Reading through the 7th book of Anita Blake again, it brought back something I've wondered for quite a while. Can any one of us get to a point whereby we could kill without remorse, without regret? We take a person's life and sleep soundly at night, never letting it bother you?

In Anita Blake there is a point where she wonders if she is more a monster than the ones she kills simply not because she has no regret over her actions, but because it doesn't bother her that she has no regret. How does a person come to that state? I can understand the years of training and maybe abuse to come to that. But what about the ones of us who lead almost normal (and slightly dysfunctioanal) lives? Can one turn sociopathic in the space of a few years or even months without realising they walked off the abyss?

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be a true sociopath. To feel no remorse, not guilt, no compassion towards what society dubs as wrong. To feel nothing really towards nothing but the world you built around yourself. Would I get to a point where I would enjoy the thrill of hunting a person? Most probably. What about to kill someone? Maybe…I don't know. Depends how far across that abyss I walked.

Oh how far have the mighty fallen from grace…when all we can think off is blood's metallic taste?