She frightened me and also disturbed me to my very depths by her immobility and her silence. Did she really exist? I wondered to myself, not without fear… Could she not have been born out of my debaucheries and my fever? Was she not one of those impossible images that a nightmare can engender? One of those criminal temptations born by lust in the diseased minds of murderers and madmen? Could she not be my soul, issued forth from my body against my will and materialising itself into the shape of sin?
― The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau (via torturegardens)
(Source: spektrophilia)