I know you cannot speak. Trust me. This is for the best.
Perhaps you have heard the stories. That I cut their tongues out and ate them, slit them like grain sacks and swallowed their innards like borscht. Or that I was in KGB and went about on the Moscow trains with the organs of my victims in my attache case.
These tales are fabulous, imaginative, even terrifying. I give you the choice to believe them or not. I will neither conform nor deny my alleged reputation.
Your eyes tell me that you wish to know why. This wish is a human failing. We are comforted by cause, yet words are inadequate. An entire world lies beyond language. It is a perverse irony, then, that words are our only tool for the understanding of causes.
Is experience itself a sort of understanding? This question you will soon settle for yourself.
Based on a true story.
Holy crap that’s good! The voice is superb–compelling, frightening and hypnotic. And though there’s no dialect, the sense that it’s spoken in a Russian accent is clear. This frightening character literally rose off the page and reached his hands around my neck. And now that I see the real life story, I can see why.
Thanks!
That was horrifying. I’d tell him anything he wanted to know.
I agree 100% with Karen about the voice. I would also add that the plot (which is the victim’s growing understanding of their imminent fate) is fabulously paced, speeding up, then a rhetorical question (where we all gasp) and an answer that is like the first twist of the knife in the wound.
Great writing!
PS I hated the story – I hate horror…
What can I say? Everyone else said it all. The voice, the creepy idea, the matter-of-fact tone of the main character. So very well done, sir.
(I will neither conform – did you mean confirm here?)
Dear Josh,
And I use the term ‘dear’ loosely. That was horrifying. Well written, but ghastly.
Shalom,
Rochelle who is going to her happy spot now.
If that guy were interrogating me, I’d pray for death. Probably wouldn’t get it, but I’d pray anyway. He’s terrifying! Great story.
Yeeks, he’s a scary chap. Nice one!
That guy sounded like the very Devil himself. Yes, truly scary. Very powerful voice and extremely well written, Hardy.
Great story. And I agree with the first comment that even though the story isn’t written in dialect, it reads that way. And thank you for the link to the NYT article.