Fear Kills

By Lu Xiaobo

Fear Kills

By Lu Xiaobo

I n this world,some people are good at causing fear,while others are good at sensing fear.

When I was a child,I heard from an old lady that right before the executioner lowers the knife,he first runs the blade over the back of the prisoner’s neck,caressing it lightly to the surface of the skin.Was the motion of touching of a knife to skin for the purposes of taking aim?No,not at all.The subtlety and lightness of the touch was simply to put the fear of God in the prisoner,so as to prepare himself to lose his head.

The fear created by the stoke of that icy cold blade to bare flesh certainly had a penetrating effect.Though no cut had actually been made,the prisoner’s soul had already fled from his body,due to the sheer terror of it all.

In order to prove the power of fear, Western scientists ran an experiment on a prisoner.They told the prisoner that he could choose to die painlessly.On the day of execution,the prisoner was escorted to a room.He laid down and stretched his hand into a small window. The doctor then narrated every step of the execution to the prisoner.

“Now we have cut your vein.”

Actually,his hand was just given a light scratch by the back of the knife. The doctor then reported again.

“You can now hear the sound of the dripping of your own blood.”

In fact,the dripping sound was made by drops of water from a tap oozing into a bronze basin.

Gradually,the prisoner went into convulsions and died.The conclusion was that he had actually died from fear,or we could say that he was frightened to death.

Because of the nature of the work that I do,I once had a chance to witness an execution by firing squad.The prisoner knelt down on the ground,and a legal examiner drew a white target on his chest,right above the heart.Then a solider aimed at the target with a gun.A shot was fired from the gun at a distance of the length of a bayonet.

Many years later,a female friend remarked at the cruelty of it all when she heard it narrated to her.Can you imagine how frightened he was of the white target,or how he felt when the bayonet was pointed at him over and over again?

My friend is a writer,so I figure she naturally has a greater sensitivity to the fear of others.It most likely has to do with her profession.I can truly appreciate her empathy for the rights of prisoners.For criminals,the death sentence may mean they have been sentenced to die,yet they still have the right to be free from fear and pain;otherwise,execution by firing squad would never have evolved into death by lethal injection.

To feel sympathy for the fear and terror of others is the moral fabric of mankind’s being.

(FromTales of a Night-shift Editor, Shanghai Sanlian Bookshop.Illustration: Tong Ling Chi Xingcheng)