, I will bite it off, but the smell was really getting to me and the kiss was - I wasn't - was I?

"Oh, you liked that," she said, letting up. She had felt my body relax, just as I had. "Mmm, I thought it might work on you if you had enough. You're the first woman I've tried. You look so cute when you're stunned like that. Take off all your clothes."

I couldn't collect my head - it was like my brain had gone blurry. That smell .... What had she said? Take off my clothes? All right. Good idea .... Maybe if I took off my clothes she would .... No. No, that can't be right.

I started taking off my clothes and I heard her laughing.

"While you're undressing, I'll tell you about something funny that happened in the desert," she said. "There I was, with no food or water. I was going to die. There was no way around it. I knew I was going to die, and I guess I'd accepted that. I was too weak to stand. I could barely see; my vision was going, the sun and the sand were in my eyes ... I crawled right into a crack in the earth and I fell through it. Caught me completely by surprise. Oh, very nice," she said, looking at me. "But I already knew you had a good body. Do you even know how many men were hot for you in college? Do you have any idea? Do you know how rotten it was, being your friend? Lie down. That's right, lie down right there on the carpet."

I was happy to lie down on the carpet. My head was spinning so badly that I'd been having trouble standing up anyway.

"I fell into a dark place," she continued, walking over, "and the fall would have killed me, except that I fell into a pool of water. Water, can you imagine? It was about ten feet deep and it smelled alkaline. Like me. Isn't that an interesting smell? Don't you love it? Of course you do. But I didn't realize about the smell until I'd already gulped about a gallon of it. Bad water, who cared? What if it killed me? I was dead anyway, and I had more of a chance with it than without it." She stood astride me, one leg on either side of my hips, facing me. From that angle she looked even more bizarre. She crouched down, hovering over me - reached down - and began to stroke me, between the legs. She poked her fat finger inside me, pulled it out, and then rubbed it up to my clit and back down.

I jolted from her touch, shouted, sat up. I pushed against her knees. Unbalanced in her crouch, she fell over backwards and landed on her enormous ass. Ripples undulated all over her entire surface - I couldn't help watching - it was like nothing I'd ever seen.

"Michael!" He grabbed my shoulders, pushed me down to the floor again. Where was Carl? Was Carl just watching all this? Was he still lying on the floor, maybe with something broken?

Danielle stood over my face. "You aren't behaving." She crouched again, bringing her crotch down nearly to my lips. "Doesn't that smell good? Don't you want to kiss me again? I won't kiss you again if you don't behave. Lick it."

I licked it. It tasted sharp, like lime. Lime. Lime for the garden. That was the smell. I nearly blacked out.

"Tell me you'll behave," she said.

"I'll behave," I said. It sounded like my voice was far away. She wanted me to behave - of course I would - I would do anything if only she would give me what I wanted. What was that? What did I want? I didn't think I knew.

"Where was I?" she said. She began to play with my cunt again, not really paying attention to that at all. Thinking of her story. I squirmed. God, that felt good. No, no, it didn't. No, silly, of course it did, but you can't let it -

"That pool saved my life. I went back to drink from it again and again, as I felt my way and dug my way out. I never did find out what that place was. It was absolutely dark, too dark to see anything. When I managed to make a hole out to the surface, I heard the sand coming in behind me. They found me not too much later. I was too weak to go back and look for it, and I never did get around to telling anyone else at the dig about it. I wasn't sure why I didn't want to talk about it. But later everything made sense. You like this, don't you? I don't know how I'm going to drain you - I can't do it the way I do the boys, of course - maybe I can't, but I'm sure we'll have fun anyway."

I barely heard her. I was panting, gasping. Every time she moved her finger, my whole body would shiver. I'd never been this bad before, never, not with Carl, not with anybody. "Please -" I managed to say.

"Please? Please make you come until you scream from it? Please let you go? Please kill you? I don't know which you mean. But it sounds like I've teased you enough. Now for your treat."

She moved up to the level of my face again, shuffling forward on her knees. The smell - "Now open your mouth," she said. I did. "I want you to drink what I give you. You'll like it." I nodded.

She lowered herself as close as she could, her palms on the carpet above my head, down on all fours over my face, her smell all over me so bad .... Then liquid. Spraying all over my face and into my mouth, streams of it into my mouth. I gulped. It tasted brackish. Alkaline. Like she said. Bad water. I swallowed more. I swallowed until the stream had stopped and my mouth was empty again. She stood up and looked down, towering over me.

I passed out.

I woke up in the same place on the floor, in the same position. My back hurt. I heard people talking in the other room. Carl. Danielle. My former lover and my former best friend. I wanted to cry, but my eyes were out of water.

Michael's voice too. They were all in the other room. Probably lying on the bed together. The men offering their cocks to her so she could finish draining them into nothingness. I stood up quietly and grabbed my purse, whatever clothes of mine I could clutch. No sound they'd heard me. I moved to the door - turned the lock, then the knob - no response from the bedroom. I opened the door and ran. To the car. In. Slam the door. Start the motor. Don't let your hands shake.

