-Humans are incapable of remembering pain. To recall a happy moment will make you smile, to draw a sad moment from a pit of memories will make your eyes well up with tears. Why then, when a moment of excruciation is relived is the only reaction, “Damn, that hurt.”

-To follow the patter, happy makes you smile, sad breeds tears, shouldn't the recollection of pain make one collapse, screaming? The moment of breaking a limb, experiencing the bone shatter, the shards cutting deep into human meat-why do these visuals conjure nothing but a small grimace (or for the more disturbed, a wilted grin)?

I paint a picture: a whining creak as rusty joints move. Crumbling metal that never expected to have to work again. A wafting scent floats upwards, blooming and spreading rancid spores. Wet and heavy, it envelops the trees nearby, the leaves cringing and shivering as they are touched. The epicenter of this rank is a shallow hole, shrouded in fog, laced with dark. The stomach-churning scent is met with sight.

A stiff, half decayed body. Fingers immobile, eyes still, he lies. The most subtle of smiles plays with his lips, but it may just be a trick of the light as it reflects off the gleaming maggots thriving in the hole of his mouth. His eyelids have peeled back and his eyes have begun to sink back into the ever-softening brain. The hands are resting on the dried remains of a bouquet, partially re-hydrated by sopping up the juices secreted by the body rotting into the ground.

Flies play over the corpse, dancing as they dangle in the most potent places. The occasional lost lightning bug mingles with the flies, sweeping down onto the body, then fleeing in primal fear of the eyes staring back, glowing in the light of the firefly.

To touch this rotting mass is to let your hand sink, be enveloped in a feeling that this body wants to eat you alive, wishes it could reclaim the life it lost. Be warned, to remain in this mass of decaying flesh too long is to surrender yourself to the squirming silent worms that blindly chew their way through any soft and yielding substance placed in their way. Withdraw yourself from your chosen place of experimentation (whether it has been a melted stomach, collapsing chest or skull cavity with an inner texture similar to that of vomit) and a desperate suck and squelch will fight your retreat. Resist its begging loneliness less you wish to donate yourself to its worthless cause.

While you can, it is suggested that you forcefully coerce those rusting hinges to move once more, shoo the flies from the grave, and escape to a place with fresher, sweeter air. Escape before the heavy taint in the air collects on your tongue, cutting off your lings as your gag reflex spasms. Once your mouth is invaded by the sticky taste of rotten meat, and your brain acknowledges that this is the scent of human meat spreading itself in your mouth, the air flow will stop reaching your lungs and your heart's reaction won't be the most amiable.

So your warning is as such. Flee before the immobile band of the dead grasps you so strongly that you abandon your desires for mortal pleasures and instead succumb to the sorrowed pleasures of death.

-So I ask you now. What was your reaction? An unpleasant churning of the stomach, a chill perhaps, or maybe your mouth hung open in mock disbelief?

Had you really been there, smelling, seeing, tasting, and touching that man, would your reaction have been more potent? You can not dully imagine the horror of it – as a defensive reaction, your brain won't let you experience it all at once. True unpleasantness and pain are refused by memory, and even embarrassment, sadness, annoyance, and frustration can be blocked out. They can be recalled in words, but only distant an analytical ones, and unless you were screaming just a moment ago, you can't prove me wrong.