They are cutting off the heads of people. Cutting off the heads of people and filming these people cutting off the heads of other people. They are feeling as if they need to cut off the heads of people and feeling as if they need to film the cutting off of the heads of people. They are making sure we see them cut off the heads of people, in front of the camera, In front of a crowd, in the sanctity of our living room, kitchens bedroom wherever we think our sanctity is, wherever we think we are safe. Making it not feel safe. As if we ever felt safe anyway, we never felt safe anyway. It’s just whether or not the monster is inside or outside whether it’s the same or a different message.
Endless. Really endless evocations of fear. Because it’s not as if we don’t have enough fear simply oozing out of our very own pores and invading our very own bodies through the air that we breathe. They need to make more terrifying deeds. Much more terrifying than the deeds any of our own imaginations could possibly envision. What is it about self righteousness in the name of God? What is the name of God? Will my small, inconsequential writings be evidence of my deserving to be beheaded in a public square? To be videotaped having my head placed on a block of wood while a black dressed man with a huge sword stands over me shouting out the atrocities I have committed by simply spewing the thoughts that are coming to my head? While I sit shaking in terror as if I am not already shaking in terror by the very abominable permission to be alive, affording to me by some semblance of a creator.
I am already shaking in terror. I am already living in fear. Place my head on that damn block! Cut off my damn head! Remove my brain from its ability to feel fear, to think thoughts, to be impudent, uneffective, stupid, damaging, just a sham. Cut off this head!
But I ask, who the fuck do you think you are that you have the right to cut off my head? Who are you? Are you more than human with all your frailties, with will your mistakes, sour smelling farts, oozing pimples that live on the inside of your thighs? Emotions full of fear and loathing and unsavory mind fucks? Who are you to cut off my head? Why shouldn’t I be cutting off your head?
Ahh, but, the fact is that I have no desire to cut off you’re head. I would fear for you that you might feel it while your head is being cut off. That your mother would, for the rest of her life, have to live with the nightmare of the knowledge that you shook, you quaked with fear, while I hovered over your body with my sword. I would be filled with guilt that your mother would live the rest of her life seeing and feeling your last moments everyday, every minute of her life. She would feel your terror, feeling the sword as it sliced through your neck, slowly, showing no mercy. You were her son, she your mother, she felt the pain of your body as it suffered. She would always wonder about your head as it was finally detached from your body, if it could see, if it could still see through the eyes that were still attached to the brain, the seat of the soul, the center of the minds eye, the headless body of her beautiful boy, lying lifeless on the ground, bloody, like a bloody carcass sliced up and waiting to be hung by a hook from the ceiling of the slaughterhouse. Just because I had the audacity, the pompous audacity to think that the thoughts and fears that dictated my mind somehow would be assuaged, dissipated by the removal of your head from your body.
Val Sivilli 