A Defrocked Academic
Mystic
"We could not live if we were wholly alive to all the ugliness of the world."
- Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock, "The Myth of Punch"
- Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock, "The Myth of Punch"
Pessimistic Passage of the Day...
- Thread starter Bleak&Icy
- Start date
cannibal cop
Grimscribe
More life meant more death—that’s what it finally came down to. The awful fecundity of the world, the terrifyingly long reach of life and its death accompaniment seemed to him a perversion. Every birth seemed to take place within a flowering of rot….
There was no escaping it. More life meant more death, and what did it matter that your child died as long as you yourself survived?…
Friends, families meant nothing. So much death in life, so much terror of both—the mathematics were unacceptable, yet inescapable.
– Steve Rasnic Tem, Ice House Pond
There was no escaping it. More life meant more death, and what did it matter that your child died as long as you yourself survived?…
Friends, families meant nothing. So much death in life, so much terror of both—the mathematics were unacceptable, yet inescapable.
– Steve Rasnic Tem, Ice House Pond
cannibal cop
Grimscribe
He hurried by the chicken coop, seeing the bobbing necks of the hens and roosters as they gawked with alarm at his passing. Their wings spread and beat out a flurry of feathers that were like snowflakes on the air. He could not escape their agate eyes. He paused long enough to open the pen and calm their squawking. They assembled between his legs, covering his own ankles with their plumage.
“Shh,” he told them, “it’s all right, we’re all all right,” and did not believe it.
They observed him indifferently, the few remaining feathers on their scrawny bodies settling back into place.
His eyes filled with tears.
As he knelt one small chicken, his favorite, flew onto his knee. He stroked its piebald head and kissed its beak. The others tiptoed away to scratch at the hard dirt, and as the flock parted he saw a shape on the ground by the water trough.
It was the oldest and plumpest of the hens, lying on one side with her claws curled inward. Her feathers rippled and lifted.
He rose to a crouch and crept closer. He wondered how long she had been dead. It couldn’t have been very long, but already an army of ants had established a supply trail in and out of the open mouth, where the tongue protruded like a pink arrow.
He extended his arm to touch her, and immediately snatched his hand away as if she were hot. Damp feathers fell aside. The wrinkled skin was teeming with maggots, busily transforming the carcass into something he did not want to see.
He gagged and hid his face.
Who would take care of her chicks now? He reached behind the perch and found her nest. This time there were no peeps, no tiny pecks at his fingers. That was good. She had left no little ones behind. He felt the polished roundness of an egg. Gently he lifted it out.
The egg was smooth as porcelain but oddly soft. And cold. He cupped it gingerly in his hand and raised it to the dying light.
The shell was full-sized but not all of it had hardened properly. Part of the surface was nearly transparent, little more than a stretched membrane. He looked closer. Barely covered by the thin cellular wall was a distorted malformed embryo. It was unlike any chick he had ever seen before, an error of nature mutated in vitro. Its congealed, elongated eye stared back at him through a delicate lace of veins.
William shuddered. Crying silently, he replaced the egg in the nest and covered it with straw. There, he thought, you won’t have anything to worry about now. Maybe it’s better this way, after all.
– Dennis Etchison, The Woman in Black
“Shh,” he told them, “it’s all right, we’re all all right,” and did not believe it.
They observed him indifferently, the few remaining feathers on their scrawny bodies settling back into place.
His eyes filled with tears.
As he knelt one small chicken, his favorite, flew onto his knee. He stroked its piebald head and kissed its beak. The others tiptoed away to scratch at the hard dirt, and as the flock parted he saw a shape on the ground by the water trough.
It was the oldest and plumpest of the hens, lying on one side with her claws curled inward. Her feathers rippled and lifted.
He rose to a crouch and crept closer. He wondered how long she had been dead. It couldn’t have been very long, but already an army of ants had established a supply trail in and out of the open mouth, where the tongue protruded like a pink arrow.
He extended his arm to touch her, and immediately snatched his hand away as if she were hot. Damp feathers fell aside. The wrinkled skin was teeming with maggots, busily transforming the carcass into something he did not want to see.
He gagged and hid his face.
Who would take care of her chicks now? He reached behind the perch and found her nest. This time there were no peeps, no tiny pecks at his fingers. That was good. She had left no little ones behind. He felt the polished roundness of an egg. Gently he lifted it out.
The egg was smooth as porcelain but oddly soft. And cold. He cupped it gingerly in his hand and raised it to the dying light.
The shell was full-sized but not all of it had hardened properly. Part of the surface was nearly transparent, little more than a stretched membrane. He looked closer. Barely covered by the thin cellular wall was a distorted malformed embryo. It was unlike any chick he had ever seen before, an error of nature mutated in vitro. Its congealed, elongated eye stared back at him through a delicate lace of veins.
William shuddered. Crying silently, he replaced the egg in the nest and covered it with straw. There, he thought, you won’t have anything to worry about now. Maybe it’s better this way, after all.
– Dennis Etchison, The Woman in Black
Mr Fatigue
Mannikin
"Extraordinary as it may appear, none of them took any pride in their work: they did not “love” it. They had no conception of that lofty ideal of “work for work’s sake”, which is so popular with the people who do nothing. On the contrary, when the workers arrived in the morning they wished it was breakfast-time. When they resumed work after breakfast they wished it was dinner-time. After dinner they wished it was one o’clock on Saturday.
So they went on, day after day, year after year, wishing their time was over and, without realizing it, really wishing that they were dead."
- from The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
So they went on, day after day, year after year, wishing their time was over and, without realizing it, really wishing that they were dead."
- from The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
cannibal cop
Grimscribe
‘After falling into a pool aged two and experiencing what experts call a non-fatal drowning, S_________ suffered lifelong injuries. “He couldn’t eat, couldn’t talk, couldn’t communicate,” said J________. “He was in pain, had seizures, and his limbs were contorted from the hypoxic brain damage.”’
Knygathin
Grimscribe
I find that rather optimistic actually. If we choose to live in denial, and look away from all the horrifying news and disgusting politics, and refuse to take in the sickly destructiveness of people about us, we can live pretty decent lives.
cannibal cop
Grimscribe
The man who’d died was old, the supervisors said. Heart attack. It could have happened at any time. It didn’t pay to get old. If he’d fallen for this little joke they would have watched him and found any excuse to fire him. The supervisors didn’t want old people working for them anymore
They didn’t understand yet that if you live long enough, everything becomes old and dirty. Dirt gets in the narrowest of cracks and you never can get it all out. Live long enough and everyone you know will sicken and die. Dirt finally has a way of taking us all. After Clayborn’s daughter perished in the fire he should have expected his wife’s death, but he had not. After that shock had worn off, though, he had settled into the inevitability of it all. Dirt would have its way.
Losing a child was like losing yourself. Now every month it seemed he lost someone, an old friend or relative died, and he lost another piece of himself. And nothing surprised him anymore.
– Steve Rasnic Tem, Passing Through
They didn’t understand yet that if you live long enough, everything becomes old and dirty. Dirt gets in the narrowest of cracks and you never can get it all out. Live long enough and everyone you know will sicken and die. Dirt finally has a way of taking us all. After Clayborn’s daughter perished in the fire he should have expected his wife’s death, but he had not. After that shock had worn off, though, he had settled into the inevitability of it all. Dirt would have its way.
Losing a child was like losing yourself. Now every month it seemed he lost someone, an old friend or relative died, and he lost another piece of himself. And nothing surprised him anymore.
– Steve Rasnic Tem, Passing Through