Free Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

Feed.
    I despair at the rise of modern violence. I truly give in to despair at times, that deep, futureless pit of despair which Hopkins called carrion comfort. I watch the American slaughter house, the casual attacks on popes, presidents, and uncounted others, and I wonder if there are many more out there with the Ability or if butchery has simply become the modern way of life.
    All humans feed on violence, on the small exercises of power over another, but few have tasted— as we have— the ultimate power. And without that Ability, few know the unequaled plea sure of taking a human life. Without the Ability, even those who do feed on life cannot savor the flow of emotions in stalker and victim, the total exhilaration of the attacker who has moved beyond all rules and punishments, the strange, almost sexual submission of the victim in that final second of truth when all options are canceled, all futures denied, all possibilities erased in an exercise of absolute power over another.
    I despair at modern violence. I despair at the impersonal nature of it and the casual quality which has made it accessible to so many. I had a television set until I sold it at the height of the Vietnam War. Those sanitized snippets of death— made distant by the camera’s lens— meant nothing to me. But I believe it meant something to these cattle which surround me. When the war and the nightly televised body counts ended, they demanded more,
more
, and the movie screens and streets of this sweet and dying nation have provided it in mediocre, mob abundance. It is an addiction I know well.
    They miss the point. Merely observed, violent death is a sad and sullied tapestry of confusion. But to those of us who have Fed, death can be a
sacrament
.
    “My turn! My turn!” Nina’s voice still resembled that of the visiting belle who had just filled her dance card at Cousin Celia’s June Ball.
    We had returned to the parlor, Willi had finished his coffee and requested a brandy from Mr. Thorne. I was embarrassed for Willi. To have one’s closest associates show any hint of unplanned behavior was certainly a sign of weakening Ability. Nina did not appear to have noticed.
    “I have them all in order,” said Nina. She opened the scrapbook on the now empty tea table. Willi went through them carefully, sometimes asking a question, more often grunting assent. I murmured occasional agreement although I had heard of none of them. Except for the Beatle, of course. Nina saved that for near the end.
    “Good God, Nina, that was you?” Willi seemed near anger. Nina’s Feedings had always run to Park Avenue suicides and matrimonial disagreements ending in shots fired from expensive, small calibered ladies’ guns. This type of thing was more in Willi’s crude style. Perhaps he felt that his territory was being invaded. “I mean . . . you were risking a lot, weren’t you? It’s so . . . damn it . . . so
public
.”
    Nina laughed and set down the calculator. “Willi,
dear
, that’s what the Game is
about
, is it not?”
    Willi strode to the liquor cabinet and refilled his brandy snifter. The wind tossed bare branches against the leaded glass of the bay window. I do not like winter. Even in the South it takes its toll on the spirit.
    “Didn’t this guy . . . whatshisname . . . buy the gun in Hawaii or someplace?” asked Willi from across the room. “That sounds like his initiative to me. I mean, if he was
already
stalking the fellow . . .”
    “Willi, dear,” Nina’s voice had gone as cold as the wind that raked the branches, “no one said he was
stable
. How many of yours are stable, Willi? But I made it
happen
, darling. I chose the place and the time. Don’t you see the irony of the
place
, Willi? After that little prank on the director of that witchcraft movie a few years ago? It was straight from the script . . .”
    “I don’t know,” said Willi. He sat heavily on the divan, spilling brandy on his expensive sports coat. He did not