The following is a response to the film Life Is Beautiful directed by Roberto Benigni and the epilogue written by Gustave Gilbert in Sergeant Nibley PhD.

 Magic. He lost it. He found it. They are the magic.

Hide those thoughts, for they are absurd. We are the almighty, they- the animals we pull at with a leash. We bind them. We are the power. Their screeching is music to my deaf ears. Their ill and severely thin bodies amusement to my clouded vision. Yes. Believe. I don’t. I do. I must. He demands, I will obey.

A sardonic smile. Bastards save yourselves. Mercy within their eyes. Bastards you look to me for help? I am evil, your enemy. Bastards save yourselves. I cannot help. Go, get out. They’ll kill you. I’ll shoot and laugh, but I have a little boy at home. Every time I speak, his bright eyes shine, he eagerly listens. Bastards save your children, I shoot, I will kill. I will spit. At you. Always at you. I will beat you, you irritable souls, why can’t you save yourselves? Steps out of line, a blow to the skull. I had to, be more cunning. Don’t let me see you fools. My wife cries to my chest every night, I comfort her, my right arm wrapped around her shoulder. “Hush,” I tell her always. The same arm ends your sickening lives. You pests, leave. Bodies upon bodies. A shame. Such a shame. I told you, yet you never did. Don’t ever listen do you?

My child. Your child. The same child.

Mercy within your eyes. I can’t. I can’t. I seek solace in the power, at home I’m reduced to the ugly weaklings you are. I am you. No, I can never be you, for I hate you. If I do not kill, if I do not terrorize, he’ll take them. He binds me within his spell. Help me. I must, I must. Please, I must. I beg of you, for I must.

Your fault. Did you not think to escape? Did your dull minds not comprehend what would become of you? For now you have truly become your own undoing.

The magic. We desperately attempt to grasp it. Our starved lungs burning. Our hungry eyes searching. But it was never within our hands to begin with, was it? For it only ever surrounded you. He cast a whimsical spell. He gave us the glass, we cheered, and drank our way into the evil we became. He politely asked, “another glass?” How could one ever decline a polite fellow? So we drank the poison of hell, believing it was a liquid of paradise.

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Bastard. Bastard. You took my ability to make her believe in the magic. You took my ability to whisper fairytales to her before going to bed, jut like you do. Just like you do with your son. I can’t be her hero, like you are to your own child. I am the gateway preventing her from witnessing the torture you cause. I am the fog that clouds a window in the cold morning. But she’ll learn soon, for fog can always be wiped away.

My breath always reeks with desperation. Lights fading. She can’t believe any more. Yet your boy, he will still wonder. Won’t know, for your voice holds the calm before my torturous storm. Do you make your little boy laugh, when I force her to be quiet?

That sweet delicate sound of his is a drug to your ears, one that instigates jubilance. But hear this, it never once does fulfill.

She gazes at me with confusion, bright eyes now leaden.

Baby, I want to tell her, your sweet voice is what causes them to pull the trigger. They silence your magic with the brutality of death. For when you laugh, you make us seem human. We become what they are. How can I tell her that her musical laugh brings the onslaught of the darkest of symphonies? Your open smile, your striking eyes, trances them. Only momentarily, we no longer are the animals.

He will be reminded how he made his boy laugh, but somehow your laugh will seem sweeter. His starved mind seeks this sound. “How come my boy never laughed that way?” he’ll wonder.

Baby, his eyes will get clouded; he’ll remember we are the animals, he’s our leash. He’ll tug, until our thrashing becomes senseless. Useless. Baby, you’ll make him forget. He’ll step into bliss, but hell will pull at his battered feet which were always so cleverly concealed with steal boots. So carefully were they crafted to hide the assault. So carefully do they think. Baby, your laugh will cause them to realize that they are drunk.

They are carefully placed within the devils hands, their armoury are their supposed wings. Such angels.

You’ll make them realize they’re burning within the flames, when they thought they were walking upon a bed of warm snow. You’ll do that baby. So I hold my finger to your delicate lips, chapped but willowy soft. Your smile, they can’t take that. It’s a diamond, a glimmering gem.

“Keep it hidden,” I will tell her, “for when the greedy ones find it, they always steal the twinkle.”