Piranhas – plasticbagger

March 29, 2020

i’m watching a video called “Young boy devoured by piranhas – GRAPHIC.” i found it on LiveLeak. this site used to be a lot better. it’s gotten less brutal over the years. the front-page is now full of “Kung Fu Drug Addict Fighting on Subway,” “Robber with Gun Outwitted by Woman with Broom.” the more vicious gore’s shared on private forums. ones requiring either an invite from a current member or an annual membership to join. thankfully, especially in the days of the Internet, a gruesome past’s never fully forgotten. 

“Young boy devoured by piranhas – GRAPHIC” opens with a man, whose face isn’t shown on camera, holding what looks to be a small human skeleton. he’s standing in the middle of a dirt road, along with maybe 20 other onlookers. there’s not much meat left on the corpse. a dark green soccer jersey sits snagged on its collar bones. the adults in the crowd have expressions ranging from confusion to discomfort to curiosity. a few kids are also on that dirt road. their jaws are hanging loose. one woman cries “aAaAaAaAaAaAaAah!” while whoever’s recording remains quiet — giving the impression they expected to upload this, and so wanted to keep the audio as clear as possible.

a dark blue tarp’s already laid out on the dirt. the man places the skeleton on top of it. his face, even when it meets the camera, is a blur from heightened anxiety. one of the skeleton’s hands gets caught between the slits of its ribcage. unlike the rest of this body, the hands have a bit of skin. no piranha would waste their time chewing through mostly bone. “aAaAaAaAaAaAaAah!” screams the woman again. as whoever’s recording creeps closer. that ever silent observer zooms on his shot: some sort of greyish-brown gunk has been growing inside the Young boy’s eye sockets. even with how HD this video is, i can’t tell whether that’s algae, or just rotting flesh.

such deaths are so brutal they almost don’t seem real. a lot of people, at least ones i’ve known, die as a result of their own bodies failing. yet online i’ve watched bystanders being blown to bits in wars older than them. Witnessed the final gasping moments of a man whose collapsing torso was pinned under a train. fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, grandparents decapitated by cartel members, who then kicked around their victims’ heads in a quick round of futbol. like sets of carnivorous teeth, the clicks of 10,000 cursors have gnawed deep at these final moments. logged into LiveLeak as “Guest,” i turn my screen’s brightness up to avoid my own reflection.