There's a guy with lime green hair. The color is so vivid you suspect it would glow in the dark. But it's a bright, optimistic shade and while you wouldn't have chosen it, it isn't offensive. A girl slowly shuffles past; maybe, anyway - she's so emaciated it's hard to be sure of gender. You suspect that if she moved any faster, she'd keel over and die right in front of you. Sad, what people will do to themselves.
But then there are others. It's like Night of the Living Dead had babies with Spanish Inquisition victims, with a few failed Holocaust experiments tossed in for good measure.
Torture, as explained by the U.N., is any act by which severe pain or suffering is intentionally inflicted on a person (who isn't a masochist). The Bybee memo of 2002 added torture to the extent of impairment of bodily function. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 added more: "a significant loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member, organ, or mental faculty." It could be torture victims wandering around out there.
In one way or another, they've all mutilated ... or mutated .... Either way. Pinhead has nothing on these people. The women in Myanmar and Thailand who stretch their necks with brass rings have nothing on these people. The girls in Africa and young men in the Amazon using lip plates have nothing on these people. The young men of the Sioux dancing with hooks in their chests have nothing on these people. Child abuse victims with their cigarette burns have nothing on these people. Anything that could be done without killing someone seems to have been done to this crowd.
It's mind-boggling how people can seem so oblivious when it looks as though they've been surgically impaled. Bizarre flaps of skin dangle more than flesh was ever meant to stretch. Metal protrudes from flesh, suggestive of some Wolverine-experiment-gone-wrong. They gesture strangely to each other.
You've read about forms of torture in history, but most of those forms were intended to cause death. These people have survived. And apparently they have little social support. You'd think, birds of a feather and all that. Even the misfits in high school hung out together. These people, though ... the largest group you see is maybe three or four. Are they repulsed by each other? Did their torture impact them mentally? Or maybe they were unstable to begin with, which led to ... whatever cruel punishment happened to them. Or a little of each, maybe.
The weirdest thing is, regular people don't seem to take much notice of them. How can you not be just a little disturbed by something so revolting and grisly? What does that say about the world, that it's just fine when these tragic victims are everywhere? What does it say about you, that you've never thought about it before and only now are realizing you're rapidly becoming fascinated by them?
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