My Brother’s Keeper

wo men with their hands behind their backs are sat down in a freshly dug ditch shirtless and in jeans. Marks all over their faces and bodies, evidence they've endured quite a thrashing before the video camera, now recording them, was turned on. They begin confessing the crimes they've committed and how they've wronged their chosen family. The family that told them they'd always protect them and give them everything they ever wanted, so long as they worked hard and never spoke about their activities to anyone not "related," better yet, affiliated--the family that would never leave them unlike the families they were born into.

The spectators in the background, who remain unnamed, donning masks, firearms and camouflaged fatigues are unmoved by what they're saying. If you could get into their minds at that moment they were probably just looking forward to not hearing what their betrayers have to say and how they're looking forward to hanging out with everyone away from the ditch afterwards, the joyous party that they'll have and the fun stories they'll exchange, maybe they'll even bring their kids around to meet each other's children and they can run around and have fun and playing in the yard without a care in the world, laughing those laughs that bring joy to anyone who hears it.

As the two men finish speaking a third walks past the camera and shoves one of the detained men down with a hard boot to the ribs, he takes the other man and lays him on top of the other and pulls out a sharpened knife. He takes that knife, making sure that you can see the betrayers throat clearly on the screen and begins his work. In a moment the knife opens the betrayer's throat and a red deluge begins spraying on the worker's hand and is covering the second betrayer's head and face. He actually didn't even gurgle that much from the steel being introduced into this anatomy. The worker knows his tools very well and keeps them in great condition to be efficient, he had the first betrayer's head off within seconds.

He still had one more task to complete before he could punch-out for the day. He had the cameraman turn around and show over 30 of his family members who're attending the event. A bond so strong that no one could break them apart, brothers forged in fire that would do anything for one another. Some times I wonder what it's like to have a relationship like that--though it makes one curious if they actually have love for each other or if it's just a fear of one another. Maybe the next scene will shed some light on that.

The second betrayer is brought to his own personal part of the ditch and laid down on his back in front of the family, his head coated red from the warm life essence that his betrayer brother spilled all over it. The worker takes his tool and doesn't put it to his work's neck, but instead the top of his chest right under the collar bone. At the perfect angle he begins flaying his chest. He begins screaming with all the air in his body.

I decide it's a good choice to turn the volume off at this point.

The ease of his knife cutting through his flesh was remarkably horrific. He removed the skin down to his belly in about 20 seconds, though he may have caught some fascia and went a bit deeper than intended in one location as something begin bubbling out of the man writhing on the ground. It made me realize how accurate those anatomy pictures are we saw in school. The man began to pass out from what I imagine was a combination of terrible pain and blood loss, but the man murdering him slapped him awake to make sure he was around for the final act. He took the knife and plunged it into his chest and began sawing back and forth forcefully. The murdered man's head slumped back one final time as the murderer took his heart out with his bare hand and presented his grisly trophy to the viewer.

To me.

I'm not sure why I chose to watch that. I'm not sure how a video like that could have earned hundreds of thousands of views. I've always said it's because I have a morbid curiosity, and maybe that's true. To see the abyss of human ferocity is fascinating. The voracious violence we're so willing to commit against one another for a minimally perceived slight is nearly incomprehensible... Yet, I realize how easy it is to engage in such barbarity. If one of the first two humans that were born from the original humans God created from the earth bludgeoned his brother to death with a stone, is it so farfetched that our fallen-kind would willingly witness such a crime against another fallen-kind?

Maybe, even though we all want to believe that we're such a good people we aren't all fully Abel.

Maybe some of us have more Cain than we realize.