He hated waking up dead.
The shock was bad enough. The feel of it -- the sensation of a thousand bugs burrowing up through his flesh -- was worse. But worst of all was the loss of memory. There was a period, every time he died, where he knew neither who he was nor what had killed him.
As such, each time was as bad as the first. He woke up gasping, clasping and clawing at his skin in a vain effort to dig out the worms and biters he could almost see writhing beneath the surface. The horrible impression passed momentarily. As the crawling things faded, he lay still a moment, trying to understand what had occurred. He wept dry, dead tears for the loss of his life.
Eventually he remembered his name: he was Sacrum. He stopped his weeping and gnashing and stood up into one of the most ferocious winds he could have ever imagined. Steadying himself as best he could, he looked around at the bleak, grey world of death. He remembered being dead before, and knew that it was always worst upon the waking, not knowing anything but the black truth of fulfilled mortality.
With the memory of his name came the memory of his geis.
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He stood before the great and crackled black house, built tall and lonesome nearly fifteen leagues from the nearest village. When the door opened he fell to his knees and knelt, in the way of an apprentice, and offered to serve. The wizened, gnarled man at the door regarded him as if he were a cow.
After a several minutes, the man spoke. "You will find saecra for me. Your name is Sacrum, now." The gaunt man let out a short, harsh, bark of a laugh.
Before he could answer, the wizard spoke again, a word Sacrum could neither pronounce nor imagine, and all the memories of his old name were b...
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..., and secrets were the most important tools a wizard had. The veil of death was indeed a mighty firmament, but even it could not long keep secrets from a wizard. Limner was an apprentice and had no totem of his own, and thus he collected secrets for his master.
Secrets had power. Theonidus, his master, reiterated the axiom until Limner thought it lost all meaning. Of course secrets had power; that was so platitudinous that even peasants would spew it at one another, acting all the time as if they were imparting some sort of great wisdom.
Limner's master was no peasant. The petty secrets that ecrets
To those in Limner's trade, Dying was something to be avoided when possible, even for a wizard. That didn't mean, however, that ho
It was far vaster than the living world, but all that had ever passed into dust resided within its boundaries.
“I shall never forget the awful climb on hands and feet out of that hole that was about five feet deep with greasy clay and blood (although I did not know then that it was blood).
...h. This causes him immense mental suffering because he confronts the constant reminder of death even in the mist of protection. If he remained integrated within society he would have had the ability to live life without a constant hourly reminder of death.
...e monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity”. (Chapter 12.13 Internet)
A small hut… [which]I examined the structure with great curiosity. Finding the door open, I entered. An old man sat in it, near a fire, over which he was preparing his breakfast. He turned on hearing a noise; and perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and, quitting the hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared capable. 72
Deaths are insignificant when you’ve seen millions of unknown corpses, and even friends and family die, there’s nothing more than they’re dead. It’s noted by Billy Pilgrim’s daughter, Barbara, that he’d only began recalling that he’d been abducted by aliens after a fatal plane crash, in which he was the only survivor, attributing the delusions to brain damage (38). Desensitization is defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it (The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science). This definition fits Pilgrim’s reactions to death, as well as the Tralfamadorians aphorism for how they deal with
The powerful diction used within the passage express the true internal struggle that the narrator is facing. The reader is able to pick up on the physical and emotional pain that the narrator is going through as a result of this struggle because of the author’s use of vivid adjectives. Words such as “nerve-jangling,” “violently,” “digging,” and “ringing” convey the intensity of the narrators emotional state. In context these adjectives may convince the reader that the this passage is about the narrator going insane. He is having major reactions to minor details such as ringing sounds and itchy skin. He is hearing nerve-jangling sounds, violently scratching himself, and digging his nails into his skin, causing himself to bleed. Many of the descriptions in the passage a...
magically' appears as More is on his way home. He asks of More, "You left him…in
The mind is a very powerful tool when it is exploited to think about situations out of the ordinary. Describing in vivid detail the conditions of one after his, her, or its death associates the mind to a world that is filled with horrific elements of a dark nature.
His strong muscles loosened and twitched satisfyingly beneath his white pelage as the he stretched the length of his body against his nest. His fur was ruffled, with a few stray bits of moss stuck to the strands. The lord looked relatively bed-ridden. With a lazy blink, he begab to make his way to the clearing of the Date Clan, with a relatively blank visage and half-lidded eyes at his nearby clanmates as he padded out of his territory.
The very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't.”
...h the “crackling and splintering in my shoulders that my body has not forgotten until hour” (32). He would never remember anything as it was, for it was now a distant and vague memory. But his torture was happening every day and every moment of his life.
"...He cringed from death as one who trips on a snake in hilltop hollow recoils, suddenly trembling grips his knees and pallor, takes his cheeks and back he shrinks."
There was no hiding from the reality of the state in which they existed. They were broken, sick, decayed, ill, weak and dying. They had received a death sentence by contracting a common disease. A disease that found them. They hadn’t searched it out. In fact, they had tried to avoid it. The disease had found him, he was a victim to this pathogen and it effected his life.
My heart was simply ripped apart. I could not believe it at first, but I knew I had to. After all these wonderful years and enthralling moments, I finally have to face God's greatest challenge. My mind wasn't as messy as before anymore and I couldn't even think of what to think. It seemed as if I had nothing to worry about, nothing to do, nothing to say. I was trapped inside this room waiting for the Grim Reaper to reap my innocent soul.