Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [918]

Someone screamed near me, then tackled me, pulled me down. I fired the gun in reflexive terror, and took the terrible impact in my own stomach. A green face hung above mine, mouth open, eyes wide, not yet feeling all his pain. I shot him again, terrified that his pain would immobilize me when he did feel it. It seemed that he took a long time to die. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 918

Note

One of the book’s coldest acts of empathy: the narrator shoots a dying man a second time because anticipating his scream is more disabling than the violence she has already done. “A green face” — the paint still dominant over the human — and “not yet feeling all his pain” is a precise, almost clinical clause that makes the man’s suffering a future event she is racing against. Nothing here is excused or condemned; the self-knowledge is simply stated.