IT WAS THE FIFTH OF JULY

It was the fifth of July. I was asleep when the phone rang. I had spent the whole night getting blasted with a couple of friends. We'd planned a photo trip down the catacombs - you know, the usual Goth shit. Usually I don't get involved in that kind of lousy stuff, but that bloke we'd met some weeks before at Les Gentilles Carcasses had said he knew that brilliant new place where nobody had ever been and all that. So I went, but in the end it didn't work out and we ended up drinking. The night had been heavy on booze and drugs of all kinds, and when I'd gone home, I'd just collapsed.

So the phone rang, and tore me out of a dreamless sleep. The red numbers on my digital clock flashed painfully in my eyes, that's how I know it was precisely 10 a.m. I didn't even wonder who it was and just picked up the phone, to stop the pain in my ears and my brain. They said it was TNT, that they were calling about Taciturne. They asked me to take my best camera and a couple of films and to come round as soon as possible. Then they hung up. They didn't say why. But it was about Taciturne, so I didn't think twice. I was still in my clothes and my camera was ready from the night before, so I started on the spot, stumbled down the stairs, half tore my ankle and got into the first taxi I could find.

I knew the way to TNT by heart. I had been there so often, harassing them when I knew that they were in close contact with Leontin. When I arrived, everybody was there. I bloody well knew I didn't look good, with my dirty hair and mascara still smudged all over my face, but God, THEY looked a fright, all grey and broken like a harem of real dolls after a night of forbidden pleasures. I knew then, when I saw their faces, and also when they offered me scotch instead of the usual tea. I should have known before that something was wrong, but 'til then I had thought everything was fine, that they were calling just for a "normal" photo session, the beginning of my career as official TNT photographer, and yet another work with my beloved idol. And that's what it was gonna be like, kind of, though not quite as I imagined. They asked me to sit and they told me everything. That He was dead. That He had killed himself the day before and sent instructions regarding his last, posthumous artwork, and a key to his apartment where photos of his corpse should be taken. I was the only photographer they had on hand - of course the matter was to remain secret and there was no time to find someone more qualified. They needed me, and I was to go to Leontin's place and assist Soldat Lamasse.

It was then I noticed the lousy bastard was there. Until then, I had been able, God knows how, to bare the news bravely, but when I saw Lamasse my stomach jumped. It was too much and I brought my empty glass to my lips just in time to throw my scotch back up. I had met him several times. He was always around and of course I had talked to him because he was connected to Taciturne, and everything and everyone that was connected to him was of interest to me. Everytime I'd seen him he'd try to make a pass at me, he loves little girls, little Goth dolls, black leather and purple and pink stripped panty hose. I know he says to everyone that he was the one who took the pictures of the body, and that I seduced him and stole the bloody films from him. But that's bullshit, complete bullshit, the filthy son of a bitch knows nothing but lies and lies and more lies. I will tell you how it all happened. So they gave me the keys to Taciturne's, a bunch of small metal keys that should have made me happy in other circumstances. So Lamasse and I jumped into a taxi that Mike had called for us, and half an hour later we were there. We went up the wooden stairs and it seemed to last forever. On the second floor, a whiff of cooking came my way, a pungent smell of ragout which, combined with the stench of smoke exhaled by that bastard Lamasse, made me stop and lean over the banister and puke my guts out. I caught a glimpse of a small kid who was just passing downstairs and apparently looked up just in time to receive my version of the holy manes in his face. Oops! Splash, splash. I remember Lamasse was wearing Magnum shoes, like the whole TNT clan. His were all muddy and they made strange sounds as he was climbing the four floors ahead of me. I felt so sick now, so out of my own skin. Nasty drug relapses from the night began to assail me and I thought for a sec that if the old cunt farted that would be the end of me. When we came to the door, my hands were shaking so hard I could hardly hold the bloody keys. They were half a dozen keyholes, and I couldn't figure out which one was which. My nerves broke and I lost all self-control, crying and screaming and beating the door with my head and knees. For once Lamasse knew how to react: he gripped my hair, pulled me from the door, slapped me twice on each cheek and I was quiet again. I'd lost one or two hair-extensions, broken a nail and the piercing on my upper lips was bleeding, but at least I had recovered a sense of proportion. I gave him the keys and he managed to open the door as I tried to convince the next-door neighbours that everything was fine.

