“– Notes towards the making of the monster… That was one title I considered. At those bad moments when the dykes crumble there is a certain relief in inventing titles. On one scrap of paper I find the following notation: In its lust after extinction the human soul has learnt promiscuous ways. I can’t remember when I wrote it nor to what precisely it referred. The notes are not consecutive; they go on and on, like tapeworm; Cain’s testament, the product of those moments when I feel impelled to outflank my deep desire to be silent. to say nothing, expose nothing.

When I write I have trouble with my tenses. Where I was tomorrow is where I am today, where I would be yesterday. I have a horror of committing fraud. It is all very difficult, the past even more than the future, for the latter is at least probable, calculable, while the former is beyond the range of experiment. The past is always a lie, clung to by anodour of ancestors. It is important from the beginning to treat such things lightly. As the ghosts rise upwards over the grave wall, I recoffin them neatly, and bury them[…]”

Excerpt from Cain’s Book by Alexander Trocchi