Five Ways To Kill A Man

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.You can make him carry a plank of woodto the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do thisproperly you require a crowd of peoplewearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloakto dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and oneman to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,shaped and chased in a traditional way,and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.But for this you need white horses,English trees, men with bows and arrows,at least two flags, a prince, and acastle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the windallows, blow gas at him. But then you needa mile of mud sliced through with ditches,not to mention black boots, bomb craters,more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songsand some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may flymiles above your victim and dispose of him bypressing one small switch. All you thenrequire is an ocean to separate you, twosystems of government, a nation’s scientists,several factories, a psychopath andland that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome waysto kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neatis to see that he is living somewhere in the middleof the twentieth century, and leave him there.

– Andre Bretan