Deep behind our sophisticated, modern self lies an ancient animal. The creature desires the things it has always desired and fears what it has always feared. What’s different is the facade we place over it, perfecting the lacquer of civility that turns a wild animal into a well-trained house pet.
The Beast within us has instinctive responses and urges, but they also carry a dark side. While strength and tenacity are seen as positive attributes, not everything it offers us leads to happy outcomes. It has the power to kill without emotion.
Instinctual responses to threats are nice, natural gifts. They protect the people we love and ourselves. Acts of blatant evil aren’t received so kindly. Some say the darkest side of our psychology is not natural. It’s inhuman. Dangerous. Criminal. From Satan himself.
As I see it, that’s not fair.
The Beast isn’t single-sided. We don’t get to pick the agreeable traits and filter out everything else. It doesn’t work that way. The fire that fuels it burns in multiple directions. We must take the good with the bad and accept what gets scorched.
There is a problem with modern life.
We work at repressing that inner monster as part of our daily routine. We push it down. Chain it up.
Highly structured social rules and Laws help us keep the creature hidden and retrained. Nevertheless, these social and civil restraints don’t provide any guarantees. The oppressed animal doesn’t play by those rules once it encounters the right situation and wakes.
The lie we tell ourselves is that no situation is right. The Beast will stay caged, forever, without maintenance. The extension to this is that evil people are inherently evil. Good ones are guilty of nothing.
That’s not true. Good people have evil moments.
From time to time, their creature breaks free, does some damage and then returns to confinement satisfied. Even for a split second, good people are visited by their animal. No one is wiser, sometimes not even the owner knows it came to the surface.
This is where my writing took me.
History proves that each human culture can work within any law, belief, religious, or moral construct, no matter how strange it may seem to another culture’s standards. It can plunder, rape, wage war, and consume anything it likes if it believes it’s right to do so.
Everyone finds a way.
As long as those inside that culture move exactly the same way at the same time, everything is just fine. The culture finds its equilibrium, life becomes stable, and then, for the most part, the creature rests. It’s not until someone else comes along who challenges, threatens and destabilises that order, that it stirs.
That’s when the inner monster rises again, and good people become evil just to remain sane, or to stay alive.
On writing SEETHINGS and its follow-up novel, I ventured into that psychological darkness in search of the darker self and how we manage the Beast. I discovered a much larger problem while I was doing it. The Beast’s restraints fray easily.
I never meant to cause hurt.
That wasn’t my intention.
I hope the creature stays locked down this time, because I don’t ever want that to happen again.
–A
SEETHINGS promises a gripping psychological thriller that blends murder, passion, and secrets of a sexless marriage. Forman’s vivid prose draws readers into a world where lightning illuminates the skies and hidden truths. As the storm clouds gather, Mitchell’s journey promises to unravel more than just the mystery of the murders.
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