Haunted《Guts》

书没有读过。不过那篇infamous短篇Guts2004年的时候读过。

那天朋友提到这本书。回家查查，发现这篇04年的读书笔记：

(A word of warning: please do not read this before or after your main meal. You might find what I am going to tell you a bit distressing.)

Having seen so many horror movies I had developed this aloofness when I saw blood and guts and they no longer shock.

Then last Saturday evening after my tea I opened the weekend supplement came with the newspaper I bought on the day and found this short story. The editor’s note read: the most gruesome short story ever published? You see when I saw this “?” I thought to myself: an overstatement to attract eyeballs or what? So in order to prove this was a pile of old guff I decided to read it.

The story was called “Guts” and was written by Chuck Palahnuik the author who wrote Fight Club (that book was later made into a cult film). It contained three mini stories about masturbation which according to the author were all based on true events.

Story 1 was about this 13-year-old boy who was a little sex manic he once tried to jack off by sticking a deliberately sharpened carrot up his own rear end. But rumoured explosive orgasm never came. And he hid the dirty carrots with his dirty laundry and went to have supper but when he got back to his room his carrot had gone his mom had taken the dirty clothes and washed them. He assumed that his mom had found that sordid carrot but nobody in his family ever confronted him yet his teen years were scared by this no-longer visible carrot.

(Having read what I just told you you might think: so what? What’s so shocking about that? Exactly I was not shocked by it at all. When I read it the first time I even laughed. But do allow me to tell you the second story see if you still find it funny.)

Story 2 was about a boy whose older brother was in the navy. This older brother had travelled a fair bit and told his younger brother that Arab guys would attain their sexual pleasure by sticking a metal rod inside their boner. Since the mental rod was hard to come by the boy decided to try it out using a wax thread. And the disaster struck the wax rod got stuck inside his guts hurt and he was hospitalised. And his parents paid good money the money they saved for his university education to get this f*cking rod out. And this kid’s future had remained limpy ever since.

(When I was reading this the first thing came into my mind was: Ouch this one hurt a little.… I know people do silly things with their body but this was pure stupidity! And to call this the most gruesome story ever published? What a load of b*ll*cks! So I read on to see where Chuck was leading us…)

Story 3 was told in first person. It was about this kid enjoying seeking pleasure under water. His family had a nice pool in the backyard and he had developed this method beating off in the pool in the water.

(OK this sounds innocent enough right?)

One day he was doing this usual pleasure dive. Accident happened and his ass got stuck by a circulation pump. He tried everything he could to be unstuck. But to much of his dismay the pump started to suck everything which had been neatly arranged inside him in a messy gruesome and bloody way …

(Well I am not to going to repeat what Chuck wrote here. Anyway if you have some imagination it’s not difficult to work it out yourself. I can tell you how I felt that evening when I was reading this passage seeing this kid’s stuff going down the drain in a literal term the tea which I just had was doing a reverse turn.)

Eventually he was reduced to a tiny skin-bag… His father found him later and called pool guys to have it cleaned. When the pool guys came his father said it was a naughty dead dog. But when they cleaned the pump they found a Vitamin C pill still stuck inside a bit of guts left there…

(OK I admit now that it is shocking. But does shocking mean good? To be honest I still cannot work out the moral of this story perhaps one of you could tell me …)