First I had to choose my victim. A man whose name was already inscribed in the Great Book of Death was to be picked, for safety’s sake – I didn’t want to be accused of murder when my sole plan was to create a work of art. I found my man crawling like a desperate snake in the red desert of Owatus and rescued him from too certain a death…gulped down by Mother Earth. I cleaned him of the remains of sand, and of the day, and hid his eyes with a thick bandage, preventing him from seeing my work. I didn’t want him to judge me; I just wanted him to obey my order.

And my order was uttered, sharp, cold: “Drink that stuff!”

The mixture was handmade, a blend of sand and water, as cold as my words, and must have been disgusting to swallow. But I didn’t think about my poor victim’s feelings at that point in my artistic delirium… and I let him drink.

My idea was quite novel. I wanted to describe the rotten insides of a human being. I wanted to reveal the layers of dust concealed under the skin. I wanted the white clay to be a perfect reproduction of human fault.

Then, I thought, when he has drunk himself full I am going to cut his skin very carefully, as not to destroy the inner pattern; I am going to untie the microscopic seams of the epidermis; I am going to strip him naked, to take off his coat of lies and dirtiness.

I wanted to produce a new form of art.

But, having drunk only half of the hard liquid, he started to choke, vomited frenetically and fell down on the dark red sand.

That was it. The dirty insides of the human being had come out.