Torture Scenes

I keep telling people - so much easier to write well than fight scenes, which I think almost always include excessive blocking and nowadays are so modelled on video games - you fight the monsters in increasing order of difficulty til you get to the Boss Fight. I don't find them interesting to read or write. But check out this bit of cruelty:

Doctor Jack laughed as he kept pummeling the dead men with his stick. “Oh, you’re a hoot, Lardo! Didn’t put up such a fight when we had you turn the handle for Rat Boy! Is that it? Now you know what the handle does? Ha! You’re smarter than I thought, you dumb piss fuck!” The blows from the stick became more frenzied at this point, and the crowd’s sound turned to jeering laughter. “You actually feel guilty? Is that it? Fuck you! You are! You’re guilty as hell! You do every thing wrong! Everything is your fucking fault anyway, so just shut up and do it! Fucking do it!”

See? He's a bad man. I bet you don't like him now at all (even though he's been shown previously to have a gentler side). I bet when he's killed and eaten, you'll feel the proper catharsis. Aristotle would approve! (Though yes, I know the Aristotelian prohibition on violence on stage. But who can ever forget the eye gouging in King Lear? Again, that shows how effective these scenes can be.)