I recently picked an “article”
from an anonymous author on the Internet which seemed altogether interesting to
me, almost thrilling, on the verge of being morally disturbing, annoying, in
same way I would even say threatening. Now, getting to the point, my ethic dilemma
is the following one: is this story just a tale to tell or it is mainly based
on real facts? Is it a rumour somebody spread on the web or maybe a fictional
version of some too bad events? I wonder if either of you can help me to
ascertain the real answer to this question I am itching for. Will you
collaborate reading this text (Peter the
strangler) and conveying your personal opinion? Thanks in advance!
“Not
until I heard twice that strange sound did I wake up and sit up, feeling the
piercing coolness of winter in a room without heater (should not I have had the
heater mended?). An ordinary person would have listened to carefully, mindfully
searching for the minutest signs of someone walking down
the corridor at home. People gifted with an extraordinary imagination would
have borne in mind a large number of mental pictures, images related to
stranglers, rippers, snatchers, and stalkers who in the end assaulted and
stabbed you on the back, and so on.
It
was not my case; I am neither an ordinary plain person nor someone whom is
given a special talent. It is said that I am a writer, not a bad one according
to the critics (I hope so); that is why in that frightening moment in which
everybody would feel a thrilling shuddering coming down the spine, I did not.
Then
it only came out, suddenly flashing vividly through my mind like a burning
spark, a few pages of my late best-seller book on murder and crime, an
amazingly scary story mainly based on a real past crime, with a very wicked man
as the chief character, Peter the
strangler, someone incapable of the least remorse, not even the shadow of a
doubt about his malevolent behaviour.
In
these moments of anxiety and collapse,
all that crime images so patiently fancied and depicted with remarkable
adjectives and selected nouns in my novels started taking their own vivid life
in my mind, literally springing from the very lines of my book without any room
for individual imagination. I was being a victim of my own literature. Can you
fancy something more frightening, any worse doom or curse? To make real the
worst of the nightmares, to come across your own literary ghosts in your
ordinary life… is it not a doomsday?
Feeling
my sensitive nerves under every pore of my skin, almost fainting, at last I
gathered all my strength together to get over this psychological challenge. I
did it and a tight sleep soon followed, deep, dense, at peace. Next morning I
woke up well balanced and full of energy, I went to my son’s room and found him
strangled.”
