One needs only to tune in his television set during "prime time" on any night of the week to witness a seemingly endless barrage of violence. That many people in our society are fascinated by violence - whether the result of our increasingly safe and "civilized" world, or the vestiges of primitive instinct, or some other compulsion scientists have yet: to discover - seems a fact of life. While most people are content to dissipate their desire to hurt or be hurt through the vicarious medium of TV, some seek a more direct course of action. River Matthews is a young man who is fascinated by violence and possessed of an overwhelming urge to be dominated. His need to play the part of the masochist becomes so strong that he leaves the man he loves and sinks into a twilight world of debauchery and degradation, a world which eventually erupts into a holocaust of unbridled violence. Fortunately for River, the damage done is not irreversible, and he eventually returns to his lover, a sadder but wiser man. But how many others are not so lucky? River Matthews' story poses to all of us the question of violence's place in our society. It is a question we can all afford to ignore.