[violence, torture] You hear words like burn and drown and stab and freeze and scald and they're just words to you. You hear stab and strangle and pummel and hack and they're just words too. A few letters, easy to say. Easy to move past. Burn. Drown. Freeze. Scald. Compact little sounds. Some may make you flinch. Send a momentary shiver down your body, raise a bit of gooseflesh. But then your nerves settle; your body seals itself again. When your body knows these words, knows them in every fiber, the words change. They become the smell of your own scorched skin, the taste of your own blood, the sight of your own fingers on the floor, separate as dropped slices of apple. These words have become something more than words. They have become weapons, ready to get under the surface of you, pry you back open. Your body remembers even when you no longer have a body
Gayle Brandeis, Many Restless Concerns (a testimony): The victims of Countess Bathory speak in chorus
