---The Day-to-Day Life of a Faceless Man---
‘The day-to-day life of man is repetition and cliché. Does this then mean that in your usage
cliché is cliché? Over-used to the point of meaningless. Or did it never really fit in the first
place?
Take a man, he works in an office and travels there every morning on the underground system.
‘It’s all been done before,’ I hear you cry, but can you not see that it makes no difference?
The man will continue to travel to his office job by the underground in the morning, and return
to his family in the evening. He will still wear his suit, and so will thousands like him. You
cannot change that life is a cliché, but you can and you must with art. The man in the suit knows
that his life is interchangeable with the man sitting next to him. You, the ‘artist,’ should
know that you too can be swapped around and the world would not notice. Everyone is a cliché
that has been done to the death. Your job is to allow us to forget that, for one moment, and
experience something new.’
*
‘People are animals, if you ask me. They’re vermin. They just scurry around in their meaningless
little lives, acting entirely on instincts. They eat to prolong the tedium because they’re all
governed by fear, and then they fight amongst themselves because deep down they know it’s all
worthless anyway.
And the rest of the time they spend screwing, or trying to, because there’s really nothing else
to do. The one drawback to it all is that they’re so fucking pathetic they can’t even control
their breeding and they’ve clogging the whole place up. And, you know what really sickens me,
they’re far too busy believing in their own superiority to realise that they’re drowning in their
own filth.
‘But then again, that’s where I come in...’
*
‘No, this one is different,’ said the TV astrologist, his voice cowled in genuine wonder. ‘There
are great things etched upon his horoscope. Great things yet terrible things also. The future
is cloudy and we have yet to see where it takes him.’
*
‘I remember once I thought I was human, but then I realised that actually none of us are.’
*
‘Hi, my name’s Steve. Look, is this guy boring you?’
*
‘I can give you more power than you can possibly imagine.’
*
‘Going to the school counsellor always sucked. He had this idea I wasn’t like the other kids,
but like I keep telling him, I’m normal. I’m totally the same as everyone else.’
*
‘The darkness is not something you merely feel. It is something you are, heart and soul. This
is something you must always remember when you write horror. Your vampire does not just, you
know, enjoy the occasional glass of blood. Where is the passion in that? Why would that make
him into a monster?
No, the vampire is the thirst. They cannot control it. From loss of control comes fear, and as
they live with that fear every night they become jaded. The horror comes from the thought that
this could happen to us.
If you forget these things then all you are left with is John Doe the immortal office worker
with super powers and I for one am not scared. ‘Oh,’ but you say, ‘he drinks blood and kills
people, that’s creepy.’ Well, it isn’t really, it is just boring, because if he doesn’t care
then why should we?’
*
‘Look,’ the voice on the phone is plaintive, pleading almost. ‘There are no hidden catches, no
secret costs. Honest.’
He is lying, of course.
*
Die young. Live forever.
---Birthing Pains---
‘And in breaking news, an office worker has been found dead in his house along with his wife
and daughter. While the wife and daughter died due to multiple stab wounds the man himself is
an altogether different story, and appears to have perished when his throat was torn apart by
teeth of some description. Police are launching a full scale inquiry and are asking for anyone
with possible information to come forward as soon as possible.’
*
‘So, Kelly,’ asked Lisa, ‘what’s your worst nightmare?’
The girls all shuffled about in their sleeping bags to look at Kelly. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that
the most worst thing I could ever imagine happening to me would be if I was buried alive. Could
you possibly imagine it? Waking up inside a coffin in the dark with no air. And underground.
Euch.’
*
‘It is interesting to ponder, is it that the baby is fighting to escape the womb and its cloying
grip? Or could it be that it is the mother saying ‘I no longer want you within me, you must leave
me now before your taint can destroy me’?’
*
‘I was never afraid of the dark. It was the things that lurked within it that gave me the willies.’
*
‘When did you first realise what you were? When did you first realise what you had become? Did
you wake up one day and realise it was too late, that the years had jaded you beyond recall?’
---And Every Night I Fall in Love for the First Time---
‘When the hunter spies its prey, its whole world must become centred on that being. It must think
as the other does so as to be where that being is. It must ignore all outside distractions. It
will be putting so much energy into the hunt, into its own continued survival that it requires
every precaution. This ‘tunnel vision’ may seem unnatural and dangerous, but for the hunter it
is its very substance, it is built in. If it is to survive then the hunter can choose no other
way.’
*
Five boys in black and white. Their shirts are open. It rains. There is a twinkle in their dead
eyes, and they sing across the airwaves:
I saw her pale in the moonlight,
And felt my soul take flight that night.
A heartbeat that clings to me,
With everything that she could be.
I feel my passions rise,
When I see the innocence within her eyes.
and the flesh that I obsess
To see her lain in state...
and the flesh that I obsess
To stir my heart of slate...
I’ve seen her first, alone and afraid,
Upon this midnight walk.
It is so dark this night and street-lamps are my sun...
And now I think of nothing more
Of this new-found love, with her I am afraid.
I think of nothing but the gentle taste of skin...
Desire pushing through to deeper mores...
With her I can become whole
*
‘There are many forms of love; romantic love, erotic love, possessive love, platonic love, true,
and more. A love song can deal with any of these, or all if it wishes, but the one thing it must
embrace is the pain. For love is pain, as much as it is beauty. The pain that comes from the
lovers un-asked for desire, that overwhelms their reason. The dark and the light forever intertwined
in the selfish depths of a person’s soul.’
*
Blood, blud, n. The stuff that tends to go all over the place when you rip someone’s neck open.
---I Do Conclude That You Have Something You’ve Been Meaning to Do---
‘If man were to meet his creator then surely he would destroy him. He would survey his world
and the death, the pain and the suffering, then he would turn to that ‘god’ with a look of askance
clouding his features. And whatever the response it could never truly justify...’
*
‘There comes a point in every child’s life when they have to leave behind the playground and
head on to more serious things. They must make a conscious decision that the things they do will
now have repercussions that they will accept. And that it will not always be easy to know what
to do in the first place.’
*
‘Hello, I used to wish I was a hero, but all that went away when I became a monster.’
*
An image on TV. A boy looks into the face of his father.
‘So you planned it all along then?’
‘I did it for you, it’s all been for your benefit.’
‘Who said I even wanted it?’
‘But... it was for you...’
‘No, it was for you, to make you feel better, to make that hole in your heart feel full again.
Well I don’t want it!’
He moves his arm about, and things are flung to crash and break...
‘I don’t want any of it. I hate you. Do you understand?’
*
‘And all the horror, all the pain and the pleasure therein. Beyond the blades and the blood is
nothing but a literary device. Titillation for those who know nothing by those who know nothing.
Empty and wrong.’
*
‘If the master teaches the student all that he knows then he may find himself the student once
more. If the master does not teach the student all that he knows then he might find the chance
for new learning cut cruelly short.’
*
‘When vermin threaten your home, or when parasites threaten your health, then you have no choice,
whatever your views on the sanctity of life, but to destroy them. It is, though you may not want
to believe it, natural, and therefore in fact ‘nature loving’, to do so.’
*
John Doe was an office worker once, but he found that that was destroyed. John Doe was a monster
once, but he found the way to destroy that too.
*
‘The sins of my life pass before me and I know that I am damned and so I go from slut to slit
and pass away to nothing.’
*
‘...and I’m so happy,
I feel so alive,
It’s really such a shame,
That everybody died.’
*
‘I always loved a happy ending...’
(c) Amsel von Spreckelsen, All Rights Reserved
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