How do you define a monster? Do you count the eyes, the teeth, the limbs? Do you take inventory of the excess, and for every surplus organ, inter a black mark in the soul? Or is monstrosity to you inscribed in other measures, in something intangible, intolerable, inhuman? There are monsters in your town, and you do not know whose faces they wear. They lurk in the nights invisible, but leave a gory wake. You see the bodies, mortality laid bare. You see your neighbors who welcomed you once with laughing eyes, now turning away in fear, in suspicion, in remorse, inaccessible. You see your community shattered and shivering, and you do not need to see the killers to infer their monstrosity. Because monsters aren’t an amalgam of incongruous limbs, but an insufficiency of human compassion. The community center is not a courthouse, but here the town has gathered in likeness of judge, jury, and executioner. Voices, inconsolable, twisted in grief, cry out their indignation: “Find them. Kill them, before they kill the rest of us.” Seeking in bloodshed the solace for shed blood. Cooler heads prevail. “There is enough death in this town,” reply the voices of reason. “The body count is high enough, without us adding to it.” And so the crowds disperse, streaming from the community center in unsettled sets. They leave grumbling about the lack of resolution, anxious over the darkness to come, sighing, privately, in relief that every last soul who entered now departs the building intact. They return home and lock the doors, and lock the windows, and lock themselves away in illusions of safety. Introspection: is majority vote the difference between murder and justice? Inside every mob lurks a monster. This one remains at rest. |
Nobody was lynched. NIGHT ONE A curfew has been instated. All actions must be submitted before 4pm PST. Phase ends at 7pm PST. PMs will be sent out at that time. Rollover will be posted at 8pm PST. Please PM all actions to nautilus. ?T : ?M |