Before continuing, I should probably address the issue of my title. Seeing as I was once mentally impaired, am I allowed to use the demeaning term "retarded"? Am I perhaps as a normally developed individual risking reproducing harmful stereotypes by referring to my past self in this manner? Am I destigmatizing the word, thereby robbing it of its power? Make of that what you will, I am well aware of the concerns and willing to listen, I don't shy away from critique. But I won't change my natural way of communicating to the whims of others, so we will likely have to agree to disagree when it comes to nomenclature. 

 

Back then I didn't know what the term meant, my parents referred to me as "having my own challenges". I didn't even realize I was "special". My family knew of the word though, my oldest brother almost challenged a stranger to a duel for using it to snicker at me (my mother hindered it from coming to blows).

 

"Kåre, Kåre?" Mother was trying to make me concentrate on her instead of the ceiling fan. I loved ceiling fans. I couldn't have expressed it in these terms, but I found them aesthetic and well-balanced. As well as wondrous in their constant and circular movement. The cool air that emitted from them made me also think of them as "nice", a term I had learned from my parents who used it to describe things that worked as they were intended and behavior that was approved. I guess my thinking pattern back then can be described as moralistic and teleological, in other words, I believed intimate objects and living things had a purpose — and I would at times get upset when they didn't fulfill that purpose. Broken ceiling fans were horrible for the same reason mean strangers were, they didn't fulfill their natural purpose — to spin or in the latter case to be kind.  

 

"If you listen, that would make me very happy", mother knew what worked. I lowered my sight from the lovely purpose-fulfilling machine. "You're going to have to do something that feels hard, but it will be okay". I was filled with hesitation, mother spoke to me the same way she did before a dentist visit. "Don't shake, it's okay." I hadn't realized my body had started to move, but she was right and the shaking was subdued due to her warm smile. Mother was the center of my universe, I didn't realize she would die one day. She was eternal and kind, like a saint of familiar love. Occasionally I would grow angry at her, I didn't have the term "tyrant" in my vocabulary, but that was basically how I thought of her those days when she insisted I go to bed early or denied me to eat expensive candy I saw in the store. During a few of those episodes, my temper had gotten the better of me and I hit her. She fell to the ground once after a punch, I cried more than she did after that. Wrought by guilt enough for her to spend more time comforting me than being angry. 

Memories like those are why I won't name my diagnosis. I wasn't a bad person, because I couldn't control myself. I don't judge people suffering from the same disability I had, and neither should you. I know that a lot of those who have made the same journey as I have don't share similar experiences, having been less harsh and violent. So as to not tempt readers to generalize from what might have been a particularly severe, even misrepresentative case, I'll allow my precise diagnosis to remain redacted. Knowing that the trained psychiatrists and other medical professionals amongst my readers probably have a good guess — I ask you to try and respect this decision. 

"I won't shake"

 

"Good, good! You're so nice."

 

"I'm nice, I'm nice, I'm nice" I said happily. I was fulfilling my purpose. She waited for me to finish.

 

"Now, Kåre, you have to do what I tell you to do. No matter how scary it feels. Do you understand?" I nodded. "No matter how not-nice it feels" This confused me. I was implicitly asked to do something which wasn't nice, in order to make my mother happy, doing something not-nice to do something nice. I felt like a mortal who was told by his prophet to love his neighbor by stoning him to death for blasphemy. "No matter how not-nice it feels. We have to do it. Do you understand". The "we" in that sentence made me put the pieces together. Mother must be referring to something which appeared to be not-nice, but was in actuality nice — to see past a type of moral mirage. I nodded, happy that I managed to figure it out. 

 

We left the waiting area, going through a long glass hall and then exiting into wild woods. I usually loved going into nature, but this wasn't right. I tried to turn back, but mother caressed me and reminded me that we had to do this. The screams and crying were what scared me. When we arrived at the bleeding men hanging from the tree, things didn't get better. Other children like me crying nearby them. I ran, but two guard-bots caught me. Mother caught up, and pushed them aside. They had built-in pillows on their arms to ensure soft grips and were designed to look friendly, but still frightened me then and there. 

"It's okay. I'm here." It felt good being held by her.

 

"Home! I want to go home! Home!"

 

"It's okay, we can't go home right now. We have to do this first"

 

I cried and screamed. But she insisted that this had to be done first. I realized that this was one of those immutable imperatives, like going to the dentist or going to bed. It wasn't one of those obligations that could be negotiated away, at most this could be delayed. With heavy steps, I walked towards the trees with the bleeding men. She had the knife I dropped. 

