The Stabilizer (from the cycle: ATROCIDAT The City of the Tormentor)

The Stabilizer
(from the cycle: ATROCIDAT The City of the Tormentor)

The soft umbrella of dusk helmed gracious gloom over Atrocidat. Nothing could embody this city better than the huge fountain here in the main square. With its crooked water givers, their slavering grimaces whitened by crowshit, clearly showed the city's decay.

Thousands of the clear-minded had gathered festively today and staggered back and forth between the tents and hungerstalls, most of them already drunk and slurring their words. Rolling their eyes, they bumped each other's shoulders, strangers greeted each other fraternizing, only to again become strangers the very next moment. Gurgling laughter from liquor-scorched throats polluted the sound of the foolchildrens bell-bright voices. They had been rehearsing the song for months in the children's wing of the Custodia and it filled me with a little pride how perfect this choir of several hundred little voices was in its harmony. As if they were one delicate voice. The Dominos Sonor had put all its skill and sensitivity at the service of the glorious climax of this years "Morusi Festivity".


The large fountain was - as usual - drained before the festival and several work-teams of primitives laid heavy chains nimbly crisscross through the - about 50 meters in diameter - large fountain basin. Foils of heavy nylon cloth were rolled over the chains in such a way that their ends extended about a meter beyond the edges of the well. Huge casserole-wagons waited with rotating bellies, while their fat blue-gray pollutions crept snakily between the tents and hungerstalls like groundfog. Small wooden bridges were placed over the edges of the fountains in four places to facilitate the foolchildrens orderly passage into the fountainpool.

The square had become quiet. The fools children had gathered in the fountain without a sound within a few minutes. The Dominos Sonor raised his hand with the stabilo and the voices of the little fools abruptly rang out with a fluttering delicate sopranino. Each child held a star-spray candle in one little hand. The flitting little flashes made shadows and lights dance on their tiny faces.

The casserole wagons had slowly moved up to the edge of the fountain, and the big swiveltubes sticking out of their bellies were being hosed into the fountain by the frenators. At an inaudible command, the sluices of the swivel bellies opened and a gray-black muddy mass poured sluggishly into the well with smacking sounds. Within 20 minutes, the morass reached just below the top of the fountain basin.

The chorus of the little fools had slowly fallen silent and the star-spray candles in their little hands gradually went out with a soft crackle. The quick-drying concrete would be hard as rock within minutes. The clear minded stood around the fountain with sobered expressions. Here and there an unfestive sobbing of femines could be heard from the crowd. Now even some of the isolated children in the well began to whimper and wail as they became aware that there was no more moving for them.

Very soon, exhausted by fear and tears, they will fall asleep in the stone. Within 4 days all life will have left them. My annual task as stabilizer is fulfilled with it. The Concrete Fool's Nursery will take its place among the many others on the outskirts of Atrocidat in 14 days.

The Tormentor's edict reads:

The city is to be made free of fools.