The man from Resurrection Avenue can't hear the crickets when they're battering violins against the window screens. That damned deaf man has got to go, say I.

I shot him and watched him slump tiredly with the blood rushing out of his head.

What else did you take, oh Resurrection man? Hell, I run like a mad blind red rage through the morning, thundering in a spasming chest of fear and contempt, shadowed beneath the sovereign crest of the glowering peaks, and you sweat in during the blue fire of nights that cannot breathe through their shame and touch.

You touch. And touch.

I will tune my sorrow higher, I will fume my fury hotter. I will kill you, Resurrection man, deaf man: I will be the needle in your eye. I will murder the filthy memory of you, until you lie dessiccated and shriveled on the moonless floor of an attic filled with the rot of forgotten flesh and bone.

You will not touch. You cannot touch.

I will laugh. I will guffaw in delicious amusement until my ribs crack as your flesh is flayed until it crawls like writhing worms. I will shriek with mirth when you dance on eternal coals, you damned deaf man.

Next time, you will hear the refusal.

Don't touch.