Green-Eyed Monster
May. 20th, 2016 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/1U3v7WR:
bomberqueen17:
He has drunk so much his eyes have changed color and shade. Too bright, too direct, they look through without appearing to focus on anything, giving him an unsettling, predatory aspect. He is so drunk that the goofy, personable aura that initially made him my friend has been peeled away to reveal a much sharper, ruthless underlayer I’d only ever glimpsed indirectly.
And it is then that he tells me about [warzone name redacted]. But he isn’t really talking about events, or what he did there, but what it did to him.
A person’s humanity, he explains, can be turned on and off, as if by a switch, and when you go into the Special Forces they screen you for that. They look for the ones who can turn it back on and become human again once they’re done being a monster. Just plain monsters, he explains, aren’t suited to the job; they can’t be controlled, they aren’t strong enough or disciplined enough to do all the rest of the shit that gets you to the place where only the brutality can carry you through. Because you need a lot more than just brutality– you need precision, and absolute obedience. A monster isn’t capable of it. You need a man who has feelings, manners, loyalty, that sort of thing– things a monster just doesn’t have. So they work pretty hard to screen you and break you and train you so that humanity can switch off, then back on again. The humanity is the handle they need to get you to and from the monster place.
Once they’re done with you, though, they don’t really worry much about the aftermath. Most of his colleagues from that time are dead now, most by their own hands.
He knew what he was getting into, with the monster thing, he’d done it before; he was quite aware of his own capacity for ruthlessness and knew how to turn his emotions back on afterward. But in the heat of that firefight, for the first time, he found himself enjoying it, enjoying the horror and the bloodshed, enjoying his own power of destructiveness.
It’s still in me, he says quietly, his eyes brilliant clear green and his face twenty years younger. That joy is still there. I could do it again, and I could love it again. He blinks, and his eyes are no less bright, but a tiny shadow of self-awareness flits across them, and they focus, for a moment, on me.
I don’t tell my wife this stuff, he says. Not like she couldn’t handle it. But for me, I need her not to know. I need her not to see that monster when she looks at me.
bomberqueen17:
He has drunk so much his eyes have changed color and shade. Too bright, too direct, they look through without appearing to focus on anything, giving him an unsettling, predatory aspect. He is so drunk that the goofy, personable aura that initially made him my friend has been peeled away to reveal a much sharper, ruthless underlayer I’d only ever glimpsed indirectly.
And it is then that he tells me about [warzone name redacted]. But he isn’t really talking about events, or what he did there, but what it did to him.
A person’s humanity, he explains, can be turned on and off, as if by a switch, and when you go into the Special Forces they screen you for that. They look for the ones who can turn it back on and become human again once they’re done being a monster. Just plain monsters, he explains, aren’t suited to the job; they can’t be controlled, they aren’t strong enough or disciplined enough to do all the rest of the shit that gets you to the place where only the brutality can carry you through. Because you need a lot more than just brutality– you need precision, and absolute obedience. A monster isn’t capable of it. You need a man who has feelings, manners, loyalty, that sort of thing– things a monster just doesn’t have. So they work pretty hard to screen you and break you and train you so that humanity can switch off, then back on again. The humanity is the handle they need to get you to and from the monster place.
Once they’re done with you, though, they don’t really worry much about the aftermath. Most of his colleagues from that time are dead now, most by their own hands.
He knew what he was getting into, with the monster thing, he’d done it before; he was quite aware of his own capacity for ruthlessness and knew how to turn his emotions back on afterward. But in the heat of that firefight, for the first time, he found himself enjoying it, enjoying the horror and the bloodshed, enjoying his own power of destructiveness.
It’s still in me, he says quietly, his eyes brilliant clear green and his face twenty years younger. That joy is still there. I could do it again, and I could love it again. He blinks, and his eyes are no less bright, but a tiny shadow of self-awareness flits across them, and they focus, for a moment, on me.
I don’t tell my wife this stuff, he says. Not like she couldn’t handle it. But for me, I need her not to know. I need her not to see that monster when she looks at me.
