Have People Went Insane?

This is a horror book blog, so beware as you read below.  It is graphic and disturbing.

Horror writers will be the first to tell you that what they imagine palls beside real-life horror. We will explore, Kolchak-like, some recent news.

Item: Miami Memorial Day weekend was rocked by a naked man eating an indigent man’s face off. Apparently drug-crazed, this man ditched his clothes, attacked another man on the side of a busy road, and began to bite the flesh from his face. Several tried to intervene with little luck, until a police officer shot the man twice and killed him.

Item: In March, a Japanese man claiming his right to become a eunuch underwent elective surgery to remove his penis, testicles,a nd scrotum. The flesh was frozen, and auctioned off. The man fileted and cooked his organs and flesh for $250 a plate (=$20,000). Apparently Japan, being an enlightened nation, cannibalism is not illegal.

Item: In this writer’s hometown of Lousiville, a Hatfield-McCoy event recently happened. In a matter of two days, 8 people were shot over a combined feud and social tribalism event. So convoluted, even the police are still sorting it out, jealousy and revenge roared through west Louisville culminating in multiple shootings and several homicides. The final occurred while police were still investigating previous shootings. As the father of a woman’s one-year old child lay dead, she wept and mourned. At that very moment, a second woman (pregnant) pulled a gun and shot her dead. Police, already on the scene, returned fire wounding and incapacitating her. Just senseless.

So whether this is a sign of the breakdown of Western society, random weirdness, or whatever, these are incredible stories even beyond the usual serial killer fodder. We seem to have become immune to internet stories of babies being cut from women’s wombs, beheading by terrorists, suicide bombers, and routine campus massacres. Saddam feeding people into wood chippers, or Idi Amin letting his crocodiles chow down on unwanted guests are so 20th century. What new and incredible horrors will compel us to action to begin to cure mental illness, and restore dignity to our everyday lives?

Horror needs to stay on the fiction page, not in our midst.