Monsters 2

I never meant to do more monsters.

I did not intend, again, to visit the subject of horrors. I had no wish to do more pictures of fiends and ogres and damn'd souls, in this world or the next.

Yet, and somewhat to my own disquiet, I discovered that I had (first) stumbled upon a genre unknown to me…i.e., the book or other work meant as a curse…and (second) that there were yet more people in the world who desperately needed cursing.

Here's the background. Sometime I did quasi-published an e-booklet or e-sketchbook entitled Montag's Monsters. itwas a personal thing and rather ridiculous. In it, I displayed a series of illustrations meant to accompany a horror novel I was working on some time ago. The story involved a graduate student who is murdered by a jealous professor. The dead man goes immediately to hell. There, he discovers that each of his professors has preceded him to Hades. Their bodies remain on earth, but their souls are down below, each transformed into the monsters which they actually, if secretly are.

I never finished the book because, well, frankly, it bored me. Or, more precisely, the people in it bored me. The damned were, of course, based on people who I really knew, and who genuinely had harmed me quite badly. Yet, they demonstrated quite well the banality of evil. Like many bullies, they were vile, but not interesting. They were bores and boors. And best left forgotten.

But I had the images already done and I published them. This gave me a certain petty and childish revenge. I could, in my own small and nasty way, portray them as I felt they truly were.


*


As I say, I thought that sort of thing was over for me. I never thought I'd do another monster.

And then…

Then came "ISIS"…The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. A.k.a., ISIL, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. This group appeared in the wreckage of our American "liberation" of Iraq, and the revolution of Syria. It set out to create its own nation in the ruins.

I was only faintly aware of ISIS/ISIL. I knew that its fighters were renowned for their brutality. I knew that they were winning. But other than that, I paid little attention to them. They seemed merely one more group of bloody-minded lunatics, in a world full of bloody-minded lunatics.

Then…but then…I saw a photo. You've probably seen it, too. It was taken by ISIS's own people. It shows a child, a toddler, circled by armed men. He, or she, it is not clear to me, looks up at them confused.

They are, I gather, about to kill the child. I gather they did so.

I saw the photo for the first time last night (August 9, 2014). I went to the web and learned after that the scope of ISIS's horrors. They burn. They mutilate. They torture. They enslave. They are butchering children.

It is part of a larger plan. A strategy, even. ISIS/ISIL uses terror as a weapon. It practices "propaganda of the deed." It commits horrid acts and lets it be known that it does so. And thus the mass murder of children. The message is that "if we can kill these innocents, think what we will do to you."

Alas, it is effective. I have watched the news while the Iraqi armies and Syrian rebels have scattered before the berserkers like leaves before the storm.


*


And they are real. These images. These news stories.

At first, like many others, I had that moment of doubt. There have been so many lies told. Remember WMDs?

But, no. The more I researched the more it seems clear that this is actually happening. That there are real bodies in the desert. That there really are POWs being shot in the head. That there really are women being raped and sold into slavery. That there really are children being murdered.

We cannot doubt it. There have simply been too many reports from too many sources …too many pictures and videos from too many places…too many eye witness accounts from too many creditable men and women …

Quite simply, ISIS/ISIL claims to be brutal and murderous and even joyfully pathological. And I think we must take them at their word.

We would be fools not to.


*


When I realized this…when I realized that the photos of the doomed child were real…I was aghast.

I was horrified that I could do nothing to save him. Or her. I cannot go back in time and pull the guns away from his head. I cannot walk between the killers, pick her up, comfort her, and carry her back to her mother.

I cannot save other children who are even now dying, or will die soon, at the hands of those madmen…

I was and am furious at my helplessness.


*


I could not sleep that night. I tossed and turned. I dreamed. While my wife slept, I went back into my office and checked the web for news. I cheered the victories of the Kurds and the Americans and Brits and the rest. I mourned the dead. I feared for the future.

And I wondered: what could I do to help?

Alas, alas, nothing. Nothing. I can write my congressman. I can post to my blog. I can make appeals.

But otherwise…nothing. I am reduced to watching while yet another group of self-righteous psychopaths inflict horror on the world. How many has it been so far? And just in my own lifetime? Genocides and mass death in how many places? Rwanda, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia…killing field after killing field. Concentration camp after concentration camp.

