Russell Twyce

Sex Sells, but Death Sells Even better You don’t believe that? Try looking up the sales statistics for tobacco products. The subliminal messages that cigarette companies put in are mostly of death but with just enough sex thrown in to throw off suspicion of what their really trying to say.

‘Smoke and die!” There is a good reason for that advertising ploy and it’s stated boldly in this post’s title. “Sex Sells, but Death Sells Even Better.”

“Hey!”  Someone might say. “Didn’t the anti-tobacco lobby fight hard to get those death messages?  Didn’t the tobacco protest each step of the way?”

What better way to get what you want entrenched than to make it appear that you’re being forced.  The tobacco companies had enough resources to fight the legislation if they REALLY wanted to.  Sex sells, but death sells even better.  Take a look at how many young people are smoking.  The death messages have done the work they were intended for: to sell cigarettes.

Die Rich as a ClickBank Pirate

“People are afraid of death: How could death sell products?” I don’t really dwell on that subject on this blog.  A better place to look to understand death better would be deathpro.com.  But I will explain the concept of using death for marketing purposes.

[private_Chevron]Each of us have a ‘death wish’ hidden deep inside.  The subconscious mind wants to die.  That is likely where the fear of death comes from too: we all know their is something inside that wants to die and we are afraid of it succeeding.  The internal death wish is what the subliminal ads geared to depicting death are appealing to.  And when you buy the product, or when you disobey your ‘will-power’ to keep smoking, you’re proving just how much control that deep, dark side has over your actions.  Death sells incredibly well — as long as you have a product like tobacco or alcohol that can legally offer and sell packaged death.[/private_Chevron]

A very short truth or fiction story by Russell Twyce

“My government,” the left-wing political candidate, in a fictional land where truth in advertising laws had been expanded to include politics, shouted into a microphone, “will tax you unmercifully and hand your hard-earned money over to our campaign friends. We will enact some new legislation geared at further complicating average people’s lives with bureaucratic nonsense, but which will open up vast new revenue streams for lawyers.  I solemnly promise that I will engage in costly boondoggles for no purpose but my own enjoyment. During my time in power, I’ll attempt to seduce as many young political interns into my bed as possible.”

Yar! Get Rich like a Pirate!

The speech then droned on longer to outline more of the excesses and unacceptable behavior that we all strongly suspect is truly happening in the high seats of power. And then he passed the podium to his worthy opponent.[private_Chevron]

“My administration will sink to unheard of levels of depravity.”  The candidate of the moral right wing party began. “I personally have a case of penis narcissism of epic proportions. To fully indulge my lusts, I’ll hire a bevy of expensive prostitutes to be my personal assistants. I’ll spend so much on myself and in lucrative contracts of questionable value to my political friends that my tax department will need to be relentless in resupplying the nation’s coffers. I won’t pay the slightest attention to what political polls tell me that people really want.”

“My government will table bills in parliament that are infinitely more heinous than any that my opponent has outlined. And,” the right wing candidate continued but then turned to grin wickedly at the other participant in the debate, “I’ll rescind this foolishness of requiring any semblance truth in our stated political platforms!”

The election result was a landslide victory for the right wing because that leadership hopeful had astutely realized that the common people much prefer a fiction they can pretend to believe is truth, to the stark truth they would like to think was fiction.[/private_Chevron]

Am I Truth or Fiction
This is a fiction story of a psychopath demonstrating his version of truth.

Am I truth or fiction? by Russell Twyce

“Is your search for stories aimed at truth or fiction today?” A prisoner asked while his shackles were being locked to the prison psychiatrist’s interviewing couch.

“I seek truth,” the doctor said while watching the guard leave, “but all you seem to offer is your fiction. I’m hoping today might be different.”

“You should call the guard back because my truth will still be true, but as it doesn’t mesh with the crap a university crammed into your skull, you will again see it as fiction.”

“That ‘crap’,” The psychiatrist scoffed, “as you refer to it, was developed after years of clinical studies, and by some of the world’s brightest minds.”

“But is an externally rendered depiction of a psychopathic mind set, as offered by a genius, more intrinsically accurate than the view of a psychopath, of above average intelligence, telling of the inner workings of his own mind?”

“The phrase ‘clinical studies’ does imply that psychopaths were indeed interviewed.”

