It's Such A Pain In The Neck

With only his right hand on the sword the lieutenant began to cut sideways across his stomach. But as the blade became entangled with the entrails it was pushed constantly outwards by their soft resilience; and the lieutenant realized that it would be necessary, as he cut, to use both hands to keep the point pressed deep into his stomach. He pulled the blade across. It did not cut as easily as he had expected. He directed the strength of his whole body into his right hand and pulled again. There was a cut of three or four inches.

[...]

By the time the lieutenant had at last drawn the sword across to the right side of his stomach, the blade was already cutting shallow and had revealed its naked tip, slippery with blood grease. But, suddenly stricken by a fit of vomiting, the lieutenant cried out hoarsely. The vomiting made the fierce pain fiercer still, and the stomach, which had thus far remained firm and compact, now abruptly heaved, opening wide its wound, and the entrails burst through, as if the wound too were vomiting. Seemingly ignorant of their master’s suffering, the entrails gave an impression of robust health and almost disagreeable vitality as they slipped smoothly out and spilled over into the crotch. …

[...]

... The right hand alone was moving. Laboriously gripping the sword, it hovered shakily in the air like the hand of a marionette and strove to direct the point at the base of the lieutenant’s throat. ... The quivering blade at last contracted the naked flesh of the throat. ... Abruptly he threw his body at the blade, and the blade pierced his neck, emerging at the nape. There was a tremendous spurt of blood and the lieutenant lay still, cold blue-tinged steel protruding from his neck at the back.



'Patriotism'
Yukio Mishima, 1966
Translated by Geoffrey W. Sargent

I should've introduced Alex to this short story of Mishima's. She always got really excited in our Old English Literature and Bēowulf classes when she talked about the gory bits, and when she told me about how gory the Icelandic sagas she was reading for her Tolkien and Medieval Literature class were.

And, incidentally, every time a cramp sinks its razor-sharp and jagged fangs into my guts and starts gnawing, these particular bits of the story comes to mind.

Because if these menstrual cramps don't give me a fucking break soon, I'd like to be doing what our hero has managed to accomplished.



(23:13 SGT)