domingo, 1 de enero de 2017

AF KLINTBERG DRUGLORE

In a previous post about druglore, I wrote a little more about Swedish postmodern legends in which leading characters were drugged. Here is my discussion on the topic:

Not to mention all the cautionary tales of young people getting "roofies." The first ones I got to know I learned from Swedish folklorist Bengt af Klintberg. In those stories, the victims are also given STD:s by their aggressor; one of them, "Drogad på Stockholm Central", has a male victim who is infected with AIDS while drugged by his aggressor. Yes, that the most sinister and extreme drugging scenario I have heard of.



Thrice he gave it to him, and thrice he drank, not knowing what it was, and how it would work within his brain.
...
And as he spake he fell back in a drunken sleep.


DRUGGED AT STOCKHOLM CENTRAL STATION
A young man from the provinces, returning home from Stockholm (he had visited the capital to do the university entrance exam, usually) by train, is invited at the Central Station by a dashing stranger to a drink, then passes out in the station toilets. He awakens with a painful derrière and a throbbing head -- what's more, back home it's revealed that he's HIV-positive.
In some versions, the drugged boy even finds a note in his pocket, in a handwriting that is not his own, greeting him "Welcome to the AIDS Club", usually signed with XOXO, hearts, and/or similar romantic touches. The seducer is a so-called AIDS Harry or AIDS Gary (the spear counterpart of AIDS Mary), specialized in making innocent young men and/or maidens enter the AIDS Club, often as they are unconscious, left bereft of reason by a drug.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/aidsmary.asp

STOLEN KIDNEYS/KIDNEY MOB (DEN STULNA NJUREN)
Swedish tourists in South-Eastern Asia are tricked into giving money and signing papers in the national language, allegedly (as said in broken English by the "eco-volunteers" distributing said papers) for raising funds to save the orangutans, the coral reef... then are invited to a drink by said "eco-volunteers" in the evening, each Swede awakens on operation tables with a stitch in the side; returning to Europe, it is revealed they had actually signed that they agreed to donate a kidney while still alive.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp 
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney2.asp

TATTOO MOB (TATUERINGARNA)
Same premise as above, only that the drugged Europeans do not awaken from their unconsciousness with kidney stitches, but instead with irezumi (full-body) tattoos, most of them depicting sinister/morbid/macabre and/or candid/risqué motifs.

REVENGE OF THE DEFILED (HÄMND FÖR VÂLDTÄKT)
A deflowered young woman contrives to find the man who defiled him, seduce him, and knock him unconscious with either ethyl stupour or other drugs added to his drink; then she takes up a pair of scissors and castrates him in cold blood (this is a postmodern update of tales like those of Yael and Sisera, Samson and Delilah, Judith and Holophernes...).
In more extreme versions, more sinister than the one gathered in Sweden by af Klintberg, specifically this US version (which also recalls Der Metzgermeister and Ramsay Bolton, as well as Titus Andronicus and other Tereus-type tales), the victim goes the extra mile by preparing a savoury meat dish, like a ragoût, which the offender eats either unwittingly or being forced at gunpoint; once the meal has gone down his throat, she reveals that he just ate his own genitals: http://www.snopes.com/woman-forces-genitals-eat/ 

TRIPLE SUICIDE ATTEMPT (TREFALDIGT SJÄLVMORDSFÖRSÖK)
Extremely unlucky everyguy or everygirl (failed university exam entrance, their only friend/love interest left for another person, has no more friends, pressure from education parents, cannot find a job or considers a simple summer job out of their league), in a fit of despair, heads for the local freshwater or coastline with a loaded gun, a noose, and sleeping pills for a "fireproof" suicide attempt by either drowning, hanging, gunfire, or overdose; the suicide downs all the pills at one fell swoop and hangs the noose from a branch or streetlight right above the water, then puts the gun to their temple for a quick headshot... but, the suicide already drowsy/sleepy with the effect of the pills, they miss their mark and the bullet cuts the noose, sending them into the water... but the splash alerts coast guard or Red Cross rescuers who fish the suicide up on their Zodiac and, upon doing artificial respiration, cause the suicide to vomit the sleeping pills; the result is the suicide surprised, believing they were saved by a greater power (god/s, destiny, chance) and adapting a more positive outlook on life (this one is actually a postmodern update of an old tale as well; the earliest mention of such a Rasputinian suicide survivor I found in a nineteenth-century Andalusian account!).
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/suicide.asp 

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