Grow Your Twitter Following

“Yet another psychopath would interpret what was said differently than a shrink does, just as you routinely refuse to hear any truth I say as anything but fiction. I suppose that if you can manage to somehow cram your misunderstood conception of my mind into one of your utterly false but university accepted but boxes, then you’ll publish your own ‘clinical case studies’ of me and proclaim your brilliance.”

“Perhaps you could employ the time of your multiple life sentences to take correspondence courses toward a degree in psychiatry. Then you’ll have the accreditation to write your own views.” The psychiatrist settled his ample butt into his swiveling and reclining chair. “Your raw intellect is as strong as many of the students I graduated with.”

“I couldn’t pass the exams to gain a degree.” The convicted killer said flatly. “My answers to questions would differ from those the professors believe are correct.”

[private_Chevron]“Give me an example one.”

“According to a recent article I’ve read, ‘sociopaths adopt a particular belief system based on a logic of their own and they seldom have any doubts’. My participant’s knowledge of this belief set and this logic puts my opinions into the psychopath’s condition into conflict with the person grading my paper and because I don’t suffer any doubts, I’m unlikely to insert the wrong answer, just to get the question right.”[/private_Chevron]

“Can you tell me how your beliefs and logic differ from mine?”

“Certainly,” the sociopath smiled enigmatically, “but afterward, I’ll have to kill you.”

“I watched the guard secure your chains,” the psychiatrist chuckled: likelihood of his being harmed was remote, “so I’ll take my chances.”

“A psychopath’s logic differs from yours in that his is true and yours is bullshit. He is without doubts because Aristotle’s logic only allows truth with no other option. The Sophist diatribe that you accept as logic is always false because it’s rooted on untrue base precepts and this waffling version of reasoning allows for either yes or no, depending on which you want to result. Consequently, you’ll never achieve the level of certainty that a sociopath has.”

“One that allows you to make arbitrary life or death decisions for your victims.”

“Indubitably.”

[private_Chevron]“I’m not trained in law, so I’ll leave off this discussion on logic, to focus on your beliefs.”

“Or to put it more succinctly, you’ll ignore a vital portion of a psychopath’s mental makeup due to your unwillingness to allow your mind to become unfettered, or as you might view it, ‘unhinged’.”

Be a rich buccaneer for a few bucks an ear

“If learning to understand your logic would make me willing to murder a fellow human being, then yes, I’ll prefer not delving deeply into it.”

“A psychopath’s logic is the elusive key and were you to dare examining it objectively, you could write a paper on the sociopath that would lead to the real cure for condition.”

“Your logic is obviously warped. Your killing people, irrefutably proves that.”

“I disagree,” the killer countered, “but you expressed a desire to examine my end beliefs without first knowing what they derive from, so let’s switch topics.”

“I see it as another aspect of the same subject.”

“Because you’re judging it with your variable result logic.”

“The world is not black and white.”

“Yes it is.” The killer watched the psychiatrist drink from a bottle of water: the man’s prominent Adams apple bobbed as he swallowed. “And that pithy remark is utterly incorrect. In the daytime the world is light or white and at night it is dark and black. But black and white or light and dark has nothing to do with why a psychopath kills. He kills because differentiating between truth or fiction is a yes or no question. The victim ends up being alive or dead: there is no gray.”

“Yet somehow this absolute to absolute philosophy translates into a need to kill and to show no conscience during the heinous act or remorse after it.”

“Remorse is a function of believing one has done something wrong. I’ve no regrets regarding the crimes I’ve been convicted of.”

“Except in the fact that you were caught and stopped.” The doctor added.

“I performed my first murder with the intent of being apprehended and it took my committing three more, that you’re aware of, to bring about my capture. In defense of my lack of sorrow regarding my actions, I’ll present my list of trophies. I started with a corrupt cop, then I bagged a bottom-feeding lawyer. I took out a government bureaucrat, a corporate maggot and I would’ve aimed next for a politician. All told, I think many people might have believed I performed exterminations but media hype drummed in that it was socially acceptable to think on my acts as brutal crimes.”

“Your notion of ‘many people believing’ is your wishful projection. It is not fact.”

“How completely brain dead it is to say that!” The psychopathic murderer moved to gain a more comfortable position: to perform the awkward action while shackled, he needed to strain briefly at the extreme limits of his restraining chain.

“You wishfully suppose that only 1% of the population is sociopaths’” the murderer continued, “but the percentage of people who are on the path towards it is exponentially higher. The one percent consists of only those who have decided they’re ready to loudly express their political views.”

