This is an excerpt from something – a list of instructions? – but I have been unable to discover the complete document.

… and place the head of the squirrel between the electric plates.

14. Move the goat into the adjoining room, and close the shutters.

15. Empty the packet of bile beans into a large glass jar, seal the lid tight, and shake furiously until you are weeping with sheer exhaustion. Dry your tears with a rag.

16. Peek through the flap to ensure the goat has not escaped.

17. Coax from the core of your being a sense of dazzling, effulgent priggery. Pat the squirrel on the head.

18. Now intone the litany of pseudo-voodoo ululations you memorised earlier.

19. Wrap the cravat around your neck. Strike a dashing pose. Cut some capers.

20. The bricks in the hod should now be cool to the touch. Chuck them one by one out of the window into the empty carpark. Make a sketch of their disposition upon the concrete, using a very sharp pencil and a fresh page of your notepad.

21. The brain of the squirrel ought now be fully modified. Remove the electric plates with care, and put them in the dustbin.

22. Winch the dustbin to the ceiling.

23. Pass your hands, those tiny, wrinkled, blotchy, shivering cold hands, over the eel at rest upon the countertop.

24. Go and get the glue-gun, and…