Prohibitions and Latex

A pork shoulder grey sky severed just below the copse-bone. I am witness to nothing, said the man in the hat, at random and with little need for acknowledgment. Once the syphilis had gone, the Witness left behind traces of himself that would not be evident until well into the tertiary stage. Those who had been touched by the Witness’ hand now played witness to Bedlam, a scourge that flattened their foreheads and softened their brains. No amount of prayer or witnessing could abet the progression of the disease, lesions and wets and roily skin that itched and crabbed, and night sweats that soiled the bed with surge and boil. In the pamphlets he left behind there were prohibitions for sodomy and beastly sex, self-pleasuring and extramarital sex, and sex with lubricants and latex sheaths.