Proof that I am, in fact, a sociopath
I'm in a narrative writing class this semester and our first assignment was to describe a character without describing. I thought I'd share with you the utterly morbid result, in case you're curious.
Icon appropriate!
Killing Jar
Whether Sylvia Plath died by suffocating in her own Bell Jar or inside the door of her oven is up for debate. But the victims of Mr. Church’s killing jar all die the same way.
He carefully sprinkles some ethyl acetate on the hardened plaster at the bottom of the jar. It’s ready for its occupants. They’re all dancing in the net like they’re having a party. Mr. Church isn’t sure he wants them to stop dancing, but he knows there are many more where they came from. He pours the colorful dancers into his killing jar and seals the lid. They are trapped with the invisible poison.
At first they continue to dance, but slowly their frenetic freeform turns into a soporific waltz. They lazily slide against the glass wall and settle at the bottom. Mr. Church’s killing jar has effectively stopped them from hurting themselves in their last gasps. All of their still bodies have remained perfect.
The corpses are pinned in sections on boards on walls, lined up in order depending on the particulars of their bodies. Mr. Church does not care if one danced better than the other-he only cares which little body is blue and which is orange. Their tiny limbs are skewered delicately, and each body is frozen in time and space behind glass.
Perfect rows line his wall. Walls of bodies that no one will come to his door for, no one will miss, and no one will hold service for. The bodies are beautiful and terrifying, with painted eyes that never close and never closed in the first place. Mr. Church isn’t fooled by painted eyes, but as he passes them he lowers his own pair.
In the winter, Mr. Church takes a trip to the Sanctuary. Here are many more of the light-footed dancers doing a dipping tango in the air. These are safe from his killing jar, and anyone else’s killing jar. The Sanctuary is just a resting place for a long journey.
Mr. Church thinks-some tragic figures, poets like Plath, die a technical death by suffocating in an oven and a spiritual death by being a crazy person. Which is the real death? Mr. Church thinks of the deaths that occur in his killing jar, but he is unconcerned. The inhabitants of the killing jar don’t have a spirit to kill, poetic or otherwise. They are mindless little dancers and they do not see the end coming.
Mr. Church thinks that the dancers have some spirit of form. They do pirouettes over his head with unmistakable drunken mastery. There isn’t thought or training behind the movement; it’s purely instinctual. That doesn’t diminish the beauty Mr. Church sees in the soft transformations of air and body.
The painted eyes dance around him and now the tango has become a ballroom step, drifting over the heads of onlookers. To think that the eyes ask for partners in the dance is to assign a personality to the brainless. Mr. Church knows this and does not join in. When he was a boy, he ran and jumped under the dancers. Now he watches them and measures their movements with his eyes. What place would this or that one take up on his wall?
Many bodies line a wall organized by type. Many bodies waft through the air in a dance with no associable emotion.
He wonders if they’re prettier here or on his wall.
Proof that I'm a sociopath, or proof that I should never wax philosophical? You decide!
Icon appropriate!
Killing Jar
Whether Sylvia Plath died by suffocating in her own Bell Jar or inside the door of her oven is up for debate. But the victims of Mr. Church’s killing jar all die the same way.
He carefully sprinkles some ethyl acetate on the hardened plaster at the bottom of the jar. It’s ready for its occupants. They’re all dancing in the net like they’re having a party. Mr. Church isn’t sure he wants them to stop dancing, but he knows there are many more where they came from. He pours the colorful dancers into his killing jar and seals the lid. They are trapped with the invisible poison.
At first they continue to dance, but slowly their frenetic freeform turns into a soporific waltz. They lazily slide against the glass wall and settle at the bottom. Mr. Church’s killing jar has effectively stopped them from hurting themselves in their last gasps. All of their still bodies have remained perfect.
The corpses are pinned in sections on boards on walls, lined up in order depending on the particulars of their bodies. Mr. Church does not care if one danced better than the other-he only cares which little body is blue and which is orange. Their tiny limbs are skewered delicately, and each body is frozen in time and space behind glass.
Perfect rows line his wall. Walls of bodies that no one will come to his door for, no one will miss, and no one will hold service for. The bodies are beautiful and terrifying, with painted eyes that never close and never closed in the first place. Mr. Church isn’t fooled by painted eyes, but as he passes them he lowers his own pair.
In the winter, Mr. Church takes a trip to the Sanctuary. Here are many more of the light-footed dancers doing a dipping tango in the air. These are safe from his killing jar, and anyone else’s killing jar. The Sanctuary is just a resting place for a long journey.
Mr. Church thinks-some tragic figures, poets like Plath, die a technical death by suffocating in an oven and a spiritual death by being a crazy person. Which is the real death? Mr. Church thinks of the deaths that occur in his killing jar, but he is unconcerned. The inhabitants of the killing jar don’t have a spirit to kill, poetic or otherwise. They are mindless little dancers and they do not see the end coming.
Mr. Church thinks that the dancers have some spirit of form. They do pirouettes over his head with unmistakable drunken mastery. There isn’t thought or training behind the movement; it’s purely instinctual. That doesn’t diminish the beauty Mr. Church sees in the soft transformations of air and body.
The painted eyes dance around him and now the tango has become a ballroom step, drifting over the heads of onlookers. To think that the eyes ask for partners in the dance is to assign a personality to the brainless. Mr. Church knows this and does not join in. When he was a boy, he ran and jumped under the dancers. Now he watches them and measures their movements with his eyes. What place would this or that one take up on his wall?
Many bodies line a wall organized by type. Many bodies waft through the air in a dance with no associable emotion.
He wonders if they’re prettier here or on his wall.
Proof that I'm a sociopath, or proof that I should never wax philosophical? You decide!