“In a voice without any compassion or conscience.”

“Again your failing to address the sociopath’s logic renders your any attempt at full comprehension futile. My murders were overflowing with empathy for humanity.”

“I strongly doubt that anyone will ever understand such a ridiculous statement.”

“Then I’ll have to enunciate it in a tone with stronger conviction.” The psychopath glanced at the notepad his interviewer was busy scribbling on. “Do you take down what I say verbatim?”

“No,” the doctor’s eyes flicked unconsciously to his desk drawer, “I just jot down my own impressions.”

“The recording device in your desk has the job of keeping my words.” The killer’s eyes then circled the room and they spied a camera. “Are we on video as well?”

“Does that concern you?”

“It concerns me,” the murderer chuckled, “but positively so. I didn’t commit suicide after my murders precisely so that my motivations could be objectively studied.”

“Let’s skip to your lack of a human conscience.”

“Instead, let’s jump to a syllogism of Aristotle’s logic. Consciousness includes having a conscience, a sociopath is conscious and therefore a sociopath has a conscience. A university or expert that proposes otherwise is obviously not presenting the truth.”

“But you repress yours.”

“Actually, I don’t. I sidestep mine. The vermin I killed were of the sort who repress.”

“How can one avoid the conscience altogether?”

“By mentally assigning the action as affecting a thing, instead of a living being.”

“By dehumanizing your victim, like by thinking of them as vermin?”

“Police operating under their present guidelines are rodents: lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians are certainly just leeches, sucking the blood of our human endeavors but I had neither the means nor desire to eradicate my victims by class.” He smiled. “There exist far more lawyers than a lone sociopath can effectively eliminate.”

“Was that a yes or a no to my question?”

“It was a partial yes. While stalking and killing my victims, I did think of them by the labels of their professions, as opposed to my mentally using their names. But it was also no because the actual mechanism for diverting my conscience was different. In my mind, I wasn’t killing a person, a policeman, a lawyer or any individual. Instead, I was breaking the law against murder. It’s the law’s fault that a human needs to be standing in harm’s way when a sociopath wants to break society’s law of murder.”

Since that was a meaty reply, the shrink was busy jotting down notes. The killer occupied his attention with a casual look at the office décor.

“Is that your sheepskin in that off-level frame?” The psychopath asked and then he strained his eyes. “I can’t read your alma matter from here.”

“Is it not straight?” The doctor stood and moved to the diploma. Along the way he said the university’s name out loud. He jigged a corner. “Is this better?”

“Perfect.”

“Do you think of the law as if it exists as an entity?” The doctor asked.

“You do as well.” The killer whispered.

“What was that?” The man moved closer to better hear.

“I said,” the psychopath’s voice was even lower, “you do too. Though it’s only a theoretical concept, you treat it as if it exists and that fictional entity was in truth, the object I was striking at.” His volume had dropped to murmuring. “Your law even treats itself as a thing: I wasn’t charged with killing a person but rather with breaking the law of murder.”

Click Here to put Persuasion into your Words

“That is ludicrous.” The psychiatrist might have been about to elaborate but his throat was suddenly clamped in the killer’s teeth. His search for stories had found a true non-fiction that didn’t hold a ‘happily ever after’ for him.

The murderer had waited until his next victim had leaned in close enough to hear. He already knew where the critical distance was, from testing it earlier. The Adam’s apple was his target and he had turned his head enough when striking, to bite on it. His jaw closed the doctor’s windpipe and his purchase was sufficient to hold tightly against the dying man’s terminal struggles. The psychopath kept his jaw clenched, despite the blood in his mouth, until the victim’s nerves stopped twitching.[/private_Chevron]

“I told you I’d have to kill you afterward.” He calmly said to the corpse. “Not to keep my words a secret, but to attach a life or death impact to them.”

The end.

The purpose of this short story is NOT to glorify psychopaths: my objective is to show that understanding why a psychopath kills is the only way to stop them from killing.  There are A LOT more potential killers in our society than you realize!  Everyone who speeds, runs red lights, experiences road rage or just road annoyance is a budding psychopath that just has not been pushed to murder – YET.

