Facing a Conditioning Killer
Have you ever made a choice you had to judge Stupid? Taken a decision that fetched you not a smile? Perhaps, you had had to choose between two alternatives under a most inconveniencing circumstance bordering on The Monstrous? As a rule, makers and takers of unpleasant decisions lament the very act, now forcing out tears from Lachrymal Gland, next forcing the tears back but either way gritting their teeth, as their only reason for touching such decisions was their earnest desire to remain alive. If they had failed to do so, A Sadistic Force, Overbearing Character, Sworn Enemy, Blood-Thirsty Captor or Killer Terrorist would have skinned them alive!
I may not forget BBC – Reported Harrowing Recollection by a Foreigner Eye-Witness in Rwanda of the Early Nineties of a Hobson’s Choice?
Then, Rwanda was war-torn, with her Hutu and Tutsi Tribes ensuring that matters wore that look.
That’s right! Rwanda of some three decades back – if I am not pushing The Incident too far. Then, a man who was running away from The Madness had tragically chanced upon armed killers from The Enemy Tribe, promptly recognized them but was as promptly surrounded by them to end his flight with his family from Death and Starvation. The BBC Interviewee Eye-Witness succeeded in voicing to her Hapless Global Listeners one of the richest evidences of the frightening similarity between The Human Mind and Satan’s in terms of guaranteed contrivance of The Nerve-Shattering!
The Murderous Band had through its leader wickedly ordered The Luckless Escapee to choose who to kill on the spot among his wife, children and Ageing Mother with the strictest warning that they would go ahead to finish all of them before his helpless gaze and finally dispatch him too, if he failed to make a choice or lingered its exercise.
Guess what next? Reportedly, The Man began a touching drama of eye-shifts from Wife to Kids and from Kids to Ageing Mother and back for a Begin – Again! But because Decision had to be hurried, with not scant time for the obvious rigmarole, he swiftly descended on his mother with a mortal blow.
Most likely, A Neatly Executed, Single Strike! From The Eye Witness, the man’s captors were satisfied with his performance, his mothers eyes by him forever closed! Faithfully, they kept their own word in The Deal by leaving The Man alive for the rest of his journey while they went their own way.
I still remember the flaming faces of the persons, who had from me picked the story second-hand. A Group would rather Mr. Desperate had pounced on his Young Wife for Silencing, sparing The Poor Life of Ageing Mother while another Obviously Silly Group would rather Mr. Desperate had wasted his kids in lieu of either woman!
Then, to me, it became pointedly clear that one should sensibly strive even in the face of extreme odds to still find out The Safest of the Unacceptable Options which have been dangled before one by A Triumphant Captor, I do not imagine, for example, handing my flesh to the Devil in lieu of the Deep Blue Sea for all the unchallenged scariness of the immense depths of all seas and their tempestuous waters. Deep Blue Ones could their ill-fated swimmers surprise, at last, with wild discharging throws towards their safe shores. I would swear the Devil had never been one, who could look twice at such ridiculous compromises on behalf of his Lawful Captives… Always ever The Exacting Evil Genius!
So, now, why would any truly level headed person end the lives of kids or, for that matter, a young woman with still many years unlived for ingratiating rescue of An Octogenarian or A Septuagenarian? To keep alive some really old dame long roaming our Earth: who might, herself, sooner or later, start actively wishing her death for reasons of exasperation with Life on Earth.
Men there are who slowly but carefully break every bone in the bodies of their victims and ones who would carelessly but speedily execute the same hateful job, with either group making a point of mischievously leaving their half-dead victims for last-minute mercy-killing pleas.
I was too sure of it: for three decades I had been anxious to remain unreachable to an adversary with such experimental mind: An Incarnated Devil, who could use the physical body as apparatus for test of The Hypothesis; Human Skin can yell out in pain more than Voice from Macabre Torture…
On one occasion, my eyelids very heavy, off I drifted to Insisting Sleep but, mid-course the accepted slumberous role, found myself in A Rwanda Transplanted into Nigeria?
Behold, it was The Guy! His cultist’s shotgun for close to thirty years waiting and hoping it would at last point A Straight One at my heart for the long-delayed squeezing of the trigger and releasing of score-settling bullets. I had to freeze in my tracks and my two hands throw up in the air in the manner of assured surrender. Cultist Cyprian had yet to hit me with a cartridge from his pistol or strike me its steely butt with the brutish hand of a would-be assassin but knowledgeable tears had begun to stream down my cheeks about my True End that was at last in sight from A One-Time-Loser-of-Two-Teeth-To-My-Right-Punch in an on-campus fisticuff that was at once sudden and insane!
“Heh Guy! Let’s say I no longer wish to lodge a bullet in your heart” Cultist Cyprian decided to leak to me – not pleasantly – because he still dropped me Three Abominable Options, which if I dared reject or unduly hesitated to own one of them, he would see to a speedy accomplishment of The Three.
“God! It’s Obsessed–With–Revenge Cultist Cyprian?
To Cyprian’s Eternal Record and Shame, he had more than a dozen fellow students put to Eternal Sleep? I had to helplessly wonder, for it was one of The Abominable Options I had to contend with, which Mortal Man could bravely begin and conclude the painful assignment of violently dislodging all his lower teeth – sixteen in all – even with an assisting sledge-hammer…
I thought, on purpose, Cultist Cyprian had drawn closer to me, so that my nostrils might pick his sweet smell from an unusually sweet perfume he probably had decided to wear for The Sweet Revenge? His three options afforded me the alternative of chopping off my two legs from above the knee or – could you believe it – gouging out my two eyes?
I knew matter-of-factly that amputating my two legs should mean an irreversible end to my beloved leisure walks and not infrequent treks, no two true artificial legs to replace a lost pair!
And who’s talking about my volunteered blinding of self, even at the peremptory command of a hot iron-wielding torturer?
In the end, I had to settle for Tooth Extraction: an uprooting of The Entire Sixteen on my Lower Jaw. I had reckoned Sixteen Artificial Teeth would conceal a sad loss of Sixteen Original Ones and with that the disturbing picture it would have delivered to a passer-by advancing from opposite direction. But no sooner had I edged nearer a sighted dropped heavy metal I could put to effective use for my torturer’s wish than I woke up to a bright light from a torch that was intently trained on my eyes to rouse me from a sleep that was judged too early by the performer. A Cousin Justina who would want me to have a sound sleep of bed–time proper!
“Ju…. Justina” I faintly remembered having stammered.
“Sorry. Coz, but you know you’d gone to a rather early sleep” Justina answered defensively. I nearly wanted to laugh at the Just Twenty-Two Justina striving to justify what must have qualified as rude interruption of sound sleep.
My Ignorant Timely Rescuer from A Theatre in which a Cultist Cyprian was evilly in charge and I about to forfeit, albeit in a dream, a good sixteen teeth… Or actually Fourteen, as two had been planning to quit!
To me it was Standard Victory to be not denied a fitting celebration that, even in a dream, I never gave a half-thought to a torturer’s conditionally spelt-out gouging out of my two eyes.
But why would I have done so?
A Loss which had maddened Super-Human Samson and made him summon all his God-Supplied Strength against himself simply to square up to his Blinding Philistine Foes…
Comments