Hell

Dear K,

I'm writing about things that scare me. Things that really scare me. I'm writing about things that make me cringe. I'm writing about the darkest things I can imagine, and the horrible part is I know these things happen. I know they happened.

I'm working on my novel. I'm pushing into dark waters. I'm pushing into the places where I should not go, where we all need to go, looking at things we need to look at, looking at real evil and you know what my life isn't so bad. I know my life isn't so bad, it's a little tough right now, I am in a very uncertain financial situation, I may have to move back to Des Moines and into a friends basement. But, my little troubles are nothing. I am a prince living in a pleasure garden compared to what is happening out there somewhere in the dark. Right now there is a man handing a child a knife and telling that child to cut the head off of another man with it. Right now there is very real hell, and we more than ever need to look at it, we need to look it in the face.

I'm losing sleep though. I read about children being eaten by children in Liberia today. I watched a man talk about it. Tomorrow I'm going to write inside the head of a man who teaches children to kill, teaches them to eat human flesh, and the horror of this is this man is not unwell in the normal ways. This man and these children are unwell in a way that you or I could have been. Then I'm going to write from inside the head of a Gulag prison guard. Then I'm going to write from inside the head of a doctor in the Japanese Imperial Army as he experiments on living human beings.

I am going to lose sleep. I am going to lose some weight. The sort of writing I'm going to do for the next couple of days, it's not pleasant. It is not joyful creation, but I think the story needs to be told. I think people need to know they could be these monsters. I think if I do this right. If I write well and true, then I will be doing the most good I can do with this story. It's a story about being yourself, and everyone else.


I'll see you on the other side,

K