ZASTROZZIMALE-COMEDY
by George F. Walker
ZASTROZZI(In this speech, Zastrozzi describes his power and his master plan to destroy his foe: the new middle class with its shiny new liberal education and its fancy for art.)
I am Zastrozzi. The master criminal of all Europe. This is not a boast. It is information. I am to be feared for countless reasons. The obvious ones of strength and skill with any weapon. The less obvious ones because of the quality of my mind. It is superb. It works in unique ways. And it is always working because I do not sleep. I do not sleep because if I do I have nightmares and when you have a mind like mine you have nightmares that could petrify the devil. Sometimes because my mind is so powerful I even have nightmares when I am awake and because my mind is so powerful I am able to split my consciousness in two and observe myself having my nightmare. This is not a trick. It is a phenomenon. I am have one now. I have this one often. In it, I am what I am. The force of darkness. The clear sane voice of negative spirituality. Making everyone answerable to the only constant truth I understand. Mankind is weak. The world is ugly. The only way to save them from each other is to destroy them both. In this nightmare I am accomplishing this with great efficiency. I am destroying cities. I am destroying countries. I am disturbing social patterns. And upsetting established cultures. I am causing people such unspeakable misery that many of them are actually saving me the trouble by doing away with themselves. And even better I am actually making them understand that this is in fact the way things should proceed. I am at the height of my power. I am lucid, calm, organized and energetic. Then it happens. A group of people come out of the darkness with sickly smiles on their faces. They walk up to me and tell me they have discovered my weakness, a flaw in my power and that I am finished as a force to be reckoned with. Then one of them reaches out and tickles me affectionately under my chin. I am furious. I pick him up and crack his spine on my knee. Then throw him to the ground. He dies immediately. And after he dies he turns his head to me and says, “Misery loves chaos. And chaos loves company.” I look at him and even though I know that the dead cannot speak let alone make sense I feel my brain turnto burning ashes and all my control run out of my body like mud and I scream at him like a maniac. (Whispers) “What does that mean?”