 

As I came closer, I realized that the screaming came from them. Partly muffled by the gags placed in their mouths. The knife was placed in my hand. They had wounds in strange shapes, I didn't recognize it then but the cuts formed religious runes. She guided my hand, and I cut into one of the men. Drawing a piece of one of the signs, him screaming and me crying while doing it. That was my cost, having to play a small part in it. Shortly after I lost consciousness, not because of the stress but due to the ritual taking effect. 

 

I didn't wake up for over a week. When I opened my eyes mother was beside me. It's hard to describe how it was, seeing her with my new perspective. The same person, with the same features, but my sensations now conveyed more information and nuances. Thoughts were processed quicker and could provide more answers to the same question than before. For example, based on the wetness on my mothers face I deduced that she had most likely recently been crying. Upon the subtle details on her face, I realized without processing it consciously that they must have been tears of joy. 

 

"Kåre!" She bent over the bed and hugged me. I held her tight while processing information about my own name. Who was Kåre? Like when you stare at a cloud that suddenly changes from an amorphic figure into something specific and meaningful, you changing when it feels like the world is, the memories in my past were recontextualized.

 

"I'm no longer retarded" I said in awe. She laughed at me and reprimanded me for using that awful word.

 

It is challenging to write this. Because I don't want to convey the idea that people with cognitive disabilities live unworthy or unfulfilling lives. I was happy as my former self. Imagine that you had been given wings one day, that would have opened up a new world to you. It wouldn't make you look down upon people without wings, it would just make things faster for you and provide more options. My journey was the mental equivalent of that. The same experiences and information became easier to understand immediately on a surface level, while I could also generate more elaborate interpretations — being able to see through previously murky water at a glance and dive deeper than I had thought possible. In the previous part of my life, an angry face meant that somebody was angry. Now I knew they might be making a silly face as a joke, faking an emotion for some instrumental purpose, or simply have a "resting bitch face". These explanations aren't mutually exclusive either, questions can now have several answers which are pieces of a puzzle.

 

I was and am immensely thankful to my mother and family. They were amazed to get to know the new me. My two older brothers helped me with homework as I started to study to take in all the information I'd missed while placed in a special school. When they heard me discussing boys candidly for the first time, that celebrity so-and-so could do what he wants with me, my youngest brother looked like he was about to die out of embarrassment. His image of me as naive and completely innocent dying in a violent coalition with reality. 

 

The studying wasn't that hard. I don't know if most of the information needed had been implanted as a part of the theurgical process ("theurgy" is magic by channeling powers from gods). If my new mind had just absorbed details from old memories, such as hearing my mother discuss parliament with a friend once, and from that conversation now having deduced that we lived in a society with some type of citizen participance in regards to government policy. Perhaps both in some way, or neither and instead a third alternative I haven't figured out. My mother insists that I'm just very bright and a natural learner, but being unbiased in regard to her daughter's capabilities isn't her strongest feature (a flaw I love in her). 

As I came to understand what had happened in greater detail, and why, I of course suffered the "beneficiary's guilt", asking myself if I was really worthy of all this. Beneficiary interest groups (organizations for people healed by rituals) had long before made the heavy lifting for me, petitioned the king, and lobbied political parties. I was entitled to all the stored information on my case, including about the man I had cut that day. I won't reveal his name publically, I just needed to know. At first it felt idiotic to send the message I wanted to write, other days it felt like a moral necessity. In case the recipient turned out to be a crazy stalker, I arranged to get a temporary number and then reached out. 

 

The text message included the following: 

"Hey, we don't know each other. What I'm about to say might bring up painful memories, I apologize if it is hurtful to read, I'm sending this because me saying nothing feels like it might be even worse for you. I was the one your son was sacrificed to heal. I just wanted to let you know that the lottery didn't pick him out to die to help some vain idiot get a better figure, it helped me live a normal and independent life. Which would have otherwise been completely impossible. I don't know if you want "a thank you", or if that feels unimportant and even insulting. But if it would help, then yes, I am extremely thankful. 

Sincerely, Kåre"

I didn't include my last name. Didn't want them to be able to look me up, beneficiary rights ensured that I could remain completely anonymous if I chose to. The phone rang, fuck! Why couldn't they text back first, to let me evaluate their craziness level by proxy. I answered, the person on the other end was crying.

 

"Oh, I'm sorry" I blurted out, guilty over having brought this storm of emotions on her.

 

"Don't be!" She almost screamed in my ear, the voice belonged to a middle-aged woman "You did the right thing. It's just that thinking of it makes me emotional."

 

"Okay" I didn't know what to say.