I saw Danielle standing in the doorway as I pulled away. I don't know if she was angry. I thought she might have been laughing.

Back to the house. I thought I could risk it. Clothes. Clean out the bank account. And then I was gone, gone, I thought never to come back.

I have been foolish so many times now.

A few days later in a small town. I was working as a waitress. The tips were not great. The customers were big, greasy truck driver types. And I remember. I remember looking at one of them - an enormous bear of a man in a flannel shirt - and thinking: Lot of meat on that one. Lots of water. He'd last a long time.

And the next thing I knew, I was apologizing to a customer and getting a mop to clean up the plateful of food I'd dropped. No, no good reason, sorry, won't happen again. I went out back, behind the kitchen, and waited until my hands stopped shaking.

Water. One day I decided to write down every time I had some, and how much. I drank ten gallons of water that day, little by little. None of it satisfied me. I felt thirsty all the time. Most of that water just went right out the other end. Nothing else was interesting. I had basically stopped eating. Once in a while I'd have something besides water to drink. But not milk.

I'd developed some kind of allergy to milk or something. Actually "allergy" isn't right; I never got close enough to find out. All of a sudden I couldn't stand the smell. I'd bring out the little pitcher of milk for a customer's coffee and try not to crinkle my nose up, carry it as far from my body as I could get away with. Other dairy products were the same, but milk was the worst.

I noticed a definite blue tint to my skin. I took longer and longer to put on makeup in the morning. Eventually I got to the point where I was using a bottle of foundation a day. I knew sooner or later someone would notice.

And the need, oh God, the need. I'd watch everyone who walked in. Mostly men, sometimes women if no men were around. All of them - what would they be like? Would they make a lot of noise as they came? Would they giggle a lot, or would they be the solemn serious type? Were they ticklish? Did they have big penises? How did they smell? How did they taste -

Taste. Water. I would look at a person and want their water. I couldn't stand it.

And they wanted me too. I could tell. Again, mostly men, but sometimes I saw even women giving me the look, the look that says, you name the place and I'm there. Whenever you want, however you want.

And how do you say to them, you don't want this, when they obviously do? The best climax you've ever had. You come and you come and you're really giving me more of your precious fluids than you think. It will swirl around in my body, chalky white, and gradually it will become transparent, the kind of water I keep. And you'll want to do it again even more. And after a few weeks of that, why, you'll shrivel away and die.

She didn't intend this, I don't think. I don't think she was planning that far ahead. She pissed in my mouth to humiliate me. She didn't know she was giving me something of hers. Something important.

Men started begging me to go out with them. I moved to the next town.

One night I actually did it. Okay, he was an asshole; that's why I did it. His name was Pete and he smelled like cow dung and aftershave, and he thought he was God's gift, not just to women, but to the universe at large. I took him back to my hotel room - I hadn't been in that town long. I took off my dress and my panties. I hadn't bothered with makeup where the dress covered. He looked and backed against the wall. His eyes were wild.

"Come here, Pete. Breathe deeply. Don't you like that smell? Isn't that a good smell?" He quivered. I moved closer. "I won't hurt you. I want to kiss you. I know I look a little scary, but believe me, this is going to be the best night of your life -" I leaned in and kissed him, kissed him a long time, the way she had kissed me. And when I pulled back, I could see by his eyes that he was mine already.

"Why don't you take off your clothes for me, Pete. I want to see what you look like under all that." He was hairy all over, and he looked shorter out of his boots. I didn't care. When I saw his penis, standing up like a flagpole, my brain had changed me into some person I didn't know was in there. I pulled Pete onto the bed. No foreplay. No nothing. Just lowered myself onto him - Oh, God, how it felt to finally have something there - up and down, lifting and shifting my hips over his. Not more than three or four times. And he came. Came for so long ....

It wasn't an orgasm where I expected it. It was an orgasm much deeper inside, in a place I didn't know, feeling that liquid enter my body. A feeling like I was growing. Absorbing.

Pete passed out from his ordeal. Before he had even finished putting liquid in me, I think. I lifted myself off, got dressed, put on fresh makeup.

I was never going to be able to do that again. Never. I wanted it more now, more than anything. Never again.

I went into the hotel bar. I knew it would be empty that early. Just an old barfly who didn't have anything much to drain, and the bartender, who was gay and would have taken more seduction than I had in me.

"Now watch," the bartender was saying. He had a glass mug half-full of beer; the rest of the mug was full of a thick white head of beer foam. He flicked a drop of something from his finger into the mug. The foam vanished almost instantly, one bubble after another dissolving away.

"Goodness," I said, moving up. "What was that you just put in the beer? Battery acid?"

"Milk," the bartender said.

"I didn't believe it myself," the barfly croaked.

