Yevgeny Zamyatin — We [1122]

Since yesterday, my head is tightly bandaged. But no: it’s not a bandage—it is a hoop; a merciless tight hoop of glass steel riveted to my head, and I am caught within this single, locked circle: I must kill U. Kill her, and then go to the other and say, “Now you believe?” The most disgusting thing of all is that killing is somehow messy, primitive. Crushing her skull with something—it gives me a strange sensation of something sickeningly sweet in the mouth, and I cannot swallow my saliva, I keep spitting it out into my handkerchief, and my mouth is dry. — Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, 1122

Note

The physical sensation of a psychological state made visceral through the taste and texture of the mouth.