Warthogs, I once was told, are among the first casualties during a drought because thirst makes the worms they harbor devour them from within. Can you imagine watching such a process if the innards were yours, smelling your own entrails as their contents spilled and sizzled over sun-baked rocks, tasting your own tongue’s putrefaction, hearing a thousand microscopic mouth-parts gnaw through the canals of your inner ears? That’s merely a sample. If you want a comprehensive impression of the tortures—to which I'm STILL being subjected—add sensation. FEEL the aforementioned, with nerves that never get numb to CONSTANT DEGRADATION.
    I’m sorry to keep harping on this. Ordinarily, I’m pretty stoical. But coping with a migraine, IN EVERY SINGLE BODY CELL, has turned me into an insupportable wimp. A cry-baby; I’ve actually taken to blubbering—between fits of screaming.
    Why I continue to be force-fed my own carrion remains a mystery, but it has induced rethinking—when I can cram a thought in edgewise—some basic premises... like death being a physical, as opposed to a metaphysical, state of termination. If this wretched experience is actually happening, death is neither. Consciousness survives beyond the flesh—if not quite detached from it, which is the part I cannot fathom. Corporeally speaking, Sebastian Arnold Lazarus 'is' no more; my picked-clean, sun-baked bones are well on their way to crumbling into powder. And yet I can’t shake off their blood-and-guts past. Whereas spiritually speaking—and I am speaking, which means that something must outlive the organs of communication—I’m in no-man’s-land, linked like a chain gang inmate to my non-immortal twin.
    “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all..."
     GODDAMNIT, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS ARE NOT FAIR!

CHAPTER FIVE...
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