As I surveyed the blade, I did feel a detachment from what I had done. You would call it a cruel detachment.
If you ignored the panicked helplessness in his eyes, if you couldn’t hear his screams or watch his frantic efforts to release himself from my prison; you too would have found it funny. Maybe. Like an animal caught in barbed wire funny or throwing a cat out a window funny. Do you know what I mean?
You say I am incapable of emotion.
But when I killed your husband I felt emotion. A whole lot of emotion. Too much emotion. And really, it was my emotion that killed him, and so I guess now I’ve proved myself?
I wonder what you will say when you see him…will you scream? Don’t scream, it’s too noisy and…unnecessary. Maybe you’ll laugh too? I laughed a lot. (Remember when we laughed together?)
I hope you find him soon, bodies are not pleasant when rigor mortis sets in. It’s a bit of a shock really, seeing something so alive so…dead. Less of a shock if you watch it happening though… in any case, I’ll be here when you come.
I wouldn’t miss your face for anything in the world.
Great to have you on board! :)
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I particularly liked the 2nd person narrative, because it makes the piece even more eerie and sinister, and brings the reader fully into the story, making us complicit, even, for events past. Not sure about the tense of the first paragraph, though - shouldn't it be present tense, before the past of the recount in paragraph 2?
Particularly fascinating is your narrator themself (I was going to say 'himself' or 'herself', but I can't figure out which it is - which is another strength). Their recurrent questions are disturbingly idiosyncratic and anachronistic (especially the one in parentheses), and the matter-of-factness with which they recount their crime is masterfully done.
Lastly, I like the one sentence paragraphs - both the heavily imbued, almost accusatory "You say I am incapable of emotion" and the threateningly portentous final line. It is this economy (also found elsewhere throughout the piece) that makes this so powerful.
And to improve it - apart from a couple of dodgy pieces of punctuation (the semi colon in Para 1, the first comma in Para 5, and the lack of capitalisation after your ellipses) - I would try to find some sort of motif to recur three or four times through the piece. A colour, perhaps? Or something sensual? I hope that makes sense.
Oh, and I love the "funny" line at the end of Para 2.
Well done you! :)
A really impressive first post!
ReplyDeleteThe ambiguity surrounding the speaker’s identity is powerful. The reader desperately searches for clues, but you offer them no easy answer, no escape, dragging them into the narrative. They are active as they must fill in the gaps and the silences themselves, imagining who it is speaking and figuring out the speaker’s relationship to the dead man’s wife. The parenthesis is really unsettling too… the image of the carefree laughter of the past offers a great contrast to the tension and malice which pervades the present.
Your piece would benefit from more sensory description, rather than just focusing on sight. Is there a sound your speaker can hear, does he imagine someone breathing, would such an imagining perhaps betray fear? Is there a smell, the dead man’s aftershave or dampness in the walls? Maybe sensory description is something you can explore in your next post.
Well done Chocoholic, a great Gothic narrative! Read some of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories for a further insight into the techniques which writers employ to convey suspense and to stimulate fear.
Hope this helps
Dani