One dark night I went down a dim lit street. Round a corner I met a word standing wild-eyed. The word was naked, skinned red and white raw.

It had wrapped its arms round itself and shivered with cold and pain. It expanded and shrunk. Expanded and shrunk. Like the two-time beat of the heart.

There was no sound. The sound was in my head. In sympathy with the two-time heart beat of the word.

Its baleful glare sliced into my mind. We talked in the mind. Just the word and I.

It poured forth its pain clamping my head in ice-like dread. The pain dripping right to my toes.

For the word was the beginning and the end. It was the end. For the word was outcast. A prophesy. A thing of the past. An intense thing that can hurt and be hurt.

But the naked word's day is past. It is now the creature of midnight tortures of half-dead minds, struggling for life. Doomed to stand naked in street corners. In the night and haunt with wild eye and baleful glare in a world where is it no longer wanted.

Where its true awesome power evokes shuddering dread.

Where the plastic word is pleasant to the palate.