An alien is on trial for sedition  -  Short Story by Russell Twyce

“My words and actions in this courthouse,” a man acting as his own defense council said to the jury in his opening statement, “will be what they are. You’ll view what I say as sedition if you will. But to me, this trial is an opportunity to share my truth. I suppose that I’m really signing my own death warrant. By a paradox, your finding me not guilty would be absolute evidence of my guilt because convincing you of my innocence can only be accomplished by my committing further sedition in front of you.”

Then the accused turned sharply on the heel of his wheelie sneaker, and glided on back to his seat. “I’m done,” he said to the prosecutor.

“The young man who stands accused,” the government lawyer orated in his turn, “has brought this all on himself.” He went on to describe the alien’s actions of going into a police station and confessing his crime. “Neither the police nor the district attorney’s office had any option but to bring this charge, because he was continuing to commit sedition in both the police station and in all interviews with him since.”

“Calling the accused as a prosecution witness is highly irregular,” the judge stated for the record: his main concern wasn’t for how injurious the defendant’s testimony might be to his own case, but rather in preventing an appeal from besmirching his judicial reputation, “but as the defendant has suggested it, I’ll allow it.”

“You’re an alien.” The prosecutor began. “Why would you choose to practice your sedition here, in a state that isn’t your own and which employs the death penalty?”

[private_Chevron]“Your question is illogical to me on several points. The first is that I’m not an alien by any definition. I don’t ‘belong’ to any other states: both my body and mind are for my soul’s free use in experiencing life. I’m from here just as I’m from everywhere on earth. My death experience showed me that I, and all of us, really come from a place existing in the gap between matter and time, I ‘belong’ to that place but it isn’t a state.” The accused young man then pointedly directed his next words at the judge. “I wasn’t originally born in this part of the planet you’ve put a border around and arbitrarily called a state—which you wrongly profess has some authority.”

“I’ll have no more seditious talk in my court!” The judge hammered his gable.

“The second,” the defendant ignored the magistrate’s outburst, “is that the term ‘sedition’ isn’t anything that exists. A state has no form in reality: it’s a concept some deluded people have agreed to think of as real. ‘Sedition’ is defined as conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against a state’s authority. The ‘state’s authority’ is a piñata that exists only in your unreal vision of reality.[/private_Chevron] Opinions I state are of what I see truly existing in this material world and your mind’s eye interprets my words as being a fiesta stick aimed at damaging your fictional papier-mâché treasure trove.”

“Which like Pandora’s box,” the judge retorted, “would spill evils into the world.”

“It would disgorge the true freedom that is our human birthright and which your delusion of statehood, rooted on your lust for power, has stolen from us.” The youth smiled. “But my absolute liberty can’t actually be taken away, so I’ve taken it back.”

“Yet you’re here in custody,” his honor stressed the ‘in custody’, “and awaiting the decision of this authority on whether you will live or die.”

“And I arrived here of my own free accord,” the accused quipped back, “while fully cognizant of all the potential outcomes.”

“Uh.” The prosecuting attorney had been biding his time. He hadn’t wanted to interrupt the judge. “You haven’t answered my questions yet. Why here? You’ve placed yourself in a life or death situation because sedition is still punishable here, by death.”

[private_Chevron]“That’s another notion of yours which is utterly incorrect. Death isn’t a penalty. Death is a soul’s reward for having completed its life mission. Spending my lifetime incarcerated in a penal institute would be a torment for me. I’d rather put myself to a mortal hazard. I’ll be found not-guilty and walk free, or be found guilty and die.”

“If this court sets you free,” the judge angrily interjected, “it would be guilty of the sedition that you are charged with. The justice department would be undermining its authority to keep citizens safe from criminals. Crimes are real things that happen to actually existing people and cause true-to-life harms.”[/private_Chevron]

“But slavery to the rule-of-law isn’t the only way to address those issues.” The man in the witness box stated emphatically. “In fact, rooting a real need for public order keeping on a series of unreal tenets is the worst possible method. It causes some crimes to be committed, exacerbates others and contributes to the motivation of all crimes. I’ve come into this court charged with sedition for inciting people to rebel against an authority that is guilty of heinous crimes against humanity.”

“Crimes against humanity!” The judge’s face went blood red as he ejaculated.

“But the court holds itself as immune from prosecution for the wrongs it commits so I’ve brought the matter before the bench by an alternate route,” the young accused spoke directly to the jury box, “in having myself put on trial for sedition against the state’s law.”

