Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Black Mercy

The Black Mercy plants are fictitious alien organisms from the DC comic book universe. They latch on to a victim with their tentacles, tap into the pleasure centers of the person's brain, and induce a dream in which the victim's deepest desires are fulfilled.

They were originally meant for use to alleviate suffering for the dying, the way morphine is administered to patients dying in pain. This was a more extreme form of pain relief.

The thing is that the seductive fantasies are so pleasurable that the person surrenders to the dream, happy to never wake again. Villains in the comic books have used the plant on the likes of Superman and Batman and brought them to their knees until other heroes came to their rescue.

(Superman and Batman's deepest desire and wish was that they had never lost their parents during their childhood. By inducing such a dream where they had grown up in a happy family, neither had the will to break free from the perfect dream to return to this horrid world)

In fact, Superman was very upset when the Black Mercy was pried off his body.


In the final episode of Batgirl, she is poisoned with the spores of the Black Mercy, inducing dreams of the perfect life for her to choose from. But somehow, she wills herself out of the coma even before blood transfusion could be done on her. Image after image was flashed before her, but nothing to her was more awesome than the life she was living now.

Wow.




Now I was wondering... what would happen if the Black Mercy caught hold of me? What would be my dream? What is my deepest desire of all, that would give me the greatest pleasure? Would I be caught forever in the grasp of the plant?

I have a feeling I'd wake.

Because I would dream of heaven, or at least try to. But heaven is beyond what I can imagine or even dream about, so the dream, like anything else on this earth for that matter, won't satisfy.

Sure the dream may be better than real life, but not that much better.

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