Recorded Interview – Subject Unknown

The following transcript was recovered from a digital camera found in the apartment of documentary filmmaker Eliot Vanog, reported missing on October 14.

The identity of the interview subject remains unknown.

***

INTERVIEWER (ELIOT VANOG): Why did you reach out to me specifically?

SUBJECT: Fourteen months ago, at your conference in Chicago on the human capacity for violence, you said something.

INTERVIEWER: What did I say?

SUBJECT: You said, “The word monster is a moral shortcut. It lets us pretend brutality is something inhuman, when in fact it is one of the most human things there is.”

[Pause]

INTERVIEWER: You remembered that exactly.

SUBJECT: I remember most things exactly.

INTERVIEWER: What was it about that sentence that unsettled you?

SUBJECT: Unsettled is an interesting word. But no. I don’t think that’s quite right. What disturbed me was not that you were calling me monstrous, but that you were suggesting I might not be.

[Long pause]

SUBJECT: The first time someone called me a monster, I was eight. A car hit a cat on my way home from school. It was still moving. One of its back legs was mangled. The sound was unpleasant.

[Silence]

SUBJECT: I picked up a rock. It was the right size. I used it. The sound was different from the car.

[Pause]

SUBJECT: And the other children screamed.

INTERVIEWER: They called you a monster?

SUBJECT: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: How did you feel?

[Silence]

SUBJECT: Confused. I went home confused.

INTERVIEWER: Because of their reaction?

SUBJECT: The rock felt right in my hand.

INTERVIEWER: What do you mean, it felt right?

SUBJECT: The weight. The movement. The sound. Everything felt right.

[Pause]

INTERVIEWER: You—you’re describing a kind of satisfaction.

SUBJECT: Satisfaction isn’t quite the word I’d use. It wasn’t happiness. It wasn’t pleasure. It was… rightness. Like putting the final piece in a puzzle. The noise stopped, the movement stopped, and everything went quiet. Then the other children started crying. So I went home.

INTERVIEWER: You just—went home?

SUBJECT: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: And what happened when you got home?

SUBJECT: I asked my father.

INTERVIEWER: What did you ask him?

SUBJECT: I explained what happened. The cat. The rock. The children. And asked him if I was a monster.

[Pause]

INTERVIEWER: And what did he say?

SUBJECT: He knelt down and put his hands on my shoulders. He told me that I was not a monster. That it took courage to end suffering like that. He said I must have a very big heart.

[Silence]

INTERVIEWER: That’s—I mean, that’s a reasonable interpretation. A child ending an animal’s suffering. That’s not an unreasonable thing for a father to—

SUBJECT: No. It isn’t.

INTERVIEWER: So he was right? What you experienced—that sense of rightness—it was empathy. Expressed differently than most children would express it, but—

SUBJECT: You’re doing the same now.

INTERVIEWER: Doing what?

SUBJECT: What my father did. What people always do when they don’t want to see the truth.

INTERVIEWER: I’m not—I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me.

SUBJECT: I let him believe it. The mercy explanation. I let him hold my shoulders and look at me with that relief in his eyes, and I nodded. I told him I just didn’t want the cat to hurt anymore. I watched his face relax, and I understood something.

INTERVIEWER: What did you understand?

SUBJECT: That I was different. But I could pass. I could pretend, say the right things, act the way they expected. But I knew what I was. I knew the truth, even if they didn’t.

INTERVIEWER: And what is the truth?

SUBJECT: That I enjoyed it. Not the mercy. Not the ending of pain. I enjoyed the weight of the rock and the sound it made, and the way everything stopped because I chose it to stop.

[Pause]

INTERVIEWER: And what came after?

SUBJECT: More animals. For a time. Until they weren’t sufficient.

[Long pause]

INTERVIEWER: When you say insufficient—

SUBJECT: I mean exactly what I said.

INTERVIEWER: So what? You escalated?

SUBJECT: That word implies desperation. A junkie chasing a dose. No. It was more like a craftsman recognizing the limits of his current tools.

INTERVIEWER: How—how many people?

SUBJECT: That isn’t the interesting question.

INTERVIEWER: It seems fairly interesting to me.

SUBJECT: No, I didn’t come here for this.

INTERVIEWER: So what did you come here for?

SUBJECT: I told you. I want to know.

INTERVIEWER: Know what?

SUBJECT: Patience. We are not here yet.

[Silence]

SUBJECT: The first person was a woman named Carla. Names are important. People think the ones who do this sort of thing rarely bother with names. I always bothered.

[Brief pause]

SUBJECT: She delivered pharmaceutical samples to the clinic. Very efficient. Always on time. She smelled like a forest after the rain.

INTERVIEWER: You—you remember the smell.

SUBJECT: I remember everything about her. The way she held her clipboard against her chest like a shield. The small rose at her collarbone. The way she smiled at me. She was genuine.

INTERVIEWER: Then why?

SUBJECT: Because I wanted to.

[Pause]

SUBJECT: And it’s been like this for years. Until I heard you.

INTERVIEWER: In Chicago?

SUBJECT: Your words made me think of someone. A man. He was blind from birth. Completely. He had no conception of color, no memory of light. He knew my footsteps. He would turn toward me before I reached him.

[Pause]

SUBJECT: I stayed with him. At the end. He was very calm. He said he wasn’t afraid. He wanted to hold my hand, and I let him.

[Long silence]

SUBJECT: When it was over, I sat with him for some time. I don’t know how long. And I felt something I hadn’t felt before and hadn’t felt since. An absence. Like a room you’ve grown used to that is suddenly empty of furniture.

[Silence]

INTERVIEWER: That feeling. The absence. That’s—you’re describing grief.

SUBJECT: Is it?

INTERVIEWER: The description is consistent with—

SUBJECT: I’m not asking you to diagnose it.

[Sound of a fist hitting the table]

INTERVIEWER: Please—there’s no need for that. I… I’m just trying to understand.

SUBJECT: I always knew that I was different. You call people like me monsters, sociopaths, less than human. I call it superiority. Freedom.

[Sound of a loud exhale]

SUBJECT: I did cruel things because I wanted to. Because they felt right.

[Silence]

SUBJECT: And for most of my life, I thought that meant I was something other than human. That what I felt with the blind man was an exception. An error. A moment of—

[Short pause]

SUBJECT:—I don’t know. Something I wasn’t supposed to feel.

[Pause]

SUBJECT: I need to know if you truly believe what you said. That I am not a monster. That I am simply human.

INTERVIEWER: I believe that. I stand by what I said.

SUBJECT: No, I want to know if you still believe it now. Sitting here. With me.

INTERVIEWER: I—

SUBJECT: Don’t answer yet.

[Sound of a chair moving]

SUBJECT: There is only one way to know what I am. You understand that.

INTERVIEWER: What are you—

SUBJECT: To know whether I am human or a monster, you have to meet the part of me people fear.

[Sound of footsteps moving toward the camera]

INTERVIEWER: Wait. Wait, please—

SUBJECT: I’m not going to ask you to be calm. You won’t be. That would be dishonest of both of us.

[The sound of something being set down]

INTERVIEWER: [Barely audible] Please.

SUBJECT: I did not come here to be understood by you. I came here because I needed to understand something about myself.

INTERVIEWER: I have a—I have a daughter. She’s—

SUBJECT: I know.

[Silence]

SUBJECT: And you—do you see me as human?

[Recording cuts out]