“Will you enlighten us,” the state’s prosecuting lawyer inquired: [private_Chevron]he was seriously interested because he often felt in his innermost psyche, that law was inserting a measure of ruination in some peoples lives that his conscience felt responsible for. ‘Might there truly be a better way: one that wasn’t just anarchy?’ But he used a mocking tone of voice so as not to openly betray his oath to law, “of precisely which crimes the law has been complicit in and how an amazing new form of policing would work in practice?”

“Overruled!” His honor snapped, though none but he had objected to the question. “My court won’t be the soapbox for the rants of a fanatic. He has already shown his contempt for society’s welfare and freely admitted to his sedition. Were this a trial without a jury, I would be ready to hand down my decision right now.” Further to this, the judge would’ve eagerly ordered the bailiff to perform the execution on the spot: so that notions even more threatening to his way of life couldn’t spread to the death row cells and into the general prison population.

“As the magistrate is ready,” the young man in t-shirt and jeans stood and faced his peers, “then you must be able to deliberate now too. I’m not permitted, and likely not able to concisely describe my vision of our wonderful future, free of law. I also doubt that a person still enslaved to the notion of law’s rule could envision it yet, so I’m quite happy that I’m not required to elaborate. I can emphatically state that I am strongly convinced and the statements I’ve made leading up to my charge of sedition were born in my freedom of beliefs and uttered with a right to free expression — whether you understand or agree with my opinions or not. My turning myself in to the police, in a state that retains the death penalty, and openly displaying so-called sedition in this trial are undeniable proof of my faith’s conviction. So decide now if freewill is more important to you than an imaginary state’s theoretical authority.”

“I will determine when the jury should begin deliberating!” The judge screamed.

“Then do it.” The youth challenged. “I’ll wave my defense. I’m prepared to sum up my case to the jury.”

“It seems to me,” the prosecutor intoned quietly, “that you just did that.”

“I took the tirade as that too.” The judge said. “But to satisfy formalities, I’ll call for those now. Wrap up your case for the jury.”

“Thank you.” The young man leaned back slightly on his wheelie shoes and rolled to a position in front of the jury box. “The crime of murder, which shares the ultimate penalty with sedition, is far different from the one I’m accused of. A murder is an act done to a person, yet the court deems that a wrong happened to the law itself. Had I killed someone, you would be asked to decide if I’d broken the law against murder, instead of deliberating on whether or not I killed someone. That concept is murky when thinking of a murder, because a human did wrongfully die.”

“With sedition on the other hand,” he continued after a slight pause, “no one person can be shown as having received a harm. The victim is the theoretical state and all supposed damage done to it, or intended to it, is entirely subjective. Your choice is to deem that my actions and words hurt the entity that you see embodied by a flag.” He pointed. “Yet I see that as a tablecloth on a stick: it doesn’t represent anything that truly exists, it’s only the symbol of a notion—a false impression. In my defiance against the non-existent state, and in my inciting others to rebellion, I didn’t damage the one physical item that presumably represents it.” An index finger had remained targeted on the nation’s banner. “In other words, I’ve not done anything in the real world to be construed as a wrong, I’ve only challenged an ideal I believe is untrue. Have you ever allowed your consciousness to realize that the law against ‘sedition’ was enacted in a direct contravention of a constitutional right of free expression? I would rather be dead than accept and feign obedience to such a dishonorable rule system that embraces obvious absurdity and fakes it off as truth.”

“I see your decision hinges on only one factor.” He took a deep breath. “Is your view of the world, and the judge’s take on society, worth intrinsically more than mine is? Is my death necessary to muzzle a philosophy that you don’t want to see explored?”

The prosecutor’s wrap up included the predictable platitudes about society’s needs over the desires of an individual, but his full fervor was conspicuously absent. The government’s lawyer was thankful that he wasn’t on this jury duty. An obligation to his profession would’ve compelled him to vote one way, when the entire essence of his being was yearning to cast an acquittal.[/private_Chevron]

“You’ll now be sequestered, until you’ve reached a decision.” The judge growled and with a glance at the defendant’s satisfied expression, he knew that the verdict of no importance. The alien had already achieved the victory he’d sought and in fact, a guilty verdict and his death at the hands of the state would gain his ideas even more exposure. In either eventuality, his precious court was defamed by the soon to be condemned man’s last question. ‘Is my death necessary to muzzle a philosophy that you don’t want to see explored?’

Readers, you’re the jury. Please voice your verdict in a comment. A life is in your balance.