``Why were you wanting to deflesh the bodies, witness?"
--British Prosecutor, Nuremberg Trials

Right next to me a huge reptile was gnawing on a woman's neck, the carpet was a blood-soaked sponge... "We're right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo! And somebody's giving booze to these goddamn things! It won't be long before they tear us to shreds. Jesus, look at the floor! Have you ever seen so much blood?
--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

There was a big bathtub in the room. The tub was almost filled with hard red-purple plaster. A hand and wrist stuck up from the plaster, the hand turned dark and shriveled, the fingernails painted pink. On the wrist was a dainty watch.
--Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

Fear was driven out by horror... the ground became increasingly hideous. Nameless things, pink, white, red, mud-bespattered, still with rags of grey or khaki.
--John Fowles, The Magus

...sirens screaming headed toward the explosion site... A column of smoke rose over the area. Shops and houses crumbled, balconies collapsed and roofs fell on people's heads... The bloodletting has been marked by savage massacres in villages around Algiers.
--Associated Press: 01/21/97, Deadly Car Bomb Explodes in Algiers

Carnage

[ carnage ]


Carnage Dreams


They piled up in one blue clammy blood-spattered pyramid, clawing and mauling each other even in death. ...when the huge mass of naked flesh had ceased to writhe, pumps drew out the poisonous air, the large door was opened... Their first task was to remove the blood and defecations before dragging the clawing dead apart with nooses and hooks, the prelude to the ghastly search for gold and the removal of the teeth and hair which were regarded by the Germans as strategic materials.
--Reitlinger, Nazi S.S. officer, An account of the gas chamber executions
Still speaking, she turned Socrates's head on the pillow and I watched her drive the sword up to the hilt through the left side of his neck. Blood spurted out, but she had a small bladder ready and caught every drop as it fell. Socrates's windpipe had been sliced through, but he uttered a sort of cry, or indistinct gurgle, and then was silent. To complete the sacrificial rite in what, I suppose, was her usual manner, this charming woman thrust her hand through the wound, deep into my poor friend's body, groped about inside and at length pulled out the heart.
--Apuleius, The Story of Aristomenes

And Ea cut off his head and slit open his veins, and out of the bone and blood he fashioned a puppet called Man.
--Babylonian Folk Tale, The War of the Gods



Muse

Dreaming
[ DreamWave ]
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