The landscape was desolate. Under the huge sickly blue sky the desert extended seemingly indefinitely. The air smelled of rotting refuse and industrial waste. The people were mostly short, hunched over, grey-faced. No one smiled, no one greeted anyone else, ever. The just walked on their short legs, looking down on the ground, each lost in his or her own sad little world.

Han looked at Souzza.

“What the hell happened here?”

Souzza smiled, instantly revealing hundreds of small sharp teeth in his mouth-hole, and making the thousands of grey wiry lines on his face contort in a nauseating manner.

“I told you. The process to make me immortal had a cost. I didn’t pay it of course. But these fuckers did. I made them all pay, so that I could go on forever!”

His voice a metal screech that made quite a few people run off and hide behind some sickly looking rocks or shrubberies.

Han smiled.

“Immortal, eh?”

Souzza grinned wider, nodding.

Han drew his blaster, placed it against Souzzas head, and fired. A cloud of greenish liquid and flesh was all that remained.

Place of factories, place of tears.

The Apocryphal Adventures of Han Solo (vol. 5)

F. Gregory. (Chapbook. Undated. Printed in Czechoslovakia.)