Happy Friday the 13th!
He appeared before me, rolling his eyes dreadfully, and sticking out a tongue as red as an iron drawn from the fire. I begged for mercy; in vain. With one hand he grabbed me by the throat, and with the other he tore out the eye I am now missing. In the place where my eye had been, he stuck his burning-hot tongue. With it he licked my brain and made me howl with pain.
Then the other hanged man, who had seized my left leg, also wanted to leave his mark on me. First he began by tickling the sole of the foot he was holding. Then the monster tore the skin off it, separated all the nerves, bared them, and set to playing on them as though on a musical instrument; but since I did not render a sound that pleased him, he began to twist them, as one tunes a harp….
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Jan Potocki, “The Story of the Demoniac Pancheco.” From Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday. Ed. Italo Calvino.
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