Madeline’s Reviews > Notes on an Execution > Status Update

It seems abundantly clear now, the opportunity you've wasted. There is good and there is evil, and the contradiction lives in everyone. The good is simply the stuff worth remembering. The good is the point of it all. The slippery thing you have always been chasing.

It arrives, at first, tingling small. Fleeting, a lump at the base of your throat. Something fragile and birdlike is trapped in your body, fluttering inconsolable.
Fear.
You swallow it in.

“The chaplain watched you with a stark sort of pity—you have always believed that pity is the most offensive of feelings. Pity is destruction wearing a mask of sympathy.
Pity strips you bare. Pity shrinks.”