A Change of Diet

Report on Inmate #6805:

He has been observed for three weeks now. His table manners have been impeccable. He is vegetarian. He eats nothing but berries on open sandwiches made of rye bread. His favourites are mistletoe and mountain ash berries. He clearly has an iron constitution and a predisposition not only to be able to ingest this apparently poisonous fare, but also somehow to be almost addicted to it. We think that he may have been hypnotised to accept this food, but have so far been unable to break the cerebral code to discover this. He has been passed as suitable to be allowed to use a knife and fork. He eats in a very particular way. He examines each berry, each scrap of bread, from at least three angles before consuming it. If there is the merest speck of what appears to a blemish on any of the berries, he will incise it with the tip of his knife and move it to the side of the plate before consuming the remainder. He eats on his own, but eats far more slowly than any of the other inmates. For dessert, he will eat a few wrinkled blue petals, by hand, again examining each one minutely to ensure that there is no rot, and no insect-pollution. He drinks nothing but consecrated water. His bowel movements are regular.

To illustrate the background to his incarceration, and the turnaround in his fortunes, his attitude and, most certainly, his eating habits, our researchers have managed to unearth this poem that he wrote a few months before his admission. It is called "The Song of the Albino Brain-Wolf" and it goes like this:

"I am drying
strapped for plasma
reaching for transparent succour
reaching for the dripping from the pregnant leaking blood-fruit
that blooms
straggly and innocent
in the soil of the hollow
that sags behind your eyes
Soon I shall lick
in and through your nostrils
soon my tongue will penetrate
your thwarted blighted plans
soon my tongue will stagnate
in the pool of your discomfort
then gulp things into me
and spit red cells
discarded to the earth
(Wherever I go, the ground is blood-litter)
All I want from you is colourless
I crave the sallow lack of real distinction of your brain
I need to catch the silent anti-howl that crawls within you
and reach your hiding soul where it is convented by silence
where soon it will be tooth-licked by the prying of my malice
and neutralised
and swallowed
and digested
and converted
to me
and to mine
I need to hide in you
your blandness is the thicket that conceals my lusted greed
I need your emptiness
and soon I shall have it
vacuous victim
prepare to meet your soul-mate."

Truly a change of diet. His rehabilitation continues.