"It's deadly to beer foam," the bartender said. "Even a little tiny bit. Except some of this crappy American beer - they put chemicals in that to keep the foam together. Hey, lady! You okay?"

I was already out the door.

I made it back in one piece. It was easier not to think of the need while I was driving. I made some stops, and then before I knew it, I was at her front door. I didn't know whether to knock or try to find a way to break in. But it was unlocked, and the house looked empty. But in the bedroom -

"Carl?"

He turned to look at me, slowly, his eyes sunken and clouded. "You - you shouldn't have -"

"How are you still alive?"

"She won't - she says she wants you to be around for -"

"Oh, God. Oh, Carl. I'm so sorry -"

"Please?"

"What?" I froze.

"Finish me. Please. I'd rather you than her."

"Where is she?"

"Out hunting. She won't be back for a while."

I sat on the side of the bed, next to his pathetic skin-and-bones body. It hurt to look at it. I didn't feel the need, not much, not from him - there was no water left in him, almost. I unbuttoned my dress and slipped it off onto the ground, took off the rest of my clothes. I lay on the bed beside him, cradled his poor head, kissed him. It was like kissing parchment. I could swear I heard skin crackle under my lips.

"All right, Carl. Lie back."

Carefully, like handling an antique vase. I lowered myself slowly onto his penis, shriveled but still erect. I couldn't cry. I hadn't been able to since waking up on her carpet.

It was very quick, just like Pete had been. A few times up and down, and he hissed and exhaled a long breath that ended in a sort of a rattle, sort of a cough. And he was gone. I had barely felt anything flow into me. There just hadn't been anything left.

"You caused his death, you know," Danielle said from the doorway. I looked up at her. "I went after him because of you. I went after every friend of yours I knew how to find. They're all dead now. Because of you."

"I never knew you hated me that much, Danielle," I said, lifting myself from Carl's corpse.

"Of course you didn't," she said. "I didn't let you know. You weren't supposed to know. What good would it have done? But then I found a way. And I got what I wanted."

"What was that?" I asked, reaching down to retrieve my dress.

"Revenge, you idiot! I've sucked all your friends dry. I've taken your lover away and forced you to kill him. I've changed you - well, that was a mistake, but now I think it's actually worked out pretty well ...."

"Because now you expect me to be as miserable as you must be?" I said.

She screamed in outrage - the tantrum I knew must have been waiting to get out. Her personality hadn't changed, even if everything else had. She charged toward me, shaking the room every time one of her elephantine feet hit the floor. She pounded toward me, and I pulled out the container I'd had by the side of the bed. An open container full of milk. I threw it on her, doused her with it. It splashed all over her, over her mammoth breasts and her stomach, all over her face and down the front of her dress. She yowled in pain, and slipped in the milk ... her feet went out from under her. She fell on her belly. Plaster drifted down, shaken loose from the ceiling.

I walked over to her. She was thrashing on the floor like a turtle that can't manage to turn over. "It hurts! Help! Wash it off! Wash it off!"

I poured the second jugful of milk all over her back.

She kicked and flailed her arms, screaming incoherently, and she splashed some milk onto my leg. Deliberately, accidentally, I didn't know which, but it hurt like hell. It might as well have been battery acid, like my joke in the bar. That's what it felt like. I went into the bathroom to rinse my leg off.

When I came back to the bathroom doorway, she was tearing at her dress, trying to pull the milk-soaked fabric away from her skin. But she was either too big or in too much pain to make the effort to pull herself off the floor, and her bulging arms were unable to grab the dress well enough to tear it. She was floundering around in an enormous puddle of milk, soaking in it. Every time she squirmed she rubbed more of it into her skin inadvertently.

Then the leaks began.

First a stream from between her shoulder blades, a small hole but under high pressure. It squirted five feet into the air, a high arc which ended in the exact center of the mattress, saturating the blankets.

Then another from near the base of her spine, spraying the far wall. Then one at the back of her head which narrowly missed me in the doorframe. Then another, and another. A fountain of pinholes. She was screaming all the while, but her screams were dying, like the whining noise of a balloon that's being allowed to deflate while its neck is held taut.

Then her surface tension gave way completely, and she collapsed into a tide of water that swept across the room.

I sighed, and sat on the bathroom floor for a while. Thinking.

And that is where we are now. This pen is running out of ink and the paper is not holding up well, but this should be readable. Please give Carl a decent burial; he was a decent man, and he had no control over the way the last four months of his life were spent.

You won't be able to find me to bury me, I'm afraid. I drank a very small amount of milk an hour ago. Less than a pint, but it's mixed in with my fluids - I've gone all cloudy - and it's eating away at my surface from the inside. Not as painful as the way Danielle went, thank God, or I couldn't have written this.

I already have several leaks that I can see and I don't expect to be around for more than another ten minutes.

The need is still there. But that will wash away.

Copyright © September 1999. Do not distribute or reproduce.