 

"Don't feel bad. We should meet up, to talk about this." I hesitated "in a neutral public place. So you can feel safe, trust me I'm harmless. But nonetheless"

 

I agreed but brought my two brothers with me, two gingers both a far bit taller than average (both of them secretly armed).  The cafeteria she picked out was a very picturesque place, so I tried to joke with my brotherly body guards that if I was murdered it would at least be in a pleasant setting. Mr. and Mrs. X didn't look particularly murdery upon arrival. The slim dark haired father had acne scars across his face and a stern look, the mother was blonde and slightly chubby. If they were intimidated by my brothers, they didn't show it.

 

After exchanges of standard phrases of politeness, and me explaining my former condition, Mr X got to the chase — "You don't have to feel guilty. If anyone should feel guilt, it should be us"

 

"No, don't say that"

 

"It doesn't matter if I say it or not, it's true. We failed as parents."  Mrs. X nodded along. "We tried to convince him to get a decent living. Told him not to accept sacrificial-lottery tickets. He responded in some glib way like 'if you believe in astronomically unlikely events happening, then why don't you buy tickets for the normal lottery? And we'll see what happens first, you get your name called and become a multimillionaire, or my name gets pulled and I die'. Or 'you know the more people take these tickets, the less likely it is that your name will get pulled. Just like the chance of winning are watered down by selling more tickets in regular lotteries. So isn't me accepting a ticket really the heroic thing to do?'.

We tried to be serious, but he just goofed around about it. Wouldn't listen"

 

"He didn't get along at any of his jobs" Mrs. X continued. "Management and him ended up arguing, and either he left or they fired him. It wasn't his fault, I heard stories of how they treated him. But he probably could have done more to become agreeable."

 

"So he participated in the lottery not to become homeless?" I said, afraid I might have benefitted from a man selling his life in a desperate situation. 

 

"No, nothing like that deary. We were always there for him. And the basic income is more generous than a lot of activists claim. If you just live prudently, no drinking or shopping expensive things, and you can make it by with a home, food, and all that even without a job"

 

"Problem is, that's one of the points where we failed as parents" Mr.X filled in "he didn't settle for living a simple life of unemployment, or just biting his tongue and taking a few hits to the ego to continue earning a paycheck. No, not only didn't we teach him how to listen properly, we didn't manage to teach him how to live modestly. He bought consoles, computers, sex-bots, a clean-bot, drank, gambled. Was the life of a party. The only way you can pull all of that off is if you're a doctor or something, commit crimes, or take part in the lottery. So he accepted the temple's money, and boy do they pay you well to take part.

 

Give you little brochures as well, and show you information videos. Telling you how unlikely it is, 'its likelier to get cancer without smoking than to get your name called, its less probable than being killed by a stranger in a robbery gone wrong', and all of that shit. Well, the brochures weren't all wrong in his case. They blabbered on about all the lives you could change for the better, and he seems to have genuinely done so for you."

 

"Yes, I don't know how to say this, but if not for your son I would still be retarded" They winced at the word, then we laughed all of us at the absurdity of the situation. "Have you seen the recording?"

 

"No, and you shouldn't either." Said Mrs. X. "We remember him for the good things in his life. His kindness, his generosity, and his charm. You shouldn't focus on how he ended his journey". Seeing as I was the reason his journey ended, I felt that I had to. We separated on good terms that day, I still met them for coffee occasionally.

 

I lied to them as we departed, said I wouldn't look up the video. A few emails to the right government agencies, they acquired the file from the temple, responded to me after three days, and after a short download I would just have to hit play. Never had any object in my life been harder to move than the computer-mouse was at that moment, having heard lectures from benefactors who were both for and against looking up this type of information, I was pulled in two. After thinking of how I would have felt in his place, I would have wanted people to know what I went through, I pressed play. 

The forest was there on my screen again, an information bar indicated that I could toggle between different camera angles. I lowered the volume as to not be deafened by the men screaming and the mentally handicapped teenagers and children crying. I now knew the societal background of what was happening. Deities did provide miracles, at the cost of human blood. While billionaires could pay out of pocket for people to risk becoming a human sacrifice in exchange for a small fortune for everyone whose name wasn't called out, ordinary people had to finance these grisly rituals through insurance cooperatives and the like. When I was born, my dad's labor union membership had turned out to include access to being the beneficiary of such a lottery, the union paid people like X an enormous amount of money each to put their name in a machine, and the "winner" was killed in a ritualized manner. Seeing as the arrangement was expensive, my parents had to take me through a lot of evaluations to prove my condition, and a lot of natural treatment to see if other options could help, before I was put on the waiting list. 

