We Are Here to Hurt Each Other

by Paula D. Ashe

Recognizing the universe as it is—a cosmic slaughterhouse unending—is difficult as the machinations of reality function only to deceive sentient beings into believing there is some meaning behind the echoing chaos.

Pain is the source of all matter. It is the force that holds the universe together, that will tear it apart, only to rebuild again.

We are here to hurt each other. Again, and again, and again, in perpetuity.

Carcosine makes the living feel dead and the dead feel alive. But their appetites change.

one could play at sanctity, could one not also play at villainy?

It was quiet, so forgotten that even the light seemed to slink in with hesitation.

but my house odds in Vegas would be better than this shit here. At least in that game you start with something and then lose it. In this game, the loss has already happened. Nobody wins against an absence.

wish I were the kind of person who didn’t find brooding so invigorating.

I only know that all of us live amidst violence and horror all the time. Very few of us stop to recognize it. Even fewer of us admit our complicity in it.