You look nervous. Is it the scars? You wanna know how I got them? Come here. Hey. Look at me. So I had a wife. She was beautiful, like you... who tells me I worry too much... who tells me I ought to smile more... who gambles and gets in deep with the sharks. Hey. One day they carve her face. And we have no money for surgeries. She can't take it. I just wanna see her smile again. I just want her to know that I don't care about the scars. So... I stick a razor in my mouth and do this... to myself. And you know what? She can't stand the sight of me. She leaves. Now I see the funny side. Now I'm always smiling.
You wanna know how I got these scars? My father was... a drinker... and a fiend. And one night, he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn't like that... not one bit. So, me watching... he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. He turns to me and he says: "Why so serious?" He comes at me with the knife. "Why so serious?" He sticks the blade in my mouth. "Let's put a smile on that face." And... Why so serious?
— Don't you make me hurt your dog!
— You don't know what pain is!
— My favorites were the scary ones.
— Oh, my sweet summer child. What do you know about fear? Fear is for the winter, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides for years and children are born and live and die, all in darkness. That is the time for fear, my little lord, when the white walkers move through the woods. Thousands of years ago there came a night
that lasted a generation. Kings froze to death in their castles, same as the shepherds in their huts. And women smothered their babies rather than see them starve, and wept and felt the tears freeze on their cheeks. So is this the sort of story that you like?
— You eνer heard about the Rat Cook?
— No. Who's he?
— Just a cook in the Night's Watch. He was angry at the King for something, I don't remember. When the King was νisiting the Nightfort, the cook killed the King's son, cooked him into a big pie with onions, carrots, mushrooms, and bacon. That night he served the pie to the King. He liked the taste of his son so much, he asked for a second slice. The Gods turned the cook
into a giant white rat who could only eat his own young. He's been roaming the Nightfort eνer since, deνouring his own babies. But no matter what he does, he's always hungry.
— If the Gods turned eνery killer into a giant white rat. . .
— It wasn't for murder the Gods cursed the Rat Cook or for serving the King's son in a pie. He killed a guest beneath his roof. That's something the Gods can't forgiνe.
A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
On the afternoon of July 8, 1981, he complained of chest pains and was taken to the dispensary. His mouthpiece and restraints were removed for an EKG. When the nurse leaned over him,
he did this to her. The doctors managed to reset her jaw, more or less, save one of her eyes. His pulse never got above 85, even when he ate her tongue.
All in vain if you die a meaningless death
People's lives depend on how they accept death.
It's like we live in a room and there is a poster on the wall. We staring at it and we think that's the whole world — the room and the poster. The picture is something nice: the landscape, a famous person. Like in that movie... Ohh, what is it called? The prison movie. The room's a cell. And the picture it's different for each of us. It can be beautiful or terrible, we're all transfixed. But it's all a lie. Something to distract us from the truth. They're lying to us. We're lying to ourselves. The room's not the world, the world is much bigger and much stranger. there's a hole hidden behind that poster that leads to the real world. We all feel safe in that room. But sometimes... Sometimes something crawls out from behind the poster. Then the ones that see it happen, freak out and try to forget what they saw.