And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (Romans 1:28-31)
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POV Kevin
"Are evil and cruelty the true nature of man?"
At first, these men and women felt remorse about electrocuting me. Their arms trembled, their faces tensed, and when I screamed in pain, they seemed horrified.
And yet their remorse didn't stop them from electrocuting me again and again. The pain was unbearable, violent spasms ran through my frail body, and my poor muscles contracted over and over.
The worst was that horrible burning sensation: I felt as though a blazing fire were devouring me. My eyes stung as if thousands of needles were being plunged into them. I felt as if my body were coming apart, as if it were going to explode. I wet myself several times, begging them to stop this torment.
Each shock was more horrible than the last, because they gradually increased the power. Despite my pleading, they never stopped.
Then something changed: their hands stopped trembling, their faces stopped tensing, and I saw habit gradually settle into their eyes.
They began to watch me suffer; they watched my suffering with curiosity. A curiosity that turned into repressed pleasure, and then small, petty smiles began to appear on their faces. Repressed pleasure turned into open pleasure, before becoming excitement, then delight.
They delighted in every one of my screams, in every one of my pains, however horrible.
A nail torn out:
"Don't be such a baby, it'll grow back."
A cut with a knife:
"It'll heal. Act like a man."
The worst was when they cut off one of my fingers to see if it would grow back.
"Oh well, no, too bad, it doesn't grow back."
I cried, screamed, howled, while my severed finger lay on the floor in a small pool of blood. It went on and on, not to mention those horrible nightmares that kept me from sleeping a wink.
I was stuck, trapped in this hellish cycle, and little by little my mind began to break. I went through periods of psychosis or a vegetative state. I stopped sleeping to avoid my nightmares, but they lurked in the shadows.
Finally, I began to cling to the only thing that was with me, the only thing that proved to me I was alive, the only thing that kept my mind from breaking.
I clung to the pain; it was my only traveling companion. It was rather paradoxical: the pain was destroying me, but I clung to it like a life buoy, because I was lost at sea in a storm. It became my companion in misfortune and in fortune. That horrible and horribly saving pain—I thought of nothing else every day, every hour, every minute, every second.
After that, I don't know anymore, because I had lost all sense of time and even of where I was. I heard Juda's confession before he pressed the button that was going to kill me.
I had understood the vile nature of that man from our very first exchanges, just from his arrogant way of speaking and his gaze. A gaze that didn't see me, but the benefits and answers he could get out of me.
He was a man hungry for answers, just like the men around him. In their insatiable thirst, they subjected me to the worst abuse, abuse they ended up developing a taste for.
They were men just like me, but only in appearance. Had I done them any harm? Had I taken anything from them?
Not in the slightest. It was just pure monstrosity; they were monsters in human form. Inflicting abuse on a defenseless human being and finding pleasure in it is anything but human.
It is inhuman, but what makes the monster inhuman is that it is human. These men, however, are humans who justify their monstrosity by using the human faculty of reason to give meaning to their inhumanity. They managed to turn evil into an instrument of good; they turned vice into virtue and virtue into vice.
Finally, it happened. That shock was the most horrible of all. I was paralyzed, frozen by the pain; I felt my skin burn. I could smell the horrible odor of my own flesh, turning into a common piece of steak on the grill.
Then nothing more: no more pain, no more smell, no more light. Nothing but me with myself and absolute darkness.
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I quickly thought back to those men—no, those monsters. I understood from their actions and from what I went through that a monster is not a being devoid of humanity; it is a being in whom humanity and inhumanity coexist.
Did they show a lack of empathy toward me? Empathy means being sensitive to the fate of others, recognizing one's own image in another. And yet they did not recognize themselves in my suffering. So were they not empathetic, and therefore insensitive?
No. If a lack of empathy means indifference to the fate of others, then they were not indifferent. Because they enjoyed watching me suffer and die like a dog.
It wasn't empathy these men lacked, but compassion and pity. They are devoid of kindness, the kindness which, added to empathy, forms compassion and pity.
They are empathetic sadists; but have they always been like that?
I think so. It was just buried deep inside them, so in the end:
"If evil and cruelty are the true nature of man, should we fight them or should we let them express themselves?"
Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man. (Proverbs 27:20)
I was falling into that endless void again; it was inevitable that I would lose my mind again. Losing all sense of time and space, my mind once again began to break into pieces like a puzzle.
The only difference from last time was that I had a body. Then I remembered that pain had saved me from madness. So I did what I had to do: that pain I missed, that tortured me—I needed it.
I began biting my wrists until they bled; I could feel my teeth sinking into my own flesh and tearing off pieces of skin. The most wonderful thing was that my mind once again focused solely on the pain, clinging to it.
The wounds healed and I could start again, but at least my mind could focus. You could have called it cannibalism, since I was eating myself, but it didn't matter.
Without warning, a rumble echoed through the void, and I looked down. I saw gigantic black bolts of lightning and mist, and I was falling toward them.
When I reached that zone, the lightning struck me. The pain was greater than anything I had endured. It struck me again and again, while the thick black mist entered through my nose and mouth. It filled every inch of my body, keeping me from breathing.
I was suffocating, but I couldn't even cough. I was literally drowning, without being able to make the slightest sound. The lightning grew more and more violent, and the mist thicker, the farther I fell.
Could you die in death? That was the question I asked myself. How long did this new torment last? I don't know. Once again, I did the only thing I could do: cling to the pain.
I kept falling, struck by lightning and suffocated by the mist, and it seemed to last an eternity. In the end, the mist stopped entering me and the lightning stopped striking me. I thought I was free, and then a gigantic black bolt struck me, ten times bigger than the previous ones.
My body burned, covered in black flames, and convulsed uncontrollably. Since the mist no longer kept me from breathing, I screamed, howled so loudly that my voice echoed through that endless void.
My scream was quickly drowned out by an even more atrocious voice. The same voice I had heard the first time; it made my body and the entire void tremble.
"Once again, through this second descent into the abyss, the black work continues its course."
"Who are you?!" I asked, gathering all my strength.
I got no answer. The darkness disappeared completely, and when I opened my eyes again, I saw Juda on the ground. Smoke was rising from his body: he looked as if he had been struck by lightning.
I looked around at the other frightened scientists, then I looked up and saw a gigantic hole in the ceiling, open to the outside: I could admire the magnificent blue sky where birds were singing.