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However,..now allow me to throw a long-winded wrench in my earlier "reactive" post.
I took a moment, and began considering a similar case I had once known.
We hear her tell of a "confession", and we see that she has come to understand things that even we, the readers, are not privy to, concerning Tony-Ray's past...
We have come to understand, to some extent, Mulefoot's twisted sense of honor concerning many of his reasons (and hidden reasoning) for the things he does. It's almost as if he has become a begrudging tool forged in the fires of past warfare. He was trained to be a killer, by those who wanted him to kill the "bad guy",..the "enemy",..trained for it,..paid for it,..all in the name of patriotism and justice. He killed for the government,..bloodily and brutally,..long before he began killing his roadside victims... What he does now is, to some extent, a helpless and fearful extension of what he was trained to do,...and perhaps did quite well, in the Thaikong conflict of his own past.
What CAN you become,..when the extent of your training and experience has been the killing of others? Some people break under such pressures.... Tony-Ray did. He's broken,..he knows it,...but he goes on,..because that's ALL he really knows... It's the source of his pain,..his loneliness,..his self-hatred... And it's the only thing he's really been trained to do...
...and he's GOOD at it...
What's more,...he's had it instilled in him that to do this "job",..sometimes the innocent has to die to get to the "bad guy"... They sure did in Thaikong,..I'm sure... They got "mixed up" in a soldier's problems, just like that poor bobcat girl...
So now,..what is he doing? With a dead-end job like carcass-hauling,...he really only has what he was trained to do,....what he DID, for countless years....
He gladly ate those balls earlier,..because that was the kind of person who's balls you should eat,..right? He was the "enemy" right? An escapee from justice,...who deserved his fate,......right?
How many more have there been for Muley,..just like that one... And Tony-Ray has been their judge, their jury,..and their executioner...
...just like he was in the war....
....except,..this time,..there are no commanders telling him that he's performing his "duty" with honor,..there are no offensives where he feels that his actions are justified by orders,..or the actions of other soldiers around him... And so he began hating himself for what he felt he still must do,..because it's the only thing he knows,....and because it needs doing....
But without "orders" there IS no proactive hunt.... There is only who he finds on the roadside,...and of course,..his own "unique" sexual needs that somehow, either during the attrocity of war or somewhere else in his dark past, has "slipped in there" at some point,..and must be fed from time to time....
And now Jen has entered the picture...
Perhaps,..in some twisted way,..she understands this... Perhaps SHE has always harbored the desire to see "bad" people "get what they deserve"...
...and she sees Tony-Ray as the well crafted machine designed by past war, duty, and training, to be enabled to DO it.. It merely ADDS to the value that he happens to enjoy the same kinks she does....
What she saw with Cucuy,...and what she heard of his past actions against such people excited her... She didn't feel sorry for them,...or for him... Not for them because,..well,...they "deserved it",...and not for him because he was MADE to do it,...it's his destiny perhaps (in her mind) to keep performing such vigilante justice...
What bothers her is how hurt he is by it all,...how painfully damaged,..both physically (after what happened at the bar) and mentally, because he hate's his "job"... And hates himself because he can no longer believe that what he's doing is right,..but he can't stop it...
And she,....she perhaps, see's herself as heroic in attempting to help him, to heal him,..to get him "better"... Not to stop the killing, mind you,..but to help make him understand that, as far as she's concerned, he IS still doing the "right thing" by murdering the "bad guy",..by removing the "enemy" from our lives,......just like old times...
But I don't think Mulefoot romanticizes the "old times" like she does... I think they soil his soul, as does any terrible "duty". He doesn't want it,..but he can't avoid it,....and now,...she wants him to feel GOOD about it... To embrace it like a "hunt" for the enemy, instead of merely the "old ways" kicking in when he just happens to come across someone like that on the highway... But he's so very lonely,...not just for sexual companionship,..or even love....
...but instead, he's lonely for lack of approval,...someone to be supportive of him,....not necessarily of his actions,....but of him as an individual...
He really does hate himself so much, however,..that finding such a person may not necessarily be a treasure. He just can't separate himself from his past enough to forgive someone who might love him for who he IS... Unless he harbors a glimmer of hope that that same person might help him become somehow "better" than who he is...
But sadly,..in the world of SLOP,..hope seems pretty hard to come by...
...and thus, the last panel can still be such a "cliff-hanger"...
Jadúgara ^_^
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