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| Theories: Elan Vital |
Posted by
Squire-of-Gothos on Friday, May 28, 2004 - 12:09 AM PST
I had to put it down. “Down”: What a great word for killing something softly; sweetly, and with utter need. I had to kill a baby today, a tiny baby bird. It just lay in its cinderblock casket, and rather than do the honorable thing, and stare me in the eye, it just shivered and swayed. Birds have such terrible balance when the wind isn’t at their tails.
I’ve had to kill so many times, and just killed on a whim so many times, I’ve become numb to the whole process. And I take the easy way out; I do all the shooting, and the stabbing, and the neck snapping and drowning, but none of the clean up. Gore scares me, and I don’t want blood on my hands. Just pure and clean breaks through thick rubber gloves and lightning crack trigger pulls. It started with bird in my back yard and BB’ guns, and moved to rats and screw drivers, rifles and pigs, climbed to deer with bows and arrows, and now it’s come full circle. Vicious little circles made of blind hatred for the breathing that comes out of living things.
I mostly just murder the things the cat drags home. Birds, for whatever reason, just carry on, and on, and on, and on. No matter how many times a cat whips its claws into the thin skin of a small bird, and tears at throats and wings, those damned feathered friends just keep pumping oxygen and plasma. So I finish what cats are so bad at. I break there soft little necks, which is hard, because I have to twist their head around three-hundred and sixty degrees, and I also drown them and shoot them in the face: Never in the body, always in the face. It’s harder to miss vitals when you don’t fuck around with the body. Mostly I do it in my carport, with a pellet gun, or my hands, or with a tub of water; however I feel like ending the slow crawl across the thread of existence.
God, I stopped caring, so, so long ago. The first time I killed a bird, I was so afraid and filled with enthusiasm and confusion. It’s weird the way endorphins and adrenaline mixes with the euphoria of mental trauma. But I got over that quickly. And man, has my life been a killing spree since then. Nary a month goes by, that I don’t think, “Boy oh boy, what do should I kill next?” That power, that sick weakness or rather that need to take it all out on the things weaker than me, used to be in my hands. I kill this, I slaughter that, whatever. Slaughter is a bitch of a word, aint it?
But that cat took it all away from me. Now killing is a necessity, and I HAVE to do it, or else I have to deal with that gore and rot that I so fear. I just like my killing to be far away, and unreachable, thank you very much. I’m weak like that. So I stand in my back yard, holding that killing stick, a wretched but beautifully simple implement of destruction, my grandfather’s Winchester model 70: Just a metal tube, a bolt, a trigger, a stock. So old, that it only holds on shot, and I have to cock the hammer myself. I load a .22 caliber C.B. cap; just a small round that’s so weak it’s barely audible in a rifle this big. I’m still in my boxers, because I’ve decided a long time ago that I would show the least amount of respect towards the things I kill. And I load and I cock and I point the gun barrel right at his face, where he’s cowering, literally cowering, in the inverted cinderblock I’ve used as a prison for him. An execution chamber, really. I look a little at his torn wings, his bloody tail, the places where fresh, “I’m old enough to fly” feathers should be, but have been ripped out, and I pull the trigger.
I think it’s sometime after I eject the shell from the breech, and just watch this LIVING thing twitch and turn like it’s trying to survive, but isn’t, that something hit me. Though it may be the specks of blood on my foot, I’m not really sure. I decide here and now, while this warm object’s nervous reactions atrophy and die, reducing its convulsion to a mere sway, that I will never kill anything again. I will never in my days try to take a life, and God, or Satan, or whatever I’ll eventually hold dear be my witness, even if something, or someone’s trying to kill me, I’ll make the effort to stop it without STOPPING it. I hate to kill. I hate it. It has been, and always will be, the most utterly obvious and penetrating weakness of my existence. I don’t even like blood. I just had to kill, to make myself seem more alive. And now I can’t count how much of my sanity, and my integrity has been murdered in the process. Every life, just another bit of the ME I wanted to be, going the way of the Dodo. Irony is also a bitch.
This was for me, but more importantly, it’s for my dearest, and Ms. Bacas, and Bettie-X, and all the other who tried to show me how obviously I was at fault, and I apologize for so ignoring how much sense their points made.
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Average Rating : 3.8
Total ratings : 5
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| Elan Vital | Login/Create an account | 3 Comments |
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Re: Elan Vital
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com)
on May 30, 2004 - 09:09 PM
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http://bettie_x.tripod.com/
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It takes a lot to be able to admit to a weakness. Most importantly, to UNDERSTAND a weakness or a compulsion. I'm glad you've seen the "error" of your ways, but I'm even more proud of you for finding it out yourself instead of caving in to someone else's badgering.
I don't condone, accept, or like hunting, but I do understand those who hunt and only eat their OWN kill instead of living off of someone else's dirty work. But their are millions of younger people (and adults) who do the same things you did, and murder is murder, suffering is suffering, death is death no matter the species. A fraction of the people who kill small things for enjoyment or psychological release eventually move to people, or become habitually abusive to everything around them, including themselves. They don't see it as a symptom of a greater problem, and sickeningly enough see it as "harmless fun".
I'm not expecting you to suddenly go vegan or vegetarian, don't get me wrong. But I'm glad you understand yourself and your behavior so clearly now, and are stopping it. I know I read halfway through and was like "oh yuck, he's talking about killing animals" and quit reading, because instead of yelling at you and calling you a killer I'd rather just not read about it. I didn't get all the way through it until I got your PM, and then realised what a wonderful piece of work it really was.
Bravo kiddo.
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