Page 61 of Lovely Violent Things

Some scholars theorized this violence was not only acceptable but essential in order to balance our flesh and spirit, carnality and essence.

Jung expounded on this theory with his hypothesis that to balance the totality of opposites within oneself was to become liberated, elevated. The closest one can ever be to achieving divinity. If you don’t go mad in the process.

A truly daunting undertaking, as Nietzsche lamented in his own words:“I undertook something that not everyone may undertake: I descended into the depths, I bored into the foundations.”His harrowing quest into the abyss of his psyche, where psychosis claimed his mind.

And where all others have seemingly failed, the Hollow’s Row offender has set out to succeed, to attain the unattainable primordial wisdom. Walking in the footsteps of the greats from the past three millennia. To become transcendent and ascend to the highest plane of human consciousness.

A path scored by the deepest pain, the most profound suffering. The destination only reached by breaking, most violently, through our very foundation.

I cast a look down at my hand. Dried blood gathers dark in the creases of my knuckles. The skin split over bone. A garish mix of red and violet bruises wrap the flesh. A throbbing hot ache flares beneath muscle and cartilage. The slashed flesh of my palms stings and demands I feel the pain.

And still, there is no physical pain that can rival the anguish which tore through me the moment I heard Halen scream.

Miguel de Unamuno wrote: Consciousness is a disease.

I flex my hand, lighting up the pain. To deny this inherently savage part of ourselves is to deny our very existence, our consciousness—to allow the disease to creep in through the slats of our mind and rot us from the inside out.

Peace and violence cannot reside simultaneously; one is always the answer to the other.

Despite what my sweet muse claims she wants, my painful affliction is knowing exactly what Halen needs—and it’s not the good guy.

When I wanted her to see the man, she saw the devil in me, and yet that’s not what she fears.

The grim truth is, such constrained morals and actions can only result in violence.

As Agent Alister demonstrated tonight. With his tightly laced veneer in the FBI. Rule abiding. Law enforcing. Good doing. He is a man of high morals. He fights the evil in the world.

And when those tightly wound constraints snap, he becomes that very evil. I’m not here to be his judge or jury. He’s already failed by the world’s standards. But by succumbing to his weakness, he made a grave fucking mistake with me.

For that, I will be his executioner.

The agent eyes me now from across the fluorescently lit holding cell. Arms tensed at his sides, he balls a bloody cloth in one hand. His dress shirt torn at the collar, his pallid skin is sheened with nasty purple bruises from my fist and scratches from Halen’s nails. His nose is broken; a dark-red seam slices across the bridge.

Standing before the cot, I stare at his busted face, my mouth twisted in smug satisfaction. My knuckles ache with throbbing heat as my hands fist, and I latch on to the pain, let it ground me, rooting me where I stand as the desire to commit carnage thrums through the cells of my body.

The need to end me is banked in the hollow pits of his eyes. Ego wounded, pride destroyed, he can’t walk out of this holding cell and leave me standing.

Before I even entered the building, I tasted Halen’s fear, a hit so pungent, the bitter aftertaste of clove still clings to the back of my throat. That alone is a violation he must suffer for.

Wrath resounds within me, and I see Halen all over again—his hands holding her down, tearing at her clothes—and I know before I leave this room, I will paint the off-white walls red with his blood.

“You want to finish this like men,” I say to him, stoking the waning flame of his damaged ego. “No authorities or rules. No bullshit interviews or paperwork. Just one primal man facing off against the other.”

He spits a stream of bloody saliva at the floor in answer.

My crooked smile stretches. I’ve derided psychology in the past, largely in part to Jung’s absurd attempt to incorporate alchemy in his psychological theories.

After much reflection, however, I’ve realized psychology is not unlike philosophy in some regard. According to the architect of chaos magick himself, Peter Carroll declared when symbolism and terminology is stripped away, all methods of magick are fundamentally the same.

Belief in our will manifests our desires.

At its core, the psyche is a primal beast.

Our nature is to consume, to create. To hate, and love. Feel passion, and obsession. The totality, the balance. Death must exist so that life can exist.

There is nothing more primary than our desire for love—and our inevitability to destroy it.

All our lovely bad and beautiful things are derived from violence.

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