The Headsman's Tale

A strange and terrible account of sloth, indifference, greed and revenge.

By Jack Ketch

Act I – The Unblinking Eye

In which the inexorable march of technology runs afoul of cloistered bureaucracy in the medieval dungeons of Mabel Zoe Wilson.

On or about the penultimate decade of the Old Millennium in a small cottage near the northern shores of Lake Whatcom, a humble lecturer dwelt in penury. His name was Perry Mills and he labored among the ivy-covered halls and moss-covered scholars of the University of Western Washington, a vast edifice of scholarship that still towers at the summit of Sehome Hill looking over the now-abandoned slag heaps, toxic sludge ponds and decaying pulp factory of the little town of Bellingham which itself was widely known as a nice liberal town with the highest population of serial killers per capita in the continental United States of America.

Mills was a large, shambling, irascible hulk of a man who limped about in a fog of malevolent cigar smoke. He had a piratical beard, hands the size of Easter hams, a metal brace on his leg, a head whose size was the despair of haberdashers and one terrible eye that was rumored to see around corners.

He also possessed a great fondness for his companion, Linda, the many cats who shared their home with him, home-brewed beer of ferocious power, the literature written in beams of light across the silver screen, largecaliber handguns, dramatic irony, good food, sharp knives and extremely fast motorcycles, though not necessarily always in that particular order.

At the University, he abided amongst the denizens of the Theatre Department and at first lectured and later professed film studies, functional literacy (a great rarity in those parts), play writing, interdisciplinary liberal arts, and popular culture, as well as a great loathing for dogs, timidity, self-promotion, arrogant clerks, most of the white race, all politicians, and any technology more complex and arcane than fire or a sharp stick.

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