And that doesn't even count the genocides that came before me…Holocaust and Holodomor, massacres and horrors…


*


I found myself a little obsessed with the situation in Iraq and Syria. I began to search for some way, however ineffectually, to express my feelings. I needed some way to, well, let it out.

I finally conceived the idea of going back to my little pictures. My "curse book" for lack of a better term. I decided to create a series of images that would portray ISIS/ISIL as it genuinely is…inside, that is. I would portray the souls of its leaders, and soldiers, and sympathizers. I would show the souls made monstrous by crimes against humanity.

I would show the fate that would await them if there is such a place as hell. I doubt that there is, but you never can tell.

I would insult and denigrate them.

*

So, I did more images. This time of ISIS/ISIL's leaders, its volunteers, its sympathizers, its paymasters…

I don't know if I'll publish the pictures. They are grotesque and the world has enough of that sort of thing already. (If you really, really want to see them, let me know. I'll send you copies.)

Though, who knows? Maybe I'll put some of the pictures out into the world.  Here and there. In one form or another.

Maybe I will do so on the theory that they will, somehow, actually impact the ISIS/ISIL psychopaths in their killing fields. Oh, don't get me wrong.  I do not believe in magic. And even if I did, a picture is not a voodoo doll with which to afflict your enemy.

But, still, perhaps these pictures will act like insulting caricatures. Maybe they will make ISIS/ISIL seem pathetic or ridiculous or, even, damned. Maybe one potential Jihadist will see the images, or encounter someone who has, and come away a little less likely to sign up at their local ISIS recruiting station.

Or, maybe, someone in the group or its leadership will see the pictures. Maybe (we can but hope), it will infuriate them. Maybe, in their rage, they will make an error…

And, finally, well, I've said I don’t believe in the supernatural. And I don't. But I could be wrong. Maybe there really is something in sympathetic magic. Or, maybe, ESP exists. Maybe there is some undetected wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum that can be shaped and focused by the human mind.

So, perhaps…just perhaps…these images might somehow cause real damage to those men who are both evil and deranged.

Particularly if not just I but many focus their mental furies upon them.

Let us hope so. Let us hope that many virtuous minds focusing their righteous anger against evil might have good effect.

Might, indeed, be mighty.


*


It may be that by the time you read this, the problem will be solved. Perhaps the ISIS/ISIL state will have collapsed. Perhaps one or more of the world's powers will have intervened and brought the bastards to heel.

Sadly, though, I suspect not. It is simply too complicated and too hellish a problem to solve easily or quickly. I suspect that, as you read this, war continues in what used to be Syria and what used to be Iraq. I suspect that ISIS/ISIL continues to murder and maim.

And even if it does not, then history seems to show there will always be others…of whatever religion or political position…willing and eager to proclaim the Holy War, the Crusade, the Holy War, the Final Solution, the…whatever.

If the original target is gone, then let these images be for those others. All who long for the apocalypse…

All who murder children.


*


If you should ever see these images, you will note several things. For example, I have tried to adapt the vision to the cultural milieu of the individuals in question. I made some pigs or dogs, animals obviously considered unclean in the Levant. In other cases I've shorn them of the male sexual characteristics that are, for them, the signs of personal superiority.

Also, in many (almost all) cases, I've shown the individual subjected to some sort of torture or bondage, frequently with strong sexual overtones, i.e., it is sadomasochistic. I wanted to add that note of perversion because I think it is fitting. "Perversion" as a word implies something evil and sick. But the average sadomasochist is, usually, a fairly harmless individual. It is thus wrong to call him or her a "pervert."

But someone who kills in the name of an all-merciful and loving God, that is a diseased and disgusting individual…a true pervert.


*


In any case, that's what I did. Those were the images I created.

As I say, I will not openly publish them. But, again, if you really want to see them, let me know. And, keep an eye out, you may run across them by accident at this or that place on the 'net.

An aside, if you do see them, you should know that they are protected by a Creative Commons mark. This will specify that you may download them, hold them, keep them…but must not resell them, or claim them as your own. Nor can you adapt them without my permission.

But you can forward them to all and sundry.

Let us hope that, eventually, they come into the hands of ISIS and its people.

And that at that moment, the images become like glass…broken glass…clear, transparent, revealing all, jagged, and, lastly…and horribly….

Wounding.