So many years trying to put it into words. Even expressing that time is a form of admitting defeat. In this moment, I’m probably not so awful or monstrous at all to most eyes. Well Sweeney Todd didn’t look too threatening getting off that boat, did he? The monster before it demonstrates it’s ills is just another beast in the vast array that life provides. It would be charitable and foolish to believe those beasts friendly.
Yet I don’t even look like a beast, people admire and praise me. People call me kind and good. It’s sweet how willing they are to not look at the past or the future. Sweet is another word for foolish. Not my job to correct them, I know that.
The greatest horror is yet to come, whatever I am building towards. I don’t know who I will scare beyond any means of sanity, but I know that direction and what it is to travel in it.
I stopped to contemplate it, my simple existence as an energy singularity. I don’t care as much about things that everyone else seems to, cars, television, even my games are just tools for meditation….. but what lights me up is when I can get people fired up and pointed in the direction I want. That’s what really gets my heart going. The thing about it is that it’s not guided by any moral sense. It’s not guided by loyalty to anyone other than me and mine.
I’m spelling it out because I don’t know how many others are like me. I’m a pure sociopath in spots. I have no reservations about using people to attain what I want in life. Meglomaniacal.
What scares me about it is that I only sort of know what I want.
Half the time I’m wrong about what I want, or I don’t get to find out because it’s gone before I get there.
Which is what has turned me into such a ruthless and cruel beast deep down.
Wrapping it all in this warm Mr. Rogers exterior, that’s the real cunning trick.
As I said, I suspect a greater horror is yet to come. I liked the character Zaphod from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy because I could relate to two things about him;
A; He knew that he was prone to occasional brilliant moments, but what scared him was that wasn’t something he could predict so he would pretend to be foolish most of the time to keep people guessing.
B; To seek out the life he wanted, he completely walled off parts of himself from his waking mind. He did it surgically, I did it with metacognitive tools and trauma.
So that unwaking mind, the one that I walled off before I went for trying to get into grad school, I don’t know what he’s up to. He plays much longer games than I do. I’ve been trying to get him to tell me for four years.
Something really terrible I think though. I looked into the void today and felt a deep glee that filled me with a sense of forboding.
So what I was thinking about was how I relate to various cryptids, a fairly fun little game compared to what I’ve been saying. I’m fascinated by the Wechuge, a similar creature to a Wendigo in that it is immortal and feeds on the flesh of humans. The Wechuge gets that way by experiencing something they shouldn’t, something that resonates with their basic essense as a person.
It’s not quite animal guides, it’s a story or a song the animal teaches the young hunter. Then when the young person returns to the village they spend the rest of their lives trying to figure out what it meant. How’s that for continuity?!
This is just for a certain tribe. Anyway everyone has a different spiritual experience, and it’s done in solitude. Yet when they come back they hunt together for the rest of their lives. They put their story into their medicine bundle, and slowly explain it to the rest of the tribe. It becomes a part of everyone else’s story.
If though they break the taboo, they do the thing that offends their story, then they become “too strong”, and they start to behave very strangely. It is very important that their tribe intervene at this point, or they will advance to the final stage and become wechuge.
If no one intervenes, they consume human flesh, and they can no longer live around people. Their insides freeze, literally. The only way to kill them is with fire and it has to be pretty hot. They don’t seem to be unendingly hungry like Wendigo, rather able to pace themselves and be patient hunters. Wechuge have been known to keep captives. There have been recorded conversations with supposed Wechuge.
I mean, it’s a myth, or a legend, either way not entirely real. Something that came out of a Canadian tribe needing to build tribal unity, and place a taboo on certain behaviors. That’s one take. I don’t discount that these stories of people becoming viscious monsters exist for more reasons than one. That the essential cruelty and visciousness of our species has been something that has bothered people for as long as human thoughts have been written down.
Sure seems like we’re living in the age of the Wechuge these days; stories told wrong, consuming our own for no rational reason. What are we doing? What am I doing? How can such a fascinating and thrilling story come to such a lackluster middle?
3 comments
I suppose the question is whether you have the self-control to prevent yourself doing whatever it is you’re afraid of. I think that’s probably something you can develop – a core that’s strong enough to stand back from whatever may seem most alluring in the moment. But yeah, to do that it would probably help to have a clear idea of what you value most deeply. And then at some point maybe carefully uncover whatever parts of you you’ve buried and try to re-integrate them?
I guess part of the tragedy of Sweeney Todd is that unique circumstances brought out the monster that was buried within him. If things in his life had gone differently, no murders, no monster. It could’ve been happy-ever-after. Most people have the potential to do terrible things, given the right circumstances. Granted, some are far closer to the edge than others. But if that potential is never unleashed, it doesn’t need to be a problem. In the end, it’ll be your actions that define you, in the eyes of whatever tribe you’re a part of, and any ancestors or spirits who happen to take an interest.
I think what it comes down to, in fear is that it frightens other people more than it ever can me. My lack of fear is what makes it such a threat. It is only years of built up empathy and compassion for others that makes me try to understand their fear. Understand the immorality of why I shouldn’t do certain things.
I’m starting to think this whole plan to keep me stuck here is a containment strategy. Which, maybe that’s fair. It’s also reckless, because it’s keeping me cooped up with the thing I want to frighten and hurt the most.
There’s no place like London.
Seriously Mrs Lovett, if you had just stayed by the sea with Mr. Todd, the whole thing might have ended happier. The city knows horrors that it teaches to those it tutors. I read a horror novel about a killer who thought the city was teaching him to commit crimes. He crossed over into a supernatural world of pain and evil. It was all very Hellraiser.
That’s the sickness though, or I suspect it. Getting out of town helped. Getting out of town again in a few weeks will help more.
The hell of it is I have to come back. Stuff happens when I go away, usually bad stuff. So coming back is going to hurt.
Which is what it comes back to; it hurts here, to be here. It might be different if I hadn’t have gotten out so much when I was younger. This place is tolerable in short doses. Instead I get almost a decade straight here….. being tutored by this sick old city.
When it was time to move on a long time ago, but someone (my parents) isn’t ready to let go.
So I have the control of whether I loosen the chains now or later, but they’ll be loose again, that’s the way they’ve been getting. When the chain breaks, I wonder at that, what will it be. I’m not afraid, it’s almost a giddy excitement.
I’m just a reliable pair of hands, a constant gardener at the bloom of destruction….. I cannot say when, how, why or maybe even what….. but I sense the importance of my watering and tending the soil. Perhaps it is a moonflower, to bloom while I sleep so I never see it.
That would be typical.
Hmmm, I might not be able to understand without more specifics. It doesn’t sound like you’re that averse to whatever it is you think you might do? It also doesn’t seem like it’s necessarily against your own values? But against those of others? I suppose it could still be harmful in terms of causing suffering to others. But I guess you’d need to care about that enough if you wanted to stop yourself. There’s no inherent imperative to care about the suffering of others. But you said you have empathy and compassion, so…?
Yep, feeling cooped up/trapped/backed into a corner is generally not great for the monstrously inclined. Though obviously I don’t know the whys and wherefores to be able to comment on the overall advisability of said containment. Stress & pressure are always triggers, though sadly unavoidable. If you do ever find yourself holding a razor to someone’s neck with malice in your heart though, it seems generally preferable to quit town, move states, flee the country, or do whatever else you need to stop yourself from going any further. Assuming you value things like liberty or a relatively clean conscience.