Osama slapped a desert mosquito that kept circling around his big nose. He flattened it on his face. Then his large tongue came out with the twitch of his face and the mosquito fell onto its waterbed coffin. No sooner had the Al Quaida mastermind eaten it than the Taleban cleric, Mullah Mohammed Omar, snuck up like Death in a brown hood and robe. The one eyed reptile then cut off Gabriele's head with his hatchet. Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed then began their game of volleyball. Mullah Mohammed Omar stood at the side of an invisible net counting score as the two other men volleyed the head over the line which he had dug into the dirt with a stick. There was talk of getting access to North Korean nuclear fuel rods, a strange epidemic that they had manufactured and proliferated in East Asia, and assassination plans for George Bush. The face of Gabriele's head kept staring at them while she volleyed about. Gabriele thought, "Talking politics and playing ball: these inane turbaned bearded little freaks can walk and chew gum at the same time." Sang Huin suddenly woke up and went into the bathroom where he splashed some water on his face. His face looked heavier when he stared at it in the mirror. He realized that as much as he had hoped to hold onto youth, it was already shed and blowing around like fragile leaves within another time and space. He chastised himself. He was getting older by the hour and yet he had no career aspirations. His Bachelor's degree in music history was worthless. He probably had no special aptitude for teaching and even if he did, he doubted that being this native gypsy who appeared on people's doorsteps at their request counted him within the ranks of teachers. What did he know that he could teach? There was nothing he was trained for, he had no competitive strife, and he did not know of anything worth doing. He heard the sound of rain and so he went to a window but could not see the substance of this harmonic pattering in external darkness. He listened to its orphic sounds, inventing reasons to go into this gentle falling of sky: milk for his cornflakes or batteries for his Walkman that he could purchase at the AM/PM or the 7-11. He wrote: Gabriele put on her hat and sunglasses and went into the rain with a bag carrying her keys, passport, wallet, sketchbook, and charcoal pencil as well as makeup and a bottle of this newly acquired substance, perfume. She had been told that there was a park near her hotel where she could see the ruins but, despite floating on cloud nine, when she arrived there all she could see were the ruins of her own life.