Before the threshold, Lamasse hesitated. For fuck sake, what was he thinking of? So I walked in first, went past a door without looking in and immediately stepped into the main room, which seemed to be awaiting me. It was all there - his computers, the twin Amigas, the Korg, the broken remains of his huge record collection. A nasty smell, rotting meat and rusting iron or something like that, lingered in the air. But what struck me most was the utter chaos which prevailed: there were clothes and record sleeves everywhere, and papers, tons of papers with texts and strange diagrams and symbols scribbled in haste that I couldn't understand. There were the remains of what must have been the last suppers of Taciturne: opened Ravioli cans with a fork stuck in them, banana peels, half-rotten apples and, on the bar, a pizza box with an half-eaten spaghetti calzone and what must have been a dopple-decker vegetable onions plus cheese feast pizza on top of a pepperoni one. Coke, or rather Pepsi (old Pepsi has a very peculiar golden glow to it that canNOT possibly be mistaken with Coke) was spilt all over it, and pans were stuffed where the sink must have been. I felt the eyes of serial killers and hardcore goddesses gazing at me from the walls, where hundreds of posters were hung. A strange, greyish blaze enticed me in the bedroom, which otherwise was plunged in utter darkness. A porn film was on, the sound off. It seemed to have been playing for hours on, how come I didn't know. The bed too was covered with papers, and no one, as far as I could see, was there. I was about to say so to Lamasse when I heard a scream, coming from the only room I hadn't visited, the bathroom. I ran, and there He was. Lying in the bath. Dead. Dead, in a bath of blood. Lying on the side, legs folded up, his right arm hanging out, his dark black hair sticky with gore, contrasting painfully with the white china. Like Snow White in the children books: white, black, and blood red. Blood red everywhere: on the walls, on the ground. Red droplets scattered on the tiled floor. And, right in the middle of it, Lamasse. The damn idiot had slipped on a pool of blood and was now gazing at the corpse of MY idol in a state of shock, sitting on his ass like he didn't remember the moves to get up. I helped him up and he grumbled something like he couldn't take it and could I manage alone with the photos. I knew from the start Lamasse was a dickhead and a definite coward. He's meant to be a fucking soldier but I've seen him more often with his hand to my crotch than to his gun. I knew I was the only one that could do the job, so in spite of the shock and of everything Lamasse later said, I took a deep breath of the meaty and metallic smell whose origin lay now before my eyes, swallowed my tears and began to work. I took tons of pictures, from all angles. I even climbed on the bloody towel holder and the loo and almost dived in the tub. On two pictures I chose a panoramic view. Very nice. They were to be used for the central artwork on Taciturne's posthumous LP. When I had finished I came back to the room and began fumbling around the papers. Soldat fucking Lamasse was trying to hearten himself by eating the rest of the spaghetti calzone. The smell in the room was somewhat changed and I knew the bastard might have puked somewhere. It was then I felt the glass was getting full to the brim. All the feelings and emotions I had tried to bury deep down my poor drunken self since that first phone call at 10 o'clock in the morning came up rushing over me. My heart and stomach were bumping in unison against my thoracic bones as if they were going to explode. My head started swimming dangerously and I wasn't quite sure if what I saw was realŠ The flat, the stench, the strange symbols, above all the corpse lying in the bath, my dead Leontin who was so close and yet so far away now, more awesome than everŠ I thought: "What if he awakes? What if his gory ghost comes after me?" So I got hold of my camera, picked up a handful of photos and papers on the floor and I dashed out of the flat and down the stairs as fast as I could. I rushed through the main door just in time to hear Lamasse call me a whore from the staircase. The door closed behind me. I ran and ran and ran like I never did before. When I got home I fixed myself a double vodka and went back to sleep.

That was, still is and will forever be the most tragic day of my life, and it still makes me sick just to talk about it. But I feel it is my duty to share those moments with the other true fans, and I truly believe that it was Leontin's wish that I should be chosen as the one who was meant to engrave for ever the last moments of his terrestrial, physical existence. Photos you will find here are doubles of the ones I did myself and others which I took with me when I fled the flat. I had to return all originals to TNT, of course. There were much more pictures than what you can actually see. I would have loved to put them online but unfortunately this is not possible: a few days after my visit to Taciturne's , someone broke into my flat and most of the pictures, as well as the bunch of papers I had taken with me, were stolen. Lamasse and the others said it was the police, but I remain convinced that it was the ONH Elders who did it. How they found out I don't know. But their intervention thickens even more the mystery around Taciturne's life and death.