William S. Burroughs

Excerpt by permission of William Burroughs Communications

Ghost of Chance

He often slept with the lemur beside him on his pallet and had named the creature Ghost…

Ghost stirred beside Mission and belched a sweet scent of tamarind fruit. Despite Babuchi’s warning, Captain Mission knew he must learn more…

He lay there in the gray light, his arm around his lemur. The animal snuggled closer and put a paw up to his face. Tiny mouse lemurs stole out of the roots and niches and holes in the ancient tree and frisked around the room, falling on insects with little squeals. Their tails twitched above their heads; their great flaring ears, thin as paper, quivered to every sound as their wide, limpid eyes swept the walls and floors for insects. They had been doing this for millions of years. The twitching tail, the trembling ears mark the passage of centuries.

As the light drained into the sponge of night, Mission could see for miles in every direction: the coastal rain forests, the mountains and scrub of the interior, the arid southern regions where the lemurs were frisking in the tall, spiny Didierea cactus. They gambol, leap, and whisk away into the remote past before the arrival of man on this island, before the appearance of man on earth, before the beginning of time.

William S. Burroughs
Excerpt by permission of William Burroughs Communications