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there, I wondered, an elusive boon that bestowed life after death? If so, could it be stolen or purchased like any other treasure?
    Or were some souls, I thought, simply stronger than death? If so, what made them stronger?
Human emotion was a potent force in nature—we know that faith can heal and fear can kill—so was passion the answer?
    If so, what focused that passion? What invested it with its prowess? Was it the power of virtue? The force of evil? The need—the insatiable craving—to exhaust every variety of pleasure?
    What could it be?
    Thoughts On Suicide
Trapped in my coffin-sized cage—covered with festering sores—tortured by a monster species—I often thought about death. And—given my predicament—I became infatuated with suicide.
    I have never been obsessed with life—life, as one cynic pointed out, is a sexually transmitted disease that always ends in death—so termination was a distinct possibility.
    I remembered the command of Nietzsche: ‘To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of ones own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness....’ What words of power!
    Yes, I thought, glorious self-annihilation is compelling and attractive. Since death is more beautiful than love (the immortal Octave Mirbeau said that), self-destruction would be a brief, almost autoerotic free-fall into a great velvet darkness.
    *** Had not the great Yukio Mishima killed himself with a dagger? Thrusting and wet—his hand one with the weapon— Mishima called suicide the ‘ultimate masturbation.’
    In my night dreams, my suicide was always maternal and affectionate. Nestled like a plump baby in my mother’s arms, I parted my lips to suckle a pink nipple rubbed with black poison.
    There was a slight acrid taste—a moment of discomfort— and then peace. Smiling sweetly, I rested in bliss.
    In my daydreams, my fantasized method of suicide was different. I imagined a radiant death—pure and clean—I died like the incinerated moth that flies into the fire.
    How I longed for a dignified end—I could almost smell the funeral pyre of scented wood—but it was not to be. Although I wanted to die—without fear and without anger— I could not. It was not possible.
    My hate—incandescent and pure—kept me alive. And my desire for vengeance—a passion that burns hotter than lust— gave me purpose.
    Vengeance gave me the reason to continue.
    Chapter III How I Found Freedom
    ‘It is your duty to learn from the enemy.’ Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 17)
    My Escape: The Day Of Blood
My escape occurred swiftly and unexpectedly. After years in the hellish, labyrinthian world of the monsters, I found my freedom.
    On the day I escaped—the time of blood atonement—I was transfigured.
In my early life, I had always been an anvil. Now, however, I became a hammer.
    An Omen Of Doom
My blessed day began inauspiciously. I had a nightmare— a bizarre lucid dream. Curiously, in the dream I could see only when my eyes were closed.
    At first I was happy in the dream—I was rich, powerful, and celebrated—I was desired by women and admired by men— but then I looked down and saw a corpse.
    The dead body alarmed me. Shaped like a cuddly little pet— a quadruped called ‘the Lamb of God’—the body was actually Dogma, the corpse of Truth.
    ‘When the cadaver no longer smells,’ hissed a voice, ‘the soul is gone.’
    Frightened, I tried to flee, but I was stopped by twin sisters. Named Pornography and Blasphemy, they were naked and white, and their mouths were red from feasting on their own children.
    ‘Violence is the key,’ hissed the sisters. ‘When you are reborn in paradise, all your victims will become your slaves.’
    The sisters forced me to eat a certain book—I could not see the title—but it was about the amoral worship of beauty and force. ‘Nazism for the Iron Age,’ I think they called it.
    Devouring the book, which was sweet in my mouth but bitter in