I know Halloween was awhile ago, but recently on my way to work, I walked through a scene straight out of a horror movie.  But first, today’s word.

eviscerate, verb –  to disembowel; to remove the entrails

Learned from:  Quake  (PC, Mac, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn, mobile)

Developed by id Software (PC), Lobotomy Software (Saturn), Midway Games (N64)

Published by GT Interactive (PC), MacSoft (Mac), Sega (Saturn), Midway Games (N64)  (1996)

Quake had a lot of personality, from the Lovecraftian overtones, to the goading messages taunting you whenever you went to quit the game, to the death messages unique for every monster that could kill you.  The most memorable one for me was, “You’ve been eviscerated by a fiend.”

At the time, the graphics were pretty much first-generation 3D.  Character models were blocky, animations were stiff and jerky, and blood was just a spray of square red pixels.  Obviously, they couldn’t effectively display every unique death with the technology of the time, but flavor text like this really lent a vivid level of detail as to exactly what happened to your character…and now, to continue the story.

So, I pass by a cemetery on my way to work, which is enclosed by a wrought-iron fence.  I’m going along like normal, until something catches my eye along the fence: a beachball-sized area of the fence itself, where it looked like something had been either pulverized against the side of the fence, or else staked on the spikes at the top.  The main area was a bloody mess, with bits of hair and actual flesh still clinging to the posts.  It had dripped down the fence, to a patch of grass the size of a coffee table–I should clarify, it had soaked a patch of grass the size of a coffee table.  And as I followed it off the grass, I realized I was standing in a smear of blood that trailed all the way down the hill, occasionally meandering to the edge of the sidewalk and pooling.  As if whatever it was had dragged itself as far as it could, before stopping periodically to regain a bit of strength, before forcing itself onward.

It was too late in the year to be a Halloween prank, and there was far too much blood for it to have been a bird that flew into the fence or something (and again, hair, not feathers was sticking to the metal).  At the time, I was at a complete loss, but rather freaked out; after some consideration, the best explanation I have, is that a deer tried to jump the fence, and didn’t make it…yet managed to tear itself off the spikes, and continue on its way…which is pretty horrifying, in and of itself.

Quake seems downright tame, by comparison.

Far less bloody than what I (literally) walked through.