The Skullists---that's what T. and I came to call them, the small group of individuals who had captured our attention during our research into what was supposed to be a rather benign creative project (of writing a screenplay).
The name was perfect, we both agreed, and from then on we both knew exactly the specific people we were talking about, who up to that point had not really a name collectively.
Most obviously, they seemed to have a literal fascination with human skulls. Personally I came to conclude that the reason for this was the same as the fascination for skulls found throughout history--namely that is is an excellent way to create fear, awe, and reverence among other people. It has always been a good way to scare people off. Bogey man stuff. Oooga Booga. Turn back. Enter ye not here, lest ye shall suffer the consequences.
But there was an even deeper reason, no doubt one that arguably is connected with the reason I've already stated, namely that a fascination with skulls often manifests as a desire to create many new ones, in great blood-stained heaps, on battle grounds and killing fields.
This desire strikes the modern person as a primitive blood lust belonging to another era. Most rational modern human beings would never admit to wanting such things, or that such lusts are found only in psychopaths. Yet recent human history seems to provide an iron-clad argument that such phenomena (and thus such kinds of death-seeking passions) and not at all a rare relic of an earlier evolutionary time of humanity, but are still very much present in modern society, and in more than a few of the individuals that comprise it.
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