 

Once all of that was done, I had to wait for the terminally ill kids to go first. Then people who suffered immense pain due to their conditions, who were regularly dangerous (my occasional punches at mom weren't enough to qualify to butt in line). The union couldn't waste that much money on a benefit either, so there weren't a lot of lotteries held every year. My mother bought into separate waiting list through her home insurance, my name now on two lists. Still, it took until I was 19. That's when I walked up to X in that forest. 

As I saw myself carving into him, I felt sorry for me. But not in the classical self-pitting way, but rather like I saw a stranger going through it. So much had changed that I felt like a different person. After the old me fainted and was carried away, it took a while for the other benefactors to be coached into carving into their sacrifice victims. Benefactors who physically couldn't participate, such as those in a coma, or who wouldn't due to psychological reasons, had to have a series of runes carved into themselves instead. Without anesthetics. I wondered if that might have been better. 

Once we left, there was only the bleeding men and chanting priest who just entered the scene. And then it came, what the chanting had called forth. Most gods have a sacred beast, an animal that they regard as having a higher value than humans. Dead people are fed to them as burial rituals, priestesses and priests spend time grooming and carrying for them. Due to their subconscious connection to the divine, their god acting like an invisible pack leader or pet owner in their minds, the beasts are studied for signs from their god. Movements are carefully observed and documented. 

From the woods came a hybrid creature. Part snake, part horse, part wolf — with human female ghostly body parts thrown in for good measure. Sacrifice victims to Hera could be fed to her spiders, monsters that buried through their skin, laid eggs inside them, for the poor souls to eatan from the inside by their young. Freya's cats toyed with some of their victims, and being fed to the worms of the earth goddess Ale didn't seem like fun either. But I wondered if this wasn't worse than all of those. The creature belonged to Loke — who had fathered the snake Jörmungandr, the horse Sleipner, the wolf Fenrir and the semi-corpse goddess Helena. The animal carried features of all of his children, as some type of cruel divine joke I presume. It hobbled forth more than ran or walked, levitating bit by bit, to then fall to the ground. 

Out of a semi-transparent humane female face, a set of wolf's jaws emerged and started tearing one of the men to pieces. A second head, snake-like, opened and two humanoid arms came out, sharp fingers cutting through another man and pulling his remains into the snake's mouth. I vomited, paused, and went back to see what I missed. If they had to go through this, then I could at least force myself to watch it. 

 

It was just as slow and painful as you expect of being eaten alive, with the added horror of it being carried out by a monster. I wasn't the first to ask this question, but why? Why do the gods demand this cruelty from us? Couldn't Loke have healed me without X going through this? There are mountains of books trying to answer this. Some say that the gods are well-meaning but limited in their ability to affect our world, rituals like this open up pathways for their magic to work. Others claim that the gods are mad, demanding these macabre acts to drive away boredom. I sure won't end that debate here. 

 

Another debate I won't end is if this was right. Should people be paid to do this to themselves, even if it gives the less fortunate like me a new life? Are the Muslims, Christians, and Buddhist right, that we should bow down to gods who refrain from such harsh demands? If not, what is our answer to those who follow "the thorny path"? Worshipers who don't compromise with the bloodier demands of our gods, instead raid to collect involuntarily sacrifice victims, and partake in rituals dedicated to our gods but that we deem to be "dark magic" due to their high costs and risks. The fact that X had to volunteer and be paid are human inventions, the ban against child sacrifices is a human invention. Concessions we force on the divine rites to make our symbiosis with the metaphysical masters more tolerant to our sensibilities. If we condemn Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists for forsaking the gods of our ancestors, how do we defend ourselves against similar accusations from the thorned ones?

I don't have all the answers. It seems like there is a middle way between paternalistically denying adults options of making bad decisions, and removing all traffic rules for the sake of freedom. As well as a compromise between saying "tough luck" to people with disabilities untreatable by mundane methods and allowing someone to die screaming so that a rich guy can get a bigger penis. I'm obviously biased, but to me, it seems unconscionable that we continue to allow human sacrifices to increase the IQ of normally gifted individuals, the beauty of the non-disfigured, and similar. People who have been given reasonable cards in life shouldn't be able to buy themselves a winning hand, while people who have been denied a set at the table should be allowed a place to sit — as long as someone of sound mind consents to take the risk of being sacrificed and is compensated handsomely for that risk. 

If it wasn't for X, I wouldn't have found a man to marry and have a child on the way. I wouldn't have graduated from MedSchool, how many patients won't I be able to help through his sacrifice? So I would like to briefly address him directly. If you can look back on this world from the next, then I thank you with every atom of my being.