dawn

SO if you were walking alone in the woods, and you came across a child torturing a cat..

I think you could fix him,right then and there.

We know from Israel Keyes, when he showed other kids what he was doing to animals, they freaked the fuck out, which is appropriate.

And he said, “what that taught me…was to not show other people”

The reaction.

Now, by instinct, the first impulse is to punish.. but yelling wouldn’t work, it would only enforce the “this is bad”

Which would make it more appealing…

Maybe,, if you wanted to get empathy into a child that felt no empathy,,

You’d have to torture him.

You’d have to set him on fire.

You’d have to make him feel what he was giving to the poor animal..

(Still reinforcing…)

Yeah,,

God damn, it’s such a timing thing.

It seems like you would HAVE to catch the monster, as they’re becoming the monster.

Once something derails in a child, it’s cumulative.

(Or maybe some people are just born bad)

I read that Adolf Hitler would stand on a chair in his kitchen, as a child, with his mother watching,,he’d stand on a chair and start speaking loudly.

Like he was directly projecting to the masses..

Maybe the Bad seed is real.

Maybe it’s tucked into the bloodline.

(More complicated than that)

Plenty of Half Bad seeds walking around, making more seeds,, and so forth ..

During the progression of a serial killer, animal torture is USUALLY a milestone.

Not always, but damned near always.

So for the thought experiment,,

I imagine that I’m walking along, and I find this moment. Fate throws me right into this pivotal space of time.

(What do you do?)

It’s curious..

Maybe you stop him, and free the cat, then you sit down and talk.

Very directly, very calmly..

I bet you could get into his head if you did it right.

I bet you could save future lives.

(“Steering”)

That’s it!

That’s the fuckin word!

If you could steer these weird and rare creatures, if you could think through it and guide the internal psyche of a troubled child.

Maybe you could change them.

(Maybe,,,impossible to do a study on it)

Yeah,, pretty far fetched…

I don’t know why the scenario keeps returning to me,,, finding someone in their first animal torture…

(Do you remember the tadpole?)

Oh god, it made me feel so bad.

We heated a machete on a little campfire by a pond, and we caught a tadpole and dropped it on the blade.

Its insides spewed out and I felt so bad, I knew we had to stop.

It was another kid.

It wasn’t me, but we all went along with it…

We also electrocuted a beetle with a DC transformer, and we trapped one in candle wax..

There was this slightly older kid that came around,periodically.

These stories were his idea, not mine or my cousins, we weren’t like that.

We weren’t like him, didn’t have it in us.

I mean, we’d fish the river, kill the fish and chop it’s head off, we’d cook and eat it on campfires,,

it we didn’t kill shit, just to be killing it.

The root of animal torture..

Where the fuck does that come from???

(Probably curiosity..)

Yeah.. maybe a bit..