Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

The orderlies were impatient to get him to his room, so I didn't talk with him long. I just said hello, that I hoped he'd feel better soon, and he smiled tiredly.

But is it really that important? Okay, it's really nice to have a good carer. But in the end, is it really so important? The donors will all donate, just the same, and then they'll complete.

Nice words are ominous. Nice words said nicely are even more ominous. I don't know how to explain this book, so I am only going to try and explain the first quote. The reason I give you this normal sounding (you might even say "nice") passage is because it carries some of the most awful evil I have ever seen. The speaker says these words to a man in a wheelchair after he has just "donated" a third organ. No gun was held to his head and the organ was chopped out of him with full consent. He is even scheduled to have a fourth organ chopped out of him as soon as he recovers enough. (If that last sentence doesn't blow your mind into little fragments, stop what you are doing, go outside and scream until the back of your throat starts to bleed and your lungs implode--if the sentence did make sense you will just now be coming back from this exercise).
But the thing that gets me, that really gets me about this quote is that little phrase: "I hoped he'd feel better soon." The speaker knows just as well as the man she is talking to that he is not going to get better; that in all reality the man is going to be murdered (it's not called murder because everyone has nice feelings about it) in a short amount of time. And she has the audacity, the evil, to wish this man good health and the hope that he will get better soon.
Put a dent in a wall; scream out loud for a while; tell the next person who suggests you get an eight to five job to fuck off and go eat some grass while your fingernails and hair grow long. Seven years ought to do the trick. Maybe you can have some hanging gardens to run wild in.
Catch you on the flip side.