So I was reading The Glister (by John Burnside). It's an ok book, but I don't really like it all that much because the main character keeps switching form likeable, bookish outcast to out and out jersey-shore variety (insert biggest and most insulting slander at charcters personality here). But anyway, at around the halfway point he and a few other characters go out hunting, and the main character, (Being a jersey shore variety etc.) described an animal as a "big bag of organs and blood." And this is where the thread starts to get serious, folks. The book continued in like nothing had happened, (obviously,) but I stared at that sentence for a long time. And that's when it hit me. Knowledge akin to the fact that thousands of people die everyday. You might be aware of it, but most people aren't really going to comprehend those numbers. You can't. The mind isn't made for that. Right then and there, I realized something.
Every person has a darker, more primal side.
Every Human has a part of them that would relish the idea of torturing another human. Every one of us, somewhere, deep within our souls, yearns for the screams of our fellow man. You. Me. The kindest and most wonderful person you know, somewhere, no matter how deep, would leap at the chance of painting the streets red with blood and littering it with offal.
And since this thread needs discussion value, I want you to think long and hard about what you would do if that part of you overshadowed the other side of you. You have victims. You have whatever tools you need. What do you do?
I think I would eat someone. Not all at once. Slowly, carefully, taking great care to staunch the bleeding once I'd cut off a finger. And I'd make sure to keep them awake, so that they could see it, and feel it, and know that I was eating what was once them. And once I'd reduced that person to a limbless stump, I'd starve pirranhas and send them into a frnzy, then slowly lower that poor soul in. Slowly. So that he knew what I was doing.
Why? To feel what they would. Not the pain, of course, but to understand what they were going through, to sense the pain of another being, to know what it's like to be tortured and murdered. I would take no pleasure in such an act. I would just want to know. also, I would want to know what it would feel like to do such an act, to commit such an atrocious act.
But do you know what really scares me? Thoughout all of writing that, I felt sickened with myself. Which means that, given the tools and the will, I would do this.
Every person has a darker, more primal side.
Every Human has a part of them that would relish the idea of torturing another human. Every one of us, somewhere, deep within our souls, yearns for the screams of our fellow man. You. Me. The kindest and most wonderful person you know, somewhere, no matter how deep, would leap at the chance of painting the streets red with blood and littering it with offal.
And since this thread needs discussion value, I want you to think long and hard about what you would do if that part of you overshadowed the other side of you. You have victims. You have whatever tools you need. What do you do?
I think I would eat someone. Not all at once. Slowly, carefully, taking great care to staunch the bleeding once I'd cut off a finger. And I'd make sure to keep them awake, so that they could see it, and feel it, and know that I was eating what was once them. And once I'd reduced that person to a limbless stump, I'd starve pirranhas and send them into a frnzy, then slowly lower that poor soul in. Slowly. So that he knew what I was doing.
Why? To feel what they would. Not the pain, of course, but to understand what they were going through, to sense the pain of another being, to know what it's like to be tortured and murdered. I would take no pleasure in such an act. I would just want to know. also, I would want to know what it would feel like to do such an act, to commit such an atrocious act.
But do you know what really scares me? Thoughout all of writing that, I felt sickened with myself. Which means that, given the tools and the will, I would do this.
